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.
There are apps for that. Plus, 30 seconds is a really long time. I have no doubt that you could solve much more complex equations than adding a few numbers together in 30 seconds. Seriously, just sit there an do nothing but watch the clock for 30 seconds. It's an eternity.
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There are apps for that. Plus, 30 seconds is a really long time. I have no doubt that you could solve much more complex equations than adding a few numbers together in 30 seconds. Seriously, just sit there an do nothing but watch the clock for 30 seconds. It's an eternity.
Do you have a chess clock on your desk?
And while I agree that some player rounds can be very clear cut and fast, especially for martials, e.g. move, single attack, raise shield, some actions, especially spellcasting can be quite time consuming, mostly not the actual spell itself, but the whole lot of decision making involved.
Distance to targets and position of enemies and allies for AoE templates, spell actions requirements, to-hit rolls, saving throws and damage calculations, application of metamagic feats, necessity for offensive or defensive movement, enemies in AoO reach etc.
And yes you can also somewhat plan ahead spellcasting but any last minute changes to the battlefield can easily make all your previous planning invalid and you have to start from scratch.
What if it takes me 20 seconds to describe the attack, 5 to roll and get a result and another 20 for the DM to describe the effect of my attack? Then I do that 2 or 3 more times.
An on level enemy isn't supposed to be challenging.Yes, it is. It's literally equal to you in power. It's like fighting your clone. It's supposed to a 50/50 shot of winning in a vacuum in a 1v1 fight.
It's not challenging for an ENTIRE party but that's a different matter.
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.If your four person party fought three evil clones of you (level+3 encounter) and you're at the bottom of initiative (bad roll), do you think each of your clones should be able to suplex another PC into a sleeper hold before you act?
Let me rephrase, because you are correct that an on level enemy is a challenge. In my opinion, an on level enemy shouldn't be that much of a challenge. Else, a party fighting against an equal number or equal CR enemies should kill the party half the time. So CR+2 encounters should be virtually impossible in that case.
Monster and player characters have different rules (and should). Equivalent level players and monsters don't need to (and shouldn't have the same strength in my opinion). So I expect that a PC should be able to suplex a equal CR monster, but not vice versa.
Yeah I think having a level x creature be as strong as a level x PC is a lot more intuitive.
I also think PF2 has shifted the focus of its heroics from mathematically crushing all opposition by spamming the same button to be able to do cool stuff-- largely narrative or cinematic things. To use The example of grappling, you can't get an automatic pin on everything you fight. But you can throw enemies left and right or pick them up and hit other enemies with them. PF1 didn't have those options in core, at the very least. And I gotta say, that's a lot a more interesting than just ending every fight with a pin.
More broadly, monks are a really good example. They might be the weakest martial for raw damage, but they can do so much cool stuff. I've posted a lot about the shenanigans the monk in our group has gotten up to, so I don't want to rehash it, but the cinematic stunts he pulls off feel a lot more heroic than just pinning every enemy.
It's fine to say "well just use different CR monsters" except my group mostly uses Adventure Paths because we don't have time to spend building the campaign world, story, and NPCs anymore.
But what that means is none of the encounters as written are at the level of challenge we would like.
And in our experience it's a lot harder to lower an opponents challenge than it is to increase it. Usually because higher level monsters might have things beyond HP, AC, attack or damage bonus that make them extra challenging. But you can increase those same things on a weaker creature that will still let them feel challenging.
It's fine to say "well just use different CR monsters" except my group mostly uses Adventure Paths because we don't have time to spend building the campaign world, story, and NPCs anymore.Ah, that's the secret Claxon, your GM doesn't have to rebuild anything.
If I could talk directly to them I would...because this is a bit of "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
What you have is a perception problem and likely stems from other games.
Say you log into World of Warcraft on a brand new level 1 character (and I'm playing WoW: Classic right now so this ain't an insult or something) and are asked to kill 10 wolves. You look at the wolves and think "Oh, those are level 1 as well, I can take them no problem." And indeed you do.
In a lot of games (WoW, Divinity: Original Sin, etc), an equal level opponent is something you are intended to consistently fight. Something a few levels lower becomes truly irrelevant and something a few levels higher becomes very difficult.
Indeed, and it was that way in PF1 and IMO should have stayed that way.
...but that's not how Pathfinder 2 works. In PF2 level represents overall power, full stop, not what you're intended to fight. It's a tool for the GM to use and frankly players are better off not knowing the level of their enemy.
