Becoming a great GM in PF2


Pathfinder Second Edition General Discussion


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Over in the thread, You might be a bad GM if..., TwilightKnight said,

TwilightKnight wrote:
Instead of focusing on the negative, why not focus on what makes a good GM? Do you really think a “bad” GM is gonna read this and have a sudden epiphany? And invariably this is gonna lead to a “You might be a bad player if” thread.

That is a marvelous suggestion, so I am creating the thread.

First, let me reverse mrspaghetti's 7 bad signs into positive goals:
1) Try to keep the players engaged and interested throughout the entire game session.
2) Reach out to recruit players.
3) Avoid player character deaths that are frustrating rather than heroic.
4) Don't be late to the game sessions.
5) Prepare properly for each game session.
6) Stick to the rules as written except when the players agree on house rules.
7) Everyone should have fun, even if that breaks any of the rules above.

I admit that I have trouble balancing 4 and 5. I was often glad whenever we decided to wait for a late player because that gave me more time to re-read the module descriptions.

I have noticed that one of the Paizo designers' goals has changed combat in Pathfinder 2nd Edition. In Pathfinder 1st Edition a player can construct a character who is supreme in one area, such as massive damage in combat or battlefield control, and almost always exercise that into victory. PF2 prevents that level of advantage. This changes encounter design and pacing, so I hope that the discussion of great GMing covers PF2-specific encounter design.

My own insight into encounter design is that the creatures in the PF2 bestiaries have fewer feats and special abilities than the PCs and balance that with higher attack bonuses. This gives them less versatility, so the PCs can often find their weaknesses and strengths quickly and either exploit the weakness or nullify the strength with adaptive tactics. As a GM back in PF1, I had an informal agreement with my players that if their characters searched for advance information in a reasonable manner, then they would find something. This became more valuable in PF2.


Mathmuse wrote:

Over in the thread, You might be a bad GM if..., TwilightKnight said,

TwilightKnight wrote:
Instead of focusing on the negative, why not focus on what makes a good GM? Do you really think a “bad” GM is gonna read this and have a sudden epiphany? And invariably this is gonna lead to a “You might be a bad player if” thread.

That is a marvelous suggestion, so I am creating the thread.

First, let me reverse mrspaghetti's 7 bad signs into positive goals:
1) Try to keep the players engaged and interested throughout the entire game session.
2) Reach out to recruit players.
3) Avoid player character deaths that are frustrating rather than heroic.
4) Don't be late to the game sessions.
5) Prepare properly for each game session.
6) Stick to the rules as written except when the players agree on house rules.
7) Everyone should have fun, even if that breaks any of the rules above.

I admit that I have trouble balancing 4 and 5. I was often glad whenever we decided to wait for a late player because that gave me more time to re-read the module descriptions.

I have noticed that one of the Paizo designers' goals has changed combat in Pathfinder 2nd Edition. In Pathfinder 1st Edition a player can construct a character who is supreme in one area, such as massive damage in combat or battlefield control, and almost always exercise that into victory. PF2 prevents that level of advantage. This changes encounter design and pacing, so I hope that the discussion of great GMing covers PF2-specific encounter design.

My own insight into encounter design is that the creatures in the PF2 bestiaries have fewer feats and special abilities than the PCs and balance that with higher attack bonuses. This gives them less versatility, so the PCs can often find their weaknesses and strengths quickly and either exploit the weakness or nullify the strength with adaptive tactics. As a GM back in PF1, I had an informal agreement with my players...

You may be missing my point on #2, it's not really about recruiting new players. The point was, if you don't ever see repeat "customers" that may be a sign that people are not enjoying their adventures at your table. I don't think it would be reasonable to expect the same people very often, just due to scheduling issues. But it would definitely be a GOOD sign if you see people signing up for your games after already having played at your table.


mrspaghetti wrote:
You may be missing my point on #2, it's not really about recruiting new players. The point was, if you don't ever see repeat "customers" that may be a sign that people are not enjoying their adventures at your table. I don't think it would be reasonable to expect the same people very often, just due to scheduling issues. But it would definitely be a GOOD sign if you see people signing up for your games after already having played at your table.

I had to mutilate some of mrspaghetti's points in order to convert them to positive. #2 is one of those greatly changed points.

