| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Well I do think that there is an expectation that some of the party will go unconscious in fights against higher level enemies in PF2.
Well, in my opinion, if it's expected that someone should be knocked unconscious every combat for the game to play out as expected...I would consider that bad design. That's not fun for my group typically. It makes us feel bad, like we're a burden on the party and not pulling our weight.
A solo monster against 4 PCs that doesn't drop one of them within the first 4 rounds is in big trouble and never really had a shot of winning. If they didn't have the ability to do that, they wouldn't actually be a threat. This is a big part of why higher level solo monsters are so much more fun for me and my tables than in PF1, 3.5, 4e or anything after D&D 2nd edition.
Clearly for some tables having one party member drop feels like losing, while for others it feels expected. The dying rules are pretty forgiving after all, as long as you are not stuck taking persistent damage.
It is too late for something to be printed in the GMG, but either for a future GMG or for a fan mod, maybe some people could put together suggestions for this different style of play that focuses on less higher level enemies, but not decreasing the difficulty. Being vocal about it could probably result in some third party folks designing adventures and perhaps even full APs around it.
Based on the rest of your post, it does seem like a problem of expectations and desires for different groups.
I loved PF1 because I felt like a super hero coming to save the day.
I hate PF2 (thus far) because I feel like a schmuck who sometimes succeeds through pure luck.
You even missed the part of being AoO'ed by the boss while trying to stand up... :P
True enough. Not as much of a true-ism as it was in PF1, but you're not wrong.
While I've only had players go down a few times, my experience is that players sometimes actually think about defensive play. When you are below half health trying to do.more than one offensive thing a turn I'd probably a bad idea.
Will concede this is a matter of taste but it not being to your taste doesn't make it bad design. Me and mine love very hard co op. Winning by the skin of our teeth, or losing by a similar margin is much more exciting to us. I actually remember an early comment when my players got beaten in the first Plaguestone dungeon being an exuberant "I've not felt a dungeon that tough in ages!"
Yeah. And it's hard to go from a fast, offensive game where the goals are "see how quickly or effectively you can win!" to one which is more careful, defensive, or strategic where the goals are more "see how you can win!" See Path of Exile for a really strong example of this, where the game has gotten so powerful for clever, niche builds that basic gameplay lags way behind and it's about the fastest paced ARPG you can run across.
It's hard to feel nerfed. It's hard to go from one game where a single smart spell can end the danger to one where you need to grit it out for every serious fight. I don't blame anyone here for feeling frustrated that they now are less successful and less powerful on the whole vs the game world at hand. It's not an easy transition.
I think it makes for a slightly healthier game this way, because I also know that no matter how they try to avoid it, power will creep. Players and parties will get better and better at picking apart scenarios as more tools, classes, spells, and so forth are available.
While I've only had players go down a few times, my experience is that players sometimes actually think about defensive play. When you are below half health trying to do.more than one offensive thing a turn I'd probably a bad idea.
Will concede this is a matter of taste but it not being to your taste doesn't make it bad design. Me and mine love very hard co op. Winning by the skin of our teeth, or losing by a similar margin is much more exciting to us. I actually remember an early comment when my players got beaten in the first Plaguestone dungeon being an exuberant "I've not felt a dungeon that tough in ages!"
Yeah. And it's hard to go from a fast, offensive game where the goals are "see how quickly or effectively you can win!" to one which is more careful, defensive, or strategic where the goals are more "see how you can win!" See Path of Exile for a really strong example of this, where the game has gotten so powerful for clever, niche builds that basic gameplay lags way behind and it's about the fastest paced ARPG you can run across.
It's hard to feel nerfed. It's hard to go from one game where a single smart spell can end the danger to one where you need to grit it out for every serious fight. I don't blame anyone here for feeling frustrated that they now are less successful and less powerful on the whole vs the game world at hand. It's not an easy transition.
