Been reading about Grappling lately, are there any good strategies for restraining your enemy? Or is the only way to roll a crit success on a grapple check? Are there many ways to better my chances or rolling that crit success or just via status/item/circumstance bonuses?
I imagine there will be feats dedicated to it later, but for now maximizing Athletics is the best way to go.
Barbarians have a feat for +2 to grapple checks, ape animal barbs have a grapple weapon which let's you apply your item bonus (deer does to, but that's op)
Barbarians have a feat for +2 to grapple checks, ape animal barbs have a grapple weapon which let's you apply your item bonus (deer does to, but that's op)
Hmm? What is this deer OP thing you speak of? Sounds interesting..
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Barbarians have a feat for +2 to grapple checks, ape animal barbs have a grapple weapon which let's you apply your item bonus (deer does to, but that's op)Hmm? What is this deer OP thing you speak of? Sounds interesting..
BarBarian Page 86: In Table 3–3: Animal Instincts, change the deer’s Damage entry to 1d10 P and replace the charge trait with the grapple trait.
So, at 7th, when you get Specialization, it's a Reach Grapple 1D12 Weapon.
Oh, what's so OP about that though?
Oh, what's so OP about that though?
Most weapons are (at best) two of those things.
I like it. Time to become an Animal Instinct Deer loving Barbarian!
How does one get the item bonus to grapple checks as a Deer?
Handwraps of mighty blows
Barring future feats, trying to grapple in hopes of pinning your enemy is folly. Grappling isn't something you build around anymore, like in PF1. Currently the animal instinct barbarian is probably the best at it, but still isn't going to critically succeed most of the time. My guess is that they might have a 15% chance to critically succeed on an at level opponent. It's simply not reliable.
You can build both a Barbarian and a Monk around Grappling.
Barbarian
Brutal Bully
Giant's Stature
Furious Bully
Thrash
Furious Grab
Titan's Stature
Collateral Thrash
Monk
Wolf Stance
Crushing Grab
Flurry of Maneuvers
Whirling Throw
Wolf Drag
Mixed Maneuver
Sleeper Hold
A Barbarian is probably better though. If you're using the OP Multiclassing rules from the GMG and get all the Feats, it could be pretty sweet.
Barring future feats, trying to grapple in hopes of pinning your enemy is folly. Grappling isn't something you build around anymore, like in PF1. Currently the animal instinct barbarian is probably the best at it, but still isn't going to critically succeed most of the time. My guess is that they might have a 15% chance to critically succeed on an at level opponent. It's simply not reliable.
Let's see...
24 STR Barbarian with Legendary Athletics and the Item bonus, +38 Athletics total at lvl 20.
+2 Circumstance Bonus while Enraged.
+2 Status bonus from the Might Domain.
+42 Athletics
A Balor have a 49 Fortitude DC and is an Extreme save, fail on a 7 and crit fail at 17, 20%.
A High DC 46, need to roll a 14, 35% to crit fail.
A Moderate one is DC 43, needs to roll a 11, 50% to crit.
This is alone, a simple spellcaster with a debuff as simple as lvl 1 Fear, would increase each of these chances by 5-15%.
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Remember that they re-balanced the combat maneauvers to be more of a debuff-mechanism rather then a shut-down one. If you don't crit on the grapple, you still make your foe flat-footed to the rest of the team. The Rogue that doesn't get a flank and doesn't need to feint will be happy. Also, Disarm hardly ever will actually disarm someone. But that -2 to their attack rolls is effectively a +2 to AC for the whole party.
So yeah, if you can spare the action and, say, forgo raising your shield to make a Disarm, you can help the whole team instead of only yourself. Of course you want to do this as your first attack, so your actually damaging attacks suffer for it.
Then again, if you are the kind who can first grab the target for Flat Footed with reasonable chance of success, then makes his Disarm with an Agile weapon can definitely help set up an enemy for a round of suffering.
IF it is the right kind of enemy and IF the rest of the party is in a position to properly capitalise on the conditions. A lot of ifs, but if it works, it works well.
I'm looking forward to seeing the feats the APG 2 offers. With some luck, they will have some to enable combat maneauvers a bit more.
Barring future feats, trying to grapple in hopes of pinning your enemy is folly. Grappling isn't something you build around anymore, like in PF1. Currently the animal instinct barbarian is probably the best at it, but still isn't going to critically succeed most of the time. My guess is that they might have a 15% chance to critically succeed on an at level opponent. It's simply not reliable.Let's see...
24 STR Barbarian with Legendary Athletics and the Item bonus, +38 Athletics total at lvl 20.
+2 Circumstance Bonus while Enraged.
