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The xp system in PF2 is far better than any do system I’ve seen in other games. It easy, doesn’t require a lot of bookkeeping, and makes complete sense.
Apart from the inexplicable decision to assume four characters instead of the much more natural "xp per character", the system is actually very straightforward. Not noteworthy or good, just neutral.
But as soon as you don't have precisely four characters in your party what could be straightforward and neutral become outright bewildering.
The system assumes a four-person party, as that is the traditional setup for a party, but that aside, the system accounts for parties of differing sizes and how to deal with xp for them, which can be accounted on a per character basis. Unless, I’m reading the rules incorrectly on pg. 508. As such I find the system not only noteworthy and good, but praiseworthy for its innovation (as I’ve not seen anything of its like before), far better than simply good.
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Because if you don’t have 4 characters it isn’t 160 xp altogether.
Now it’s 40 xp per character. Doesn’t matter how many characters there are.
Previously you chopped up the xp by the amount of PCs involved and you had increasingly higher amounts of xp needed to advance from level to level.
I don't think it's complicated for a 5 man party, you just multiply the XP value by 0.8. The formula for each party member's XP gain is just (XP of Encounter * 4)/# of party members. Or, if that seems too mathy, just use the XP budgets they outlined in the table, and don't try to go between the values.
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The system assumes a four-person party, as that is the traditional setup for a party, but that aside, the system accounts for parties of differing sizes and how to deal with xp for them, which can be accounted on a per character basis. Unless, I’m reading the rules incorrectly on pg. 508. As such I find the system not only noteworthy and good, but praiseworthy for its innovation (as I’ve not seen anything of its like before), far better than simply good.I fail to see why "you gain 40 xp per character assuming you are four characters" is an improvement (instead of the obnoxious extra leap of logic I find it as).
Compare the natural way of doing it: instead of saying a monster of your level is 40 XP, say it is 160 XP in total.
Then everything works instantly for groups of all sizes, no extra step necessary for all those of us who run groups where the size isn't always 4.
Finding out I'm somehow outside the intended audience just because I have a group of five (where we play even if one can't attend) was a most unwelcome surprise. There really is nothing special or uncommon with having not-four players!
Note 1: that xp is relative to your level (instead of absolute where an Umber Hulk would be worth 4800 xp or whatever regardless of your own level) is not my complaint - that mechanism is fine. Not new, not brilliant - perfectly reasonable.
Note 2: that xp doesn't increase exponentially with level (you need 1000 xp at level 1; you need 1000 xp at level 20) is not my complaint - that mechanism is fine. Not new, not brilliant - perfectly reasonable.
From my way of looking at things, there is nothing natural about how each creature has a set experience; that's just how it has worked in the past for other games. The current experience method just emphasizes the social aspect of the game: everyone contributed and gains equal experience.
I agree that there is nothing special about groups with more or less players than four people. That does not mean that the game was made solely with only four-player groups in mind; if that were so, then there would not be any support for giving experience for groups outside of four people, which there are. The game just makes it easier to balance and give experience for a group of four players instead, while eliminating fractional experience, such as splitting 50 experience between four characters, and accounts for the added difficulty of encounters with less party members and thus granting greater experience (if I did the math correctly). I don't find it an obnoxious extra leap of logic at all; and to make the simple math easier, the text states that adding more creatures for larger parties or lowering the amount of creatures for smaller parties.
As I've already stated, I have not seen the use of this experience model in any other game, and I think its use makes the game much better and easier to manage: in another word, brilliant, not something just perfectly reasonable, as there are other games that use different models of experience gain, which does not make their developers' choices unreasonable.
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Because if you don’t have 4 characters it isn’t 160 xp altogether.
Now it’s 40 xp per character. Doesn’t matter how many characters there are.
Previously you chopped up the xp by the amount of PCs involved and you had increasingly higher amounts of xp needed to advance from level to level.
Yes I know this. I have read your reply twice - it is written as if there is a reason (justification/defense/etc) of Paizo's new scheme but I cannot find one?