I think it makes for a slightly healthier game this way, because I also know that no matter how they try to avoid it, power will creep. Players and parties will get better and better at picking apart scenarios as more tools, classes, spells, and so forth are available.
As someone playing a totem hierophant templar right now in Delirium I totally get what you're talking about. I cream everything except bosses in just a few seconds, but I'm such a glass cannon (behind on gearing) that I die 3 or 4 times in solo boss fights. A large part of it is going in blind to the boss mechanics and not knowing the tricks to avoid some of the AOE damage mechanics. The Brine King and the wall of water got me several times.
But I think the thing that you're concerned about with power creep isn't going to be a thing. I think they can very easily stop from having any significant power creep because they've already set it up very unlikely. They've reigned in bonus types available, and capped bonuses to most things at +3. What made power creep in PF1 was having lots of untyped bonuses and in general bonuses types that you could stack together. That simply isn't possible if PF2, unless the designer intentionally start increasing the numerical values of bonuses provided.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Will concede this is a matter of taste but it not being to your taste doesn't make it bad design. Me and mine love very hard co op. Winning by the skin of our teeth, or losing by a similar margin is much more exciting to us. I actually remember an early comment when my players got beaten in the first Plaguestone dungeon being an exuberant "I've not felt a dungeon that tough in ages!"
A couple of points:
1) This:PC: "Ah, I have opened the door and look into the next room."
GM: roll initiative. The creature in the room goes first, it attacks you at range, crit, that's... 17 damage...doubled...plus persistent 1d6.
PC: "Well, I'm dying again."
2) "Winning by the skin of your teeth" is exciting. But like a lot of things EXCITING ALL OF THE TIME EVERY TIME FOREVER ALWAYS isn't that much fun. You get burnt out real quick when the only fights you have are fights for your life. Its as bad, if not worse, than only fights you can't lose. Games (and most entertainment media, actually) need points of relaxation where the tension recedes and the player/viewer/reader gets to reflect on what just happened, but at the same time, still see the story drive forwards.
Dungeon Defenders 2 had that realization early in development when people were either winning or losing based on the last wave of enemies and often times that last wave would be double the difficulty of everything prior, sometimes more. It led to situations where you'd put down your initial defenses, hit G until the last wave showed up, and then immediately die. The first four waves were boring because they couldn't do anything, then the last wave would come along and you'd see this spike in difficulty, one where you thought you were prepared because you'd taken all the previous waves--not just without difficulty, but without needing to DO anything at all. But the thing was, it wasn't so much that the first four waves were irrelevant compared to the last wave, but that you had to play perfect, spending every drop of resource just the right way, otherwise you lost on the last wave. It didn't matter what you did: you'd be winning, right up until the last wave, at which point you either won or lost based on having done everything just so (or not). It sometimes even came down to "if you don't have X class build Y defense in Z location, you can't win."
The developers were so focused on having every match be one that came down to the last minute that they forgot that there were 14 other minutes. And it made people sour. They since fixed it, but after that there was several changes in direction due to a revolving door of lead directorship, that the game is now like every other free to play game: shallow and chock full of monetization.
(There were some other parts, like an enemy that had longer range than your long-range defenses that were actually GOOD for the game, as that's what traps and auras were for (or going in personally and smacking them with a sword), but those got changed because Whiney McWhineFaces didn't like the fact that "these enemies out range my towers.")
Is there a market for that kind of game? Sure, Dark Souls sees a lot of popularity. But I'll wager that the popularity of Dark Souls is smaller than that of, say, Minecraft (notorious for its gritty combat).
There are so many ways to make fights "challenging" without being "frustrating." Simply having to fight when low on resources can be hard, even when its against what would normally be low-level trash. Introducing a (mechanical) time limit of some sort can create a pressure on the players. It doesn't always have to be "you can't land hits on this guy."
But PF2 has gone in the direction of "you can't land hits on this guy" for every "hard" fight they've published. Its designed that way, encouraging GMs to use creatures higher level than the party as solo bosses. Players don't like fighting them, and for good reason, but we're stuck with that bad decision.
