PF2 Overall Balance Questions

[Thorinteague]

I've done a few searches and so far I've found some bits and indirect pieces, but no direct answer to my question. So forgive me if this is a retread.

My group is growing vocal with their concern about 2e balance. The specific thought for the past week is that a balanced CR seems to be overpowered when you compare the vanilla monsters in the Bestiary with their equivelent PC's, at least at Lv 1/2.

I must admit as a GM I feel like 3e/PF was a little too cushy for the players. Combat feels to me like it suddenly became lethal. I feel like this is why they incorporated the three knockdown mechanic. PC's would be dropping like flies if they died at -CON HP.

I was wondering if anyone else feels this way, if you've encountered this or what. If you feel like this is not what you've experienced, tell me about your game a little.

[krazmuze]

Yes players are likely to go down but unlikely to go out, especially if hero points are properly used.

The draft gamemastery guide for monster creation has been released, they are not built like PCs they are indeed more deadly.

Combine that with critical success ranges and leveled stats it makes the overlevel bosses very likely to down a player.

A leveled 4v4 is extreme campaign ender fight with someone likely to die.

On top of that is severe adventures, it took a dozen PCs to finish Plaguestone, the author likes to open levels with severe fight chains when those should be level ending blowout fights.

[Karthak1]

I love the 2e balance and difficulty so far. PF1 characters are way OP, or the vanilla enemies are way UP, however you wanna look at it. Once you know the system, and especially if DM allows options from all sourcebooks, you can make a powerhouse character at any level. You get a whole party of veteran players and the encounter building rules no longer cut it, haha. I pretty much had to hand-craft every encounter, or at a minimum buff the enemies' base stats and/or HP. I love how now I can pull decent encounters right out of the book instead of having to always do extra work. I'd actually prefer if wounds were a little bit more difficult to get rid of, but even as is, it's still much better balanced than PF1. But I'm an old-school player and tend to make my games on the difficult side. I also play all my video games on hardest difficulty. I know a lot of people don't enjoy that style. It's hard to find a base setting that pleases everyone.

[Cyouni]

I glanced at the low level enemies to confirm, and in general they're running on fighter bonuses, since they don't have much else in terms of abilities. Usually they don't have things like AoO, but have more fitting things for their type instead.

The thing that likely throws you and your players off is that a level 1/2 monster, in direct combat with an equal level PC, has a 50/50 chance to win. This is very not true for PF1.

[thenobledrake]

PF2 creature level is not an equivalent to PF1 challenge rating.

They are similar because of their purpose - to rate creatures danger toward player characters - but the important details are significantly different. PF1 mimicked the way that D&D 3.X tried to set up an "equal" encounter as a resource-drain of about 25% so you'll definitely be able to get through a few without needing to rest, where PF2 sets up an "equal" encounter as one in which "Characters usually need to use sound tactics and manage their resources wisely to come out of a moderate-threat encounter ready to continue on and face a harder challenge without resting."

That's why when you look at a level 1 creature compared to a level 1 character, you're not looking at a situation of "well, I guess we might be in trouble if the dice are really against us"

[Deadmanwalking]

A fairly optimized level 1 PC is a fair fight (as in, they have equal chances of victory) for a level 1 monster in PF2. Ditto any other level where the two are equal, assuming the PC has appropriate items for their level.

The monster will usually have slightly higher to-hit (unless the PC is a Fighter), and similar Saves and Save DCs, but will also usually have only mediocre AC for their level, and far fewer options than a PC of the same level will.

The balance is really pretty spot-on. It's just not the same balance point things wound up at in PF1, which can throw people for a bit of a loop.

[citricking]

Pf2 is nicely balanced, but d20 games are super random and swingy, so how things go are really dependent on dice rolls.

For a severe encounter you're expected to win, but because of how random things are there's still a decent chance to lose even though the PCs are better than the monsters. PCs will keep facing encounters, so even though they are expected to win each one, since they face so many they are bound to die eventually.

Also spell casters are weaker than martials at lower levels, and spell selection is very important. If they aren't selecting spells like electric arc and heal or magic weapon they might not contribute much.

[The Gleeful Grognard]

Please read the encounter creation guidelines. Creature level isn't meant to be CR and an equal level creature should be a challenge 1v1.

A level 0 creature is one level lower than 1, a level -1 is two levels lower than one. Both have boosted to hit rolls so that they can actually do something in the 1-2 rounds they will be alive for. But they in no way match the raw power of a level 1 PC.

[Yossarian]

Your intuition is correct. But not for the right reasons.

First: 'challenge rating' in PF 1 and 'encounter level' in PF 2 are not the same thing. So a CR 5 encounter is not equal difficulty to a Level 5 encounter. And the old CR ratings Difficulty of Easy / Average / Challenging etc don't map 1 to 1 onto the new Encounter Threat of Trivial / Low / Moderate etc. Especially the hardest encounters, where the new PF 2 crit mechanic can make 'ordinary' creatures into tanking critting bosses (which is cool imho).

Second: how encounters are constructed in 2nd edition is also very different. Theres no absolute XP value for a monster based on a CR. Rather it works roughly like this:

Take a look on page 498 of the core rule book.

In second edition encounters have an 'XP budget' for that encounter:

Encounter Threat:
Trivial 40 XP
Low 60 XP
Moderate 80 XP
Severe 120 XP
Extreme 160 XP

Those XP budgets are level-dependent, unlike Pathfinder 1. It's a big change!

Once you know your encounter XP budget you grab enemies to fill out that budget.

The XP cost of a creature depends on its level relative to the PCs (very different from 1st edition). See table 10-2 in the core book. For example:

Creature XP costs:
A creature that is 4 levels lower than the PCs level costs 10 XP.
A creature the same level as the PCs costs 40 XP.
A creature that's 4 levels higher than the PCs costs 160 XP.

For example a Gug is a level 10 Monster (notice 'level' not 'CR').

A Gug fighting some level 14 PCs would be a 10 XP monster.
The same Gug fighting some level 6 PCs would be a 160 XP monster (and an Extreme encounter all by itself).

So yes, you're right that the 2nd edition encounters seem dangerous relative to the 1st edition ones. But that's because you're comparing apples and oranges. CR is not the same as Encounter level (and Threat).

Hope it makes sense! Took me a while to wrap me head around it but I find it works well.

PS: if it's Fall of Plaguestone that's giving your PCs issues, it is quite a tough module! Jason likes to scare PCs sometimes :) If they're really not into it, just tone down the toughest few encounters.

[PossibleCabbage]

I feel like the biggest change in the editions is that in PF1 CR was roughly "an appropriate challenge for a party of this level" whereas in PF2 monster and hazard level is roughly "at what level is fighting this thing a 50/50 proposition."

I kind of prefer the latter, since if you were to say trigger a magical trap which creates evil duplicates of the PCs, what level should those monsters be? Anything other than "the same level as the PCs" doesn't really make sense; and fighting your evil duplicate should be a very hard fight.

[Thorinteague]

Thanks for the help all, we are enjoying PF2 and learning more and more.