Enemies to hit vs Player AC

[Sebastien Chiasson 939]

My players hit lv 12 recently (it's a long running game and they didn't start at lv 1).

Their AC are 34/36, 34, 32, 32 and 31.
If I wanna populate a dungeon I obviously will not put a bunch of lvl 12 enemies everywhere as this will end up being too difficult.

So I'll put enemies within the -4/-2 range.

If they are -4 and they are by the book (so I don't boost them to compensate which would make them more powerful anyway) their average to hit requires a roll
of 11/16/20 to hit the lowest ac. With the average AC it would be roughly 14/19/20 to hit. Meaning enemies rarely hit the players making plowing through them very easy

If they are -2 we have 8/13/18 for the lowest AC and 11/16/20 for the average. First hit in average has 45% to hit then it goes downhill. 45% ain't too bad but afterward it's very unlikely they will hit.

The players being able to hit a -2 in average with 7/12/17 for the lowest to hit of the group (beside the casters) and -4 being 4/9/14. Unless I fill the dungeons with lvl 12 or so enemies the players just plow through the encounters.. am I missing something?

[Henro]

I'm confused, a PL-4 enemy is supposed to be trivial. If you're going to fill up a dungeon against a level 12 party, it should probably consist of level 10-12 enemies (normal enemies) plus a few stronger level 13-14 enemies (minibosses).

A level 12 enemy is about as strong as one individual 12th level PC. So one single level 12 enemy is not going to be a very challenging encounter, especially against 5 PCs.

[Sebastien Chiasson 939]

Let's forget about bosses for now those are fine and I made some special rules for bosses which make them more challenging encounter
Like a Displacer Beast beasts getting 2 Reaction (tentacles) and stuff like that.

For regular enemies, encounter with 2 or so PL0 every few room is relatively uninteresting. Yes I can populate that encounter with a few PL-2 or so but since they will rarely hit the players they just get ignored until the main threat is dealt with. IF I put PL +1/+2 every few rooms I can't do that many encounter in the dungeon and it has the same problem as before where there's very few enemies and the players gang up on it and kill it in roughly 2-3 turns.

For the PL -4 i was just going by one of the encounter setup recommended in the DM book but I honestly don't use it unless I want my player to feel heroic in a certain scene plowing through a bunch of monsters.

So far while PF2 has many great rules like the 3 actions and the way in handle shields, when player hit high level enough the disparity between each level become so much that things are either too easy or to hard and finding a sweet spot where you can put multiple opponents become a challenge. My solution so far was to give enemies the to hit of of Monster 2 level higher.

[Henro]

That seems like it would cause a lot of critical hits, but whatever works at your table.

I find a good "standard room" has a few weaker enemies (PL-2) and one or two strong ones (PL or PL+1). Like a room full of ghouls plus an "elite ghoul". Weaker enemies don't hit as often but can provide flanking and other debuffs, which means the party can't simply ignore them.

[Sebastien Chiasson 939]

To crit my lvl 12 player a high to hit enemy of PL 0 has to roll a 17/20/20, crits are fairly rare.

[Sebastien Chiasson 939]

I guess it's more my habit of being a DnD player where enemies tend to last longer in a fight where PF2 enemies have a very short lifespan.

[thenobledrake]

Some things to keep in mind when setting up encounters using enemies that are lower-level than the party:

1) Tactical choices. If you use a bunch of the lowest level recommended enemies as an encounter they will have numbers with which to coordinate things like flanking and aiding, and could even use their numbers to better position the PCs into any hazards or disadvantageous positioning available in the encounter area.

2) Mixed groups. An encounter using a squad of trivial enemies is one way to use them, but is not the only, and an encounter in which a few trivial enemies are present to assist a single more-potent enemy is another and is a much different experience.

3) Play assumptions. Each encounter isn't an entirely independent event, and the PCs will likely have reasons to desire accomplishing numerous encounters with the same set of resources. This means that every encounter, even the trivial ones, can add to the difficulty of later encounters and by the end of the adventuring day an encounter that is "easy" on paper feels like a serious challenge because the characters have less resources to defeat it with.