+2 Status bonus from the Might Domain.
+42 Athletics
A Balor have a 49 Fortitude DC and is an Extreme save, fail on a 7 and crit fail at 17, 20%.
A High DC 46, need to roll a 14, 35% to crit fail.
A Moderate one is DC 43, needs to roll a 11, 50% to crit.
This is alone, a simple spellcaster with a debuff as simple as lvl 1 Fear, would increase each of these chances by 5-15%.
The monsters on AoN for level 20 have the following Fort values:
37, 39, 36, 37, 32, 36, 30, 36. Average of 35. If we ignore the two low stand out values, avg 36.8 Meaning you need to meet a 57. That means 30% of the time you could succeed. Also rage doesn't give you a bonus to grapples, but Furious Bully will (just to clarify). I disagree that most people would dip to get the domain, but I guess if you're building for it as much as possible then it counts.So 30% of the time you can pin someone, if you build the most extreme grappler you can.
To me, that's real f$*&ing lame.
Level 20 is also a bad place to do analysis in my opinion. We're much better off looking at around level 10.
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Sure I don't mind doing at lvl 10 either, that is even better actually.
Furious bully +2
Domain +2
20 STR Barbarian
Athletics to Grapple +23, total +27
Looking at the values of the GMG in the fortitude saves
DC 34 Extreme -> Roll a 17 20%
DC 32 High -> Roll a 15 30%
DC 29 Moderate -> Roll a 12 45%
Still around the same.
And 30% of chance to pin someone that is above High in the Saving chart (your 37) is not a simple someone, but one of the best at fortitude saves that have around btw. That is the same value that a Legendary Fortitude character would have with an Apex item and full con.
I don't really care who the opponent is, I only care about the chance of success.
I'm still suffering from shock from PF1, where if you focused on grappling not only we're you definitely going to pin someone, with the right build you could pin multiple people in the same round and go from not grappling to pinned in a single round (required Snapping Turtle Style).
Now against an on level opponent I have about a 30% chance to successfully pin them. If they'r higher level than me, that goes down probably by 10% per level. And boss monsters in PF2 are usually 1 to 2 levels higher than you.
An on level enemy isn't supposed to be challenging.
Ultimately this is my chief complain with PF2, I always feel like a weakling. If I'm putting everything into something, I should be suplexing the enemy into a sleeper hold almost every turn.
But instead, it's "Well, if you find the weakling enemies you can do that, but against other strong guys you might do it sometimes".
And remember it comes at the cost of potentially doing damage. And if you fail on the first attack, or try to do it as a action after attacking you will suffer the multiple attack penalty. Dropping your chance for success by 25%.
I don't really care who the opponent is, I only care about the chance of success.
I'm still suffering from shock from PF1, where if you focused on grappling not only we're you definitely going to pin someone, with the right build you could pin multiple people in the same round and go from not grappling to pinned in a single round (required Snapping Turtle Style).
Now against an on level opponent I have about a 30% chance to successfully pin them. If they'r higher level than me, that goes down probably by 10% per level. And boss monsters in PF2 are usually 1 to 2 levels higher than you.
An on level enemy isn't supposed to be challenging.
Ultimately this is my chief complain with PF2, I always feel like a weakling. If I'm putting everything into something, I should be suplexing the enemy into a sleeper hold almost every turn.
But instead, it's "Well, if you find the weakling enemies you can do that, but against other strong guys you might do it sometimes".
And remember it comes at the cost of potentially doing damage. And if you fail on the first attack, or try to do it as a action after attacking you will suffer the multiple attack penalty. Dropping your chance for success by 25%.
Don't you think the vast difference in the amount of existing content has something to do with that?
I never played PF1, but looking at AoN, it appears that Snapping Turtle Style was in a book that released 3 years after launch.
PF2 hasn't even hit 1 year yet.
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No I don't believe the difference in content will account for that.
At the end of the day, what plagues me is the success rates for PC actions. Paizo has tightened the math in this edition, your first attack on a round usually will have about a 50%-65% success rate against an at level enemy. And I hate it. It makes me feel like my character isn't doing their job. Then I look around the table and see other people who feel like they're also doing something wrong.
We're not. The games just harder. It's not as generous with bonus, you don't have chances to get many.
The option to grapple two people at once is something that will probably come in time.
The option to virtually guarantee I will succeed on a athletics check to pin an enemy would break the math of the game and be an unfair and overpowered option within the context of everything else in game.
It's not just the options, it's the underlying math of the system that I'm just not really happy with.
