My group hasn't finished, but we're entering the final chapter tomorrow. And I can confirm it's been challenging for them, especially since I tend to roll really well as a GM. We did have one character death, though it could have been avoided. They generally found the main dungeon of chapter 2 to be the easiest part of the module so far, everything else has been a challenge to defeat. My group does have 5 players, so they have that advantage, but one player isn't always there.
My group got through it all pretty successfully.
The hardest fight for us was actually the break in to the final camp, but we got really lucky with a calm emotions and the Barbarian Orc critically failed his save. Yes, the critical failure downgraded to a regular failure, but keeping him out of the big fight was well worth one action per turn by the sorcerer (who also got a second orc) and not attacking him until we had cleared the camp. I know everyone writes off incapacitation, but our sorcerer used that spell to control the battlefield beautifully for the last third of the module. We were only 3rd level until the very end of book, after we had saved the town.
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I hear a lot of people talking about the lethality of combat in PF2, and throwing a bunch of alchemists at the party in the first module is the best way to reinforce that stereotype, because persistent damage is the fastest way to kill players who drop in combat, but hearing people talk about all the "almost" TPKs makes me think the system is working as intended.
Making encounters that really push so many parties to the edge feels like it is exactly the right place to be. The death and dying mechanical change play a massive role in that. In PF1, you couldn't have monsters do too much massive damage, especially at the lower levels of the game, because getting hit for 25-30 points of damage was often a killer.
In PF2, with Hero points and the way magic healing works, it should be expected that one or two characters will drop with some frequency in major combats. For some, that is a big shift that feels "extra lethal," and will result in some occasional deaths that are less predictable than they were in PF1.
But look at how everyone talks about these epic encounters. At least at my table, the realization that no character is tough enough to recklessly rush forward into every combat without considering who it is against or the environment it is taking place in is a wonderful improvement to role playing game combats.
My group should be finishing this week. I had 2 player deaths vs the blind wolves in the first blight and I was only giving them 2 actions a turn instead of 3.
Outside of spite's cradle the party had to use most of their daily resources to handle the orcs. They had to make camp outside before they even when in. The whole first floor drained a lot of their resources because they triggered the falling ice trap and the water elementals did good damage. They still have the the 4 dredges and all 3 fights on the bottom floor to deal with. I am pretty much going to give everything but the last fight the weak adjustment otherwise it will be a tpk. My players for the most part like pf2 but don't like this adventure because of how grueling it has been.
The party is Goblin Bard(meistro), Human Alchemist(bomber), Half-Dwarf Druid(wild shape, barbarian dedication), Lizardfolk Barbarian(Dragon)[replacement for half-orc barbarian that died], Leshy Sorcerer(Dragon blood)[replacement for Goblin ranger(animal companion/flurry) that died]
The 10 above crit rule and the fact that almost all encounters in the module are +1 or +2 above apl means there are lots of crits on the party so pretty much every other encounter at least one player is dropping to dieing 1 or higher and than taking 10-40 after every combat to heal up with medicine.
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My group of 5 players finished with one overall casualty - the ooze killed my Warpriest of Iomedae.
We found that ooze the toughest fight, thanks to the bleed, but we also had to pull back and take a long rest after clearing out the top floor of the final stronghold.
The challenge level seemed significantly higher than most of the PFS scenarios we've played.
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I'm running a group through. Cliff notes are that yes, this group has found it to be quite challenging.
5 PCs, no true veterans of RPGs, though 3 have had at least some experience with either PF1 or D&D5e.
We got through all of chapter 1 and the first few fights in chapter 2 with me scaling the fights up to account for the 5th PC. By the middle of Chapter 2, though, there was some grumbling around the table because of the difficulty.
I handled this in two ways.
One, I did a lot of research, in the books and on these boards, and I came to a similar conclusion to many here: Fall of Plaguestone has too many Severe encounters. So, I stopped scaling the encounters up to account for the 5th player. That has helped quite a bit. Note that I did not TELL my players I was scaling back the difficulty.
Two, I addressed the expectation of danger. We talked about the difference between "Dying Condition" and "dead" and how Dying is an expected part of the game. We talked about how Dying and Wounded are ways to show your character is seriously injured, but you're not really in true danger of losing your character until you're getting to Dying 2 or 3 without a Hero Point. We talked about how this is a game where you go in, both give and take big hits, and try to use solid tactics to pull off a win. We talked about how it's expected that Treat Wounds is used liberally after most fights, and they're not doing anything "wrong" that results in Treat Wounds being used basically all the time. I think those conversations helped as well.