I myself have many repeating players, including when we swap which of us is the GM. Because of these repeating players, I deliberately focus on adding some new blood to our games. A different style and viewpoint adds spice. A player departing due to scheduling or moving away leaves room for a new player.


In the other thread, Red Griffyn had some suggestions for game preparation.

Red Griffyn wrote:

#5 x a Million.

The best run scenarios feel like the whole thing goes off super smoothly and with great pacing. There is no single or multiple 30 minute delays while the GM catches up (i.e., drawing maps, reading monster abilities, figuring out scenario mechanics, etc.), the GM has an answer to most questions or can re-direct to keep things moving, and ultimately the session carries its momentum throughout. A combination of just enough prep AND good improv to adjust when PCs do something unscripted/unexpected.

The worst run scenarios have frequent pauses, fights over mechanics/rules, multiple GM ret-cons because they don't actually know how the scenario ends and the story/mechanical continuity gets broken by one of their decisions earlier on in the session. These are more often then not the GMs who didn't even read it once or 'lightly skimmed it' and rely on improving their way through 4-5 hours. Unless your the GM equivalent of a "Who's Line is it Anyways" improv actor with a correct encyclopedic knowledge of bestiary, you shouldn't be relying on just improving through 4+ hours of GMing.

The 'bare-scrape-the-bottom-of-the-barrel-minimum' prep as a GM is to:
1.) Read the whole PFS scenario, module, or AP ONCE.

A good level of prep is:
1.) Read the whole PFS scenario, module, or AP TWICE (once before and once for the section you're going to run the day of or day before so it is fresh in your mind)

2.) Think about the parts of the scenario that will be awkward, less engaging, bog down play/lose momentum,etc. and prep something to make it go faster.

[e.g. 1] example, if there is a race mechanic think of some descriptions of what successful checks do, create an excel table to add up the 6 teams race progress BEFORE the session so you aren't spending 30 mins calculating it at the end and ret-con your PC's team losing (though knowing their position during the race might have made them take different actions).

[e.g. 2] highlight or make a 1 pager of weird in scenario interactions. Like if you did "X" in part A then you get a +2 bonus to do "Y" in part C (these get forgotten so often and they often hurt PC's success and are it can be difficult to find 1 sentence on page 3 when your on page 15 and trying to keep things flowing well).

[e.g. 3] Look up a GM prep thread for the scenario/AP to find out where the mistakes/errors are so you don't run an impossible encounter/puzzle or miscalculate APL, etc.

[e.g. 4] If there are weird scenario unique mini-rules, print out at least 1 copy per 2 PCs so they can share it and reference it. So many 'build a fort' or 'have a legal case' or 'have a chase' or 'public debate' kind of mini-games in these things and having the actual rules printed means they don't have to ask you every time their turn comes around.

3.) Prep the maps. They don't have to be pretty but at least block out the shape ahead of time instead of forcing people to watch you draw for an hour in game. If you like having fog of war, I'd recommend cutting out ~100 Bristol board circles and 'covering up' the completed map and only revealing as they go along (I've re-used these hundreds of times so if you have some scrap opague material it is truly a great way to keep the metagming down). If possible borrow the flip mats or equivalent from others at the table to save on drawing or be flexible enough to re-purpose a similar but different map (i.e., forest map vs. winter forest map can both really be on the same flip map). If drawing a map, put a compass point identifying North on your map and a little box outline for where PCs start as those are the first question everyone asks.

4.) Read the monster statblocks and think about how they would fight. Refresh yourselves on their actual mechanical rules. For example, what are the mounted combat rules, underwater combat rules, grappling rules, or monster grab ability, etc. Read some of the high level spell slots so you know what a caster might cast. I usually prep an excel sheet with the statblock (copy pasted for reference from the scenario), an HP tracker for combat, and a screen image of the rules off AoN that I don't know off by heart, etc. so I can confidently remember what the hell is going on at hour 4 when the boss comes up AND internet suddenly drops and we can't look up rules.

5.) For a home campaign prep one or two combats/plot hooks for the times 'PCs went too fast or didn't go to the main plot line mcguffin area'. Its totally fine to say that you're not prepped if the PCs won't follow any adventure hook, but try to have a few contingencies in your back pocket.