Personally I found the old system more intuitive because it matched the experience of so many video games, and my guess is most of us probably play more video games than we get to play table top (since it's something you can do alone).
If WoW used PF2's system, those wolves meant to be fought by a level 1 character would be level -3 instead. Nothing about them would change but the level they appear as. And if PF2 used WoW's system, enemies of equal power to your level 1 PC would appear as level 5...but again, no actual stat changes needed, just how they're labeled.
You're right, it wouldn't require any change in the wolves stats, but the video game knows to only put you up against level-3 enemies. Whereas the GM (sometimes AP writers) don't know or forget the shift in the balance of power (at least that what it seems like to me).
his is why the incapacitation tag applies to something even one level higher...because being even just one level higher means that enemy is supposed to be 41.4% stronger.
A level 5 troll is unkillable by a level 2 character, an severe boss for a level 2 party, an even match (extreme) for a level 5 character, a trivial encounter for a level 5 party, a low threat encounter for a level 8 character, and three trolls are needed to qualify as a trivial encounter for a level 8 party.
And this is exactly how PF1 was written and supposed to work, by the way. This ain't new.
This last bit I disagree with. Enemies in PF1 were such that a X level character could often easily beat an X level enemy in strict terms of damage per round vs hp race to 0. Special abilities that could completely negate certain characters ability to act effectively not withstanding.
Your level 10 fighter was probably going to pound a Fire Giant into the ground, because (and especially over time) the options that made these characters powerful kept expanding and power creep was super real.
Perhaps power creep will happen in PF2, but what it's looking like right now is were not going to see much number inflation.
For refernce (a CRB fighter would struggle against that fire giant, but with Advanced Weapon Training and the other myriad of tricks I think they'd have a pretty easy time and just use some charges from a CLW wand with a friendly caster to go back to full).
For refernce (a CRB fighter would struggle against that fire giant, but with Advanced Weapon Training and the other myriad of tricks I think they'd have a pretty easy time and just use some charges from a CLW wand with a friendly caster to go back to full).
Oh man, that brings back memories... Of all the threads where people complained that the 3.x / PF 1 Fighter is terrible at fighting, precisely because he would struggle in a 1:1 vs. an on-level melee monster.
Of course these discussions happened before Advanced Training. But that was, sadly, too little, too late.
The thing is, right now the treadmill effect is in full force, and I'm not happy about it. But I can see why the devs did it this way. They are so very conservative about giving out boosts because you never get that djinn back into the bottle. On the other hand, handing out some power creep in future publications, potentially in the form of optional rules not only allows an adjustment, it also sells books.
At the end of the day, Paizo pays the paychecks with the money we give them for their books. Publish or perish isn't just for scientists folks. So I don't begrudge the devs for playing it safe and 'keep the ball low'.
...just to be clear here. I say
"And this is exactly how PF1 was written and supposed to work, by the way. This ain't new."
and also previously provided a link to the exact rules specifying that.
And your response to me pointing out the exact rules Paizo wrote on how the game was supposed/intended to work is
This last bit I disagree with....I don't see any point in continuing this discussion given that.
It was how it was supposed to work, but didn't.
Everyone knows that the CR encounter guidelines in PF1 didn't work because the power creep after the CRB was huge.
You are correct about the theory, but in actual practice that wasn't how the game play worked.
Yes, in PF2 Paizo made that the actuality. And now, every GM who is used to the relative power balance of Players vs Enemies in PF1 is tryign to play it the same way and is destroying their players.
Not through malice, but because of the shift.
I agree the problem is perception.
But when you spent 10+ years looking at on level encounter as trivial and now it's quite challenging...well a lot of GMs are getting situations they didn't expect where players are struggling and dying. And players don't feel like heroes, they feel like barely competent people surviving basically by luck.
I came to play "Big Damn Heroes", not "Lucky guy manages not to die whole campaign".
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If the problem is with perception, why isn't perception also the solution?
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If the problem is with perception, why isn't perception also the solution?
Good luck making me perceive failure as success.
...but then I have trouble understanding how other people don't approach a new system/edition/game with a clean slate because that process comes easy to me for reasons I don't entirely know.
You do understand there's a difference between "challenging" and "frustrating" right?
If the problem is with perception, why isn't perception also the solution?
Because changing the minds of AP writers and GMs to start making the "standard encounters" as CR-2 is a lot harder than it sounds.