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My grp was level 3 at the start and for the finale of the final chapter. Barbarian (lvl 3): +1 striking Greatsword
Ranger (lvl 3): +1 striking bastard sword
Cleric (lvl3): +1 striking Greataxe
Wizard Universalist (lvl 3)
Where did you get 3 striking runes? There's only one in the module, and it's in the possession of the final boss, and if you somehow got a formula for it you can't craft an item that's a higher level than your own.
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but you're not really in true danger of losing your character until you're getting to Dying 2 or 3 without a Hero Point.
And that is a problem with excessive severe encounters.
Bosses are likely to crit because NPC are OP by design and have leveled stats, which takes you down to dying 2 without any wounds. Then once you are down the next hit will actually be more accurate (AC-6 vs MAP -5) and is even more likely to crit you to dying 4.
But why would he? Why is he continuing to attack an unconscious character, instead of using remaining actions to focus on the other characters?
This is one of the ways that the three-action system is a big improvement. In PF1, you couldn't walk away halfway through a full attack. If the BBEG drops player A on the second attack in his full attack routine, he can't then walk over to player B. Since the only one he can attack is the unconscious player A, then he might do that.
But in PF2, that's almost never the case. If the BBEG's action drops a PC, then why continue attacking that PC who isn't much of a threat anymore? Why not spend the actions more usefully to move on to the next PC?
but you're not really in true danger of losing your character until you're getting to Dying 2 or 3 without a Hero Point.
And that is a problem with excessive severe encounters.
Bosses are likely to crit because NPC are OP by design and have leveled stats, which takes you down to dying 2 without any wounds. Then once you are down the next hit will actually be more accurate (AC-6 vs MAP -5) and is even more likely to crit you to dying 4.
But why would he? Why is he continuing to attack an unconscious character, instead of using remaining actions to focus on the other characters?
This is one of the ways that the three-action system is a big improvement. In PF1, you couldn't walk away halfway through a full attack. If the BBEG drops player A on the second attack in his full attack routine, he can't then walk over to player B. Since the only one he can attack is the unconscious player A, then he might do that.
But in PF2, that's almost never the case. If the BBEG's action drops a PC, then why continue attacking that PC who isn't much of a threat anymore? Why not spend the actions more usefully to move on to the next PC?
If the BBEG knows that the party has healing magic (assuming they do) it's very worthwhile to make sure the dead stay dead.
And that is a problem with excessive severe encounters.
Bosses are likely to crit because NPC are OP by design and have leveled stats, which takes you down to dying 2 without any wounds. Then once you are down the next hit will actually be more accurate (AC-6 vs MAP -5) and is even more likely to crit you to dying 4.
But why would he? Why is he continuing to attack an unconscious character, instead of using remaining actions to focus on the other characters?
This is one of the ways that the three-action system is a big improvement. In PF1, you couldn't walk away halfway through a full attack. If the BBEG drops player A on the second attack in his full attack routine, he can't then walk over to player B. Since the only one he can attack is the unconscious player A, then he might do that.
But in PF2, that's almost never the case. If the BBEG's action drops a PC, then why continue attacking that PC who isn't much of a threat anymore? Why not spend the actions more usefully to move on to the next PC?
Because when someone goes down you want to make sure they stay down and a character isn't going to know the mechanics of "their HP has reached zero and they are unconscious now"
Same as a the real world, someone goes down, you don't check their vitals you make sure they stay down. This is emphasised in a life or death confrontation.
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Attacking downed PCs while others still stand should be very rare, only occurring when a creature has an all-encompassing drive that supersedes its own sense of preservation (e.g. mindless undead might be driven to create more undead).
It's not like PCs can just pop back up without repercussion, either: even with some healing they are wounded, prone, dropped all their held items, and probably low on HP.
Any intelligent enemy would understand that conscious PCs represent a much greater and more immediate threat. Any animal who wants a meal will use actions to start dragging the creature away to a safe place to eat.
It's not only realistic but part of GMing a good game: your players should trust you not to kick them while they're down unless there's a really good cause — otherwise, you will create a boring and extremely risk-averse culture at your table.