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At the end of the day, what plagues me is the success rates for PC actions. Paizo has tightened the math in this edition, your first attack on a round usually will have about a 50%-65% success rate against an at level enemy. And I hate it. It makes me feel like my character isn't doing their job. Then I look around the table and see other people who feel like they're also doing something wrong.
It's not just the options, it's the underlying math of the system that I'm just not really happy with.
I like the fact that things are consistent so that a 30 DC in one skill is just as hard as a 30 DC in another skill.
But yeah.
The 50%-65% success rate "feels bad." With martials it isn't as problematic or noticable as it is with other classes (martials missing a swing happens, you just follow up and swing again; your odds of landing at least one hit out of three* are pretty good. Wizards casting a spell and having the enemy save--even if the effect is lesser--just feels like you wasted your entire turn).
*Yes, I'm aware a third-action attack isn't the best use of an action.
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You're correct, it's not as bad with martials because you get lots of chances and they're "free".
When the wizard misses his spell attack roll and expends the spell...it's really terrible.
I know what Paizo was after with the math in this edition, I thought I wanted it. But it turns out I wanted to feel heroic, and this edition doesn't make me feel that way.
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I know what Paizo was after with the math in this edition, I thought I wanted it. But it turns out I wanted to feel heroic, and this edition doesn't make me feel that way.
Bingo.
As broken as PF1 can be, it had the right feel.| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
I know what Paizo was after with the math in this edition, I thought I wanted it. But it turns out I wanted to feel heroic, and this edition doesn't make me feel that way.Bingo.
As broken as PF1 can be, it had the right feel.
I can only speak for myself here, but I never found curb-stomp Fights particularly heroic. But a victory won hard, by using all your skills, spells and expendables, by staying fast even if swings whiff and spells fizzle, if you have to try and try again until you finally emerge victorious...
And PF 2 requiring to stack all those mods to earn your hits just has 'that feel' for ne.
Lycar, I wanted that fight, but basically only with boss monsters.
I wanted to curb stomp most other encounters, and have an occasionally heroic encounter with someone(s) the parties equal. As a GM I knew how to make that happen, though it wasn't easy. However, since it was basically just at significant plot points it wasn't overly difficult to do, but definitely required invested time.
In PF1 making a challenging fight took work on the part of the GM.
In PF2 they don't really need to do anything, maybe place your party against a couple level+2 enemies. But for players to survive they need to get lucky and work incredibly well together. And that's definitely a shift from how my group got used to playing. PF2 has been terribly lethal, with our GMs often going..."Yeah, we're not going to do X the way it's written because I think you all will die, at least one of you. And since no one has access to life restoring magic...that would leave one of you out for a while."
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I can only speak for myself here, but I never found curb-stomp Fights particularly heroic. But a victory won hard, by using all your skills, spells and expendables, by staying fast even if swings whiff and spells fizzle, if you have to try and try again until you finally emerge victorious...
And PF 2 requiring to stack all those mods to earn your hits just has 'that feel' for ne.
I feel this is relevant, and while I recognize the satire, I think the operant phrase from that clip is the whole point of games, particularly ones like role playing games.
Sure, different strokes for different folks, but the mere existence of "you can't hit the X unless the X is flat-footed and slowed" as a general tactic takes the reward out of the challenge.
- Doing it leads to a gankfest where you win, but it doesn't feel heroic because the enemy is on the ground surrounded by four dudes taking turns kicking his ribs.
- While Not-Doing it leads to a gunfight where all you brought was a knife. And well actually you forgot the knife at home, so this sharp stick will have to do.
The problem that PF2 has is that as a player my character does not feel competent. I swear someone did some research/analysis into (I thought it was MMOs) on what kind of success rate "feels good" to the player and came out to somewhere between 60% and 70%. Raw numbers wise, PF2's 50-65% looks like it hits that threshold, but it really doesn't. A 10 point difference is huge in this arena, especially when a bog-standard fight is of the on-level or higher type (where on-level is pegged at 50%: because if the roles were reversed, obviously the outcome rate shouldn't change, and every level below an opponent you are you lose 5 percentage points).
I don't trust things that fail half the time I use them. I would never use something that was so unreliable, which is one the main reasons I see Counterspell as such utter trash. The whole point of counterspelling is being able to go "AH HA! I PREPARED FOR THIS, SUCK IT!"
And I can't do that if half the time I go "AH HA! I PREPARED FOR THIS and it didn't work."
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Lycar, I wanted that fight, but basically only with boss monsters.
I wanted to curb stomp most other encounters, and have an occasionally heroic encounter with someone(s) the parties equal. As a GM I knew how to make that happen, though it wasn't easy. However, since it was basically just at significant plot points it wasn't overly difficult to do, but definitely required invested time.