[thenobledrake]

Sebastien Chiasson 939 wrote:

To crit my lvl 12 player a high to hit enemy of PL 0 has to roll a 17/20/20, crits are fairly rare.

Crits are, unless there is a distinct gap of level, supposed to be "fairly rare."

However, it is worth noting that not only are things like a 20% or 5% chance roll happening a lot more likely than people give them credit for being (i.e. 5-6 critical hits happening in a typical PF2 encounter isn't a statistically unlikely event), but that with the involvement of buffs and debuffs chances of critical hits can easily double or even triple.

The 17/20/20 you mention could become 13/18/20 with buffs/debuffs in play.

[Kyrone]

My experience being an ex 5e DM was that enemies were just bags of HP that the casters just control the enemies with one spell and the the stick wielders just wack it until dead.

But anyway, let's say that I want 6 encounters with a boss in the end, I would probably do, 3 moderate, 2 low and 1 severe encounter, I would do...

Low
2 lvl -1
lvl 0 and lvl -2

Moderate
lvl 0 and 2 lvl -2
4 lvl -2
Lvl + 2

Severe (boss)
Lvl + 2 and 2 Lvl -2

[SuperBidi]

Sebastien Chiasson 939 wrote:

My players hit lv 12 recently (it's a long running game and they didn't start at lv 1).

Their AC are 34/36, 34, 32, 32 and 31.
If I wanna populate a dungeon I obviously will not put a bunch of lvl 12 enemies everywhere as this will end up being too difficult.

So I'll put enemies within the -4/-2 range.

If they are -4 and they are by the book (so I don't boost them to compensate which would make them more powerful anyway) their average to hit requires a roll
of 11/16/20 to hit the lowest ac. With the average AC it would be roughly 14/19/20 to hit. Meaning enemies rarely hit the players making plowing through them very easy

If they are -2 we have 8/13/18 for the lowest AC and 11/16/20 for the average. First hit in average has 45% to hit then it goes downhill. 45% ain't too bad but afterward it's very unlikely they will hit.

The players being able to hit a -2 in average with 7/12/17 for the lowest to hit of the group (beside the casters) and -4 being 4/9/14. Unless I fill the dungeons with lvl 12 or so enemies the players just plow through the encounters.. am I missing something?

In my opinion, the biggest issue is that you are not mixing enemies. You just take a bunch of martial enemies and expect them to do anything. But at level 12, casters are more than a good thing, they're a necessity.

Now, if you count Flanking (easy to get if you have tons of enemies), Frightened (Fear 3 is a stapple), and Inspire Courage (good example of buff spell), your enemies have +4/+5 to hit. So, it gets pretty easier.
Now, if you want to be nasty and take Flanking, Synesthesia and Inspire Heroiced Inspire Courage, your monsters will have +8 to hit, which should be far enough to even hit your high AC characters.

[Ascalaphus]

Sebastien Chiasson 939 wrote:

My players hit lv 12 recently (it's a long running game and they didn't start at lv 1).

Their AC are 34/36, 34, 32, 32 and 31.
If I wanna populate a dungeon I obviously will not put a bunch of lvl 12 enemies everywhere as this will end up being too difficult.

So I'll put enemies within the -4/-2 range.

If they are -4 and they are by the book (so I don't boost them to compensate which would make them more powerful anyway) their average to hit requires a roll
of 11/16/20 to hit the lowest ac. With the average AC it would be roughly 14/19/20 to hit. Meaning enemies rarely hit the players making plowing through them very easy

If they are -2 we have 8/13/18 for the lowest AC and 11/16/20 for the average. First hit in average has 45% to hit then it goes downhill. 45% ain't too bad but afterward it's very unlikely they will hit.

