I feel that monster attacks are very overpowered at low levels


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I am surprised with the absolute ease monsters hit players, especially at the lower levels. This has really caused a drag in my low level campaign as players are frustrated at not being able to play the characters they want. This has especially been pronounced with my barbarian and great weapon fighter. My barbarian player has complained about being a glass cannon and he has even stopped raging as he is too afraid of being hit and the rage benefits at low level seem quite tame. You get 3-4 temp hit points which are gone in first hit, a -1 to AC and a +2 to damage. These benefits seem awfully weak compared to 1PF 1E barbarians. Both players complained how a shield seems a necessity and not an option for a front line character. (I kind of like shields being needed but that's just me :D )

The goblin commando is a real pet peeve. I get that they are Paizo's mascot but come on. A +9 to hit for a level 1 monster seems absurd. That is as strong as an 18 strength fighter at level 1. I don't see goblins on par with the best martials a PC can have. That is utter bunk in my book. All of the monsters seem to be on the fighter attack table which is just dumb IMHO. They should be trained at best and their stats with notable exceptions such as ogres should not be on par with most player characters. My players just don't feel heroic. They feel like its a slog. Its as if Paizo staff calculated that a monster's attack roll or save dc is calculated against the best possible option a player presents in every circumstance to give the common result of a 10 or better for success. My concern is when a power targets a weak point for a character such as dragon's breath hitting character without great reflex scores, giants throwing rocks at clothies, etc. It just seems way overpowered


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You generally send creatures of 1 level lower against PCs if there are multiples. I'd reserve the at-level or over-level creatures for tough/boss fights.

So, level 0 creatures would be more appropriate for standard encounters for PCs to face.

But yes, monsters are definitely tougher this edition.

Liberty's Edge

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Monsters are on par with PCs of the same level, that's what level means. In the Goblin Commando's case, they're basically the monster version of a level 1 PC Goblin Fighter, and have the stats to back that up.

Changing this would just make level not mean anything any more, or at least not the same thing consistently, and is a bad idea.

Generally, PCs should either be fighting lower level enemies, or enemies that they significantly outnumber, that's what the encounter building rules say, and sticking to them is a good call that will make your PCs generally feel more powerful.


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Playing at level 2 currently. Can concur, you aren't just imagining things. Fighting monsters can be a dicey thing. Like Deadmanwalking mentioned, make sure if you are crafting your own campaign that you are following the encounter building rules.

We were fighting a pair of enemies with shields a bit ago. They would tuck in behind their shields and attack twice against our barbarian and monk in the party. It was quite a tough fight even outnumbering the enemies 2 to 1. They had an AC of 20 with their shields up.

On the other hand, our barbarian glass cannon (giant instinct) has a -2 AC in total, but a +10 damage. When he did hit, he would go through both the goblin and his shield.

On a subsequent fight, it was a similar scenario. The four of us against two of these goblins with shields. On the first round, one of the goblins got to go before any of us. On our first turn immediately came up with the idea, 'hammer the other one before he gets his shield up'. We're learning - slowly. However, once we do, it won't just be our characters that feel powerful, but us as players too.


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It isn't just low levels. I am playing Age of Ashes and even with houserules that give me significantly more HP, I regularly get hit/crit for a third of my max hp as a champion in plate. For reference, we just hit 7.


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By my math-based estimation, Barbarians are perhaps the most glass cannon of the martials except perhaps for Rogue (except those guys know it and use tactics to suit). The 12 h.p. is deceptive, as Rage lowers one's defenses enough to make the 10 h.p. of other classes safer, and hence more valuable. There's also the mindset of playing a raging character that may interfere w/ wise tactics in some cases.

Aside from that, and what DMW said above, a lot of the low-level monsters do less damage than a Fighter w/ a 2-handed weapon despite having the same attack bonuses and being the same level. Several also have fewer h.p. than a warrior PC with similar AC would have.
So no, hard disagree on monster attacks being overpowered. The strongest of them are built using PC rules, and that's about as fair as one get.

As for those w/ extra high attack bonuses, that's to keep them viable a minions when fighting higher level PCs, yet if one notes their damage it's easy to determine that average damage remains appropriate for their level.
There's also a deeper reason to want higher attacks w/ lower damage, as it leads to less swingy battles (which if balanced normally, stability of battles should favor the PCs).


The first hit by a monster hitting a PC is factored across nearly all levels. The first attack of even a lower level monster has a good chance of hitting a PC. 2nd attacks of boss monsters can usually hit. 3rd attacks are usually a good deal lower. This is the expected math of monster design.

Tell your barbarian player and your casters to tough out those low levels. They'll eventually hit levels where things are really good for them. Barbarian is one of the most vicious, monster destroying martial beasts in the game. Casters start to turn tough fights into easy walkovers. You have to tough out those low levels where the -1 AC and easy hits and maybe crits eat your hit point pool up quick or your save DCs aren't that high and you can't memorize enough spells to attack lower saves on enemies.


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If you put a level 1 Goblin Commando against a level 1 PC, the PC should win approximately 50% of the time. That is what level means.

A Goblin Commando is effectively a level 1 Goblin Fighter. (Actually, it's weaker, as it doesn't have a class feat or skill feat.)


The guidelines included in the book call a monster of equal level to the party a "low-threat boss" for a reason.

