Combining encounters is NOT RAW.
More precisely, it does not follow the Encounter Budget rules.
In my games, combat encounter budget does not override verisimilitude. If the party acts in a manner that causes a combined encounter to occur, it's gonna happen. Monsters are not sitting in their rooms going, "Damn. I can't do anything. It's not fair. The encounter budget rules will make the encounter too tough and the DM said he would kill us if we went to help out."
I'm not playing this way. Game needs to be able to handle combined encounters and still live.
Fortunately, it does.
To avoid their PC dying, players coming from PF1 have to unlearn their PF1 best practices to adapt to the completely different PF2 paradigm.
Ditto for GMs if they want to avoid TPKs.
Combining encounters in PF1 was far more feasible without risking a TPK. In PF2, it is extremely easy to get a TPK by combining encounters that were budgeted separately.
If the players don't want combined encounters, they need to show a sufficient amount of caution. I have high expectations of my players as a DM. I will punish foolish play. I do not as a DM feel bad killing players that treat the game world as not "real" meaning as though they can loudly wander around killing things while other things stay in their room waiting to die. Players should use all means available to them to scout, coordinate fights, and find ways to kill stealthily and quickly or at least put the fight position in their favor to deal with combined encounters.
So far the players have been able to handle this style. If PF2 forced me into some unnatural style of play where I had to play monsters incompetently for the PCs to survive, I doubt I would play the game. I'm glad the designers did not do this. PF2 encounter budgets are a nice guideline, but PCs can handle a lot more than the guidelines suggest, especially experienced players.
New players maybe you play things a bit softer until they get their feet wet. Veteran gamers should be able to handle combined encounters fairly easy as long as they are not dealing with some overtuned ability.
I can agree to be cautious, but PF2 PCs are strong enough to handle combined encounters.
This seems like kind of a weird take. It almost reads as "I don't like this kind of spell, so I'm going to have the enemies react to it by suddenly behaving in a far more lethal way."
My enemies always react in the most lethal way. So there's no change in behavior in here.
Or, I should say, they always react in the most lethal way depending on their psychology, intelligence and knowledge. I'm not adversarial but I'm tough.And I really hate all the metagaming assumptions around encounter difficulty, mainly:
- The GM will not combine encounters.
- All encounters will be balanced even if we decide to knock at the fortress front door.
- The safest route is the one with the most basic terrain features. As terrain is not counted in encounter difficulty, going through water for example can lead to a tougher encounter. So some players avoid any form of special terrain unless they are forced to.
At my table, you may face Extreme+ encounters if you knock at the fortress front door, you may face an entire dungeon if you alert everyone by your behavior and water is taken into account in encounter difficulty. Some players dislike it but others love it, so I consider that my GMing style and not a mistake.
Past that... having that be your go-to answer to walls
It's not a "go-to answer", just a word of caution. Using walls as a go-to answer to every fight may have unforeseen consequences. On the other hand, using them with intelligence works wonders, like everything in PF2.
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I do not as a DM feel bad killing players that treat the game world as not "real"...
Rafaj, the Snake Charmer: "Where's Sally? Wasn't she supposed to join us for the game today? Why is everyone so dirty?"
Daren Mott, Commander of the Frielion Brigade, Lone Survivor of the Battle of the Palain, and Champion of the Hundred Games: *gulps nervously* "Quiet you fool! You know we're only supposed to talk in character! *leans in to whisper* She let it be known that she didn't believe in Derivan's delusions of a "real" fantasy world. Now she's buried in the back garden."
:P
I do not as a DM feel bad killing players that treat the game world as not "real"...Rafaj, the Snake Charmer: "Where's Sally? Wasn't she supposed to join us for the game today? Why is everyone so dirty?"
Daren Mott, Commander of the Frielion Brigade, Lone Survivor of the Battle of the Palain, and Champion of the Hundred Games: *gulps nervously* "Quiet you fool! You know we're only supposed to talk in character! *leans in to whisper* She let it be known that she didn't believe in Derivan's delusions of a "real" fantasy world. Now she's buried in the back garden."
:P
We don't play live table, haha. I wonder if people still call it "Live table" if you speak only in character and anything you say is considered what your character does?