In PF1 making a challenging fight took work on the part of the GM.
In PF2 they don't really need to do anything, maybe place your party against a couple level+2 enemies. But for players to survive they need to get lucky and work incredibly well together. And that's definitely a shift from how my group got used to playing. PF2 has been terribly lethal, with our GMs often going..."Yeah, we're not going to do X the way it's written because I think you all will die, at least one of you. And since no one has access to life restoring magic...that would leave one of you out for a while."
So why not just fight groups of Level-3 and Level-4 enemies when you want to feel heroic? Between level 6 and level 14, there is an 11 to 12 point difference in AC and saving throws.
10th level martial (10+4+5+2=+21) against 6th level moderate AC hits on a 3, criticals on a 13. Same martial against even level opponent hits on a 8 and criticals on an 18 (your 65% number). Against a 14th level boss fight, they hit on a 14, and critical on a 20.
Level 10 enemies are not CR 10 enemies from PF1. Moderate encounters in PF2 are not Average encounters from PF1. An NPC with character classes in PF1 was level+1, and level+2 if they had gear equivalent to a player (i.e. their magic weapons are up to date - which is true of all enemies now). So that fully equipped 10th level wizard that was a CR 12 enemy from PF1 is now a level 10 enemy in PF2.
There are 5 tiers of encounters in both systems, but try lining up the names sometime.
Easy vs Trivial. Average vs Low. Challenging vs Moderate. Hard vs Severe. Epic vs Extreme.
So another way to think of it, all those moderate threat encounters are "challenging" situations. They're supposed to make you work. The low threat encounters used to be the average one you'd encounter in PF.
If you want encounters to make you feel heroic, have more "trivial" and "low" encounters. Instead of two equal level enemies, have three level-2, or better yet, six level-4. Now you're defeating more enemies than your party with little to no effort.
From the core rule book on encounter design:
"Trivial-threat encounters are so easy that the characters have essentially no chance of losing; they shouldn’t even need to spend significant resources unless they are particularly wasteful. These encounters work best as warm-ups, palate cleansers, or reminders of how awesome the characters are. A trivial-threat encounter can still be fun to play, so don’t ignore them just because of the lack of threat."
If those are the encounters you like, talk with the GM, or run them as the GM. Its not a question of the system, its a question of picking which encounters to create.
What the PF2 system is much better at is having consistency across monsters and encounters. When the encounter includes two level 10 enemies, you know how hard it is. In PF1, two CR 10 enemies could have wildly different difficulties if they were say, wizard or fighter NPCs.
Edit: Is the issue because the label "Level-3" and "Level-4" sounds weak, when in reality they're not?
So why not just fight groups of Level-3 and Level-4 enemies when you want to feel heroic?
Because I'm not the GM for my groups PF2 game and I don't get to make those decisions. I have made it known to my group that I don't feel like my character (or any character) feels very competent in this system, but I've agreed to at least play through 1 campaign before I make any final decisions.
But at the rate things are going, my final decision would be that I don't want to participate in future PF2 games.
Edit: Saying level-2 or level-4 encounters doesn't bother me. If everyone expected that on level challenges are...in fact challenging. But I feel like APs are written way more deadly than they used to be, because on level enemies are difficult, but not treated that way.
Now healing is abundant, and you can survive and succeed. You can win the day.
But it feels like we barely win by the skin of our teeth, hide for 10 minutes (to hours) to lick our wounds and then trudge on.
That's just not the heroic story I want.
...But I feel like APs are written way more deadly than they used to be, because on level enemies are difficult, but not treated that way.
This. Plaguestone (which, yes, is overtuned more than intended, but I'm seeing similar--if just not as extreme--complaints about Age of Ashes) feels like constantly going up against one of two types of fights:
- Pushovers, which are done before some PCs even have a chance to realize that there was combat (this is heroic...how?)
- Murderous, which are against above-level enemies, completely thrash the players, leaving at least one with Dying/Wounded before its over (this is heroic...how?)
This. Plaguestone (which, yes, is overtuned more than intended, but I'm seeing similar--if just not as extreme--complaints about Age of Ashes) feels like constantly going up against one of two types of fights:
- Pushovers, which are done before some PCs even have a chance to realize that there was combat (this is heroic...how?)
- Murderous, which are against above-level enemies, completely thrash the players, leaving at least one with Dying/Wounded before its over (this is heroic...how?)
I actually think that the window for even and heroic fights is actually very small in PF2.