3) Pathfinder is not about combat. Pathfinder is not a tactical minis game where winning and losing are the only options. "Oh, just run away from those hard fights" sure, I'll do that, while my buddy there is unconscious and bleeding out. I'm sure it'll do him a lot of good. Running away in PF2 is actually kind of hard to do, assuming you have a place you can run to where the Big Bad can't or won't follow. Or that doing so means you can heal up (the Big Bad can too) and come back any time (can't the Big Bad just...go somewhere else? Good luck finding him again!) or that you aren't under some kind of time pressure (either perceived or mechanical) where you HAVE the availability to go lick your wounds for an hour or six.
Yes, Pathfinder has a lot of rules for combat, we all understand it well, but there's also narrative strung through out. PCs can't just "go somewhere else" there's nothing else out there to go TO. Not every GM can make up a fully formed adventure and world with things for their players to do when they leave the yellow brick road. I'd wager that MOST GMs can't, and players agree not to do it because they know the invisible walls are there even if they don't acknowledge them. Players are far more ready to say, "This isn't fun, can we do something else?" than run from a fight they know they have to win in order to progress the plot.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Currently wrapped up AoA. At the start of my own personal campaign now, and the party just hit level 2 after 9 encounters. So far no one's gone unconscious yet and the least amount of enemies in a combat has been 2. Only one enemy crit so far and the champion kept the sorcerer (who ran into the frontline to see into a ravine to cast) up with their reaction. Nothing so tough yet that the PCs have missed the majority of their attacks-- no solo encounters at least.
I'm glad that the enemies in Pathfinder 2 are much stronger than the enemies in Pathfinder 1. When I say that, I mean-- I'm glad the monsters aren't just paper tigers who fold instantly. After running Age of Ashes to 20, I can say that combat only slightly breaks down at 20, and even then it should-- the PCs are 20th level and they deserve to have a bunch of badass moves. From 1-19 the system stays relevant and it never just becomes an exercise in instantly defeating the enemies like PF1 begins to slip into at level 9.
Man... PF1 combat was demoralizing as GM. So many encounters ended on the first turn of combat that it basically permanently soured my feelings on the last edition. So many enemies who were made RAW, painstakingly, over hours... and took their entire hp total in damage in one full attack from a dimension doored martial. Or failed a save they could only pass on a 15 and are instantly, embarrassingly defeated. And then they burn a hero point (I had to give them to the villains to make them a threat) to barely squeak a pass instead so they'd get a turn, and so then they miss most of their swings. All the story building it up and then the mechanics just relentlessly failing.
One time we had a climactic end-of-campaign battle against a foe I'd built up for almost a year out of game. Our ranger one-round-killed him from the starting position on the map. Deflated, the party sensed how miserable I was and asked if maybe he had some way to come back from death... sensing their utter disappointment I rallied, improvised, figured out a way for him to survive a 300-damage volley. The rest of the party was excited! They closed the gap and engaged his minions in combat! He moved up and exchanged blows with his nemesis! This dramatic swashbuckling combat is why we everyone wanted to play Skulls and Shackles!
On the ranger's turn they just volleyed him to death a second time. "He was the biggest threat so he had to die first." We spent the rest of the plodding, meandering combat fighting nameless mook 1 and 2 and 3 who no one gave a damn about before calling it for the night.
And that was the BASELINE experience we had past a certain level. It got so narratively dissonant that my PCs would specifically hold back to sell the 'kayfabe' of the encounters so that the bad guys wouldn't get looney tunes'd and invalidate their struggle in comparison. Basically doing things to throw fights for two rounds before flipping the switch and blendering them. After all, if the villains are incompetent cartoon characters, that just also casts a question about how incompetent the PCs must be if these guys who died in one full attack were hounding them in story the entire campaign.
Literally have had a wizard with no proficiency pick up a magic greatsword off an enemy and wield it into combat instead of casting spells, and have had a caster PC who used a bow and had bow feats and a melee PC who used a rapier+buckler with rapier-specific feats swap weapons for a fight just to goof off. They won, of course.