Right now, with a relatively limited set of monsters, it can be a little tricky to set up encounters that don't include "low-threat boss" creatures at 1st level since there's only so many 0 and -1 level creature that fit the adventure - but it's worth making the effort to do it if your players aren't interested in higher-difficulty play that is inherent with using same (and higher) level monsters in PF2.

The upside of the inherently tougher monsters is that a GM doesn't have to throw in potions and/or spellcaster monsters to buff up the creatures in order to present any challenge to a cooperative party of characters.


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Arrow17 wrote:
Its as if Paizo staff calculated that a monster's attack roll or save dc is calculated against the best possible option a player presents in every circumstance to give the common result of a 10 or better for success.

You're not imagining things, that appears to be exactly what they did. The general scheme is that for the first attack, nat 7-10 to hit, and nat 17-20 to crit; for the second attack, nat 12-15 to hit, and only a nat 20 crits; for the third attack, nat 17-20 to hit, and nat 20 barely crits.

By all accounts, this is an intentional departure from PF1, where bonuses were stackable to absurd levels. No more 3rd level characters with +33 Perception modifiers. On the flip side, no more headaches designing encounters where 10% of characters will automatically make a DC 35 check and 90% of characters need a natural 20.

Arrow17 wrote:
My players just don't feel heroic.

Well, for starters, I don't think that first level characters should feel particularly heroic. They should feel like part-time, entry-level adventurers, not CEOs of Whoopmonster, Inc.

But as others have pointed out, characters should be fighting monsters below their level - that's why the monster levels go down to -1.

How far below their level, though, depends on how many PCs you have. CRB pg 488p has a the details, but this is my rule of thumb: one APL-2 monster per PC is a moderate encounter, and APL monsters are double the XP of an APL-2 monster.


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They are pretty fine in my opinion, as they are the nerfed version of a lvl 1 Fighter Caracter:

- Less HP
- Less hit
- Less damage
- Less AC
- More or less same saving throws
- No AoA
- No special attacks

There is really no comparison at all.

Also, as many others already pointed out, a character against an enemy of the same level should have more or less the same odds for for win or lose.

If your players don't feel heroic and demand to stomp on goblins because reasons, you can simply put them against goblin warriors, which are lvl -1 creatures.


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When our group transitioned from 1e to 2e we had similar troubles early on. The malfunction, we belatedly realized, was that we were treating combat encounters more like higher level 1e encounters: get in the BG's face and trade full-attack actions.

We took a break for a bit to analyze our issues. It turns out that we basically behaved as though we're still playing Pathfinder. It's easy mistake to make since the game is called "Pathfinder" and many of its aspects still use the same nouns (with slightly different underlying rules and mechanics).

We realized that we had to stop playing Pathfinder, "forget" everything we know, (mechanics and rules) about 1e, and approach the 2e game as a completely new and separate game ("Trail Blazer").

Reevaluating 2e in that context, we changed our encounter tactics to minimize or reduce in-face time. Forcing opponents to burn actions -- standing back up, picking up or drawing a weapon, stepping or striding, attempting to remove persistent damage, etc. -- instead of Strike three time, changed the experience dramatically for us.

YMMV.

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

By the encounter building rules:

1 level 1 creature vs 4 level 1 pc party: Trivial. If its two, then its moderate, if 3 then severe, if four then extreme.

If its level 2 creature then one of them is low encounter and two of them is severe encounter.

For level 3 creaturs vs this party, its moderate encounter and two of them is extreme. For level 4 creature one of them is severe and for level 5 one of them is extreme.

Meanwhile with level 0 level creatures, one of them is trivial, two of them is low and four of them is severe. With level -1 one or two of them is trivia, three of them is low, four of them is moderate, 6 of them is severe and 8 of them is extreme.

What is my point and why I in very slow and painful manner listed out all possible combinations of encounters for level 1 characters by levels currently in bestiary?

To say: "Please don't put multiple level 2 or higher creatures vs level 1 party, that is cruel". That or rather than using multiple monsters of single level typoe, combine weaker bosses with more mooks to make that higher difficulty encounter :p

If you want severe or extreme difficulty level encounters for level 1 party(I'm horrified if you do though :p) composed of monsters with same levels please use weaker enemies in massive numbers rather than something like level 4 or 5 creature :P


Yup. Alot of the feedback here goes for the whole game, but is extra critical at low levels just because everything is going to be more swingy there, with big dice weapons being disproportionately brutal and PCs more likely to not have 100% filled out their Armor DEX cap yet. Extreme is the 50/50 you live/they live mega-grinder that should rarely if ever be used, but even the lower difficulties can go south quick at low level, so don't aim to use the tougher difficulties as much, and aim to fill them with lower level creatures so any "lucky" crits VS PCs will be less dangerous. Also, the more creatures per encounter, the more players can learn P2E tactics IMHO.

