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So this is only thing I've seen local PFS groups(and my players whenever we played 2e oneshots) comment on that I haven't seen mentioned in paizo forums a lot: That system feels too swingy and that players get critted all the time.
I think its mostly because designers are still used to 1e mentality where "severe" encounters (aka encounters were at least one pc is supposed to get ko'd) never actually were that severe and that they were very common type of encounters, were mook encounters existed not to threaten pcs but to use the resources.
Meanwhile in 2e, if there are enough mooks to be severe encounters, its actually difficult encounters, whereas single boss strong enough to be severe will crit all the time.
I've been kinda avoiding voicing my own opinion on this since I have yet to run or play 2e AP so as I lack long campaign experience, I don't know how it feel in long run, but in short term it feels really tiring that every time I play PFS and we reach a boss, I get critted to the face and have to fear for my life each time :'D Since while there are tactics to avoid getting critted, it still for some reason feels unfair to be critted all the time. I think its mostly because level 1 and 2 characters can't really survive crit to face and stay conscious(and if they do, they have high chance of dying from massive damage) and not every party has dedicated healer with them.
But still, I kinda feel like devs should use more severe encounters were the boss is equal or one level higher than pcs and rest of encounter exp budget is filled with mooks rather than solo bosses, because fighting solo bosses all the time seriously gets tiring because fearing for your life in each scenario isn't super fun at low levels :'D At high levels it might be okay, assuming characters survive high crit chance until then.
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The problem you might be facing here is the AP design. You're right in that system works best with a slightly overlevelled boss backed up by mooks. But the AP design is still learning from the actual gameplay. I expect it'll get better over time.
The crit rules are fine. In fact, better than fine. They're one of the core selling points of the system, and enables the underlying math to work.
Swinginess is a consequence of every d20 system. If you want a system without swinginess, you'd have to look at d6 based systems like Shadowrun or Dragon Age, or even systems like FFG Star Wars. And that results in tradeoffs of benefits that the d20 base brings.
What is being perceived here as 'swinginess' is the system at work. Bosses are meant to crit regularly. Bosses are meant to melt through your hit points. Bosses are meant to succeed and critically succeed against effects with regularity. This is what the system uses to compensate for the action economy problem.
One boss, all things being otherwise even, has a nightmare dealing with a party of four adventurers, simply because those adventurers have four times as many actions as them. In order to compensate, the boss needs more damage and more defenses.
However, the monster design doesn't create "boss" type monsters. Extra damage and extra HP for a boss template could make the boss unbalanced for use anywhere else.
5E manages this with Legendary Actions and Legendary resistances, enabling the boss to keep up on action economy, and cheat on defenses.
For PF2, the crit system manages this problem. If a monster is stronger than you, it crits more, and thus does enough damage alone to compensate for being outnumbered and out-actioned. It saves better, and thus doesn't need legendary resistances. Its AC is higher, meaning you hit it less.
It's just that these fights are particularly grueling for players, and should thus be used sparingly.
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Yeah, the system needs to compensate for the fact in a game with any sort of action economy, a party of 4+ PCs will be at a massive advantage over a single opponent by the very virtue of having More Opportunities To Do Things than the boss has. The math needs to even the playing field out.
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It depends upon the classes of the characters. If you are a party of mostly spellcasters, most of the time you effectively get 1 spell and either a move or other action per round. So a party of 4 spellcasters gets 4 "attacks" or attempts to inflict something each round, vs a melee-type monster that gets 3 actions by himself. If he doesn't have AoO's, try scattering each round, so "full move, then 2-action spell" If everyone moves in different directions, he can't get to all of you, so try to stay away from each other and him and hit him with ranged attacks. A Ranger or other ranged martial character can help too.
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I personally don't think solo encounters should really be a thing until Level 3 or 4, when the PCs have enough HP to survive an average critical dice roll.