Uh, it’s much less convoluted and easier to implement.
Couldn't you just add or subtract the character adjustment value from the XP budget, if you don't feel like modifying the encounter? The bottom line is that if you don't adjust the encounters, the party is going to level up much faster or slower than intended, which will make all the encounters much harder or easier over the long run, so it is not a good tactic for playing an AP without modifying the encounters, but for a single encounter that you don't want to adjust it shouldn't really make that much of a difference.
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As I understand it, assume a pretty standard encounter like a party of level 2 adventurers facing an Ogre with its Orc flunkies (mostly so I only have to look up "O" in the Bestiary =)
One Ogre Warrior (L3) and three Orc Brutes (L0) against four level 2 heroes.
The straight-forward approach would be for each monster to have an XP listed, to sum up the total XP, and then share it equally among the adventurers.
Because Paizo has opted for static (non-exponential) xp and relative (not absolute) xp (and one pretty much requires the other), we will need to take the step of cross-referencing the monsters' level with the party level. But that's fine.
So we're looking at one PL+1 creature (60 XP) and three PL-2 creatures (also 60 XP) for a 120 XP or "severe" encounter. Assuming the heroes win, they each gain 120 XP.
So far so good, but that's because we're looking at it from a builder's POV.
Now imagine you see this encounter printed in some adventure somewhere. You have five heroes, and you can't be bothered with modifying the encounter. How much xp should each character get?
120 XP, right?
Not so fast!
To gain the listed amount, you need to add something to the encounter to justify the award given the extra party member. For a severe encounter, you need to add 30 XP's worth of threat before each of the five characters can earn their individual 120 XP.
But I just said I didn't want to modify the encounter (say by looking up that 30 XP corresponds to a PL-1 critter, which in this case could be an Orc Warrior (L1).
Why can't I just observe that 120 XP per character amounts to a 480 XP encounter, and instead share that equally over the five characters for a haul of 96 XP each; no encounter modding, or rulebook lookup needed?
(And if I do think the encounter needs to be amped up, note that by adding an Orc Warrior I end up with the exact same result: (480+120)/5=120. In short, leaving it up to the GM whether to keep the encounter as is (less xp) or amp it up (same xp).Why...
There is no reason they couldn’t have done that. You could also do that yourself without the book telling you to,
...
Incidentally, if you take a severe encounter (120) and subtract the character adjustment (30 xp), you get almost exactly the same number without having to do any division.
But the real danger of taking a 5 player party and not adding monsters to the AP is that they will fall too far behind in level to keep up with the challenges. If your party is going to be consistently a different size, it is pretty important to try to match the encounters to the number of players in this version.
I’d say 99% of groups ran PF1 APs against Paizo’s assumptions (they assumed 4 man parties with 15 point buy. I believe they also assumed most groups would find a percentage of treasure in the mods but I don’t know for sure).
So either these groups are accustomed to changing APs, playing as written and having an easier time then expected and having fun or playing as written and still finding it challenging. Whatever their configuration unless they are intending to run PF2 as written (party size and all) they shouldn’t stop doing what they have been doing and be open to making further changes.
But the real danger of taking a 5 player party and not adding monsters to the AP is that they will fall too far behind in level to keep up with the challenges. If your party is going to be consistently a different size, it is pretty important to try to match the encounters to the number of players in this version.Maybe... just hand out the same xp...?
I mean, if the danger is what you say it is, that must be because the GM isn't adding enough monsters.
But a much easier solution is to just... not give out less xp.
In fact, if the module is so rigid that every chapter has strict level requirements, how about just using milestone leveling where each time you start a new chapter you level up to the minimum necessary for that chapter.
And leave the detailed xp awards system for those adventures that are designed to handle that, such as a free-form game or a sandbox game, or a game where the GM is prepared to adjust monsters on the fly.
I’m all for milestone advancement. I use at my home table. I was simply trying to say the system is pretty easy to adjust on the fly, but the reason why the advised method of handling more or less PCs is to add more or less monsters is because encounters will be more fun for players with about equal numbers of monsters to PCs, as a general rule.