Anything beyond that (e.g., coming up with NPC personalities/accents, reading aloud NPC speeches to figure out pacing, cluing in PCs to secondary success conditions, picking out minis/tokens of the actual monsters, bringing extra dice/pre-gens for new players, prepping/bringing some means of combat tracking, printing out or customizing handouts of rules/NPCs in the scenario, etc.) are all gravy and wonderful to have as well.

Keep in mind GM's are human, don't have infinite time to prep, etc. so there will still be pauses needed or rules checks, etc. But it is EXTREMELY evident to players whether a GM that is merely 'recalculating the impact of a PC decision' vs. the being 'totally and wholly unprepared or making up rules on the spot'. People are dedicating hours of their life to have these shared experiences with you. As a GM, you have the most impact on people's enjoyment at the table and I think it behooves you to do some minimum preparation in recognition of that fact and to respect everyone's time.


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Red Griffyn wrote:


1.) Read the whole PFS scenario, module, or AP TWICE (once before and once for the section you're going to run the day of or day before so it is fresh in your mind)

2.) Think about the parts of the scenario that will be awkward, less engaging, bog down play/lose momentum,etc. and prep something to make it go faster.

For example, I goofed in my last game session. I started the 5th-level party and the 80-xp enemy patrol too far apart in a forest, 200 feet. The enemy, thinking they were unseen, advanced 25 feet. In contrast, the party attacked from 175 feet. The ranger demonstrated his +1 striking composite longbow and the druid demonstrated her Fireball. The enemies were smart enough to take cover and eventually run from this overwhelming firepower, which ruined the encounter. They had to scatter, so the leader called out to regroup at the Burnt Blind, another encounter in the module. I could do this because I had prepped for not just the current encounter, but read ahead, too.

They were too busy running to cover their tracks, so the party can track them down as they Treat Wounds. This is a change from the PF1 module, since Treat Wounds does not exist in PF1.

I asked my wife for help in drawing the map of the burnt blind and had to explain it. The poor woman suffers through many spoilers. She pointed out that the party will want to investigate the bodies killed by the fire, so I ought to add clues not included in the module. Since I know the plot of the module, I can deduce which clues will advance the plot.

Horizon Hunters

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I will add 8: make player decisions matter.

Players love derailing adventures with curve balls. Let them.

It does not mean you need to be a pushover. It only means that when an encounter ends not the way you expected, you can figure out what happens next, improvising if you have to.

Say they throw a clutch spell or crit on a skill check and pull a cow corpse out of a bag of holding and the owlbear is friendly now, what then?

It is a magical moment and it needs to be savored.

Let these magical moments create waterfall effects through your adventure. They should have a profound effect, not just "ok lets get back on the rails".

Grand Lodge

Be aware of your environment
There are some significant differences between running org play vs home game AP/module vs home game custom (and probably evolving) campaign world. The most obvious are your freedom to deviate from the story and M.S.U. (make shit up) and time management. There certainly are more, but just wanted to include the concept in the list.

Be aware of your audience
Try to learn what type/style of game your players enjoy and make sure to make as much of that as possible. Things like high magic vs low magic, heavy tactical (combat) vs social encounters, roll vs role play, game mastery/rules lawyer vs casual, etc. Knowing your players helps a lot with keeping them engaged. Worse case, if you find you prefer a much different game than the players, talk about it or find alternative players. Sometimes it’s better to change the group dynamic rather than force everyone to be less than satisfied with the game experience.


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Most of the initial/modified 7 in this list feel like 'how to be a good/reasonable GM', and are what I consider table stakes. TwilightKnigt's two items are starting to get into what moves you from that tier to the next.

I think another aspect of great GMs, is being able to bring diverse characters to life. Its definitely the piece that I struggle with the most in trying to improve.

Of using narration to shape the mood, being able to go beyond the box text, but balanced with making sure its not you telling a story/dominating the talking time, but you setting a stage for the players to tell the story.


#9 Make sure every player gets their spotlight moments

It doesn't have to happen every encounter, but it needs to happen often enough for each player that they don't feel unimportant or marginalized.

(This is related to #7 but I think different enough that it deserves its own number)

When these moments happen, make sure you award Hero Points in recognition.

Sovereign Court

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I think an interesting question is, "what makes you a good second edition GM?"