And yeah, Shields can be a great idea, especially on Barbs (and especially on Giant Barbs). 3.x/P1E Barbs didn't tend to use Shields, but not really because it didn't fit the Viking Berserker trope, more just because Rage boosted STR and 2H weapons was how you got the most out of STR. The thing about P2E Barbs is Rage is just a flat bonus that applies equally to 1H weapon. Getting that +2 AC (or +1 vs normal) with Resistance, atop your Temp HP and you're alot more resilient while still doing serious damage. That's not the only way to play, but if you are having trouble, I think it's a prudent one until you feel "on top" of the rules system


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I also was strongly opposed the way they did it in PF2, however when taking the time thinking about it I became a little less opposed to their deliberate design philosophy. Paizo really wants the action to happen within each individual fight, which is a reason for a couple of changes to the way things usually worked, e.g. no real pre-fight-buffing and easy out-of-combat healing via Medicine skill.

As such all monsters are designed to be 'disposable' but credible threads to the party, at all times and while fielding comperatively low numbers (as Paizo wanted to keep the number of miniatures that are on the battlefield at any given time relatively low).

Question: How can a low number of enemies be a credible threat to any party?

Answer: They need comparable or even better (offensive) hard stats than the player characters as they are usually missing most of the other abilities and feats that players characters do have. As an additional benefit, even low level enemies can now pose a credible threat due to their 'artificially inflated' stats, so even a lower level enemy will often still be a threat.

In addition to all of this (and as described above) the to-hit target numbers have significantly been lowered in PF2, especially compared to low level PF1, which means you will get hit and get hit and get hit. This also means that while keeping your defenses maxed is still mandatory killing enemies faster than they kill you is the real way to go. Tanking damage is not dead, don't get me wrong, however it is incredibly more difficult than it ever has been in Pf1, even versus just a single on-level opponent.

Does it still hurt martial ego when monsters of the same level have better to-hit because of fighter-like proficiency levels and often also better attributes? Clearly yes! Does it still hurt caster ego when monsters of the same level have better to-hit and spell DC because of better proficiency levels and often also better attributes? Clearly yes!

So for as much as I understand all these changes from a designers point of view, I am still not fully at ease with those decisions as they can easily have players feel less heroic, especially in the early APs, where almost every battle can feel like a meat grinder more than high fantasy.


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Arrow17 wrote:
I am surprised with the absolute ease monsters hit players, especially at the lower levels.

At low level, it's easier to fight lower level monsters. At high level, it tends to go the other way around.

So, if you want your player to feel heroic while still staying in the rules, try using mostly level 0 and -1 enemies instead of higher level enemies (especially level 3 and 4 enemies which are killers at that level).


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What others said, also keep in mind that unless the encounter is meant to be difficult the goblin commando won't have easy flanking like PCs will so martial PCs are almost certainly hitting with effective +9s, +11s for fighters.

PCs are stronger than a goblin commando though it is essentially a level 1 goblin fighter without AoO or any feat options.

It is in light armour with less than dex cap, using a subpar melee weapon, has +3 str, has +2 con.

Everything adds up fine.

Now goblin warriors, they have boosted attack rolls. But terrible HP, terrible damage, low AC, low saves, low skills, trash initative/perception.

Use goblin warriors if you want them to feel heroic.

Dark Archive

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Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Another thing to note about encounter building. Posting whole table again so no need to look it up:

Party Level -4 10 Low-threat lackey
Party Level -3 15 Low- or moderate-threat lackey
Party Level -2 20 Any lackey or standard creature
Party Level -1 30 Any standard creature
Party Level 40 Any standard creature or low-threat boss
Party Level +1 60 Low- or moderate-threat boss
Party Level +2 80 Moderate- or severe-threat boss
Party Level +3 120 Severe- or extreme-threat boss
Party Level +4 160 Extreme-threat solo boss

On the left is creature on solo, on right it is with mooks :p

So like, level 4 creature vs level 4 party with two level 0 mooks or one level 2 mook is low threat level encounter where level 4 creature is boss. you can pump up amount of mooks to eventually make it severe or extreme encounter, but it still will be relatively painless fight as players won't be critted all the time and any aoe will wipe out most of mooks.

Basically what I mean is that in this edition, any encounter composed of multiple higher level enemies at same time is equivalent of having multiple boss enemies at same time. Unlike Pathfinder 1e where that was standard encounter design :P

...Baaaaaaaasically, I really hope paizo devs have realized to avoid doing that stuff :'D Whenever it happens its really scary. I think paizo devs might realize that game isn't newbie friendly, but I don't think they realize WHY that is. I don't think game needs rule changes to be more balanced or something, I think it needs different design philosophy than 1e did.


The Gleeful Grognard wrote:

What others said, also keep in mind that unless the encounter is meant to be difficult the goblin commando won't have easy flanking like PCs will so martial PCs are almost certainly hitting with effective +9s, +11s for fighters.

PCs are stronger than a goblin commando though it is essentially a level 1 goblin fighter without AoO or any feat options.

It is in light armour with less than dex cap, using a subpar melee weapon, has +3 str, has +2 con.

Everything adds up fine.

Now goblin warriors, they have boosted attack rolls. But terrible HP, terrible damage, low AC, low saves, low skills, trash initative/perception.

Use goblin warriors if you want them to feel heroic.

That. The level -1 goblin warriors are your 'standard' goblin enemies: they still have good offense, but they are trash in most other respects so your PCs will show their superior competence.

Instead, a level 1 enemy is more or less equal to a level 1 PC. As others have already said, it will probably be even better stats-wise since it lacks all the special abilities that the PC has; but the point is that dueling an equal-level opponent is around a 50%-50% risky business. It's not about being or not being heroic, it's that you are facing something that is as bada$$ as you.