Now with PF2e, the challenge feels more par for the course. Villains have bite to them so it's fun for me, the historically luckless GM, and the PCs get the mechanical challenge that makes it feel like their struggles are real instead of illusory. Combat doesn't get cartoony anymore as I add a hundred, then another hundred, then another hundred HP to boss monsters in-play just to make sure everyone in the boss fight gets an action. My PCs don't have to stagger around like pro wrestlers acting like the enemy's attacks that bounce off their AC, saves and buff spells are bone-shattering assaults. Math matters and I can get a better grasp on what challenges my PCs should face.
Your absolutely right Draco. Next time my players are enjoying the challenge I'll be sure to remind them they are having too much fun as three people on the forums dont think they should.
Are there people who enjoy that sort of thing?
Sure.But its not broad appeal.
There are people who like Michael Bay movies, but I don't think anyone would call them good.
That's the point I'm getting at.
Your absolutely right Draco. Next time my players are enjoying the challenge I'll be sure to remind them they are having too much fun as three people on the forums dont think they should.Are there people who enjoy that sort of thing?
Sure.
But its not broad appeal.There are people who like Michael Bay movies, but I don't think anyone would call them good.
That's the point I'm getting at.
Draco, while I agree with you on the general topic at hand, we should probably refrain from telling other people what they do or do not like or making too broad of assumptions about the wider appeal of play styles unless we have stronger evidence.
I think the argument we should make is that the game might be better if it was written to accommodate our play style and allow GMs to increase the challenge, rather than needing to reduce the challenge.
In my experience it's easy to make things harder, a lot more difficult to reduce the challenge.
Your absolutely right Draco. Next time my players are enjoying the challenge I'll be sure to remind them they are having too much fun as three people on the forums dont think they should.Are there people who enjoy that sort of thing?
Sure.
But its not broad appeal.There are people who like Michael Bay movies, but I don't think anyone would call them good.
That's the point I'm getting at.
Draco, while I agree with you on the general topic at hand, we should probably refrain from telling other people what they do or do not like or making too broad of assumptions about the wider appeal of play styles unless we have stronger evidence.
I think the argument we should make is that the game might be better if it was written to accommodate our play style and allow GMs to increase the challenge, rather than needing to reduce the challenge.
In my experience it's easy to make things harder, a lot more difficult to reduce the challenge.
Claxton, I really appreciate the respect and tone of your post and enjoy discussing these issues even though we have a difference of opinion on this one specific issue. I respond here because I value your thoughts and feedback, not because I am trying to prove you wrong.
In PF1 it was really difficult to dial up the difficulty effectively in a fun and balanced manner. CR was not very effective for determining the actual difficulty of monsters.
There is a really strong case to be made for a default system running at level equality meaning 50% chance of success. It makes it much, much easier to turn dials in both directions at a consistent and balanced pace. The issue that folks are really debating right now is more focused on whether or not it was appropriate to suggest that throwing monsters up to level +4 was an appropriate adventure design, and that the published modules have leaned into throwing the higher level opposition against parties, especially at lower levels where there has been a real dearth of lower level enemies, because we only have 1 bestiary and the monsters in it are spread out over many levels.
However, to bring this back around to grappling:
Against higher level solo monsters, being able to restrain your opposition more than 5-10% of the time with a single action that can be repeated indefinitely would be an incredibly powerful action to be able to take. If the odds were much better, a party of 4 wrestlers would be nearly unstoppable in combat, they just take turns grappling until someone succeeds and then everyone else hurts the monster until it escapes or the grappler fails, and then they repeat every turn. Even if the monster escapes, Escape is an attack action, you've found a way to limit the monster to 2 actions a round and having to start every turn with MAP.