Things like being on time for the game, giving people spotlight, being fair with the rules - those are important for any game, not specifically second edition. But what about things that a great 1E GM might need to pick up to also excel at 2E?

Looking at PFS2 scenarios that are great, and ones that are... less so, I think a lot of it revolve around understanding how to wield the new uncertainty in dice rolls. 1E had characters that could be supremely good in their field and rarely or never fail; in 2E, whenever you're asking for a die roll, there's a chance people may succeed and a chance people may fail.

- Characters are going to fail an "easy" check needed to advance the plot
- Characters are going to fail an important saving throw
- Characters are going to get a series of unexpected critical successes and complete a challenge much faster than anticipated

On the whole PF2 has what I would describe as "bouncy accuracy" - any individual die roll is much more uncertain, but over the course of a longer skill challenge or combat, characters tend to bounce back from failures and prevail.

We have the critical success/success/failure/critical failure paradigm. This adds to die roll outcomes: it means a failure isn't necessarily "bad", it's just "not good". Only a critical failure is actively bad. What that means is that a failure may mean you don't advance, but also doesn't set you back. You can often try again, or regroup and try a different tactic, but you're not forced into damage control.

You can see this in the victory point system, where a success is worth 1 VP, critical 2VP, critical failure -1VP and failure just 0. So as long as the odds of success are higher than that of critical failure, characters will tend to accumulate points and given enough time, win the skill challenge.

But being able to eventually win, doesn't always make it fun. You might tell players, "statistically you'll win this skill challenge in 40 rounds" and people are going to stare at you like you're crazy. Even if your point total is advancing, if you fail much more often than you succeed (but you don't critically fail often, so you keep moving forward), it's still pretty demotivating. I experienced this yesterday in a scenario with a skill challenge that had DCs set too high and required far too many successes for such a high DC. We eventually got it but it's going to cost the scenario a lot in my review. It took us more than an hour to slog through it and the only really meaningful choices we had were "roll dice" or "don't do that because the DC is so high you're more likely to critically fail, so sit this out please".

I like the basic simplicity of the VP system from the Gamemastery Guide, because it gives you a lucid easy to understand way to construct many different minigames for different situations, without having to develop many new rules - combining versatility with simplicity. What I think is weak though is that the GMG doesn't really explain how to set DCs for a "everyone can try", "everyone MUST try", "your best person can try", or "everyone can try and you're expected to get successes scaled to party size, so if most of your party is bad at this, tough luck" checks. A skill challenge where all the options are Intelligence-based skills needs a different DC than one where there's both mental and physical skills.

Another aspect of building skill challenges is to understand the impact of Trained+ skills on it. At level 1, the difference between trained and untrained is 3 plus some ability modifier. A talented but untrained character (say, +2 ability modifier) will succeed at a level 1 DC (DC 15) on a 13+ and critically fail on 1-3, so 8/20 vs. 3/20 odds. That's tough but still doable. Compared to the character doing it as their main thing (+4 ability, +3 trained) who only critically fails on a 1 and succeeds on a 8+. But now advance these characters to level 5; that's DC 20, and our characters now have +3 (level 5 ability boost) and +11 (Trained and +4 ability). The untrained character now only succeeds on a 17 instead of a 13, and critically fails 1-7, so is on average no longer contributing to this check. The Trained character meanwhile needs a 9+ to succeed, so they're sliding back a bit unless they become Expert, in which case they're a bit ahead (7+).

What that means for scenario design is that the "everyone must roll" check at level 1 can't be designed the same way as an "everyone must roll" check at level 5, because if you do that, the level 5 check is going to see most characters failing. Something's gotta give:
- Maybe this shouldn't be an "everyone must roll" check (and the amount of successes shouldn't be based on half the party succeeding!)
- If everyone must roll, maybe the DCs should be much lower (as much as 5 lower)
- Maybe there should be more different skill options, aimed at different character types (so offering both Diplomacy, Perform and Deception doesn't count, offering Diplomacy, Athletics and Arcana does).

Another aspect to designing skill challenges is to make them interesting. If the challenge is to get a certain amount of successes and all you can do is roll dice, that's not very interesting. If there are three separate problems requiring different but overlapping skills, and you have to decide which is more important to your party and which characters are going to work on what, that's much more interesting. Likewise, just needing to get a lot of successes isn't interesting. If every so many successes you get new information or options that encourage you to rethink your choices, that's more interesting.