Sczarni

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Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Arrow17 wrote:

I am surprised with the absolute ease monsters hit players, especially at the lower levels. This has really caused a drag in my low level campaign as players are frustrated at not being able to play the characters they want. This has especially been pronounced with my barbarian and great weapon fighter. My barbarian player has complained about being a glass cannon and he has even stopped raging as he is too afraid of being hit and the rage benefits at low level seem quite tame. You get 3-4 temp hit points which are gone in first hit, a -1 to AC and a +2 to damage. These benefits seem awfully weak compared to 1PF 1E barbarians. Both players complained how a shield seems a necessity and not an option for a front line character. (I kind of like shields being needed but that's just me :D )

The goblin commando is a real pet peeve. I get that they are Paizo's mascot but come on. A +9 to hit for a level 1 monster seems absurd. That is as strong as an 18 strength fighter at level 1. I don't see goblins on par with the best martials a PC can have. That is utter bunk in my book. All of the monsters seem to be on the fighter attack table which is just dumb IMHO. They should be trained at best and their stats with notable exceptions such as ogres should not be on par with most player characters. My players just don't feel heroic. They feel like its a slog. Its as if Paizo staff calculated that a monster's attack roll or save dc is calculated against the best possible option a player presents in every circumstance to give the common result of a 10 or better for success. My concern is when a power targets a weak point for a character such as dragon's breath hitting character without great reflex scores, giants throwing rocks at clothies, etc. It just seems way overpowered

Hes not playing barbarian right. They start with the instinct.

Sczarni

Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

For example spirit is +3 damage, giant starts with +6 damage, dragon starts with +4 damage, so on and so forth.


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CorvusMask wrote:
Basically what I mean is that in this edition, any encounter composed of multiple higher level enemies at same time is equivalent of having multiple boss enemies at same time. Unlike Pathfinder 1e where that was standard encounter design :P

I don't think that PF1e or 3.x in general was designed with that in mind, it just ended up that way because of how strong PCs turned out to be. You essentially have to ignore the encounter guidelines or build directly against the PCs to challenge them in PF1e. And I am not sure it is fair to call them boss level enemies given their relative strength at that point ;)

CorvusMask wrote:
...Baaaaaaaasically, I really hope paizo devs have realized to avoid doing that stuff :'D Whenever it happens its really scary. I think paizo devs might realize that game isn't newbie friendly, but I don't think they realize WHY that is. I don't think game needs rule changes to be more balanced or something, I think it needs different design philosophy than 1e did.

The APs suggest they have, plaguestone may be a meat grinder and Age of Ashes has a couple of harsher fights in the first two books but easily levels out.

Extinction curse has some rougher fights, but only if the GM doesn't run it right and ignores how it is meant to be run.

Agents of Edgewatch is smooth going combat wise.

Sczarni

Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

The only reason rage and instinct is separated is for multiclassed people. Fighter into barbarian isn't going to rage as well as a barbarian. So they must wait till 6 to get the instinct.

But barbarians START with the instinct and should never deal just 2 damage unless they are Animal or fury that is...

Liberty's Edge

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Verzen wrote:
But barbarians START with the instinct and should never deal just 2 damage unless they are Animal or fury that is...

I mean, he's probably aware of this and the character in question is just Animal or Fury Instinct. Probably Fury, honestly. That's gonna be a lot of player's first Barbarian Instinct.

Sczarni

Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

If he wants an interesting build.. animal instinct barbarian, animal skin at level 6 reverses the AC penalty giving expert to unarmored defense, +1AC or +2 AC status bonus to AC instead of the penalty and they get +3 Max dex bonus to AC. They get less big pew pew damage but are far more resilient physically from 6 on.

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
The Gleeful Grognard wrote:
CorvusMask wrote:
Basically what I mean is that in this edition, any encounter composed of multiple higher level enemies at same time is equivalent of having multiple boss enemies at same time. Unlike Pathfinder 1e where that was standard encounter design :P

I don't think that PF1e or 3.x in general was designed with that in mind, it just ended up that way because of how strong PCs turned out to be. You essentially have to ignore the encounter guidelines or build directly against the PCs to challenge them in PF1e. And I am not sure it is fair to call them boss level enemies given their relative strength at that point ;)

CorvusMask wrote:
...Baaaaaaaasically, I really hope paizo devs have realized to avoid doing that stuff :'D Whenever it happens its really scary. I think paizo devs might realize that game isn't newbie friendly, but I don't think they realize WHY that is. I don't think game needs rule changes to be more balanced or something, I think it needs different design philosophy than 1e did.

The APs suggest they have, plaguestone may be a meat grinder and Age of Ashes has a couple of harsher fights in the first two books but easily levels out.

Extinction curse has some rougher fights, but only if the GM doesn't run it right and ignores how it is meant to be run.

Agents of Edgewatch is smooth going combat wise.

Isn't entire level 1 of EC's first book pretty rough? Like the way it sounds is that it happens in short span of time and there are few level 3 enemies vs level 1 party


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My viewpoint is solidly opposed to the OPs, even though I 100% agree with the OP that the monsters are dangerous.

A few have brought up how using PF1 tactics in PF2 doesn't work well. Completely agree. My party of noobs did better out of the gate than my party of veterans because the veterans had to un-learn PF1 the hard way while the noobs picked up how PF2 runs quicker.