It's not a fun game to run if the players don't learn to handle hard combat. Going from room to room killing monsters according to the encounter table is not appealing.
It's not a fun game to run if the players don't learn to handle hard combat. Going from room to room killing monsters according to the encounter table is not appealing.
For you, this may well be true.
I have a son who's into this stuff, and pretty much any day where he gets to sit at a table with a bunch of other people and roleplay a goblin is a good day as far as he's concerned, regardless of what else is going on.
Different people enjoy different things.
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I do not as a DM feel bad killing players that treat the game world as not "real"...Rafaj, the Snake Charmer: "Where's Sally? Wasn't she supposed to join us for the game today? Why is everyone so dirty?"
Daren Mott, Commander of the Frielion Brigade, Lone Survivor of the Battle of the Palain, and Champion of the Hundred Games: *gulps nervously* "Quiet you fool! You know we're only supposed to talk in character! *leans in to whisper* She let it be known that she didn't believe in Derivan's delusions of a "real" fantasy world. Now she's buried in the back garden."
:P
We don't play live table, haha. I wonder if people still call it "Live table" if you speak only in character and anything you say is considered what your character does?
It's not a fun game to run if the players don't learn to handle hard combat. Going from room to room killing monsters according to the encounter table is not appealing.
Depends on the players.
And negotiating can be a thing too.
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Raving dork was commenting more on the claim that a GM might be killing players, rather than characters.
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Raving dork was commenting more on the claim that a GM might be killing players, rather than characters.
Live Table in the extreme.
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Raving dork was commenting more on the claim that a GM might be killing players, rather than characters.
Thanks, Unicore. Was this really not understood? XD
Live Table in the extreme.
LOL.
I hate that I misspelled Firelion.
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The encounter budgeting rules are pretty straightforward.
Combining two moderate encounters of 80, jumps straight to extreme at 160.
Yes, being partway through fight #1 *could* make it easier, but a backline surprise could also make it more difficult.
Party comp makes a huge difference, those with slot casters can slam all their "ohshit" buttons, while martials, Kineticists, ect, that lack the ability to "nova."
All that is true, but not relevant to the general, blank slate discussion.
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The actual numbers jump between a single encounter and the added second is huge. I want this to be as clinical, and white-room as possible. A moderate fight that "makes too much noise" and pulls in a severe monster is immediately off the scale at 200.
Senior players who have been living at the top of the curve for years often forget just how big a gap there is between them and the average player. I've said it elsewhere, but the actual average players will forget to use Reactive Strikes, they are not playing close to optimally.
Combining encounters can be represented with a numerical danger/power budget, and the game does not recommend going beyond extreme. As such, saying "it's ~wrong" to do so is pretty damn close to correct.
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Experienced GMs who not only have time with the system to have a more fine-tuned sense of encounter danger, but who *also* know the party well enough to gauge their ability, can open the potential to combine some encounters as a dramatic way to punch up the danger, add some spice of consequence, ect.
I do NOT want lurkers to read that and think it is at all normal or expected to combine encounters, it's not.
I would like a take a moment to quote what the book says about Extreme Encounters, budget: 160
Extreme-threat encounters are so dangerous that they are likely to be an even match for the characters, particularly if the characters are low on resources. This makes them too challenging for most uses. An extreme-threat encounter might be appropriate for a fully rested group of characters that can go all-out, for the climactic encounter at the end of an entire campaign, or for a group of veteran players using advanced tactics and teamwork.
That budget is just 2 moderate encounters added together.
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If your party regularly eats extreme encounters for breakfast, please try to step back and get some perspective on the playerbase as a whole.
Combining encounters is one of the most deadly things a GM can do that will kill PCs, and it's also something that can be super easy to let happen because it seems natural. Pf2e is a game, with gameplay conceits. This is a good example of one of them.
So yes, combining encounters can* be a good or great thing*, but that statement has alllllll the asterisks* I can throw onto it. By default, DO NOT do it.
If / when that happens as a logical consequence to events, the danger of that change ought be clearly flagged by the GM, ect, ect.
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Combining two moderate encounters of 80, jumps straight to extreme at 160.