Considering that even and above level challenges (not only encounters) usually require above average to good rolls, and lower to lowest level challenges usually require average to below average rolls, coupled with the fact that you really need to master the buff & debuff meta in order to make even and above level challenges realistically beatable really means that if you apply said meta to any low level challenges also you will usually pretty much be able to trash them.
On the contrary, if you can somehow not apply this meta (for any reason, e.g. you have the wrong group composition, or someone took the wrong skills and feats etc) all even and above level challenges will continue to feel like rigged uphill struggles, simply due to the hardcoded monster stats and DC's for above level challenges.
My personal experience on the matter of not feeling heroic / competent are the often astonishingly high DC's for skill checks, which in fact even a specialist needs a good roll to be able to tackle. In my opinion this is wrong as - with the exception of extreme circumstances - a specialist should always have a better chance to succeed than to fail in order to feel special, e.g. a 10+ on a d20 should suffice on most checks that a specialist does.
if you apply said meta to any low level challenges also you will usually pretty much be able to trash them.
On the contrary, if you can somehow not apply this meta (for any reason, e.g. you have the wrong group composition, or someone took the wrong skills and feats etc) all even and above level challenges will continue to feel like rigged uphill struggles, simply due to the hardcoded monster stats and DC's for above level challenges.
Among other effects, such as the Incap trait making clear goto debuff spells invalid on anything above your level. Not...this being a problem with the trait per say, but the choice on where it got used and just HOW strong the effect of the trait was.
(And just looking at the wording of the incap trait, if there were an incap ability that required you make an attack roll and the target got a save, they'd get to double-dip)
Basically, Incap spells are wasted on low level enemies because you could kill them without too much trouble (so why hit them with color spray where they are removed from the fight? At least at low level, higher level play could see a difference) but lose 90% of their effectiveness on higher level enemies.
But yeah. A lot of small things that looked ok on the surface come together and produce this incredibly tight system. 5th Edition is too flat IMO (boringly so) but PF2 is too steep. Less steep than the playtest, but...that's honestly not saying much.
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- Pushovers, which are done before some PCs even have a chance to realize that there was combat (this is heroic...how?)
They aren't. Unless, maybe, the Good-aligned party members try to do the Right Thing (TM) and spare the enemies / try to redeem them. Depending on whether the group is into that kind of roleplaying.
- Murderous, which are against above-level enemies, completely thrash the players, leaving at least one with Dying/Wounded before its over (this is heroic...how?)
Because they still survived against the odds. Because being heroic and being awesome are not the same thing. If you are lucky, they go together, but that isn't always the case.
As for experts not feeling particularly competent... Yeah, I feel that. However, a complex task should not hang on a single roll. Simple things are sped up by saving on the rolling, but if you have a situation where even an expert has to work to get things done, the very fact that the expert will, on average, get those successes required faster then the guy who isn't makes the difference.
The grades of success are a step in the right direction. Other systems take into account by what margin you beat the DC in a much more granular fashion. Imagine you could score successes by every +2 or so you beat the DC, capped by your skill level, Like, only 2 successes per tier. Which means, an Expert could get up to 4 successes on a good roll, compared to the trained guy who is capped at 2.
So, what I would propose to make skill experts feel better is to have them roll against a lower DC, but multiple times. Gives the Experts and Masters and Legends something to feel good about if they can score a critical success on a roll of 18/16/14 instead of a nat. 20.
Because they still survived against the odds. Because being heroic and being awesome are not the same thing. If you are lucky, they go together, but that isn't always the case.
"I had the MOST EPIC game of Pathfinder last night!"
Yeah? What happend?"I ALMOST DIED! Yeah, I got hit by this orc in the first round of combat and spent the next half an hour of play time making DEATH SAVES!"
If that's what rustles your jimmies...uh...good for you? That sounds really boring to me.
I'd rather be doing something.
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This thread has been derailed a lot, but I have to agree with the general sentiment here. The more I run PF2 for different groups of people, the more I grow to dislike the ultra-tight math and the effects it has on some parts of the game. I remember one piece of feedback that was repeated to exhaustion in the Playtest was that succeeding on anything was too difficult and the characters felt weak, and while strides were made to solve this, it doesn't seem like they were enough.
Between high level creatures making the party feel like a bunch of commoners that fail in 70% of what they do, the game expecting you to optimize your character and your combat strategies (which is extra terrible for new players), specialists feeling like they are just "kinda good" at something, and being Trained on something eventually meaning you're still really bad at it, that are a lot of things in PF2 that make your characters feel... lame. That's my #1 issue with the system by far, at the moment, and the sad part is that I think this is unlikely to change. With the -10/+10 crit system, any numerical adjustments have such an insane amount of value that fixing the issue without creating many others is like finding a needle on a haystack.