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I still don’t understand what you’re saying honestly. If you have a different size party you should alter the encounter, lest the encounter be too easy or too strong.
The rules on page 489 go over adjusting encounters and xp for different party sizes.
I am having real trouble taking you seriously if you claim you still don't see my point, but okay - one last chance:
Why not have xp in total so things work equally easy for three or five man parties? Why the extra steps if you don't have four heroes?
What's so brilliant? In fact, what makes it anything but awkward and convoluted?
And please don't say "so some GMs don't have to divide by four".
PS. Please don't give me rule page references as if I asked a newbie question.
Now see this stuff is why I’m confused.
The XP does go off a total.
The game has only been out a month, we’re all newbies, and this is a question involving rules. The pages with the rules is gonna get brought up.
But the real danger of taking a 5 player party and not adding monsters to the AP is that they will fall too far behind in level to keep up with the challenges. If your party is going to be consistently a different size, it is pretty important to try to match the encounters to the number of players in this version.Maybe... just hand out the same xp...?
I mean, if the danger is what you say it is, that must be because the GM isn't adding enough monsters.
But a much easier solution is to just... not give out less xp.
In fact, if the module is so rigid that every chapter has strict level requirements, how about just using milestone leveling where each time you start a new chapter you level up to the minimum necessary for that chapter.
And leave the detailed xp awards system for those adventures that are designed to handle that, such as a free-form game or a sandbox game, or a game where the GM is prepared to adjust monsters on the fly.
You have an encounter with a miniboss (20 xp) and 4 mooks (10 xp), for a 60 xp encounter. You downgrade to 3 people, and thus need an enemy gone. A fitting one is to remove a 10 xp mook, leaving a 50 xp encounter. How do you divide that xp?
(80 xp for the boss and 40/mook has the same problem, as now you're dividing 200 xp by 3.)
You have an encounter with a miniboss (20 xp) and 4 mooks (10 xp), for a 60 xp encounter. You downgrade to 3 people, and thus need an enemy gone. A fitting one is to remove a 10 xp mook, leaving a 50 xp encounter. How do you divide that xp?
(80 xp for the boss and 40/mook has the same problem, as now you're dividing 200 xp by 3.)
This is what I was trying to get at with the formula earlier. In this case, you would multiply the XP by 4/3 to get the amount a 3 man party would earn for fighting an equivalent difficulty encounter. So what would net 60 XP for a four man group would earn 80 XP if only three beat the same challenge. And 50 would lead to a weird number (66.667), so I would probably round it to 65 or 70.
This is what I was trying to get at with the formula earlier. In this case, you would multiply the XP by 4/3 to get the amount a 3 man party would earn for fighting an equivalent difficulty encounter. So what would net 60 XP for a four man group would earn 80 XP if only three beat the same challenge. And 50 would lead to a weird number (66.667), so I would probably round it to 65 or 70.You have an encounter with a miniboss (20 xp) and 4 mooks (10 xp), for a 60 xp encounter. You downgrade to 3 people, and thus need an enemy gone. A fitting one is to remove a 10 xp mook, leaving a 50 xp encounter. How do you divide that xp?
(80 xp for the boss and 40/mook has the same problem, as now you're dividing 200 xp by 3.)
Or, if 5 xp here or there isn't that important, we can probably just have flat numbers to add or subtract based off of the intended difficulty of the encounter, which don't require any division and come out to the same general numbers. Which is how the system already works.
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Hmm but will it be simple enough to move me away form my free form you level when it is right for the story method?
You have an encounter with a miniboss (20 xp) and 4 mooks (10 xp), for a 60 xp encounter. You downgrade to 3 people, and thus need an enemy gone. A fitting one is to remove a 10 xp mook, leaving a 50 xp encounter. How do you divide that xp?
(80 xp for the boss and 40/mook has the same problem, as now you're dividing 200 xp by 3.)
I'm not "downgrading" to three people. I had three people from the start.