At level 13 it feels very balanced. I crit a lot with the powerful solo monsters, but my PCs have the tools to deal with those criticals and it requires more input from the PCs to survive. Things like shadow siphon, champion's reaction, shield block or breath of life are very important. I recently hit a party of PCs with a powerful wizard. The wizard won initiative and cast chain lightning and two PCs critically failed their saves; shadow siphon brought it down to regular damage so they could survive, and after the cleric's turn, the party was back to full hp again.
Pathfinder 1 felt like a well-oiled program. You would input all of the buffs and full attack actions you would spend to win an encounter, and then run the program. Enemies would all likely just barely damage the PCs before they were overrun and killed. Pathfinder 2 has a lot more input necessary for victory against difficult odds-- the deck isn't so stacked in the PCs favor anymore.
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More specifically, PF1 fights were won or lost at character creation/development. If you did that right, there was nothing short of some horrific bad luck with losing initiative and failing to save against some SoS effect that could stop a moderately optimized party from facerolling any encounter that was within its CR range.
That's not the case in PF2 and this might lead to an impression of massively increased lethality, because fights are now won more by tactics and clever use of abilities, rather than stacking things before the fight.
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More specifically, PF1 fights were won or lost at character creation/development. If you did that right, there was nothing short of some horrific bad luck with losing initiative and failing to save against some SoS effect that could stop a moderately optimized party from facerolling any encounter that was within its CR range.
That's not the case in PF2 and this might lead to an impression of massively increased lethality, because fights are now won more by tactics and clever use of abilities, rather than stacking things before the fight.
Somehow you left out " a couple of dice rolls". Luck is the single biggest factor in PF2. It easily outweighs tactics. And clever use of abilities is usually the "rule of cool".
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Somehow you left out " a couple of dice rolls". Luck is the single biggest factor in PF2. It easily outweighs tactics. And clever use of abilities is usually the "rule of cool".More specifically, PF1 fights were won or lost at character creation/development. If you did that right, there was nothing short of some horrific bad luck with losing initiative and failing to save against some SoS effect that could stop a moderately optimized party from facerolling any encounter that was within its CR range.
That's not the case in PF2 and this might lead to an impression of massively increased lethality, because fights are now won more by tactics and clever use of abilities, rather than stacking things before the fight.
Dice rolls are important, yeah, as they are in any d20 system. But I don't think it outweighs tactics. Every time I've seen PCs die or struggle it's because they're using poor tactics. I've also seen them use good tactics to bounce back from bad situations where I seem to constantly roll crits. The three action system and the fact that you usually don't want to spend all actions attacking really enables this.
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Somehow you left out " a couple of dice rolls". Luck is the single biggest factor in PF2. It easily outweighs tactics. And clever use of abilities is usually the "rule of cool".More specifically, PF1 fights were won or lost at character creation/development. If you did that right, there was nothing short of some horrific bad luck with losing initiative and failing to save against some SoS effect that could stop a moderately optimized party from facerolling any encounter that was within its CR range.
That's not the case in PF2 and this might lead to an impression of massively increased lethality, because fights are now won more by tactics and clever use of abilities, rather than stacking things before the fight.
This is kind of a non-point. Sure. All rolls are important in a roll-driven system. Tactics are just probability modifiers like character builds are. The relative weight of those things is different between editions, though. That is Gorbacz's point.
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Somehow you left out " a couple of dice rolls". Luck is the single biggest factor in PF2. It easily outweighs tactics. And clever use of abilities is usually the "rule of cool".More specifically, PF1 fights were won or lost at character creation/development. If you did that right, there was nothing short of some horrific bad luck with losing initiative and failing to save against some SoS effect that could stop a moderately optimized party from facerolling any encounter that was within its CR range.
That's not the case in PF2 and this might lead to an impression of massively increased lethality, because fights are now won more by tactics and clever use of abilities, rather than stacking things before the fight.