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Thinking on it a bit more, I think my line of thought about making sure the dead stay dead is my 5e brain talking. In that system, healing someone up from 0 at range is cheap and risk-free. That isn't really the case in PF2, since you always need at least two actions to heal at range and the wounded condition makes whack-a-moling people dangerous.
Bosses are better off letting the party fumble around wasting actions getting downed PCs back up then finishing them off. If a melee character dropped next to the boss, they are going to have to pick up their weapon and stand up, plus the 1, but probably 2 or 3 actions to get healed. If the boss has a good reaction, it will probably be set off when the player tries to stand up. Once the boss has a second pc down then the balance has really flipped and the party is in real trouble, which a boss monster can usually manage if the healer moved closer to the downed character. Whack a mole takes pretty serious resources from the party to keep up that they aren’t spending on bringing the boss down. Sure anyone can get annoyed when the enemy keeps getting up, but focusing on the source of the healing probably makes more sense than finishing off a foe to leave yourself open to an inspired and angry counter attack.
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The problem is that the wounded mechanic is the only thing the GM can use to truly threaten the players. low on HP is just a threat of being wounded and is easily canceled out at break and during combat. Being low on HP otherwise has no mechanical impact. Being prone and dropped items is loosing actions but the party still has 9/12 of their actions, so all it does is increase difficulty a step - which again is just a risk of loosing HP which is really the risk of getting wounded.
So what if players avoid risk because they are afraid of getting wounded. Then bad things start happening in the world and innocents start dying because of their inaction when they are not stepping up and being the hero and taking that risk. This happened on Critical Role and it made for a great story when they finally decided to step up and stop avoiding risks after a PC died. The GM killed a downed player as had already committed to the BBEG second strike because that PC had the highest damage potential, a choice the player made from their character option that increased their chances of death despite being in a bad position. High risk High reward. The GM could have proceeded to TPK, but instead accepted surrender, because that was the path to a better story.
Attacking a downed PC almost never makes tactical sense, nor does it represent how animals/people behave in the real world.
So what you ultimately end up with is a combative GM-vs-PC environment where players know that if they ever hit Dying 1, the GM will outright try to kill them even if it makes no narrative or tactical sense because they want to "challenge" their players. It's a good way to end up with a party focused only on defense, and afraid to play the game or take even small risks.
This isn't to say that attacking a Dying PC never makes sense, just that you should have good a reason to do so.
Also, if you think Wounded is the only way to threaten players, it might be a better idea to examine your tactics as a GM before trying to outright murder your players with immersion-breaking tactics. That ain't fun for anyone at the table.
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Attacking a downed PC almost never makes tactical sense, nor does it represent how animals/people behave in the real world.
So what you ultimately end up with is a combative GM-vs-PC environment where players know that if they ever hit Dying 1, the GM will outright try to kill them even if it makes no narrative or tactical sense because they want to "challenge" their players. It's a good way to end up with a party focused only on defense, and afraid to play the game or take even small risks.
This isn't to say that attacking a Dying PC never makes sense, just that you should have good a reason to do so.
Also, if you think Wounded is the only way to threaten players, it might be a better idea to examine your tactics as a GM before trying to outright murder your players with immersion-breaking tactics. That ain't fun for anyone at the table.
Attacking a downed PC almost -always- makes tactical sense, though you are correct in that it doesn't represent the real world. The real world doesn't have magical healing that turns the unconscious PC back into a fully capable threat in just a few seconds. If anything is 'immersion-breaking' it's the NPC ignoring the fact that the opponents keep just standing back up to attack it again.
As GMs, we rarely do it because players often consider it a GM vs Player attack (even when it's not, and is clearly the most tactical option.)
Now, obviously, there are times when it doesn't make tactical sense. Such as when there no obvious healers in the party.
But if I am taking MAP, and are choosing between a 3rd attack that will likely miss an active opponent or hitting a downed one? Hit the downed one. Did I just drop a spellcaster who couldn't care less about being prone, if I use my last action to move away. Hit them again instead.
Now, this doesn't mean I'm advocating hitting the PCs when they are down. It's almost always the proper -tactical- decision, but it's rarely the most 'fun' decision, or the healthiest decision for the GM-Player relationship. Used sparingly and thematically, however, it can be a great tension building option for those 'final fight of the level' encounters.