If an encounter is written as having 60 xp, the easy and natural thing would be for that to be divvied up among the four adventurers - 15 xp each.
When you run the reduced encounter for three adventurers that's 50 xp split three ways, which nicely rounds down to the same number: 15 xp.
That's the way everybody has been running it for decades, so trying to make it sound like difficult or hard work isn't exactly convincing...
(I know the 60 xp is per hero so the example should really use the number 240 xp)
I am obliged to point out you literally described the PF2 system in saying that, except it even skips the division. Because the actual answer you avoided giving with the notes I gave was that it'd be 200/3 = 66.67 xp per person. That's a nightmare of a number.
Again, divide your 100 xp monster among your 3 players.
The other point in skipping the division is that it puts a proper sense of scale on comparable parts of the system. You know exactly how much an encounter is worth to push players towards the next level, and how much it is compared to story rewards.
Finally, just because it was used for decades doesn't make it good. If you want to do that, I'd like to see if you can keep going using a slide rule for a week.
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So far nobody has offered a single suggestion of why the 4-man-centric xp is actually any good.
Everybody is just reflexively defending their favourite new game.
But I still want to know what was so great that they found they had to move away from "this monster is worth 100 XP, divide that among your heroes" which just works.
We have. Repeatedly.
It’s much more streamlined and easier to understand and implement.
I apologize for bringing up the "XP versus Milestones" thing as an example of how it's easier to include a system, even though a lot of people are going to ignore it and do something else, than it is to include no such system and require people to build one for themselves.
I should have known people were going to take issue with even the most obvious examples.
So far the only real gripe I've had is how special materials work in the game, and really it's something that is so easily fixable for a homegame I'm not sweating it too much.
Basically I'm irked that using a special material requires an upkeep in investment just so you can put higher-level runes on it, which feels a little tax-y to me. It would be fine if it also increased the material benefits in question, but it doesn't seem to outside of HP and hardness.
My thought on this is that monster weakness values increase with level, so you are getting more benefit from your special material at higher levels. So they made the cost scale, if you want to keep scaling your magic enhancements, to match the scaling of weaknesses.
My thought on this is that monster weakness values increase with level, so you are getting more benefit from your special material at higher levels. So they made the cost scale, if you want to keep scaling your magic enhancements, to match the scaling of weaknesses.
This is only sort of true. Weaknesses scale, but so does HP. So the relative value of that weakness only improves if the scaling of the weakness is greater than the scaling of HP and that's not usually the case.
For instance, the werecreature template's silver weakness is always 20% of the monster's bonus HP from the same template.
For another example, even though it's not special materials, the level 5 flame drake has weakness 10 cold, which is 13% of its total health. The elemental inferno has weakness 15 cold, but that's only 7% of their total health because the enemy's total healthpool is so much higher.
This is only sort of true. Weaknesses scale, but so does HP. So the relative value of that weakness only improves if the scaling of the weakness is greater than the scaling of HP and that's not usually the case.
Yes, but gold values are tied to absolute damage numbers, not relative to monster's hp. A +15 to damage should always cost more than a +5 to damage in the current system, all else equal. That's why you have to pay to upgrade once the monster weaknesses go up, even if the relative value from those weaknesses might be less than before.
Again, this is just my assumption on why it's done this way.
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No no no.
When you pay cash, your change is in "gold" bills and "silver" or "copper" coins.
If you put ten units of a lower denomination together, you get a single unit of a higher denominational value.
It's actually addition using base ten, something humans, with their fingers and toes, are hard-wired for.
Which, is actually why I love the new Silver Economy and Bulk Encumbrance systems!
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No no no.
When you pay cash, your change is in "gold" bills and "silver" or "copper" coins.
If you put ten units of a lower denomination together, you get a single unit of a higher denominational value.
It's actually addition using base ten, something humans, with their fingers and toes, are hard-wired for.
Which, is actually why I love the new Silver Economy and Bulk Encumbrance systems!
Base ten IS multiplication and division...
If someone can figure out $6.78 from $10, they can figure out 6.78 pounds from 10 pounds just as easy. :P