I did not and they're not. Stuff like buffing/debuffing (which is much more important in PF2 because -1/+1 to hit is huge compared to "meh, bonus number 32" in PF1), depriving your opponent of actions, coordinating actions due to classes having abilities that synergize with other classes, advantage in mobility actually playing a role now that charge isn't a universal ability and running x4/x3 speed doesn't exist in combat etc. etc. etc.
By this point I have around 20 sessions of PF2 under my belt and the only change in the role of dice rolls is that they actually have some meaning now, because with a competentely put together PF1 character, dice rolling was mostly for fun. You succeded at everything you were optimised for. So much for RNG playing any role.
PF1 fights are all about as single dice roll, which is initiative. Beyond the first few swingy and remotely balanced levels, pretty much nothing else matters if you twinked out your toon in a moderately competent way.
And if you're trying to jadedly snark your way across ... I am the singular, best, utterly superior person on these boards when it comes to sarcasm. You'll lose. :)
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I've been kinda avoiding voicing my own opinion on this since I have yet to run or play 2e AP so as I lack long campaign experience, I don't know how it feel in long run, but in short term it feels really tiring that every time I play PFS and we reach a boss, I get critted to the face and have to fear for my life each time :'D Since while there are tactics to avoid getting critted, it still for some reason feels unfair to be critted all the time. I think its mostly because level 1 and 2 characters can't really survive crit to face and stay conscious(and if they do, they have high chance of dying from massive damage) and not every party has dedicated healer with them.
What character are you playing? Because if you play a Giant Barbarian, being crit all the time is kind of expected.
In PF1, players were only focusing on attack, attack being the best defense. In PF2, if you are doing significant damage and lack defense potential (Giant Barbarian is a good example) you will finish most of your fights on the ground as monsters will focus you and you will take a lot of crits.Somehow you left out " a couple of dice rolls". Luck is the single biggest factor in PF2. It easily outweighs tactics. And clever use of abilities is usually the "rule of cool".
I really have the opposite impression. Tactic alone win combats without taking damage (and as such, not caring about dice rolls).
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Tactics are a much bigger influence in PF2 than they were in PF1. You could afford to do deliberately stupid things in PF1. In PF2, that will almost certainly get you killed, and if you're unlucky might kill your whole party.
We've found crits happen a lot for both us and the monsters. (As an archer fighter it's the main way I ever get to do anything.) However, by and large we mostly get messed up by poor planning/tactics the crits hurt but even with only a Paladin w/Battlefield Medic we've only had close calls (and I think one Hero Point to save death use) in Age of Ashes so far after going through book 2. (Where the last slog of fights really messed with us if not for some tactical use of a Ring of Ram we'd have really been in trouble.)
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Isn't that just a matter of PF1 being way more forgiving than PF2?
All characters in PF2 need to use some amount of strategy to not die.
But in PF1, most fights could be brute forced. Leaving strategy mostly for teamwork feats, spring attack, and poorly built characters; Sometimes others mostly Reach weapon users and casters.
PF1 isn't forgiving at all, if you don't have enough system mastery to build a decent character, you'll be stuck for the whole campaign watching how others have much more fun than you and your flavorful but hapless multiclassed Monk/Cavalier or plain vanilla cRogue.
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And if you're trying to jadedly snark your way across ... I am the singular, best, utterly superior person on these boards when it comes to sarcasm. You'll lose. :)
And this is why you're the bag of holding I want to use to bludgeon my enemies to death.
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PF1 isn't forgiving at all
I disagree 100%. Every +1 didn't matter like it does in PF2 so you didn't need to collect every single one to get to viable, and the band of viable characters was wider.
if you don't have enough system mastery to build a decent character
It doesn't take much to produce a viable character: about as much as learning tactics you need to take for PF2 combat IMO. Now I'm not talking bleeding edge characters but viable characters for the generic PF1 AP's. It wasn't very hard to look up a guide if creation went sideways.