PF2 combat is FAST! This is a good thing. I've played other RPGs where a "hard" enemy just had twice as much HP. Made for slow, boring fights where nothing interesting was happening. Not so in PF2, and accurate enemies are a big part of that. If you hang out with a monster you're gonna get hit, you're gonna get crit, it's gonna be messy. Better have good tactics, better employ them quickly. It's not just about dealing damage to the enemy, it's about limiting their ability to deal it back to you. Move tactically. Take cover. Raise a shield. Use spells, items and abilities to your advantage.

Feel the fear when a strong enemy gets a hold of you. The fear is good. It lets you know that your party could fail. That fear lets you know for certain that the choices you make are the difference between victory and defeat - in short, that your choices MATTER!

PF2 encounter balance/monster potency is all a core part of this, and it's brilliant. Learn to trust it. Learn to even use the bonkers Severe Solo encounters. They are soooo much fun, and the party feels like they're hanging on by their fingernails the whole time, but the balance is so good that you can do that without TPKing your party.

And yes, I've had salty players over how tough higher level enemies are. Just last night the spellcasters were salty because the big bad solo monster critically saved against 3 high level spells. That didn't feel too good to them. But the design is sound, and the fight was dangerous and scary, and when the Ranger used a Vine Arrow to pin the enemy in place after the fighter knocked it down, and the monster couldn't do much other than stand up and take an attack of opportunity, THAT felt way better because of the difficulty of the fight, and EVERYbody felt good about denying those actions as the monster had been hitting and critting EVERY round prior.

Learn to trust it. The combat balance of this game is a triumph of game design.


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The designers have said that they deliberately gave low level monsters a very high attack so that they could stay relevant for a few more levels. The problem is that they gave so many of these monsters weapons with lethal and deadly traits.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I kind of think the lethality of early PF2 is an asset as long as the GM handles player expectations well.

It is important to learn that spending three actions to run up to a group of melee enemies is a terrible first action.

And I find that persistent damage is much more of an actual player killer than pop corning up and down once or twice in a combat.

Players often associate getting KO'd once with death, which can happen in PF2, but that usually only happens in the event of a TPK where the party falls victim to some kind of paralyzing or player dropping AoE ability.

Having low level enemies that can hurt you if they get lucky or you play against them with the wrong tactics really helps sell the importance of approaching each combat as its own unique problem and not try to cookie cutter the same tactics over every situation.

Scarab Sages

Once you start factoring massive damage in, level 1 becomes very lethal. The solution, of course, is to ignore massive damage for low level characters, but for those of us who primarily play PFS, that’s not an option. A creature dealing as little as 15 points of damage on a normal attack can autokill a lot of 1st level characters on a crit.


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Reading through this, I am seeing two different definitions for 'heroic' characters.

Heroic: I am a hero. I obliterate every enemy that dares to challenge me, without breaking a sweat.

Heroic: I am a hero. I will take on anyone no matter the cost. I will eventually win even if the odds are stacked against me.

PF2 tends to lean more towards that second definition. But it bugs me that people keep saying that their characters don't feel 'heroic' just because it is a different meaning of heroic than they were expecting.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
breithauptclan wrote:
Heroic: I am a hero. I obliterate every enemy that dares to challenge me, without breaking a sweat.

Has anyone actually said that's what their goal was? Feels like you're kind of putting words in peoples mouths here.

Scarab Sages

My first experience with 2E was a mob of civilians throwing trash at my character... that crit and nearly knocked him unconscious on the first round. He only stayed up because he was a dwarf with a 16 CON (rogue, so 21 HPs). They did knock him down on the second round.

That did not feel heroic (and more or less kept me from playing 2E for months after that). It gets better at later levels, but overall, the crit mechanic seems to work against the players more than for them, which often leaves me feeling very ineffective in a lot of fights.


Ferious Thune wrote:
...but overall, the crit mechanic seems to work against the players more than for them...

That's been true of every critical hit system to exist thus far, and likely will continue to be true of all of them that come along later.

This is because the case of being taken out of the fight is always going to be more of a big deal for the player's character than for any non-player character, given the intention that player characters stick around long term and are also the only way a particular player has to interact with the game (where a GM is still "playing the game" even if all their NPCs are dying quickly).

However, I do have to point out that there's a bit of an inaccuracy going on due to perception of low level PF2. The game isn't as lethal as PF1, despite sometimes higher critical hit chances and sometimes larger damage pools because the rules are designed in such a way that the majority of times a character gets "dropped" they will actually survive and recover before their next encounter.

Take your 16 con dwarven rogue and put them up against the equivalent enemy in PF1, and their 21 HP getting taken out in a crit and another hit is only 11 HP - so the crit would probably have dropped you, and another hit would have been nearly assured death.


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Squiggit wrote:
breithauptclan wrote:
Heroic: I am a hero. I obliterate every enemy that dares to challenge me, without breaking a sweat.
Has anyone actually said that's what their goal was? Feels like you're kind of putting words in peoples mouths here.

Well, how are you interpreting comments like this then?

