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@K1 : Have you often attacked a downed enemy as a PC?
Knowing that healing exists and knowing that specifically PCs do not die are two entirely different things.
I expect creatures to have dealt with adventurers in the past, and not being simply npcs.
Are you saying that every single monster that a person encounters has not only interacted with a PC (a rarity) but downed them often enough to know they can get back up unlike any other enemy?
You wanna know what that sounds like? Meta-gaming.
He fell down.
He could be faking it or eventually be dead, but since i don't care I still continue hit him until his head is cruahed. I don't want to be stabbed because I didn't care.
Care to explain how a creature can tell the difference between Dying 1 and Dying 4 without a check? How long does he continue to wack the corpse in these scenarios?
See how that makes no sense? It's because you gave the monster perfect knowledge of when the PC is dead dead vs. dying.
Even in the quote, you say "how do I know they're not faking!"
How do you know at Dying 4 they aren't faking?
What you suggest is some stupid fiction like game of thrones, where the vipera fights the mountain and beats him to death.
I don't really know what the point of this statement is, but the Mountain died of poison and was suffering the affects of it during the combat.
He was also speaking during the scene, so we know he wasn't unconscious or dying.
Then everybody in that world was surprised to see a dead man returning from death.
The only person that was surprised Oberyn died was his wife. Even Tyrion was watching on beckoning him to finish it.
Oberyn was literally interrogating him while he was on the ground "Who gave the order!"
That is the situation I want to avoid, since everybody knows magic.
It would be illogica otherwise.
Meta-gaming is okay because magic exists? I'm not sure I follow.
Knowing that healing exists and knowing that specifically PCs do not die are two entirely different things.
I think there's confusion on the "NPCs die at 0" rule. Its strictly a rule to make playing the game easier, and is not some law of the in-game universe. All those enemies you knock out still presumably make recovery checks to stabilize, but are assumed to fail. It doesn't add anything to the game for the GM to roll a bunch of recovery checks, keep track of which Mook is at what dying level, etc, especially if many groups will respond by finishing enemies off at the end of combat (which is what happened in my PF1 games), so you just ignore it.
If the enemies have healing magic as well, you should not assume they all die at 0. The rules specifically call out enemy teams with healing magic as not using that rule. The enemies do not need to interact with PCs to know that a creature which drops in a fight can come back with extraordinary means.
@K1 : Have you often attacked a downed enemy as a PC?No often as i healed downed monsters, but sometimes I had go.
Mostly because a player pretended to go alone and failed and got caught. Then the enemies killed him.
Sometimes happened that I couldn't succeed ( this means all of my players managed to save themselves ) an encounter because I let this pass and 3 of em got resurrected, even if they played it wrong and should have been killed.
I decided not to because I wanted them to proceed.
I haven't understood your answer. Maybe my question was badly worded: How often have you attacked a downed enemy as a player?
I haven't understood your answer. Maybe my question was badly worded: How often have you attacked a downed enemy as a player?@K1 : Have you often attacked a downed enemy as a PC?No often as i healed downed monsters, but sometimes I had go.
Mostly because a player pretended to go alone and failed and got caught. Then the enemies killed him.
Sometimes happened that I couldn't succeed ( this means all of my players managed to save themselves ) an encounter because I let this pass and 3 of em got resurrected, even if they played it wrong and should have been killed.
I decided not to because I wanted them to proceed.
I read the opposite, sorry.
Just once.
Because other enemies were divine spellcasters like clerics, and I as a hybrid melee/spellcaster didn't know if they were able to heal or not.
So I decided to ask to cut his head off.
All the enemies were divine casters.
All the other times, with enemy spellcasters, we simply managed to kill them first. Regardless the fact they were healers o r dps.
So, I think it proves our point: It's suboptimal to attack a downed enemy without reasons. Even in movies/books/whatever, I don't remember anyone finishing off a downed enemy while the combat is raging besides zombies, because they are mindless. It needs only an animal intelligence to focus on standing enemies.
In zombie film the main characters make sure to destroyed the zombie head (while the Zombies simply feast on the body of a fallen one ).
Then they know 100% that the zombie is done.
Same goes irl when you shot somebody in the head. Or in a rpg when you say that you hit the enemy to make sure he is dead.
If you are surrounded by 10 enemies and you are 4, then maybe you won't try to finish off a downed enemy.
As said, depends the situation.
But if I have time, and I am not playing a careless character, I will make sure that the enemy is killed for sure.
Eventually I don't if I know that my party is all alive. I maybe simply Kick the body to flip it, then start to scavenge.
Currently as a paladin i don't even scavenge. But depends on the enemy i could celebrate his death by praising my god while piercing the enemy’s body with my weapon.
That's outside combat. During combat, it's not a valid strategy to lose actions on a downed enemy without reasons. So, no need to fudge it.
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No dude, you definitely have no idea what metagaming is.
Using out of game knowledge or mechanics to support character motivation.
But given how rude your response is I don’t think we should carry on.
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Maybe we should make a new thread to talk about whether or not it makes sense for monsters to focus on dying characters? Kinda getting away from the caster/martial thing.
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And my point was - fudging isn't just about rolls - it's about how the entire game plays - because it's a game and the GM is supposed to adjudicate for a fun experience - there is always fudging going to be going on, a player can't really know - and the way over level enemies works in PF2 - if a player suspects that it's happening - well the rules are setup to make sure they fail more than succeed, and re-enforce that feeling.
We played straight - and had 3 tpk's (2 in the first adventure) - oddly every single monster that killed us - was altered - replaying that now with the new monsters - the game was much different. It was validating.
Your statement up there just ignores that fact.
