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I have 7 players, so their severe encounter budget is 210 xp, and their Moderate exp is 140, we use relatively short adventuring days, and my players are well optimized so I tend toward the Moderate to Severe end of the scale for our encounters which has worked beautifully for most of the campaign (we had 6 players for most of it, we've had more for like 2ish levels of play)
Last night, they were level 17, I threw 4 skull takers at them, which are level 18, so for them worth 60 exp each, coming out to a total 220 xp, basically just over the severe threshold, which are encounters they usually don't have much trouble with.
Well, a few horrid wiltings and a couple finger of deaths later, I had killed two of my PCs and the party had to full retreat and resurrect one of them, while the other took over the powerful NPC cleric allied with the party. Now this was really a product of one character rounding a corner on the four of them on his own even though they knew the rest of the party had lost initiative, then rolling some of the worst rolls of his life, including on his hero point rerolls of the saving throws. This was also the party's main source of healing, so once he went down, they lost their ability to pull people out of finger of death range.
In the end it was actually pretty awesome because the resurrection scene had super intense rp in my setting's spirit world, allowing a character who is very cagey and secretive to finally bare their soul to the party. It also really raised the stakes and feeling of challenge in my finale dungeon for the whole campaign. This isn't me asking for advice or anything, I have the situation well in hand. But I wanted to offer some advice, and maybe spark a discussion of experiences.
But the point is, be careful of your exp budget when you get super large, at roughly the 7 person mark, you officially have enough exp to use a number of slightly higher leveled monsters to potentially brutalize your party in very short order-- especially because AOE attacks tend to scale perfectly with party size (whereas normally, even the most powerful monster attacks are still hitting a very limited number of targets.)
Its very easy for these AOEs to overwhelm the party's collective HP and start dropping people, and death effects are way more common (especially for the undead creatures that fit the theme of the current arc.) So basically: Watch out. This is true even when your party are cakewalking 'severe' encounters filled with lower end foes, or single +4 bosses and such.
In the future, after this ends, I'm going to probably keep party size down-- which I want to do for other reasons as well related to rp and spotlight time. But it should also prevent this, since the exp budgets would normally regulate the number of higher level creatures you can possibly have pretty well.
Large parties create all sorts of in-session problems. You need so many adversaries to challenge them that the least encounter can take ages to play out.
But the scenario you describe, a more than severe-level encounter, sounds like it played out about as one should expect. Even at on-level moderate encounters, a string of bad rolls can easily snowball into a TPK or near-TPK event. That's how PF2 rolls.
Large parties create all sorts of in-session problems. You need so many adversaries to challenge them that the least encounter can take ages to play out.
But the scenario you describe, a more than severe-level encounter, sounds like it played out about as one should expect. Even at on-level moderate encounters, a string of bad rolls can easily snowball into a TPK or near-TPK event. That's how PF2 rolls.
We've been playing weekly since release and it hasn't been our experience at all, though it wouldn't surprise me for low-op parties.
Generally my players have been able to take down even severe encounters (which this was on the dot for, pretty much, being only 10 exp more than the floor for severe) without too much difficulty unless extenuating circumstances make those harder (incorporeal undead before they even have magic weapons, for instance, came up in our initial test game.)
So this is very much a special case-- honestly they've been able to take down extremes in the past without too much difficulty.
This kind of configuration is something legal using the exp budget, but is very much an outlier relative to other encounters: combining an inflated budget, with slightly higher level foes who have AOE.
Frankly, so much depends on how the encounter is set up, what sort of terrain there is, and what specific powers the adversaries have that they can bring into play.
I appreciate the fact that PF2 comes much closer than PF1 or DD3.x to the ideal of having a useful metric for challenge rating combat encounters. But such a system isn't perfect, and so much can change depending on tactics and luck of the dice at key moments.
In my opinion, it has nothing to do with the size of the party.
At low level, higher level enemies are deadly.
At high levels, multiple AoE spellcasters are deadly.
Try an encounter with lower level monsters using AoE and you'll see your party run like chickens. All auto-TPK encounters at high level feature lots of low level spellcasters.
In my opinion, it has nothing to do with the size of the party.
At low level, higher level enemies are deadly.
At high levels, multiple AoE spellcasters are deadly.Try an encounter with lower level monsters using AoE and you'll see your party run like chickens. All auto-TPK encounters at high level feature lots of low level spellcasters.
Been there done that, my players handled it just fine-- basically they can reduce the damage by succeeding at saves, and can output enough healing to not be in danger.
Been there done that, my players handled it just fine-- basically they can reduce the damage by succeeding at saves, and can output enough healing to not be in danger.In my opinion, it has nothing to do with the size of the party.
At low level, higher level enemies are deadly.
At high levels, multiple AoE spellcasters are deadly.Try an encounter with lower level monsters using AoE and you'll see your party run like chickens. All auto-TPK encounters at high level feature lots of low level spellcasters.
If you go into auto-TPK encounters, you can dish out around 1000 AoE points of damage in one round, save for half. So, even without getting to such crazy level of damage (and such crazy encounter design) I think a proper moderate encounter full of AoE damage should easily scare a party. I don't know what was your encounter, but it sounds really weak to me.