Ubertron_X wrote:
So for as much as I understand all these changes from a designers point of view, I am still not fully at ease with those decisions as they can easily have players feel less heroic, especially in the early APs, where almost every battle can feel like a meat grinder more than high fantasy.
Watery Soup wrote:
Well, for starters, I don't think that first level characters should feel particularly heroic. They should feel like part-time, entry-level adventurers, not CEOs of Whoopmonster, Inc.
HumbleGamer wrote:
If your players don't feel heroic and demand to stomp on goblins because reasons, you can simply put them against goblin warriors, which are lvl -1 creatures.

Scarab Sages

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thenobledrake wrote:
Ferious Thune wrote:
...but overall, the crit mechanic seems to work against the players more than for them...

That's been true of every critical hit system to exist thus far, and likely will continue to be true of all of them that come along later.

This is because the case of being taken out of the fight is always going to be more of a big deal for the player's character than for any non-player character, given the intention that player characters stick around long term and are also the only way a particular player has to interact with the game (where a GM is still "playing the game" even if all their NPCs are dying quickly).

However, I do have to point out that there's a bit of an inaccuracy going on due to perception of low level PF2. The game isn't as lethal as PF1, despite sometimes higher critical hit chances and sometimes larger damage pools because the rules are designed in such a way that the majority of times a character gets "dropped" they will actually survive and recover before their next encounter.

Take your 16 con dwarven rogue and put them up against the equivalent enemy in PF1, and their 21 HP getting taken out in a crit and another hit is only 11 HP - so the crit would probably have dropped you, and another hit would have been nearly assured death.

A mob throwing trash in 1E wouldn't have had a 40% chance to crit me. The 1E crit mechanic worked in the PCs favor far more often, because most creatures only had a 20 x2 crit range, while many PCs had 19-20, 18-20, or even 15-20 crit ranges.

In 2E, enemy attack bonuses are so high vs AC that crits are far more likely. Add onto that doubling the roll instead of rolling dice twice, and the chances of massive damage killing a level 1 character are much, much higher than the chances that the enemy would even have threatened a crit in 1E, let alone confirmed it and rolled enough damage to do His plus CON.. I did the math in a PFS thread. Ledford (an infamous greataxe wielding handling barbarian), who had an incredibly high kill rate for a 1st level scenario, has about a 3% chance of one-shot killing the 1st level Ezren pregen when charging against a flatfooted Ezren.

One end boss in a level 1 adventure for PFS, which is not even a particularly strong end boss, has a 5% chance to auto-kill Ezren. So as likely to flat-out kill Ezren as a creature was to threaten a crit in 1E.

Against Seoni, that jumps to a 10% chance to auto-kill thanks to massive damage.

It's an anomaly of 1st level, because of the way that the massive damage rules work. Even a low boss can often do enough damage to kill a small ancestry character or a caster, or especially a small ancestry caster. The creature in question only does 1d8+8 with a +12, which is nowhere near the highest numbers I've seen in a level 1-2 scenario. There have already been reported kills from it.

Incidentally, someone pointed out that if you roll the dice twice, the chances of an autokill drop significantly. So again, it's a combination of the hitting by 10 being a crit and double the damage. Those are things that can be house ruled away, but for the base game, they result in a very dangerous situation for 1st level characters.


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Yep again. The problem is that +/- 10 crit system messing with numbers.

While needing a natural roll means its a minimum 5% and maximum 25% (with 15-20 crit) to crit can cause trouble. It also meant that high attack creatures were not more likely to threaten a crit, just more likely to confirm them.

But the PF2 system makes high bonuses have a guaranteed increase in how often crits happen. Which is why there are so few ways to stack or gain bonuses. Getting more than a +4-6 would mean a 30% chance to crit. And considering that monsters typically have higher attack/spell attack, they start off with a significant chance to crit, before other monsters start flanking or using abilities.


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Crits make the game more fast and furious.

Liberty's Edge

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Temperans wrote:
Yep again. The problem is that +/- 10 crit system messing with numbers.

'Problem' is a subjective term here. This is certainly an important point in how crits work, but whether it's a problem is gonna be a matter of opinion.

Personally, I think the way crits work is great. When fighting on-level foes specifically if the PCs don't get buffs, debuffs, flanking, or anything like that the enemy is more likely to crit unless the PC is a Fighter (in which case they're on par)...but if there are buffs, debuffs, flanking, or the opposition is lower level that advantage shifts rapidly to the PCs, and that's a much more common situation than there being none of those.

Now bosses of higher level, they will crit the PCs a lot...but single foes being actually tough to beat in PF2 is more of a feature than a bug, IMO.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
breithauptclan wrote:
Well, how are you interpreting comments like this then?

Well, when Ubertron says the game feels like a meat grinder, I'm assuming they mean... that the game feels like a meat grinder.

But just because someone finds the game slogging as is doesn't mean that what they're looking for is a game so easy it doesn't have any stakes. To insinuate as much is absurd.

Scarab Sages

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I’m actually kind of curious what the game would play like if the +10 crit mechanic was taken away (so either only crit on a nat 20 or have to confirm with a second +10 roll or something like that). I feel like the creatures are still going to be dangerous. Combat might take longer. But you aren’t going to feel like getting knocked unconscious is inevitable, and there would be room for including more bonuses to attacks, damage, and ACs without breaking everything. Something I really don’t like about the system is that it’s impossible to build a character that is hard to hit, because AC is effectively capped. There really is no such thing as a high AC character. Even champions are just slightly higher and still likely to be hit or crit, and their actual survivability comes from shield block, armor specialization, and lay on hands. It’s like a whole category of characters has just been eliminated from the game. Even spells like mirror image don’t really help, because that will most likely be gone after one round of attacks.