It's kind of weird to me that someone can both know that an on-level encounter was supposed to be challenging even though that didn't work out as intended and also know that an on-level encounter is supposed to be challenging this time around too... but also not be able to adjust their expectation.
...but then I have trouble understanding how other people don't approach a new system/edition/game with a clean slate because that process comes easy to me for reasons I don't entirely know.
It's not that I don't understand, it's that my GM is constantly throwing encounters of equal level at us and were always struggling and failing.
It's not fun.
Just because I know it's a challenge doesn't make it any more fun to suck against all the encounters we have because we don't ever fight anything with a CR less than our level.
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The issue with pining for the days of PF1 challenge rating is that because it didn't work you couldn't really do anything with it. If you wanted an actual challenge it was incredibly hard to tune properly. I was constantly maxing the hit dice for my NPCs, and quite often throwing their builds out and doing them from scratch so they could actually be a threat to my optimized player characters.
Regardless of whether specific encounters are overtuned, I'd much rather have a system that does what it sets out to do. Because then I have a dial I can turn to increase or decrease difficulty to desired levels.
Even if you don't enjoy playing through the published adventures anymore, it feels strange to me to prefer a system where you couldn't gauge the difficulty at all than one where you can reliably make things easier or harder.
I feel like both of you may have misread my last post. I'm not gonna harp on the misread bits though.
Because changing the minds of AP writers and GMs to start making the "standard encounters" as CR-2 is a lot harder than it sounds.AP writers I'll give you, but if a "Hey GM, it'd be real cool if you would include more encounters of the Low and Trivial difficulties and using creatures that are lower level than our characters" doesn't get you at least some progress... you might just not have the right GM for your tastes.
You are correct that the talking to the GM would be a way to go...but it's not always as easy to figure out how to say it in a way that will be well received and not come across negatively. It's easy to say "Well talk to your friend" but if we're all honest it's not always easy to provide this kind of feedback to someone.
If I've misunderstood your previous post I'm sorry for that, but it basically came across as "You knew it was supposed to be a challenge [even though it wasn't really] in PF1 and you also know it's a challenge in PF2 and they've succeeding at making it so. So what's your problem?"
Ultimately the problem I'm having is that I'm not having fun because the level of challenge as written is higher (relative to PF1) and I don't enjoy struggling all the way through a character's existence.
In PF1 I could craft a well built character that could, overtime, gain great power and stomp challenges well above what they were supposed to. That was what I enjoyed. Currently there's not really any options to build your character in a way that significantly increases their power. In PF1 you gained numbers. If PF2 you gain options, but the numbers basically stay the same. And for me, that just sucks.
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I feel like both of you may have misread my last post. I'm not gonna harp on the misread bits though.
Because changing the minds of AP writers and GMs to start making the "standard encounters" as CR-2 is a lot harder than it sounds.AP writers I'll give you, but if a "Hey GM, it'd be real cool if you would include more encounters of the Low and Trivial difficulties and using creatures that are lower level than our characters" doesn't get you at least some progress... you might just not have the right GM for your tastes.You are correct that the talking to the GM would be a way to go...but it's not always as easy to figure out how to say it in a way that will be well received and not come across negatively. It's easy to say "Well talk to your friend" but if we're all honest it's not always easy to provide this kind of feedback to someone.
If your problem is that you are playing the AP as written and not having fun, then you're not criticizing your friend, you're criticizing the AP. And ultimately telling this to your friend is going to be a more productive use of your time and emotional energy than complaining about something you can't change on the internet.
Unless your GM is James Jacobs or one of the other AP writers, you just need to be clear that your problem is the AP.
If your problem is that you are playing the AP as written and not having fun, then you're not criticizing your friend, you're criticizing the AP. And ultimately telling this to your friend is going to be a more productive use of your time and emotional energy than complaining about something you can't change on the internet.
Unless your GM is James Jacobs or one of the other AP writers, you just need to be clear that your problem is the AP.
Good advice to change the things you can.
And ultimately telling this to your friend is going to be a more productive use of your time and emotional energy than complaining about something you can't change on the internet.
It might be more immediately productive, but if I (and others) collectively continue complaining loudly enough and long enough we might just change the course of things.
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And ultimately telling this to your friend is going to be a more productive use of your time and emotional energy than complaining about something you can't change on the internet.It might be more immediately productive, but if I (and others) collectively continue complaining loudly enough and long enough we might just change the course of things.