Also, having a party focused on defense isn't a bad thing. It's just a thing. Some players and groups prefer to play that way, others care more about how much damage they do.
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But if I am taking MAP, and are choosing between a 3rd attack that will likely miss an active opponent or hitting a downed one? Hit the downed one. Did I just drop a spellcaster who couldn't care less about being prone, if I use my last action to move away. Hit them again instead.
But the choice isn't binary (attack at MaP -10 or not); PF2 is a more mobile game. If I'm a bad guy and I'm that worried about healing, I will use my last action to move and get in a healer's face. Or, position myself more optimally so as to not eat a full attack when the PCs are up / take cover, raise shield, etc.
There's a lot more you can do than "stand there and full attack" the downed PC.
Again: not to say that will never happen, but it's RARELY the optimal strategy when you have other living threats on the field.
Also, having a party focused on defense isn't a bad thing. It's just a thing. Some players and groups prefer to play that way, others care more about how much damage they do.
No, that's not what I'm talking about at all.
I'm positing that if you always kick your players when they are down you teach them an unhealthily risk-averse playstyle because they are more worried about getting killed than enjoying the game. This is something you see a lot with GMs who care more about killing PCs than about sound tactics.
Sometimes you get knocked out in Pathfinder — that's a normal part of the game and it shouldn't default to becoming the ideal target for attacks.
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Obviously Paizo thinks you should kick a player when they are down.
Why?
Because the only mechanical purpose for being wounded is so that you can hit them when they are down. Wounds has zero mechanical impact to the game beyond increasing dying value, and increased dying value only means you do not want to get hit when you are down as it decreases the number of hits to kill you.
In other editions do you risk temporary difficulty from action economy loss to do popup healing, or do you leave them and hope they stabilize>. Clearly because action economy was not enough harm to a party (like it is for the solo boss), popup healing was a problem Paizo thought needed to be solved.
The solution was wounded, sure fine do all the popup healing you want, but it comes at a seriously diminishing return due to greatly increased risk of being dead. Ignoring it and saying you should not attack the downed, just takes you right back to popup healing being a problem.
Attacking a downed PC doesn't affect their wounded value at all, their wounded value only increases when they get stabilized/healed. Someone can only pop up so many times.
The most optimal strategy for a NPC is indeed hit, hit, hit. They cannot afford to lose actions not hitting like the players can. Their level boost and higher accuracy means they can actually succeed on that third hit, and still often crit the downed, by design.
So you're saying it's by design enemies take a Dying 1 PC to Dying 3 (or outright kill a PC who started at dying 2)? okay…
Also, whether you're dying 1 or dying 3 you will heal the same. So it doesn't really make sense for an enemy to attack you while you're down unless they they want to kill you above all other tactical options (take cover, move, demoralize, raise shield, hurt living enemies attacking them, etc).
How do you think the do that but with their jaws. The have to bite you to drag you, and you are not going to die in their food pile in their lair, you will be dead before you get there.
This is why we have Dragging rules and Forced Movement rules in Pathfinder. And they don't do damage to creatures.
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And that is a problem with excessive severe encounters.
Bosses are likely to crit because NPC are OP by design and have leveled stats, which takes you down to dying 2 without any wounds. Then once you are down the next hit will actually be more accurate (AC-6 vs MAP -5) and is even more likely to crit you to dying 4.
But why would he? Why is he continuing to attack an unconscious character, instead of using remaining actions to focus on the other characters?
This is one of the ways that the three-action system is a big improvement. In PF1, you couldn't walk away halfway through a full attack. If the BBEG drops player A on the second attack in his full attack routine, he can't then walk over to player B. Since the only one he can attack is the unconscious player A, then he might do that.
But in PF2, that's almost never the case. If the BBEG's action drops a PC, then why continue attacking that PC who isn't much of a threat anymore? Why not spend the actions more usefully to move on to the next PC?
Because when someone goes down you want to make sure they stay down and a character isn't going to know the mechanics of "their HP has reached zero and they are unconscious now"
Same as a the real world, someone goes down, you don't check their vitals you make sure they stay down. This is emphasised in a life or death confrontation.
In the real world, when you drop one person but other people are still coming at you with swords and bows (and spells), are you really going to ignore them to make sure this person isn't getting up?
Every action you spend attacking an unconscious person on the ground is an action you're not spending dealing with the people that are still up.