There's a catch, though: Combining encounters is not the same as making a big encounter.
I'd never put my parties against an Extreme Encounter unless I really wanted them to retreat/die. But I combine encounters regularly.When you combine encounters, you don't exactly make a big encounter because there's a delay between both encounters, a short one, but significant. From experience, a party can deal with a Moderate encounter in 2 rounds and a Severe in 3 rounds, I've used these values for wave fights and it works wonders (for 2-3 fights, over that you need more time as the party is not getting their hp back otherwise). So if I combine 2 Moderate encounters with the second encounter arriving with just one round of delay it's actually much closer to a Severe encounter than an Extreme one. It's manageable by most parties.
Another thing is that combining encounters tend to multiply the number of enemies. And 10 enemies are not equivalent to 5 twice-stronger enemies because there are choke points, AoEs spells, control spells, etc...
And the last point is that the PCs can retreat. When you combine encounters, it's quite obvious. You see an enemy running away, you hear the second encounter coming, etc... So if you feel you can't handle all of that, you can retreat. It's rather easy to retreat unless the enemies are extremely mobile and I've seen numerous times the PCs retreating when they were pulling more weight than they can handle.
As of now, I only got one combined encounter that led to PC deaths. Raven Black can speak about it as he was there. And I think he can confirm I made it clear the party was at some point triggering the boss fight (while they were at half hit points with many resources used). In my head, I was giving them all the signals for retreat but they didn't. I certainly failed to be clear enough or they missed some signs, it's hard to tell as I must admit it got a bit heated (in my opinion, there was a difference between the ambiance I wanted and the expectations of some players).
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Trip H, I hear you, and I don't entirely disagree, but I think there are certain narratives about the game that come from people holding too tightly to a "right way" to play PF2, that end up just "proving" the idea that all casters are terrible and that martials, especially fighters, are just too powerful.
One of the biggest causes of this meta-analysis is players believing with 100% certainty that the GM has an obligation to never modify an encounter in progress, and to always let them rest up to full between fights.
As a GM, it is really not that difficult to actually make a difficult encounter less life threatening by having one of the enemies make a big show of going off to alert the boss. If the party is already struggling, then you've just made the encounter easier, and you've clearly signaled to your players that they are in over their heads and it is time to fall back. If they double down and manage to stop the retreating NPC, and not TPK, then maybe the 10 minute break before the next fight will feel particularly earned--if they expected to have to actively go get help, then it is reasonably logical for the PCs to assume that a short rest in the area is possible.
Additionally, what makes combined encounters threatening is the number of actions being used against the PCs. So if the GM is being true to spending actions to open doors, move around, and for reinforcements to have to spend actions standing up, grabbing weapons, etc., the threat of the combined encounter is particularly defused across turns. New GMs who just have everyone standing around with their weapons drawn might overwhelm a party with a combined encounter, and there probably could be better advice in the GM core about running dynamic encounters, but it isn't special elite GM stuff. It works just as well for GMs that don't run encounters as tactical death traps as it does for GMs who do.
Thinking about NPC motivation and reasonable behavior is not elite GM behavior.
And that is what brings it back to the OP for me. If you are a GM and you have players that want to play control casters, you have players that want the opportunity to cast spells that will have long lasting effects on the battlefield. You can't really do that with 3 round encounters. If you have a party of 4 martials, and they think one of them having trained medicine and battle medicine is all they are going to need to survive, then you could be brutal, and disabuse them of that notion, or you can keep discrete encounters with 10+ minute breaks between them. As a GM, you are always making choices that create the true meta analysis of tactics for your game. If your players are making "bad choices" of tactics for your game, it is probably on you to decide how to talk to them about that/change the game to fit their expectations. That is rule 0 stuff to me, and shouldn't get pushed off to "elite play."
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BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GM
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TBH the examples given above show exactly why only veteran GMs should try their hand at combining encounters.
They are full of excellent insights on GMing and how to design wave/combined encounters in PF2. The latter notably comes from true system mastery based on experience. It is not clearly written anywhere in the rules AFAIK.