Currently, there are sometimes that I feel PF2 is more suited to making a Dark Souls kind of campaign than an Epic Fantasy one.
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Because they still survived against the odds. Because being heroic and being awesome are not the same thing. If you are lucky, they go together, but that isn't always the case."I had the MOST EPIC game of Pathfinder last night!"
Yeah? What happend?
"I ALMOST DIED! Yeah, I got hit by this orc in the first round of combat and spent the next half an hour of play time making DEATH SAVES!"If that's what rustles your jimmies...uh...good for you? That sounds really boring to me.
I'd rather be doing something.
Why didn't someone in your party immediately cast Heal? Or Goodberry? Or use Battle Medicine? Or Gloves of Healing? Or feed you a Healing Potion? Seriously, the APs give out Healing Potions like candy. We have like 30 of them and have only ever needed to use 1.
How did the battle last half an hour? Battles last like 10 minutes, tops.
If anything, I've found combat to be too easy. There's rarely any real threat, and if you ever do actually die, the Hero Point mechanic makes sure you don't.
I'm just glad to be able to use real tactics and have modifiers that actually do something.
I fled from 5E where a single casting of Fog Cloud negates all tactics, because no matter how many instances of Advantage or Disadvantage are in play, a single opposing Vantage just cancels them all out, and you're back to all of the exactly the same classes just rolling 1D20 to hit per round (2 if you're lucky enough to get Extra Attack), and that's it. Talk about boring.
How did the battle last half an hour? Battles last like 10 minutes, tops.
So, I don't know how your group works and plays, but any single battle in PF2 seems like it takes my group at least an hour. Unless it's so easy that we say "it's not even worth running, you guys will win with only minimal resources, so lets just say 15 minutes of game time passes to account for some heal checks".
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...
I think you might have missed the sarkasm in Draco18's post...
The part of "survival" being heroic as emphasized by rolling death saves.
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How did the battle last half an hour? Battles last like 10 minutes, tops.So, I don't know how your group works and plays, but any single battle in PF2 seems like it takes my group at least an hour. Unless it's so easy that we say "it's not even worth running, you guys will win with only minimal resources, so lets just say 15 minutes of game time passes to account for some heal checks".
I legitimately can't even begin to fathom that. We've only ever had 1 fight go past 5 rounds, and that was only because the stupid boss kept Blinking around the battlefield with is high AC. I can't imagine how that could possibly take an hour. Our Level 6 party took out a Level 8 enemy in 1.5 Rounds last night. When you crit for 39 damage in a single hit, fights don't take that long.
Why didn't someone in your party immediately cast Heal? Or Goodberry? Or use Battle Medicine? Or Gloves of Healing? Or feed you a Healing Potion? Seriously, the APs give out Healing Potions like candy. We have like 30 of them and have only ever needed to use 1.
You obviously missed the obvious sarcasm, but sure. I'll bite.
Why wasn't the person immediately healed? Because (1) getting someone up to ~16 hp after they just took ~30 damage and are still within reach of the guy that did it seems really smart tactics.
So alternatives were chosen to get the bad guy away from the unconscious player.
It worked, the PC got healed, another PC went down, bad guy (at level+2) spawned another level+2 creature...right on top of the first PC that went down. Who went down again.
And then a third PC went down.
And then there were no more heals to give.
How did the battle last half an hour? Battles last like 10 minutes, tops.
One, we have six players, two:
Barbarian: "I rolled a 16 on the die, so that gives me a 24, 26 because flanking. Bardsong?"
Bard: "Even with lingering, that expired last round, sorry."
GM: "That misses."
Repeat for 5 rounds.
Agreed with Draco18s, our combats also last about 5-8 rounds on average (in large part depends on number of enemies) but we have 6 people and it seems like each round takes about 10 minutes.
This usually involves having a number of enemy combatants roughly equal to the number of players.
If you're fighting against only 1 or two targets that would make a huge difference.
Agreed with Draco18s, our combats also last about 5-8 rounds on average (in large part depends on number of enemies) but we have 6 people and it seems like each round takes about 10 minutes.
This usually involves having a number of enemy combatants roughly equal to the number of players.
If you're fighting against only 1 or two targets that would make a huge difference.
I just don't see how any individual player's turn takes more than 20-30 seconds, maybe 1 minute maximum. I mean, for the most part, you know what you are going to do long before your turn rolls around, and already have the proper dice and modifiers ready. In combats with lots of enemies, half the enemies die from arrows and spells before they even get a turn.
