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Hi all. A problem I've been having in my group is that I think the fun of PF2 is being affected by how deadly the system is, especially past the early levels. Basically, PF2 seems to be a high damage/high healing system. But an interrelated problem is that tougher enemies get TOO MANY critical hits (just had a battle in an adventure path where the monster's crit range was something like 13-20). and too quickly put PCs unconscious. And then the wounded/dying rules make it so that a PC is at death's door if they get revived from unconsciousness twice, because one of those critical hits would put them at dying 4 (going unconscious from a crit adds two to the dying value). That limitation on reviving PCs kind of undermines the whole high damage/high healing design. I don't know if I've adequately explained the problem, but here are some possible house rules to make it so that every tough battle isn't just PCs constantly getting knocked unconscious and then revived and then facing death:
(1) Critical hits only add one die to the damage and only do double damage on a 20. A main source of the bloodiness seems that more powerful monsters have high to hits and just get way too many critical hits. It detracts from the spirit of the critical hit when they are constantly happening. This house rule would restore the magic of the 20. Of course, PCs will be affected as well, but I think the monsters have been getting more crits.
(2) Death is not keyed to the wounded condition, but instead the wounded condition gives -2 to rolls for every 1 wounded (or -1, but that might seem too modest). I would also want to think of some condition where death would actually result -- although I don't think the negative of constitution score from PF1 is a better option...
(3) In theory, hero points should help with dying in PF2 RAW, but in my experience a PC would need to be able to do it more than once in a combat and RAW does not allow it (because they need to use all remaining HP to avoid dying). An alternative to #2 might be to say the PCs start every session with 3 HP and that a critical hit does NOT add two to the dying condition and that only one HP needs to be spent to avoid dying. But in that event, PCs would basically just save HPs for avoiding dying, and I'm not sure it would be very interesting. (Note that I find it is awkward and artificial to try to make sure I am awarding one HP per hour to each PC, so I don't love reliance on HPs.)
Your thoughts? Other suggestions? Does anyone else perceive a systemic problem here? I love PF2 (the 3 action mechanic, the character versatility) but I do think this aspect is affecting the fun at my table...
You're misreading the text a bit there. Taking damage while you're dying increases the value by 1, or by 2 if it's a critical hit or critical failure. In the sidebar under Death and Dying next to the condition, it clarifies that if you are rendered unconscious you go to dying 1, but if you get crit unconscious or a critical failure brings you unconscious you go to dying 2. Still not great if all the monsters crit PCs on 13s but that's... that's a party composition problem, which is a new thing in PF2e that doesn't ever get mentioned.
As for the rest of your post: I give my PCs two hero points when the session starts, and a third after about 60% of a session has elapsed if it's a long session (thanks to COVID sometimes we play for 10 hours, most of the time 5 1/2). That fixes granting them.
I also add +10 to hero point rerolls if the value is under 11, so a 3 is a 13, a 9 is a 19, and a 10 is a 20, but an 11 is an 11 and a 14 is a 14. This makes hero points much more viable and interesting instead of "dud points" where you roll a 2, fail, and then roll a 1 and somehow heroically fail worse.
Giving a penalty to the wounded condition will tamper with death spiral mechanics. It's the same as making the PCs 2 levels lower every time they go down, which can just make a TPK guaranteed instead of recoverable with a single death.
The big thing with PF2e from my experience that no one talks about that everyone SHOULD talk about is you need to have a solid party composition if you want to play the Adventure Paths without changes. You cannot run a bard/monk/rogue/rogue party composition in the PF2e adventures-- with the space-saving and time-saving measures put in place, there are extremely minimal low encounters and almost all fights are moderate or severe. Clerics and divine Sorcerers are the only "healer" classes with abundant free heals and are nearly mandatory. Making sure at least 1 of your frontline have an oppressively high AC-- mandatory-- and if they're not a Champion, then the party is likely going to take level+2 extra damage every single round-- so Champion, mandatory.
If you're running your own home game you can make the encounters far less lethal, far less pressed-for-time, far less "1e" where the encounter math wasn't so tight that an enemy escaping to get reinforcements is an all-but-guaranteed TPK if the PCs have any damage on them whatsoever. But if you're running Plaguestone or Age of Ashes-- good luck. Not only are these modules written under 1e assumptions, their math is off so badly. The official Paizo encounter math back then was for some reason very number-of-creatures light, so you only see a few sparse level-2 or level-1 encounters. Everything else is 2 +1, a solo +2-+3 or three equal-level, and that's not the sweet spot for many groups, especially mine.
So, TL;DR: If you're party isn't willing to char-op their party composition, then put the weak template on the monsters. Weaken them twice and add an extra. Avoid solo fights at +3, aim for +2 solos. Buff hero points and give them more treasure.
This worked for me and we've been having a blast in my homebrew campaign. Good luck!!
PF2 can definitely be a system shock to people used to PF1. It took my party a long time to get used to the idea that a PC getting dropped to 0 is just a normal thing that you can expect to happen once every couple fights or so, and not something to freak out about.
Like Ice Titan, I have adopted the "+10 on low rolls" rule for hero points and my party has greatly appreciated that. It helps hero points be a more sure get out of jail free card.
There's also a lot you can do as a GM to mitigate things; don't play monsters as ruthlessly murderous. I will often have monsters make poor choices, spread their attacks instead of focusing (single large monsters especially), or provoke attacks of opportunity because they don't know a character is a fighter. It's perfectly reasonable for monsters to make these kinds of mistakes; after all, PCs make them all the time. As long as you aren't too blatant, your PCs will likely never notice.