I was using problem more in the physics/mathematics sense, as something that needs to be investigated and calculated.

Although I do think its a problem in the general sense that there are so few ways to buff/debuff. I like buffing/debuffing and having it mean something more than a +1. Yes I know a +1 is a lot in this system, but its also feels meh.

Liberty's Edge

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Ferious Thune wrote:
I’m actually kind of curious what the game would play like if the +10 crit mechanic was taken away (so either only crit on a nat 20 or have to confirm with a second +10 roll or something like that).

This would eliminate a lot of the difference Level makes in efficacy. Which, IMO, would be bad since I like level mattering as much as it does. It'd also make all buffs or debuffs of any sort matter quite a lot less, which is also not ideal.


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Ferious Thune wrote:
A mob throwing trash in 1E wouldn't have had a 40% chance to crit me.

I was going through your points one by one and writing an answer to them, but as I drew to the end of your post and was checking the math I realized that all of the things which I was going to say "that doesn't seem accurate" about come down to basically 2 things: pre-generated Ezren is deliberately squishy (having taken next to none of the available defense options he could have), and using higher-level monsters against a 1st-level party can be problematic (which has always been true - like how a PF1 ogre might instant-kill a 1st-level character just by rolling high damage on a normal hit).

Ferious Thune wrote:
...they result in a very dangerous situation for 1st level characters.

PF2 1st level has felt less dangerous for me than PF1 did, since now it's things like "a max damage critical hit from a boss killed my character" instead of "a moderate damage roll from just about any monster I'm facing at 1st-level drops my character, and if they confirm a critical hit it'll probably be an instant death"

I mean, sure, if we compare this PF2 situation to something like a PF1 orc vs. PF1 Ezren, it's a 5% one-hit-kill chance vs. a roughly 1% one-hit-kill chance... but an 11.25% chance of getting dropped to dying by 1 attack vs. a roughly 41% chance of getting dropped to dying by 1 attack. And with other differences in rules, it's more common in my experience for dying to become dead in PF1 than in PF2.

Liberty's Edge

thenobledrake wrote:
Ferious Thune wrote:
A mob throwing trash in 1E wouldn't have had a 40% chance to crit me.

I was going through your points one by one and writing an answer to them, but as I drew to the end of your post and was checking the math I realized that all of the things which I was going to say "that doesn't seem accurate" about come down to basically 2 things: pre-generated Ezren is deliberately squishy (having taken next to none of the available defense options he could have), and using higher-level monsters against a 1st-level party can be problematic (which has always been true - like how a PF1 ogre might instant-kill a 1st-level character just by rolling high damage on a normal hit).

Ferious Thune wrote:
...they result in a very dangerous situation for 1st level characters.

PF2 1st level has felt less dangerous for me than PF1 did, since now it's things like "a max damage critical hit from a boss killed my character" instead of "a moderate damage roll from just about any monster I'm facing at 1st-level drops my character, and if they confirm a critical hit it'll probably be an instant death"

I mean, sure, if we compare this PF2 situation to something like a PF1 orc vs. PF1 Ezren, it's a 5% one-hit-kill chance vs. a roughly 1% one-hit-kill chance... but an 11.25% chance of getting dropped to dying by 1 attack vs. a roughly 41% chance of getting dropped to dying by 1 attack. And with other differences in rules, it's more common in my experience for dying to become dead in PF1 than in PF2.

I definitely agree with you here - dropping to dying is a worse situation in PF1, and Ezren is just not a great example to discuss monster's offensive capabilities. Level 1 Ezren in PF1 had 8HP and 12AC; you didn't need a peasant troop throwing trash at him to kill him easily. Picking an entirely arbitrary CR 1/2 humanoid, a Bestiary 1 Hobgoblin has a ~16% chance to knock him to dying in a single blow. The Hobgoblin Solider in 2e (a level 1 creature, so significantly more threatening) has only a 7.5% chance, and that requires a crit. If he's cast Shield, it's a 5% chance.

Throwing higher-level enemies at low level PCs has always been a bad idea in PF - it's just easy to accidentally kill someone. But my experiences back up the maths we're discussing here - it feels significantly less squishy at level 1 in PF2, even for someone like Ezren.

Liberty's Edge

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Ferious Thune wrote:
My first experience with 2E was a mob of civilians throwing trash at my character... that crit and nearly knocked him unconscious on the first round. He only stayed up because he was a dwarf with a 16 CON (rogue, so 21 HPs). They did knock him down on the second round.

What encounter is this and what are the stats of those involved? Because the issue here seems to me to be 'civilians throwing trash' being a meaningful threat to PCs at all...which is to say a leveled monster.

Unless that's not an accurate assessment of the encounter, of course, which is why I want to know what encounter this is.

I mean, if we're actually talking a 40% chance to crit, that's better than an Ogre and means the 'civilians throwing trash' are a level 3 monster and could probably kill said Ogre...so something is wrong with that description, either on your part or the encounter's.