I mean you could play an entire game of Warhammer 40K in an hour, and that involves way more figures.
Just different play styles I guess.
Or when someone crit-fails a save and goes down and ohshit its your turn now and you query the group about best options.
Or double check your spell list because a New Thing showed up and are looking to see if you have a spell that'll work.
Or...
Plus there's the fact that at most tables you can't roll your dice in advance. Because, I dunno, something about cheating?
Or when someone crit-fails a save and goes down and ohshit its your turn now and you query the group about best options.
Or double check your spell list because a New Thing showed up and are looking to see if you have a spell that'll work.
Or...
Plus there's the fact that at most tables you can't roll your dice in advance. Because, I dunno, something about cheating?
I didn't say anything about rolling dice in advance, that would be absurd. I said have them ready, as in, if your weapon does 2D8 + 1D6, you have those in your hand.
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Why didn't someone in your party immediately cast Heal? Or Goodberry? Or use Battle Medicine? Or Gloves of Healing? Or feed you a Healing Potion? Seriously, the APs give out Healing Potions like candy. We have like 30 of them and have only ever needed to use 1.You obviously missed the obvious sarcasm, but sure. I'll bite.
Why wasn't the person immediately healed? Because (1) getting someone up to ~16 hp after they just took ~30 damage and are still within reach of the guy that did it seems really smart tactics.
So alternatives were chosen to get the bad guy away from the unconscious player.
It worked, the PC got healed, another PC went down, bad guy (at level+2) spawned another level+2 creature...right on top of the first PC that went down. Who went down again.
And then a third PC went down.
And then there were no more heals to give.
How did the battle last half an hour? Battles last like 10 minutes, tops.One, we have six players, two:
Barbarian: "I rolled a 16 on the die, so that gives me a 24, 26 because flanking. Bardsong?"
Bard: "Even with lingering, that expired last round, sorry."
GM: "That misses."Repeat for 5 rounds.
I'm starting to think the problem is that your GM is discounting his decision making to the system, and so you're angry at Pathfinder 2. Have you considered being concerned that your GM is throwing two severe threat boss enemies at you at a time instead of a more even spread of CRs within each encounter? When you go above 4 players the system favors quantity over quality (increasing enemy numbers with low-level reinforcements over eliting or duplicating high level foes) because of the tight math of the system-- turning a PL+2 encounter into a PL+2x2 just because that would fall into the guidelines is often not the correct decision. It took me a while to grok that the CR guidelines in this game are way more important than they were in 3.5 and Pathfinder 1.
Afaik that math checks out for your barbarian's second attack, assuming you're level 6 (6, prof +4, str +4) and they don't have a magical weapon yet-- which is pretty unusual and wraps back around to my GM query above, but... If you're talking about his primary attack missing on a 16 with a result of 24 (26 with flank), you're between levels 3-4? versus level 8 opponents?
In PF1 the game was ostensibly -not- a team game. You were a loose collection of characters who did not rely on eachother at all, programming your character with macros of devastating combinations that would one-round-kill opponents. Now, the math of the system is set up to encourage teamwork. Intimidating enemies, using a bevy of magic items to provide minor benefits, using debuffing spells, making use of talismans etc. Right now according to your anecdote you are playing hard mode Pathfinder 2. Are you character optimizing your party composition to account for that?
It sounds like more of a talk to your GM scenario.
How did the battle last half an hour? Battles last like 10 minutes, tops.
Man, I wish. At level 18, every enemy has between 280 and 500 hp. Even high-damage crits from the barbarian deal on average 110-- everyone else needs to trigger weaknesses to get big damage like that. Equal level monsters save on 8s vs most damaging spells, so spellcasters don't do strong damage unsupported. Add in that our party is unusually caster heavy-- druid, sorcerer, bard, cleric-- and you can see how things can get dragged out. It takes about an hour and a half for my PCs to kill 3 level appropriate enemies.
The enemies are almost permanently debuffed though, and our champion and barbarian are soaking up magical assistance. Monsters can have a hell of a time hitting, and with a liberator champion most of their full attacks are dead in the water. Two reactions per turn that give -20 resistance to all... so that soaks up 20 slashing, 6 evil, 12 fire... AND the hit ally gets to stride away AND anyone else in their reach gets to step away too. Sometimes it feels like we're slow-pulling through a dungeon. Lowest HP I've gotten someone in the last 10 levels is 29 (out of 250)-- and that's from an implosion failed save, a power word: kill, drain bonded object and power word kill combo from a furious enemy wizard. Our cleric healed them for 180 on their turn with one action then echoing channeled for another 40 something, over full health.