Consider the "library challenge" where PCs can read books and make skill checks to get discovery points, and when they get a certain threshold, they learn some factoid. Okay, can be interesting if you have interesting factoids. But what if every factoid also reveals directly actionable information like "maybe we should investigate that room because it might contain the cipher to this other book that we can't read", or "aha, now we know why the monsters are attacking every night, and we know where they may strike next so we can set an ambush".

So what I'm advocating is going a bit beyond just making a skill challenge not-all-or-nothing. If you need to get all the victory points to win a skill challenge, why are they separate rolls? If there is only Good Enough or Not Good Enough as outcome, then you could resolve this with a single die roll. So cutting it up into "good enough" and "even better" or "unlocks extra side option because you had spare successes" is a step forward. But you need to go one step further: you need to ensure that halfway and partial successes are actually actionable.

* Getting some successes on one guest at an influence challenge gets that guest to tell you some gossip about another guest, opening new skills that can be used against the second guest.
* Finding the central catalog of the library allows the players to choose specific subtopics to focus on (because they only managed to bargain one day of research with the curator) so now they can prioritize the topics they need most (or be tempted by that rack of treasure maps..)
* The party has to defend an outpost against bandits coming in a couple of days. Each day they can work on different fortifications, and they have to decide which traps, walls, ditches etcetera to construct, and in the eventual siege they'll get to use what they managed to make. So they have to choose between what's easy for them to make and which harder things are really great to have at the end. But whatever they do, there's not enough time to do all the possible things, so it's really about choosing what you want most.


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I flagged this thread to be moved too. Just mentioning PF2 in the thread title does not make this a PF2 thread.


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To make it more of a PF2 thread, here's a tip for it specifically: Vary your combats. Make some combats a solo APL+3 monster. Make others hordes of weaker enemies. Use on-level enemies. Mix and match. I think a problem people have experienced with the system (in large part due to this being how Fall of Plaguestone and, from what I've heard, Age of Ashes does this) is throwing the party almost exclusively at monsters that are a higher level than them. This creates a lot of scenarios where the martials spend most of their time missing and the casters are only ever getting successes against their spells. And while there absolutely should be fights like that sometimes, it shouldn't be all of them.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Thank you mrspaghetti for creating your original thread and spawning so much positive discussion on the boards! :D


David knott 242 wrote:


I flagged this thread to be moved too. Just mentioning PF2 in the thread title does not make this a PF2 thread.

I also mentioned PF2 in the last two paragraphs of my opening post. :-)

I have been curious about how PF2 plays differently than PF1. I noticed some differences. How does that affect encounter design. This issue is tangential to how to be a great GM, but a GM ought to know the strengths of the roleplaying system. Therefore, I self-servingly added that issue to this discussion.

And when I dissect Ascalaphus's comment and reply to it, I will be using examples from PF2.

If this thread moves to Gamer Life, then I might start discussing Roll20, since I switched to that recently due to the pandemic.

Sovereign Court

Mathmuse wrote:
And when I dissect Ascalaphus's comment and reply to it, I will be using examples from PF2.

I'm very interested in your take on this. I've always liked reading your analyses.


Ascalaphus wrote:

I think an interesting question is, "what makes you a good second edition GM?"

Things like being on time for the game, giving people spotlight, being fair with the rules - those are important for any game, not specifically second edition. But what about things that a great 1E GM might need to pick up to also excel at 2E?

Looking at PFS2 scenarios that are great, and ones that are... less so, I think a lot of it revolve around understanding how to wield the new uncertainty in dice rolls. 1E had characters that could be supremely good in their field and rarely or never fail; in 2E, whenever you're asking for a die roll, there's a chance people may succeed and a chance people may fail.

- Characters are going to fail an "easy" check needed to advance the plot
- Characters are going to fail an important saving throw
- Characters are going to get a series of unexpected critical successes and complete a challenge much faster than anticipated

On the whole PF2 has what I would describe as "bouncy accuracy" - any individual die roll is much more uncertain, but over the course of a longer skill challenge or combat, characters tend to bounce back from failures and prevail.