That seems pretty unlikely. During the playtest Paizo talked a lot about why they were going to pay more attention to survey data than message board complaints. And there's a lot less complaints right now than during the playtest, or posting in general to be honest. The boards are comparatively pretty dead.
Also, you're going to continue to be miserable at your table in the meantime, so even if complaining is productive I can't see why you wouldn't have the conversation.
And ultimately telling this to your friend is going to be a more productive use of your time and emotional energy than complaining about something you can't change on the internet.It might be more immediately productive, but if I (and others) collectively continue complaining loudly enough and long enough we might just change the course of things.That seems pretty unlikely. During the playtest Paizo talked a lot about why they were going to pay more attention to survey data than message board complaints. And there's a lot less complaints right now than during the playtest, or posting in general to be honest. The boards are comparatively pretty dead.
Also, you're going to continue to be miserable at your table in the meantime, so even if complaining is productive I can't see why you wouldn't have the conversation.
It may be unlikely. But I think the fact that the board traffic has decreased is perhaps related to people's dissatisfaction with the new edition, though honestly I don't have evidence for that, it's purely speculation.
I wouldn't say I'm miserable, but definitely not happy or satisfied with the current gaming experience.
Honestly the conversation I would have would be "Hey, let's go back to PF1". However, we have one person who kind of dominates the group who I already know doesn't want to. And if I'm honest, the rest of us just have a hard time of being contradictory to them.
You're not wrong that it would be more effective, but honestly it's not easy to have these sorts of conversations for everyone or every group. Rocking the boat can be very hard.
But you've articulated exactly what your problem is: the difficulty curve. Unless your Dom prefers that level of difficulty, you can still play PF2 on easy mode. It isn't even extra work for the GM-- PF2 easy tool has a single button you can hit for literally any creature (including AP specific NPCs) to apply the weak or elite template.
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Like, there are maybe 10 very vocal people complaining about this on the forums. There are probably an equal number of folks vocally disagreeing, and there are folks like me who disagree with a lot of stuff but generally can't be bothered to get sucked into it anymore.
I just can't see Paizo deciding to break the engine they've built based on that, no matter how much those same people complain about it. Because the engine does what it sets out to do, and it is very easy to tune it up or tune it down to taste. The encounter building math is intuitive and works like the rules say it should. There's no good reason to change that.
The best case scenario isn't going to be making it so on level enemies are trivially to defeat. That won't happen. They've been trying to achieve that for like 20 years and finally did. At best, you might see Paizo publish some easier APs or modules, but you'll be fighting lower level opposition, not having on level enemies get easier. And you'll still need to talk your table into running those easier adventures, so you're basically back to square one.
I actually think board traffic decreasing is a good sign for the game. People who are satisfied don't post much. Angry people do. Less traffic generally means less angry people.
Conversely it could also mean that people are playing other things.
I certainly don't post on Dumpshock any more (and have very very rarely posted on the Shadowrun official forums) since the release of SR5 and SR6. But that doesn't mean I'm part of the "silent majority" of people who are "satisfied with the game."I stopped playing and as a result stopped participating in discussion altogether.
The problem is that we have no way of knowing which is true.
I actually think board traffic decreasing is a good sign for the game. People who are satisfied don't post much. Angry people do. Less traffic generally means less angry people.Conversely it could also mean that people are playing other things.
I certainly don't post on Dumpshock any more (and have very very rarely posted on the Shadowrun official forums) since the release of SR5 and SR6. But that doesn't mean I'm part of the "silent majority" of people who are "satisfied with the game."I stopped playing and as a result stopped participating in discussion altogether.
[b]The problem is that we have no way of knowing which is true. [b]
We have a rough way, but it's a direct indicator of the whole system in general which is sales over time. But considering it was released less than a year ago and we're in the middle of a pandemic right now...the data probably isn't useful at this time.
We have a rough way, but it's a direct indicator of the whole system in general which is sales over time. But considering it was released less than a year ago and we're in the middle of a pandemic right now...the data probably isn't useful at this time.
Oh, agreed. They're also numbers that you and I may not have access to.
Likely we won't have access to that information. As far as I know they're not required to report the data publicly, and unless PF2 is out selling competitors they probably wont report it. Even if they are outselling there are reason to still not publicly state so.