My statement was solely and entirely about fudging dice rolls to make the PCs fail at something they actually succeeded at. I am also generally unfamiliar with any use of the term 'fudging' that is not about dice rolls.
I don't know exactly how you're defining the term, but it's sure not in any way similar to how I was using it.
I have to ask what you refer to here - because the devs did indeed state flatly that they don't balance for her kind of play but feel it's a valid playstyle. If you don't follow the logic that they expect GM's to play monsters dumb to encourage a game - then that discussion would require another thread. I don't really want to get into the weeds over this as it was an illustrative point - I happen to agree with the majority that the game is more fun when it's not a strict simulation.
My point was purely that the statement that Colette's playstyle was atypical had basically nothing to do with fudging dice rolls.
Not arguing if it was bad or not - but I feel pretty confident based on posted play-logs that their group is 100% no fudge - the entire playstyle seems like it would depend on it.
Sure. I'm positive there was no fudging of rolls in Colette's group...that's just not the part of their playstyle the devs found unusual.
I mean, if I'm wearing hiking boots, but also a full face bunny mask, people who say I'm dressed oddly are probably talking about the mask, not the boots. Likewise, people who say Colette's play style is unusual are talking about elements pretty far removed from 'not fudging rolls'
Yep - it's a sign of bad GMing - it doesn't mean he has a "shitty GM". I see this tossed around way to much and it isn't really helpful - most new GM's need to spend a good deal of time in the weeds before they understand that tabletop RPG's are neither a book, nor a computer game. There are some epiphanies that need to be had before you really can get over the idea that you aren't the author of the story - but rather the players are.
If you're brand new and routinely removing players successes via fudging...you're a bad GM. Now, that's not a condemnation, a lot of people learning a new skill are bad at it for a while, and everyone can improve with practice and a willingness to learn.
But that doesn't change that if you are engaged in 'bad GMing' you are, at the moment, a bad GM. And I was using shitty as a synonym for bad in this instance.
As an aside - it was redundant - the OP wouldn't be worried about the GM altering the result if they felt confidant in the GM. I expect that is a different topic but the root of the 'edition anxiety' all stems from places that take away the players ability to 'ensure success' - if you think about it even for a moment you can follow that path to the root of the issue - which is fear of player agency being taken away or denied - which is only compounded if they have a GM that isn't 'super'. It's also (if you follow PFS threads at all) a huge reason why PFS is so popular - it doesn't take a statistical study to notice the overwhelming majority of problems with PFS stem from players wanting 0 GM variance.
I don't entirely disagree here in general, but it's not really the case in this instance. You see, we're talking about GMs actively ignoring the rules as written...because that's fundamentally what fudging rolls is. I mean, casters suck in PF1, too, if the GM fudges all Saves to make those saves successful. People seldom complain about that because it's understood that such behavior is bad and inappropriate.
No system can protect against the GM actively ignoring said system. It's impossible.
Straying a bit off topic... but here's more math...
Ranger: Precision vs Flurry
3 attacks with a Composite Shortbow.
Precision:
50% hit, 15% crit + 35% hit, 5% crit + 15% hit, 5% crit
(.5 + .15*2)+(.35 + .05 *2)+(.15+.05*2) = 1.5
2d8+2 * 1.5 = 16.5
Deadly 1d10*(.15+.05+.05) = 1.375
+ 1d8 * 1-(.5 * .65 * .85)=3.256875
+ 1d8 * .15 * 2 = 1.35 (crit with precision)
+ 1d8 * .35 * .05 * 2 = 0.1575 (miss then crit)
+ 1d8 * .35 * .6 * .05 *2 = 0.0945 (miss twice, then crit)
= 22.732
Flurry
50% hit, 15% crit + 45% hit, 5% crit + 35% hit, 5% crit
(.5 + .15*2)+(.45 + .05 *2)+(.35+.05*2) = 1.8
2d8+2 * 1.8 = 19.8
Deadly 1d10*(.15+.05+.05) = 1.375
= 21.175
Yeah this thread alone has already took it to a semantic argument and back again.
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Casters have suffered the following nerfs and I wouldn't call the current situation balanced:
1. Per your cited values, monsters have a 70% chance to succeed (strong save), 60% chance to succeed (mid save), and 45% chance to succeed (weak save). This makes critically failing a save almost non-existent (only on a natural 1 in most cases). This only gets worse for a boss battle due to non-linear treadmill scaling where you absolutely shouldn't waste your real spells on them unless you want to get shut down.
2. Casters spell proficiency rolls are heavily delayed. That means you are only likely to crit on a spell attack roll on a natural 20 and can't take advantage of easy to inflict conditions that martials can (e.g., flanking for flat-footed)
3. There aren't many true trike worthy attack roll spells in the game right now, so it doesn't make up for accuracy via proficiency issues.
4. Without metagaming you can't know the monster's weakest save via the recall knowledge action based on RAW. Even if your wizards thesis was "Battle Acumen and the Magical Application of and Common Golarion Hostile Creatures" it still falls under the purview of your GM to be nice enough to give you the information you want.
5. Spell mechanics for control spells are all about action removal are not strong enough to really delay a creature from battle for more than one or two rounds. As identified in #1-4 since critical failures or critical hits are mathematically 5% for most instances of spell use really spell power is based on a save failure or success (since they have a much higher than 50% chance if you targeted their strong save unknowingly). What this means is that you end up with a large percentage of 'control' spells that remove 1 total action through some kind of effect that requires them to clear the debuff via one action, move out of the AoE, etc. On the rare instance a spell has some mechanical value beyond this, it almost certainly has the incapacitation trait, which forces the overall success rates...
I hope Paizo takes note of this, this was a very well written and thought out post.