As far as your suggested changes:
1) I hope you don't have any fighters in your party. This rule massively nerfs fighters. In many fights in my Age of Ashes campaign the fighter PC is critting on a 15 or 16; rare is the combat where she needs a whole 19 to crit. Especially once debuffs start getting thrown around; we've had fights with frightened, flat-footed enemies where she can crit on an 8. Fighters rely on reliable crits as their main source of damage; without that, they are going to be weaker than classes that have damage bonuses.
2) This is probably fine for the combat in which the PC gains the wounded condition, but if they then need to push on to another fight without time to treat their wounds, that PC is going to be feeling pretty useless with such a severe penalty.
3) Do you really have PCs hit dying 4 so often for this to be needed? Even with Age of Ashes being such a brutal campaign, it's been rare for me. Monsters don't tend to attack dying PCs and heavily wounded PCs are usually smart enough to avoid rushing into combat until they can get their wounds treated. Except the warpriest of Gorum, but honestly the dice just love him and I don't know how he hasn't died yet...
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#3) Don't do this. My group was in the Playtest, and even after a near-TPK in PF2, we all still agreed that the 1 hero point revive in the Playtest was terrible. It makes everyone avoid spending hero points on anything else and players bouncing up and down repeatedly in a single fight feels silly rather than heroic.
If you wanted to buff hero points - I'd say have Heroic Recovery clear active conditions on use, or at least persistent damage. My group has seen characters clear their dying condition with hero points, then immediately fail the flat check against persistent damage and return to dying 1 on the same turn. For an even greater buff, have hero points actually return PCs to 1hp and conscious instead of 0hp and stable, but unconscious to let them do something to participate in the fight.
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Personally, since my campaigns are all online atm - I have everyone start each session with 1 hero point + 1 hero point for anyone logged in and ready to start by the scheduled time (incentive to prevent too much lateness wasting time for the rest of the group), and really need to remember to award extra hero points later on (my group is still getting used to remembering they exist).
I also consider it very important that I inform players who return to consciousness that enemies will typically ignore them until they actually take certain actions - allowing them a small reprieve before rejoining combat. [Rationale: Enemies are typically too focused on the PCs fighting back to realize that a downed PC is conscious again until they do things like stand up, attack, or cast a spell.] This can often get used for things like a quick potion chug or even just delaying for the enemy to move away before the PC willingly exposes themselves to danger again.
There's also a lot you can do as a GM to mitigate things; don't play monsters as ruthlessly murderous. I will often have monsters make poor choices, spread their attacks instead of focusing (single large monsters especially), or provoke attacks of opportunity because they don't know a character is a fighter. It's perfectly reasonable for monsters to make these kinds of mistakes; after all, PCs make them all the time. As long as you aren't too blatant, your PCs will likely never notice.
I'll echo some of this and say I rarely play enemies as highly tactical with a top-down view of the battlefield like players do. My fighter in particular has enjoyed how often he gets to make AoOs now that they're no longer assumed defaults - since I'll have dumb monsters repeatedly trigger them and most others will trigger an AoO at least once before realizing the Fighter can do that.
If you wanted to buff hero points - I'd say have Heroic Recovery clear active conditions on use, or at least persistent damage. My group has seen characters clear their dying condition with hero points, then immediately fail the flat check against persistent damage and return to dying 1 on the same turn. For an even greater buff, have hero points actually return PCs to 1hp and conscious instead of 0hp and stable, but unconscious to let them do something to participate in the fight.
My personal rule here is: If you spend a hero point to survive death, you are out of the fight. You are unconscious and cannot be resuscitated for the remainder of the battle; on top of that your character ends up with some kind of scar or permanent mark from the experience.
In exchange, my players have my solemn promise that if they spend a hero point to avoid death, they will not die in that fight. Monsters will not target them, events will conspire to ensure their (bare) survival. They live, period.
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Voomer,
Unsure if you are the GM or player.
That said, have you considered dialing back the difficulty of all encounters by one step?
This will be extra work for the GM - yes - but the system has some pretty tight math that doing so may have a substantive impact of the unwanted dynamic you are describing.
Cheers.
Thanks, everyone. Yes, I am the GM. I have played a couple sessions with the critical hit homerule (#1 above) and changes to hero points, and it has helped a lot. I understand that only doubling damage on a 20 decreases the fighter damage output, but that PC is still doing very well and it has absolutely saved the party that the monsters are not getting critical hits every other round.
The other big adjustment is hero points. I have been giving 3 out at the start of the game, because the game recommends one per hour and we play for 3 hours, but maybe I will start by giving two and awarding a third as earned as the night progresses. That has helped a lot. I have also been allowing them to use the HP on more things, a la PF1, although not everything on the PF1 list. Giving the PCs more reliable access to HP has helped a lot too.
So far I have not needed to modify the dying rules, other than not having +2 to dying condition if a critical hit. I'm hoping my other adjustments will make changes to dying rules unnecessary.
I'm reluctant to modify the difficulty of the encounters, for lack of time and expertise in how to do so. I think it's a very good idea to try to play the monsters a little dumber, or erratic. For example, we ended the last session at a moment that will be a TPK if the monsters are merciless, but I think I will just have the monsters let the PCs run away. I suppose it would also be helpful to have the monsters run away more often, rather than getting every lick in before dying on the battlefield.
I appreciate your suggestions and welcome any more!