I have experience with bouncy accuracy because my players played that way in PF1. I have had one player, David, who created the classic optimized PF1 character, a two-handed fighter who could consistently deal massive damage. One other player, Rich, had extreme optimization as a goal, too, but he tried to make a character good at everything, which Pathfinder does not allow. Most of my players grew their characters organically based on their backstory, their interactions with the other PCs, and the needs of the party. This led to their accuracy never being guaranteed. They relied on teamwork instead.

Teamwork plays well against uncertain accuracy. If someone fails an easy check to advance the plot, then another teammate who is merely trained in the key skill can attempt the check. "How did the barbarian read the cipher when the investigator failed?" "My tribe marked their history in runes. This cipher is in runes, too." If someone fails an important saving throw, then the team rallies around them offering protection or remedies.

I can't take credit for that as a GM. That is my players' style. My role was give opportunities. And PF2 creates some rather amusing opportunities for teamwork. Let me repeat a story about teamwork in PF2 from House Rules to Make PF2 Less Deadly for PCs? comment #8.

Mathmuse wrote:

I was worried when the 4th-level PCs had to fight a 7th-level rogue and his entourage. It was a 184-xp extreme threat challenge (actually 230 xp, but I scale the xp by 4/5 due to the 5-member party), which they could handle, but this was the first time they fought a character 3 levels higher than them. He could deal massive damage.

I shouldn't have been worried. The ranger and liberator champion teamed up against him, while the other three party members dealt with the other enemies. When the enemy rogue hit the ranger with the first Strike of Twin Feint, the champion used Liberating Step to prevent some damage and move the ranger out of range of the second attack. The ranger was getting three attacks to every enemy attack, and some of the damage of the enemy attack was blocked. My players found an effective tactics against the rogue that involved stepping out of his reach, like TwilightKnight suggested. The rogue switched his tactics to plain Strikes, but they dealt less damage than Twin Feint. And in the time he lost, the rest of the party had taken out the minions and joined the battle--at a distance since their AC and HP were not as good as the ranger's and champion's.

I mention this battle in another thread. Claxon pointed out that a proper build with Reactive Pursuit rogue feat would not have been hurt as much by this tactic. The good news for PCs is that NPC creatures don't get PC builds. They gain a higher attack bonus in exchange for receiving fewer feats and skills. They cannot adapt as well as PCs can adapt. ...

The lack of Reactive Pursuit opened up a teamwork tactic.

Ascalaphus wrote:
We have the critical success/success/failure/critical failure paradigm. This adds to die roll outcomes: it means a failure isn't necessarily "bad", it's just "not good". Only a critical failure is actively bad. What that means is that a failure may mean you don't advance, but also doesn't set you back. You can often try again, or regroup and try a different tactic, but you're not forced into damage control.

Paizo put combat-changing effects into the critical successes, which a GM can exploit to create a battle more interesting.

My players had deliberately ambushed the 7th-level rogue and his patrol as they crossed a river. After the rest of the party joined the fight with the ranger and champion, the halfling rogue/sorcerer had a lucky critical hit against the 7th-level enemy rogue with Produce Flame. Produce Flame usually does not give persistent damage, but it does on a critical hit. The halfling rolled 5 persistent fire damage. The enemy rogue stepped into the river to extinguish the fire with Assisted Recovery. It worked immediately, but the rogue did not realize that that was a big mistake.

The 7th-level rogue had Deny Advantage which negated flat-footedness from flanking and hidden condition. It did not negate flat-footedness from balancing. I had established that a character standing the the river was balancing against the current (Fording a River) and the players knew this. I thought that the two party rogues would take advantage of it when he forded the river, but he was too fast and clever. The persistent fire damage from the critical hit gave me a plausible excuse to put him back in the river. The party rogues deserved more time in the spotlight when their Sneak Attacks worked again for one round.

The goal of a GM in combat is not to win the fight. The goal is to make the player characters earn their victory and gain glory in the process. Failures by the party combined with a critical success by the enemy make the fight look tough, so they enhance the victory. Critical successes by the party make the PCs look lucky, and lucky heroes make for good tales.