As well, some companies will try to make statements about their game with the information about the quantities sold. Think "Over a million copies sold" which could be true, but tells us little since people may buy 1 copy and dislike the system and never buy another.
Right, which goes back to my statement that "we don't know whether people are silent because everything's fine, or if they're silent because they're playing something else."
And my group is going to be in the "playing something else" category.
Agreed, which is why I said it was purely speculation on my part.
And once the current campaign has ended I have decided that I wont participate in any more campaigns my gaming group* will do using PF2.
*My group of friends probably has between 10 and 20 people who regularly play table tops games, but any given group for a particular game usually consists of only 5 to 6 people.
As an aside, because of the tool I'm working on (because I'm bored), I've found that a 15th level fighter is always being hit on a d20=10 but isn't seeing reliable misses until d20=5. Being crit on d20=16
The first level fighter has d20=12, d20=7, d20=18 for those same points.
(Against a same-level monster and working with APB progression)
That is, a 15th level fighter is being hit 15% more often, crit twice as often and have attacks miss entirely 30% less often. The fighter is objectively worse off as a result of leveling up.
And I know I don't have all the variance in monster and trap data in yet, but of the nine level 15 creatures in the bestiary, only two have a to-hit bonus under 30 (demilich and wemmuth). And one of them is a spell caster (so, not really a good example for making melee attacks).
There aren't any 15th level traps, but the guidelines work out that a simple trap has a whopping +37 to-hit (a 15th level fighter's AC is 37)!
Skills, perception, first attack, are all "about the same." Fort looks amazing, but its mostly "I have two data points right now" and those two data points were selected to target AC (as well as the "success is critical success" effect).
I feel like I'm missing something.
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In PF1 I could craft a well built character that could, overtime, gain great power and stomp challenges well above what they were supposed to. That was what I enjoyed. Currently there's not really any options to build your character in a way that significantly increases their power.So you're...disappointed you can't make a gamebreaking build over time?
I'm not trying to be glib, that literally seems to be what you're saying. That as a level 16 wizard, for example, you want to be able to "stomp" a generic level 20 wizard because you built yours better.
I don't want a game breaking build, but I do want to feel like I built a successful character.
If I've attempted to make the best fighter I can and still miss more often than I hit, and still take more hits than are missed against me...well to be honest I feel f$#+ing stupid.The odds of success are entirely too stacked against characters. I never reach a point where I feel like my character is accomplished at the things they're intended to do.
Game breaking is what wizards could do in PF1 with high level magic. But a PF1 fighter, even with the strongest options at increasing AC, damage output, to hit was never going to break the game. They could ruin an encounter by making it trivial. But there were so many things an optimized fighter couldn't do that I would never consider it game breaking.
Game breaking abilities are things that completely derail the expected flow of the game. Like a wizard who creates a timeless demiplane and uses it to craft and never leaves, just astral projects himself wherever the party needs to go.
The fighter, no matter how strong their attack and damage are, is doing exactly what the game expects and wants.
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ahh the good ole days of PF1, i miss 500+ damage per round with Cave Druid ooze level 14. R.I.P old friend.
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ahh the good ole days of PF1, i miss 500+ damage per round with Cave Druid ooze level 14. R.I.P old friend.
And while that build was powerful, the damage itself wasn't that big of a problem. What made this build arguably too good is it could do all that damage and was still a 9th level spell caster.
Edit: Well, I actually forget how many spell levels it had since the original version involved taking monk levels too.
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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[...]
I feel like this is almost a false dichotomy.
You can have a hard fight where your characters can still reliably do the things they're supposed to do.
You could even have an easy fight where you can't reliably do the things you want to do, but the enemy is weak enough that they still go down without much trouble anyways.
I feel like most games you'll find on the market (tabletop or otherwise) try to make bosses tough by making them hardy and mechanically involved, not by making the player simply fail consistently to do anything. So I'm not sure why there's this notion that one necessarily requires the other suddenly, just because PF2 does it.
But as a one-off custom designed boss? Sure! Feel free to do it! I do. But it's definitely outside of standard monster design.
I gotta say this is something I've been doing a lot lately and it is a pretty decent solution to the issue if you have the time to do it. I basically never use any creatures that are higher than level+1; if I want anything to be a challenging solo or duo encounter, I just tailor-make the bosses so they don't make the PCs feel like they fail on everything all the time, and try to bring the challenge in the form of additional mechanics, etc. It's some work, for sure, but it has made for a muuuch better experience for my players.