If any aspect of grappling has been particularly nerfed in a way that disrupts narrative believability, it is the fact that a creature that is only grabbed and not restrained is unimpeded in attacking you in any way, even if they are using a two handed reach weapon. It would have been kind of cool for there to be a way to make it where a fighter would want some kind of agile weapon on them for when they get grabbed, Maybe by adding something like this to the grabbed condition: "making an attack that is not agile, other than attempting to escape, results in character counting as enfeebled 2 for that action."
Literally have had a wizard with no proficiency pick up a magic greatsword off an enemy and wield it into combat instead of casting spells...
Sadly this won't work anymore unless you throw some astoundingly weak enemies at the party.
The attack "penalty" for wielding a weapon without proficiency in 2E could be anywhere between 3 and 28 points!
Draco, while I agree with you on the general topic at hand, we should probably refrain from telling other people what they do or do not like or making too broad of assumptions about the wider appeal of play styles unless we have stronger evidence.I think the argument we should make is that the game might be better if it was written to accommodate our play style and allow GMs to increase the challenge, rather than needing to reduce the challenge.
In my experience it's easy to make things harder, a lot more difficult to reduce the challenge.
Claxton, I really appreciate the respect and tone of your post and enjoy discussing these issues even though we have a difference of opinion on this one specific issue. I respond here because I value your thoughts and feedback, not because I am trying to prove you wrong.
In PF1 it was really difficult to dial up the difficulty effectively in a fun and balanced manner. CR was not very effective for determining the actual difficulty of monsters.
There is a really strong case to be made for a default system running at level equality meaning 50% chance of success. It makes it much, much easier to turn dials in both directions at a consistent and balanced pace. The issue that folks are really debating right now is more focused on whether or not it was appropriate to suggest that throwing monsters up to level +4 was an appropriate adventure design, and that the published modules have leaned into throwing the higher level opposition against parties, especially at lower levels where there has been a real dearth of lower level enemies, because we only have 1 bestiary and the monsters in it are spread out over many levels.
However, to bring this back around to grappling:
Against higher level solo monsters, being able to restrain your opposition more than 5-10% of the time with a single action that can be repeated indefinitely would be an incredibly powerful action to be able to take. If the odds were much better, a party of 4 wrestlers would be nearly unstoppable in combat, they just take turns grappling until someone succeeds and then everyone else hurts the monster until it escapes or the grappler fails, and then they repeat every turn. Even if the monster escapes, Escape is an attack action, you've found a way to limit the monster to 2 actions a round and having to start every turn with MAP.
If any aspect of grappling has been particularly nerfed in a way that disrupts narrative believability, it is the fact that a creature that is only grabbed and not restrained is unimpeded in attacking you in any way, even if they are using a two handed reach weapon. It would have been kind of cool for there to be a way to make it where a fighter would want some kind of agile weapon on them for when they get grabbed, Maybe by adding something like this to the grabbed condition: "making an attack that is not agile, other than attempting to escape, results in character counting as enfeebled 2 for that action."
I try to have reasonable discussion without resorting the name calling, though sometimes I do get too heated. Occasionally we just need a gentle reminder to step back and separate our passion for our vision of the game from the individual on the opposite side, who though they may not agree or may not understand, probably isn't a bad person and isn't trying to ruin your fun.
Ultimately we all want the same thing, to have fun with our friends.
Returning to the discussion of grappling:
You make a fair point about fights against individual creatures, though my counter point would be those simply shouldn't exist in my opinion. They were bad design in PF1. They're still bad design in PF2. Removing abilities that shut down a boss improve it some, but not enough. Not unless you're fighting something +3/4CR, which then just feeds back into my feeling of not being able to successfully do anything.
For me I would definitely prefer fights to have a number of enemies approximately equal to the number of player characters, always. Boss fights would have minions to even out the odds. And then sure, a player might grapple the BBEG and reduce him to not being effective. But then he has to stand their and take the attacks of the minions.
As it sits now, the penalty for grabbing just isn't enough IMO and the chance at critically succeeding is so small that it's not worthwhile to try.