I once designed an encounter that was meant to be combined. I started off with four cultists in the main room of the temple, then drew ine four more from an adjacent room the next round, drew in one of the priests and another cultist a round later, then finally the temple's teleporting divine guardian.
I don't remember what each encounter individually would have been rated, but all four together definitely would have cracked the encounter budget if it weren't for the fact that by the time the next encounter had joined, the previous had already taken part of a beating until eventually the players were stacked up against a lot of injured enemies.
My players have been playing a while, but they are far from tactical veterans. They survived the fight and it was grueling but satisfying. Admittedly this is the fight that came closes to killing the sorcerer, but part of that is what I described in threads around the old "New" wounded rules--the party prioritized tapping them for a few hit points between every time they went down, bringing them back up in the middle of trouble and in the last few, during the middle of a bunch of the priest's AoEs.
In any case, it is clear to me that combining encounters can be dangerous, but a combined encounter is far less dangerous than one whole encounter would have been at the same budget, and gets less so the longer it takes the reinforcements to arrive (provided you can spend that time eliminating parts of the original - one big foe becoming two big foes will still be two big foes until the first goes down, but 4 small might be 3 or 2 small when the next encounter runs in)
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PS at the risk of returning to the original premise, if you have a shapable wall spell, consider than you might be able to block the exit in the same move you divide the encounter.
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I once designed an encounter that was meant to be combined. I started off with four cultists in the main room of the temple, then drew ine four more from an adjacent room the next round, drew in one of the priests and another cultist a round later, then finally the temple's teleporting divine guardian.
I don't remember what each encounter individually would have been rated, but all four together definitely would have cracked the encounter budget if it weren't for the fact that by the time the next encounter had joined, the previous had already taken part of a beating until eventually the players were stacked up against a lot of injured enemies.
My players have been playing a while, but they are far from tactical veterans. They survived the fight and it was grueling but satisfying. Admittedly this is the fight that came closes to killing the sorcerer, but part of that is what I described in threads around the old "New" wounded rules--the party prioritized tapping them for a few hit points between every time they went down, bringing them back up in the middle of trouble and in the last few, during the middle of a bunch of the priest's AoEs.
In any case, it is clear to me that combining encounters can be dangerous, but a combined encounter is far less dangerous than one whole encounter would have been at the same budget, and gets less so the longer it takes the reinforcements to arrive (provided you can spend that time eliminating parts of the original - one big foe becoming two big foes will still be two big foes until the first goes down, but 4 small might be 3 or 2 small when the next encounter runs in)
This plays to the true secret of winning PF2 encounters which is actually written in the encounter budget : as soon as you take a foe out of the fight, the encounter's budget and thus its severity goes down.
Same in reverse when one of the PCs goes down or cannot contribute to the fight for whatever reason.
The PF2 system handles combined encounters fine.
As a GM/DM, you coach your players up and introduce new players to combined encounters and harder fights slowly. That is why I mentioned that with new players you would be more cautious until you get them to understand the rules.
This side discussion started because Super Bidi mentioned what he considered a possible issue with the use of wall spells. Whereas I consider the main use of wall spells is dealing with combined encounters. Once you are using wall spells, you are pretty high level. You should have some experience playing unless doing a higher level one shot.
Wall spells are excellent at delaying combined encounters. Depending on the wall and the monster level, they can give you a few more rounds.
This original discussion is about controller casters or controller martials (since those exist now). I think controllers are very helpful when dealing with combined encounters. It is one of their primary functions.
They still exist in PF2. I think it is still a highly useful caster function to help control combined or difficult encounters.
If you are not combining encounters or creating very difficult encounters, I don't think the value of a controller caster is quite as noticeable. You'll still notice the trips or the single target slows. But the multi-target slows, walls, phantasmal calamities, entangles, and other wide area control spells that help players deal with very large, very difficult multi-target encounters, or combined encounters when an area is descending on a party are more valuable and noticeable when the DM puts the players in a situation where these spells are highly useful.
In my experience in PF2 so far, once players have sufficient experience, combined encounters or very difficult encounters favor casters and especially favor control casters who really shine when things seem overwhelming. As a DM you have to know that a good controller is present and knows the quality control spells to use.