The players being able to hit a -2 in average with 7/12/17 for the lowest to hit of the group (beside the casters) and -4 being 4/9/14. Unless I fill the dungeons with lvl 12 or so enemies the players just plow through the encounters.. am I missing something?

I don't understand your problem. You're picking weaker enemies because on-level enemies would be too hard, but then you complain that the weaker enemies are weaker?

Suppose you're planning a Moderate difficulty encounter for your level 12 players. You look at table 10-1 and see that's 80XP (assuming 4 players). Then you look at table 10-2 and see that you can buy two on-level enemies for that. So a Moderate difficulty encounter could be two level 12 enemies.

Then you flip open your Gamemastery Guide and consult table 2-9 which shows you that a moderate to-hit bonus for a level 12 creature is +24.

Comparing that to the ACs of your party, that will crit on a 17+ against the lowest AC in the party and only on a natural 20 against the highest. So the front guy is fairly safe against critical hits, which is good because that's his job. The squishy character had better try to hide in the back of the party.

However, talking about general chance to hit: against the guy in the back it's a hit on a 7+, while the front guy, even with shield raised, requires a 12+. So he still gets hit but not all the time. Which is again, as it should be, because this is a "Moderate" difficulty.

[Staffan Johansson]

One of the differences between 5e and PF2 is how enemies scale with level. In 5e, attack bonuses and AC don't change that much with level, but hit points and damage do. So low-level foes will hit high-level PCs reasonably often, but not do very much damage. But in PF2, hp/damage doesn't scale as much, but attack bonus/AC does. The result is that lower-level foes won't hit you very often, and they'll almost never crit you, but you'll still feel it when they do manage to connect. The same goes in reverse – PCs will crit low-level foes a lot and go through them like a flametongue through butter.

Also, let's look at the guidelines for a moderate encounter. A moderate encounter is 80 XP worth of monsters. That's either two same-level monsters, two PL-1 and one PL-2 monsters, four PL-2 monsters, about five or six PL-3 monsters, or eight PL-4 monsters. Essentially, reducing the monster level by 2 doubles the number of monsters. So we should assume that a monster two levels the party level has about half the impact on the encounter of one that's at-level. However, low-level monsters should probably adjust their tactics to account for the action economy – essentially, the same tips that work for PCs versus bosses should work for minions versus PCs. Use abilities that have OK effects on a successful save. Outmaneuver the PCs so you get flanking bonuses. Look at more efficient ways of using your second and third actions than attacking with very low chances - perhaps help an ally set up a better attack instead of making a weaksauce attack themselves.

[Queaux]

I've been thinking about this a lot. Here's a chart I made using level milestones:

1
2 HP
3
4 Striking
5 Weapon Prof; Secondary Stat
6
7 Caster Prof; Weapon Property; Master Save
8 Resilience
9
10 +1 Weapon; Primary Stat; Action Feat
11 Armor; Master Save
12 Striking
13 Weapon Prof
14 Resilience
15 Antimagic; Secondary Stat; Caster Prof
16 +1 Weapon
17 Apex Item
18
19 Striking; Armor; Caster Prof
20 Resilience; Primary Stat

Looking at this, the party has just gotten some pretty significant milestones at levels 11 and 12. In particular, the level 11 armor and save buffs will make the party quite a bit more resilient versus level 10 enemies.

With these milestones, I'd treat level -3 as level -4 for encounter budget and experience. I'd treat level -2 as giving 5 less xp in the budget per 2 enemies of this level. I'd treat level -1 through level +2 normally.

I think the plurality of experience should come from level -1 enemies in order to give the repeating moderate encounter experience to your party. The game considers these the most standard enemy to face. I think that's a pretty good decision; it makes the players feel heroic without devaluing the abilities of the players or enemies due to mismatched levels.

Also, don't stress out over getting the experience to go to the set encounter numbers. I find around 100 xp encounters pretty satisfying. Consider matching up defensively inclined lower level enemies and offensively inclined higher level ones if you want the encounter to be a bit harder because that configuration has more synergy.