Ascalaphus wrote:

You can see this in the victory point system, where a success is worth 1 VP, critical 2VP, critical failure -1VP and failure just 0. So as long as the odds of success are higher than that of critical failure, characters will tend to accumulate points and given enough time, win the skill challenge.

But being able to eventually win, doesn't always make it fun. You might tell players, "statistically you'll win this skill challenge in 40 rounds" and people are going to stare at you like you're crazy. Even if your point total is advancing, if you fail much more often than you succeed (but you don't critically fail often, so you keep moving forward), it's still pretty demotivating. I experienced this yesterday in a scenario with a skill challenge that had DCs set too high and required far too many successes for such a high DC. We eventually got it but it's going to cost the scenario a lot in my review. It took us more than an hour to slog through it and the only really meaningful choices we had were "roll dice" or "don't do that because the DC is so high you're more likely to critically fail, so sit this out please".

I like the basic simplicity of the VP system from the Gamemastery Guide, because it gives you a lucid easy to understand way to construct many different minigames for different situations, without having to develop many new rules - combining versatility with simplicity. What I think is weak though is that the GMG doesn't really explain how to set DCs for a "everyone can try", "everyone MUST try", "your best person can try", or "everyone can try and you're expected to get successes scaled to party size, so if most of your party is bad at this, tough luck" checks. A skill challenge where all the options are Intelligence-based skills needs a different DC than one where there's both mental and physical skills.

That victory point system will be handy in the next module of my campaign, Assault on Longshadow. The PCs will have a fixed, limited time to shore up the defenses of the city of Longshadow. The module provides a Defense Point system for marking progress; however, my players are likely to add extra complexity. A well-defined minigame system could track their schemes.

When most of these players played the Iron Gods adventure path, they played crafting-oriented townsfolk who became adventurers. They frequently returned to their hometown Torch and set up businesses there using the rules in PF1 Ultimate Campaign. Some of their businesses were cover operations to hide their wealth or their technological crafting from the quasi-governmental Technic League. Others served to improve the town or give jobs to people they rescued. PF1 Ultimate Campaign provided a Capital System for building the businesses. The players mostly spent money as capital, but they used the Influence capital and Labor capital to keep aspects secret from the Technic League.

For my players, following through on a mundane downtime plan can be as rewarding as a quest. However, like a quest, the plan needs mileposts so that the players have a sense of progress. "You want to build a workshop right above the waterfall so that you can have a waterwheel? There is an orchard there, been in the family for 100 years. You will need influence to buy the land from the owner." Earning influence through a Victory Point minigame offers more sense of progress than making diplomacy checks.


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I think its very important to realize a number of things about the system:

1) Just because everything has a level does not mean all encounters and rolls should compared to the party. Sometimes the party should be able to easily succeed, other times they should have a lot of trouble.

2) Varied combat is not just about the number of creatures and their level. Its also about their strategy, the location, even the stats of individual creatures.

3) Follow the rules as much as the players and you are happy. Change anything you dont like. In the end, it is a game and no one is bound by the rules. Just make sure everyone is on the same page.

4) Make sure everyone is having fun. Given how much PF2 is based on luck it can be very likely for some players to grow resentful. Be careful not to exacerbate the problem by only sending enemies and challenges that dont fit a given player.

This last 2 will be very controversial but to me they are very important.

5) Dont pull your punches unless there is a reason, and most creatures are not idiots. Unless there is some reason most creature try to survive.

A creature is having problem hitting a champion or their ally? Unless there is a reason the creature would probably try to escape. A creature has a way to surprise the party? They wont go for the guy in full armor. People keep getting healed? There is no reason to let a healer live if you can kill them. Etc.

6) Everything the party does good or bad has a consequence. A party that helps people will earn their trust and aid. However, being jerks and acting like murder hobos should make them despised and potentially draw the ire of the town/country.

Sovereign Court

Temperans wrote:

5) Dont pull your punches unless there is a reason, and most creatures are not idiots. Unless there is some reason most creature try to survive.

A creature is having problem hitting a champion or their ally? Unless there is a reason the creature would probably try to escape. A creature has a way to surprise the party? They wont go for the guy in full armor. People keep getting healed? There is no reason to let a healer live if you can kill them. Etc.

As a corollary to this, don't give all of your creatures "fight to the meaningless death" tactics. Something I really can't stand is creatures whose purpose in life seems to be to spite the PCs as much as possible, and then get mulched.