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One of my first experience in PF2 has been very similar: Bar fight and my character got one shot by the automatic damage of the bar fight at the beginning of the round.
But I don't think it's an issue with PF2 but with the conception of the bar fight. How come a bar fight automatic damage can one shot an adventurer, even a slightly inexperienced one???


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SuperBidi wrote:

One of my first experience in PF2 has been very similar: Bar fight and my character got one shot by the automatic damage of the bar fight at the beginning of the round.

But I don't think it's an issue with PF2 but with the conception of the bar fight. How come a bar fight automatic damage can one shot an adventurer, even a slightly inexperienced one???

The issue there could be with whoever decided to put automatic damage on a bar fight, as it's not like there's a listing in the Bestiary or a hazard in the books called "bar fight" - and the bar fight I'm familiar with in a printed adventure doesn't have automatic damage built into it.


SuperBidi wrote:

One of my first experience in PF2 has been very similar: Bar fight and my character got one shot by the automatic damage of the bar fight at the beginning of the round.

But I don't think it's an issue with PF2 but with the conception of the bar fight. How come a bar fight automatic damage can one shot an adventurer, even a slightly inexperienced one???

Take an unlucky hit on the jaw or a bad fall, I would be more concerned that the frail wizard with 8 str, 8 con and 8 dex at level 10 can handily beat most barroom toughs without casting a single spell and without wearing armour or wielding a weapon :P

CorvusMask wrote:
Isn't entire level 1 of EC's first book pretty rough? Like the way it sounds is that it happens in short span of time and there are few level 3 enemies vs level 1 party

Spoiler

:
Yes and no, it has three level 3 creatures, two of which are fights, one of which is necessary and the final fight for the chapter. If the GM ignores all the story text and just runs them as straight encounters without context or nuance I can see it being a problem, but GM incompetence isn't something an adventure should cater for imo. The majority of the fights in the chapter aren't straight fights to be fair. Take the bear for example:

- The party knows the wagon has a bear in it and don't need to open it
- The bear only fights for two rounds before regaining its senses unless the player character is carrying the cape from the ringmaster's tent (in which case it stops when that and only that character is unconscious)

The only real fights in chapter 1 are
Spoiler

:
- Vipers
- Cockatrice, unlikely to be fought outside of the weirdest of parties, probably the biggest threat
- The final boss of the chapter, who you likely have allies against and specifically "prefers to hang back" and is a spellcaster.

Moving on to chapter 2:

Spoiler:
The two demon fights again have specific text that makes the combats sub par for their level and give a huge amount of preparation time and knowledge to the PCs. If the GM runs them as straight encounters and ignores the adventure writer's wishes then it would be dangerous, but outside of that it should be fine.

Dark Archive

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Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Spoiler:
The Gleeful Grognard wrote:
SuperBidi wrote:

One of my first experience in PF2 has been very similar: Bar fight and my character got one shot by the automatic damage of the bar fight at the beginning of the round.

But I don't think it's an issue with PF2 but with the conception of the bar fight. How come a bar fight automatic damage can one shot an adventurer, even a slightly inexperienced one???

Take an unlucky hit on the jaw or a bad fall, I would be more concerned that the frail wizard with 8 str, 8 con and 8 dex at level 10 can handily beat most barroom toughs without casting a single spell and without wearing armour or wielding a weapon :P

CorvusMask wrote:
Isn't entire level 1 of EC's first book pretty rough? Like the way it sounds is that it happens in short span of time and there are few level 3 enemies vs level 1 party

Yes and no, it has three level 3 creatures, two of which are fights, one of which is necessary and the final fight for the chapter.

If the GM ignores all the story text and just runs them as straight encounters without context or nuance I can see it being a problem, but GM incompetence isn't something an adventure should cater for imo. The majority of the fights in the chapter aren't straight fights to be fair.

Take the bear for example:
- The party knows the wagon has a bear in it and don't need to open it
- The bear only fights for two rounds before regaining its senses unless the player character is carrying the cape from the ringmaster's tent (in which case it stops when that and only that character is unconscious)

The only real fights in chapter 1 are
- Vipers
- Cockatrice, unlikely to be fought outside of the weirdest of parties, probably the biggest threat
- The final boss of the chapter, who you likely have allies against and specifically "prefers to hang back" and is a spellcaster.

Moving on to chapter 2:

The two demon fights again have specific text that makes the combats sub par for their level and give a huge amount of preparation time and knowledge...

Umm, I agree with you about the bear since bear would require party members to open the cage for whatever weird reason, that encounter only really happens if PCs notice the talisman and want it or if gm for some reason doesn't note that its bear cage before they open it :p

But on rest of them? While there are plenty of fights that are skippable with skills, pcs rolling badly is always an option, so even if drunks aren't most threathening of foes they could still cause enough damage for resources to be spent. You also kinda forgot about the hazard as well. Actually you seem to dismiss all "level 1" creature encounters as "not real encounters" for level 1 party?

Also umm. You are kinda dismissing cockatrice on completely subjective basis. If you show PCs the map like when running in roll20, it increases chances of players visiting it. As does if (whether with visible map or theater in mind one) gm lists the area as area they could go to check out :p

If they do get allies that does help party a lot yeah. Though I do grant you that the spellcaster has mostly area control and debuff spells for most part so they likely won't knock out all party members easily :p

That said, I do recall people mentioning they had painful time in part 1 of the book? Including here on paizo.com.

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