I don't buy the "the monster doesn't know the mechanics" argument. If the monster doesn't know these mechanics then why should it assume the PC is still alive when it's unconscious? 99.99% of all creatures are dead at 0HP.
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@Krazmuse: I think a lot of what you're saying as "rational" isn't actually all that reasonable.
It sounds like your monsters are trying to inflict maximum grief on the party before they die, not actually win. Spending actions kicking a downed PC when those actions could also have been spent trying to win against the other PCs. Each action spent on a downed PC is more time for the ones still standing, but your players will be pretty unhappy even when they kill the monster.
It doesn't make sense from the monster's perspective (unless it's a mindless undead or a daemon with a self-annihilation desire). It only makes sense from an adversarial "I'm the GM and I'm going to use all these monsters to try to kill the party" perspective.
Dragging rules are on page 272. They’re part of the carry capacity and bulk section.
We had a group go through this adventure path. It has had big swings of devastation and comfort. The encounters were adjusted for 6 players (1 GMPC) and added a couple mechanics for the final boss.
The only death was the GMPC at the very end, risking his life by grappling the creature with his outrageous speed and Athletics (but failing the initial fortitude save because the creature was infused with the plague for added hardness) to prevent it from reaching the stone.
Thank you, not the greatest for combat dragging, saying use 2 hands and can go about 50feet per minute. That's almost like saying 5 feet per round since that is 6 seconds, so all 3 actions?
Yeah. Unlike 1E there is no combat maneuver for repositioning (Grapple in 2E specifically states you lose the grapple if you move), so we're stuck with this and house ruling whatever seems reasonable for now.
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My two cents on the whole wounded/dying thing...
It is NOT in there to be a means for the GM to easily kill a downed PC.
It is there to make a dramatic moment at the table.
Bob the Fighter is down and bleeding out. The party can do several things...
1) do nothing, hope Bob stabilizes on his own, and focus down the enemy
2) use Stabilize to save Bob but leave him out of the fight
3) use Heal or similar to bring Bob back into the fight, but now Bob is Wounded and is at higher personal risk; now Bob has some interesting choices!
A) play dead and avoid as much risk as he can
B) get up and keep fighting, risking going down and being in a very precarious place
C) get up and flee to safety
To me, all of that is far more interesting and meaningful than:
Bob the Fighter goes down, and a few enemies kick him a few times ‘till he's well and truly dead; nobody had any chances to make tough decisions on how to act in light of poor injured Bob.
If Bob's party elects to give him a chance to keep fighting, and Bob's player elects to push it, knowing the risk, and THEN Bob dies, then Bob's player made conscious choices, faced the risk, and feels like HE had agency in the fate of his character. And that is a great moment that will be talked about for a good long time. Long live the memory of Bob the Brave, who put his life on the line to fight for Etran's Folly! Maybe they make a statue of him to replace the Plaguestone, and Etran's Folly becomes known as Bob's Stand, not Plaguestone.
Or.. you know... he could have gotten a merciless double tap by an orc and been completely forgotten.
I can confirm it's been challenging for them, especially since I tend to roll really well as a GM.
Give yourself a minus 2 circumstance penalty. If that's not enough, make it minus 4. :-)
Bosses are likely to crit because NPC are OP by design and have leveled stats, which takes you down to dying 2 without any wounds. Then once you are down the next hit will actually be more accurate (AC-6 vs MAP -5) and is even more likely to crit you to dying 4.
I can't always remember all these three letter acronyms you folks throw around here. What the heck is MAP?
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I can't always remember all these three letter acronyms you folks throw around here. What the heck is MAP?
A map is obviously something that you can use to determine a route from your current position to your desired destination!
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Thanks.
"The MAP is not the territory" -- Glibert Gosseyn
You keep citing well-known GMs who kill PCs when it matters contextually or for the narrative, but none of that supports an argument to always grief players when their PCs are unconscious.
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If your immediate response to a player going down, every time, is to finish them off, you are a bad GM. There is no arguing this, you are intentionally entering into a purely adversarial stance with your players. At that point, as a player, I would probably retire my character or become so defensively minded that it would effectively derail your campaign.
Before you even bring up Critical Role or Jason’s campaign, they both made it clear that it was an unusual circumstance that lead to the character dying without any chance of being saved. Molly did an incredibly stupid thing, and died because of it.