That might work for some daemons that are literally made out of nihilism, but that should make them exceptional enemies. Most enemies, when they realize they're not going to win this fight, should be considering escape, rather than hoping for a lucky crit that hurts another PC before they get killed.


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While a thread that gives hints on how to be better as a GM is not a bad thing by itself, i think it's counterproductive to put a list of things one "must do" to be good as a GM.

The reason is that it's already much harder to be a GM rather than a player. Even a "bad gm" has to put much more effort than a player.

So, a list of things one "must do" will only dishearten someone that just want to try to be a GM.

Most of those things can be learned from experience. It doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things if you were underprepared once and you had to improvise or lose 30mins looking something forward IF you learn from that experience.

For other things a good PLAYER can instead help lessen the load. Don't be disruptive, don't be antagonistic, even if something would steal the spotlight from you you don't need to spent 30mins arguing with the GM and just let it go and discuss it with him after the session is over, and etc.

A fledging GM that sees a mountain of "requirements" in order to act as a GM will probably just shrug and never try at all.

And that's a loss for both the game and the players.

The important thing to note is that a GM is also someone playing the game. He's there to have fun as well, he's not there just for the sake of others.

As i said in the previous thread, a "good GM" is just someone that fits the table so that everyone (and that includes himself) has fun, nothing more nothing less.

As the simplest example about the TBKs that some people discourage: I had a GM in the past that made it his goal to try to kill us in the encounters. Was he popular? Not really, but the players that stick with him were players that actually enjoyed the challenge of having every battle be a fight of life or death. Sure, some new players would quit, but that doesn't mean that he was a "bad GM", just one that wasn't a fit for those players. For those who stick to his table, he was quite a good GM since despite his ruthlesness in the encounters he was both a good storyteller and had an excellent grip on the mechanics of the game.


shroudb wrote:

While a thread that gives hints on how to be better as a GM is not a bad thing by itself, i think it's counterproductive to put a list of things one "must do" to be good as a GM.

The reason is that it's already much harder to be a GM rather than a player. Even a "bad gm" has to put much more effort than a player.

So, a list of things one "must do" will only dishearten someone that just want to try to be a GM.

This can be another piece of advice: a great GM does not have to do everything that other great GMs do.

I have heard of the Matt Mercer effect where players who watch the Critical Role web series believe that any gamemaster and any players can play as well as GM Matt Mercer and his talented voice actor players. I know that I fall well short of his skills as a GM. On the other hand, one of my players binge-watching Critical Role says that I run a game like Matt Mercer. I don't, but we match on the issues that that player cares about, mostly player autonomy. And that is good enough.

Sovereign Court

There are many ways to be a good GM, I've learned a lot from having very different GMs run the same game system.

Still, I do think every game system has it's own peculiarities that a GM can use or misuse. So I think the question of what makes a great Second Edition GM is valid.


Mathmuse wrote:
This can be another piece of advice: a great GM does not have to do everything that other great GMs do.

This is great advice that isn't given often enough.

People really should take it to heart as there isn't just one way of being great at GMing, and in almost zero cases is someone trying to mimic the style of another GM going to be as good of a GM as they would be if they focused on their own strengths, what feels natural to them, and played to their audience (because expecting your players to play like someone else does is also easily going to lead to issues).

One other thing though is that even putting these "professional GMs" on a pedestal by saying things like "I know that I fall well short of his skills as a GM" is also a habit that we'd all be better off breaking. You might think "I'm nowhere near as good as Matt Mercer" and your players might think "I'm glad my GM doesn't run like Mercer because that'd suck."


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Can't post about bad GMs, can't post about good GMs, guess we just won't post. >8[

Shadow Lodge

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Temperans wrote:
1) Just because everything has a level does not mean all encounters and rolls should compared to the party. Sometimes the party should be able to easily succeed, other times they should have a lot of trouble.

This, so much. GMs/scenario writers not understanding this is what made me initially hate PF2. Most rolls should not be at level DCs. Normal tasks should have easy DCs, don't use a challenging DC unless the PC is actually attempting something challenging.

Not understanding this sets a one note tone to the campaign of frequent failure, where instead of heroes, you are playing a bunch of bumbling peasants.

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