Monk/Cavalier or plain vanilla cRogue
You can make an PF2 Chirugeon alchemist with a low Int too... Or the playtest oracle... Or someone that multiclasses into several classes that requires different stats. Nothing in PF2 prevents you from making a poorly thought out character and seeing people have more fun than you: the only thing was that PF1 had more moving parts that could go wrong but that has more to do with product length/age than complexity.
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PF1 and PF2 are both forgiving and unforgiving in different ways.
PF1 and PF2 are both forgiving and unforgiving in different ways.
I can agree with that. ;)
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*flexes* finally, an opponent (hopefully) worthy of me!
I disagree 100%. Every +1 didn't matter like it does in PF2 so you didn't need to collect every single one to get to viable, and the band of viable characters was wider.
It doesn't take much to produce a viable character: about as much as learning tactics you need to take for PF2 combat IMO. Now I'm not talking bleeding edge characters but viable characters for the generic PF1 AP's. It wasn't very hard to look up a guide if creation went sideways.
Oh, at no point did I say that your cRogue or Monk/Druid isn't viable. They should be able to not die in a Paizo PF1 AP, unless it's vanilla Rise of the Runelords Xanesha or some random Seugathi or whatever that's actually dangerous for its CR.
Paizo APs were built with a 15 pt buy party of Fighter/Rogue/Wizard/Cleric in mind ... which also meant these AP did fall apart if anybody whipped out a Grenadier Alchemist or the GM was inexperienced enough to let somebody pick Sacred Geometry + Dazing Spell. But I digress.
The point was that PF1 was unforgiving because you would inevitably feel like your Monk/Druid is second, if not third, fiddle to everybody in the party. A Paladin has more in-combat bite and out-of-combat utility than a core Rogue has. It's a matter of how fun you have, and if you're missing for the 6th time in a row with your flurry of misses or are stuck casting barkskin while everybody else is doing gonzo bat sheets, you're out of luck unless your GM is BENEVOLENT enough to allow retraining.
Chirugeon alchemist with a low Int too
Notwithstanding how ChirAlchi isn't remotely as useless as any cRogue or cMonk, you're comparing a specific, almost purposefully gimped build of a class to an entire class, because no matter how you build a PF1 cRogue or cMonk or most of multiclass combos, you suck. Not hard enough to fail at playing through a Paizo AP, but see above. At mid-levels up, you're an extra in a superhero movie.
Or the playtest oracle...
OK, I take that worthy back. Seriously, an argument out of playtest version? I mean, that's like arguing about playtest Occult classes and then looking silly when the final book was out. Really? You rate me THAT low? I mean ... I'm semi-seriously insulted. That's almost as bad as Colette Brunel trying to convince everybody that PF2 playtest was 16 TPKs in the first adventure. Sheesh. I need a shower.
Nothing in PF2 prevents you from making a poorly thought out character and seeing people have more fun than you: the only thing was that PF1 had more moving parts that could go wrong but that has more to do with product length/age than complexity.
You know, I'd take that argument seriously if you would ever, for once, raise it among all the "PF2 is all cookie-cutter samey characters with no way of making a bad character" people who pop up on a regular basis, but you kind of never did. So I'll take it not as something you treat seriously, but a talking point.
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The point was that PF1 was unforgiving because you would inevitably feel like your Monk/Druid is second, if not third, fiddle to everybody in the party.
It was unforgiving of unbalanced parties, which you can do in any game. A full on healing cleric is going to make a Chirugeon alchemist feel like a "second, if not third, fiddle" for healing as it pumps out Divine Font without touching it's normal spells while he's running around trying to feed someone a potion... I don't see much difference between this and your "PF1 cRogue or cMonk or most of multiclass combos" vs better classes situation.
a specific, almost purposefully gimped build of a class to an entire class
I find the mutagenist similarly bad but I don't see why a subclass shouldn't be talked about or isn't worthy of talking about especially when one of YOUR examples was a Monk/Cavalier... Even with that combo, Disciple of the Pike, , Sohei and zen archer make it much less onerous and less purposely 'gimped'.