Our next game is a flip-flop with 4 martials and 2 casters. I'm sure they'll rip through enemies far quicker and the enemies will be more effective to match. At least, I hope so.
I'm starting to think the problem is that your GM is discounting his decision making to the system, and so you're angry at Pathfinder 2. Have you considered being concerned that your GM is throwing two severe threat boss enemies at you at a time instead of a more even spread of CRs within each encounter?
SURPRISE, WE'RE PLAYING PLAGUESTONE
The encounter detailed above (in vague terms) was:
Both encounters were Level+2 solo fights ("severe").
Unless the party completes the previous encounter without making any noise (how!?)
Oh and the Scultor's first significant damage came from the blood ooze (prior to failing the save against the ooze's health-leech ability he'd taken 2 damage...TOTAL)
GM has already been not adjusting the fights to account for the fact that we have 6 players instead of 4.
I'm starting to think the problem is that your GM is discounting his decision making to the system, and so you're angry at Pathfinder 2. Have you considered being concerned that your GM is throwing two severe threat boss enemies at you at a time instead of a more even spread of CRs within each encounter?SURPRISE, WE'RE PLAYING PLAGUESTONE
The encounter detailed above (in vague terms) was:
** spoiler omitted **
GM has already been not adjusting the fights to account for the fact that we have 6 players instead of 4.
As much as I do think some steps could be made to make the PCs feel more awesome and interesting, as I've said earlier, I don't think Fall of Plaguestone is a very good parameter for anything here. Everyone knows it's an extremely unbalanced adventure and almost a meat grinder if you run everything as written. Which is extremely odd for what should be the introductory adventure of the system (in which case it would probably be better to miss by making it too easy than too hard), but that's another point that's related to the adventure design and not the system itself.
I don't see how the average turn can last 30 seconds. There's generally at least 1 roll an action on average, you have to: roll, add modifiers, find the DC, compare target to DC, then actually resolve what happens, I'm good at math and I'd say that at the very least that's 10sec on average. Plus actually saying what's happening. Can't see the average turn taking less than a minute. And that's with no time spent discussing or making decisions.
I'm starting to think the problem is that your GM is discounting his decision making to the system, and so you're angry at Pathfinder 2. Have you considered being concerned that your GM is throwing two severe threat boss enemies at you at a time instead of a more even spread of CRs within each encounter?SURPRISE, WE'RE PLAYING PLAGUESTONE
The [...]'s tactics as listed in the book are to ready-action hurl alchemist fire at whomever opens the door....
It's not. His action is to flee into the next area as soon as someone opens the door.
None of those enemies have a 27 AC.
As much as I do think some steps could be made to make the PCs feel more awesome and interesting, as I've said earlier, I don't think Fall of Plaguestone is a very good parameter for anything here. Everyone knows it's an extremely unbalanced adventure and almost a meat grinder if you run everything as written. Which is extremely odd for what should be the introductory adventure of the system (in which case it would probably be better to miss by making it too easy than too hard), but that's another point that's related to the adventure design and not the system itself.
Oh we're aware. Which is why the GM hasn't been scaling things up based on party size. And its still a meatgrinder.
But all that said, I still don't think that toning it down a little (by lowering monster's levels by 1) would really make that big of a difference. The fight with the ######## says its a fight with two level 4 creatures (for a level 2 party) but it really felt like a fight against two level 5 creatures.
Scaling it back by a level and then scaling back up by an extra enemy wouldn't have made the fight that much less frustrating. Taking a rough stab at what a level 4 ooze would look like (taking some averages of values between the two in the bestiary and knowing the stats of the one actually in Plaguestone and trying to go down from it), I get:
11 AC, +14 Fort, Ref +2, Will +6
80 HP*
Melee: +13 | 1d8+5 damage*
Bonus ability DC 21*
*Values approximated to more closely resemble the one in Plaguestone as there's no linear interpolation possible that makes sense
That still crits my PC on a 10 when attacking,** saves on a 15 (Ref) or crit-saves on a 3 (Fort), and requires a 16 on the d20 to save against its ability and an ~8 to hit it (but it has four times the HP of a PC). And these values are below what was written into Plaguestone and it still would wreck people's faces.
**My PC isn't a front line melee, but a fighter's AC is only going to be 3-4 points better. That's still a crit on the first attack at 14!
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I wish we could get through our turns in about a minute!
In 1st edition, we'd get through 1-3 encounters in 4-6 hours of play (6-8 hours after you account for mealtime and breaks). Thankfully, 2nd Edition is much more streamlined and we're now getting through twice as many encounters in that same time frame.