You know, I'd take that argument seriously if you would ever, for once, raise it among all the "PF2 is all cookie-cutter samey characters with no way of making a bad character" people who pop up on a regular basis, but you kind of never did.
I had [and HAVE] a LOT of issues with the new game, like bulk... Just because I picked my battles doesn't imply I didn't have other issues. You can take it anyway you wish but that doesn't make it true.
PS: on oracle, it was more my stating how much I disliked then playtest class than an argument on the game as a whole: it seemed relevant as it was the most useless I've felt in the game so far vs others in a group I played PF2 in. I hope the class gets a full remake.
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I feel like it's kind of telling though when your example of a bad PF2 character is someone going out of their way to not invest in the stats they need, contrasted with the bad PF1 character whose mistake was taking a feat they didn't realize was put in the game as a joke or using the multiclass rules completely normally and as intended by the developers.
I feel like it's kind of telling though when your example of a bad PF2 character is someone going out of their way to not invest in the stats they need, contrasted with the bad PF1 character whose mistake was taking a feat they didn't realize was put in the game as a joke or using the multiclass rules completely normally and as intended by the developers.
With much less customization there is... well less customization: stats is one of the few areas of it left in the PF2 game across classes. If I get into an alchemist having to buy back features other classes get automatically, I'd have Gorbacz accusing me of talking about a subclass [as a healer doesn't have to buy DC's for healing elixirs] or how alchemists [Chirugeon] have to keep up 2 skills and use 2 sets of tools, both needing 2 hands, to use their special ability or the crippling penalties of mutagens...
You start to get into specific cases, as classes including archetypes and multiclassing can be good or bad points on both sides. A PF2 barbarian multiclassing into fighter isn't doing themselves many favors with the dedication feat much like a sorcerer that takes the feat to get trained with the sword find that over time the proficiency falls behind his sorcerer weapons. So there are other examples, it was just stats are the easiest to point to in a 'someone without system mastery' situation in PF2.
I mean I feel like I missed a good argument but I would feel silly coming in now. plus I'm not sure what they are really complaining about.
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Sure, the PF2 crit rules are swingy. But that's not a mistake, they're intended to be.
And you get tools to cope with the swinginess. Conditions have clearly defined ways to get rid of them and most of them go away over time. Dying 1-4 makes it so that it's actually really rare to get critted to death outright.
In PF1, swinginess came from other things. A PF1 crit at levels over 5 or so had a good chance of not just dropping you unconscious, but going straight past to negative constitution and killing you instantly.
And PF1's high reliability abilities could lull you into a false sense of security. Like when you hit 90% of the time, but then one round you roll three misses in a row and the monster doesn't die like you thought it would, and now it's the monster's turn.
Starfinder has a notorious crit problem. It seems like half of all fusions they write for weapons are for giving them crit effects, and many weapons are only distinguished from each other by crit effects. But crits only happpen on a 20 and often enough the extra damage from the crit kills the enemy, so the crit effect ends up being meaningless.
I have many house rules, and critical attacks are among them.
Critical Attacks
When the result of an attack roll is a critical success, instead of rolling the dice and multiplying the result by two, the attacker will roll once and add this result (plus modifiers) to the maximum amount that a normal attack does (including modifiers). This means that critical attacks will deal between 101-200% of the damage that a normal attack does. In the event that a critical attack does triple damage or more, all damage beyond double is rolled.
This makes crits much more dangerous, but other house rules I use can make up for this in the player's favor. I almost had a TPK at level 1, but I think the party wasn't quite used to the new system (plus house rules) yet.
I have an idea. Give the boss 2 turns per round, but it has a penalty to all checks and defenses. Not sure how big the penalty should be. I would say between -2 and -4.
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I think that critical hits are fine. You can do things to prevent being hit and mitigate damage in general. I've found that in PF2e, especially without hero points,combats are far more rewarding because even the less difficult encounters can always provide a sense of danger and incentivize proper tactics and communication.