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Looking for some math wizards to help me estimate how much a +4 difference is worth in this edition. I'm hoping to generate some evidence to convince my players that, unlike the previous edition, 2nd Edition isn't about building powerful characters, but employing intelligent tactics. I fear if I don't set them on a better course, the continued TPKs are going to cause them to burn out.
Let's assume for a moment a single wrecker demon (AC 19) is fighting against four 3rd-level PCs. And let's assume the PCs are using some basic teamwork tactics like flanking (–2 circumstance penalty to AC), buffing (+1 status to hit from bless or inspire courage), and some debuffing (Intimidation to Demoralize for -1 status penalty to AC). How much difference is that going to make, mathematically, than not doing any of those things?
Let's assume the party has a not-quite optimized martial taking advantage of his allies' cooperation to attack the wrecker demon. An optimized 3rd-level fighter would have about +12 to hit.
04 expert proficiency
03 level
04 strength modifier
01 potency rune
12 total to hit
So our non-optimized fighter (or perhaps optimized martial from another class) likely has about a +10 to hit (perhaps the character only has 16 Strength and no weapon rune). That means the character has a 60% chance of hitting at all, and a 10% chance of landing a critical hit.
Now, with the aforementioned tactics, there is a 4 point difference, so now the character has a whopping 80% chance of hitting at all, and a 30% chance of landing a critical hit. Furthermore, the character's iterative attacks increase substantially in effectiveness as well.
Can anyone break it down further? Unearth any more specificity regarding DPR? I'm terrible at math, but am wondering how the above might compare to alternative tactics (such as everyone spending all of their actions to simply dogpile rather than assist one another).
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So taking the "barbarian" or addle-brained fighter with +10 to hit as example.
Without the flank, buff and debuff he hits on a 9+ and crits on a 19+. With it, he hits on a 5+ and crits on a 15+. Put that differently: he crits three times as often. ("Three times as often" sounds better than "20% more", and happens to be more mathematically accurate too.)
But let's look at the second attack. What if our barbarian is doing a second Strike. Without all the assists, he needs a 14 to hit and crits on a 20. With the assists, he needs a 9 to hit and crits on a 19. (Since he's a barbarian, he's not using an agile weapon.) So getting the assists makes him hit about 50% more and crit twice as often on second attacks.
And let's take it to the third attack. Normally the barbarian needs a 19 to hit on the third attack, and crits on a 20. With assists, he hits on a 14 and still only crits on a 20. So the assists make him hit 3.5x more often on third attacks.
One thing to take away from this is that third attacks are a long shot, and if you don't already have some assists happening, maybe instead of taking the third attack, you should spend that action setting up an assist for someone else.
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Looking for some math wizards to help me estimate how much a +4 difference is worth in this edition.
On an attack roll, a +1 is equivalent to 12-15% extra damage. A +4 is roughly a +50% increase in damage (a bit more, but that would be nitpicking). As a side note, first attacks deal 60-80% more damage than secondary attacks (simple way of calculating it is to consider a second attack deals half the damage of a first attack and a third attack deals half the damage of a second attack and you should be very close to the real numbers).
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I think the take away here is, a +4 is actually pretty huge in terms of combat effectiveness
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Let see with my 3rd level hammer and board Paladin of Torag.
Unassisted +10 to hit, damage 1d8+4 (average 8.5)
Wrecker demon AC19
Miss is 18- or Nat1. Average damage 0HP
That is 8- on the first attack die, 13- on the second attack die, 18- on the third attack die.
Critical is 29+ or Nat20. Average damage 17HP.
That is 19+ on the first attack die, 20 on the second attack die, 20 on the third attack die.
Normal hit is the rest. Average damage 8.5 HP.
That is 9 to 18 on the first attack die, 14 to 19 on the second attack die, 19 on the third attack die.
So first attack average damage is (8x0+10x8.5+2x17)/20=119/20=5.95 HP
Second attack average damage is (13x0+6x8.5+1x17)/20=68/20=3.4 HP
Third attack average damage is (18x0+1x8.5+1x17)/20=25.5/20=1.275 HP
Average damage for a full attack is 10,625 HP.
***
Assisted +14 to hit, damage 1d8+4 (average 8.5)
Wrecker demon AC19
Miss is 18- or Nat1. Average damage 0HP
That is 4- on the first attack die, 9- on the second attack die, 14- on the third attack die.
Critical is 29+ or Nat20. Average damage 17HP.
That is 15+ on the first attack die, 20 on the second attack die, 20 on the third attack die.
Normal hit is the rest. Average damage 8.5 HP.
That is 5 to 14 on the first attack die, 10 to 19 on the second attack die, 15 to 19 on the third attack die.
So first attack average damage is (4x0+10x8.5+6x17)/20=187/20=9.35 HP
Second attack average damage is (9x0+10x8.5+1x17)/20=102/20=5.1 HP
Third attack average damage is (14x0+5x8.5+1x17)/20=59.5/20=2.975 HP
Average damage for a full attack is 17, 425 HP.
That is almost 2/3 additional damage.
If, unassisted, you would kill the monster in 5 rounds, assisted will help you kill it in 3 rounds. That is 2 less rounds of damage inflicted by the monster before it dies.
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I'm hoping to generate some evidence to convince my players that, unlike the previous edition, 2nd Edition isn't about building powerful characters, but employing intelligent tactics. I fear if I don't set them on a better course, the continued TPKs are going to cause them to burn out.
Your players have multiple TPKs and still don't think they need to change what they're doing? The situation might be hopeless.
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God damn I love this edition
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I'm hoping to generate some evidence to convince my players that, unlike the previous edition, 2nd Edition isn't about building powerful characters, but employing intelligent tactics. I fear if I don't set them on a better course, the continued TPKs are going to cause them to burn out.Your players have multiple TPKs and still don't think they need to change what they're doing? The situation might be hopeless.
Well, in a TPK, the responsability is shared between the DM and the players. Sometimes, the best way to deal with a party lacking strategy is just... to reduce difficulty. Not everyone enjoys tactical play.
And PF2 is excellent for difficulty reduction. Just give your players a level and boom, you are in easy mode. 2 levels and it's cakewalk mode. Or if you are designing encounters, just reduce a bit the levels of severity. 60 xp for a Moderate encounter, 90 for a Severe, 120 for an Extreme one, and 800xp per levels.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It is probably easier to give characters a level boost, if using an AP rather than having to adjust the written encounters.
But I can be kind of lazy when it comes to GMing.
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It is probably easier to give characters a level boost, if using an AP rather than having to adjust the written encounters.
But I can be kind of lazy when it comes to GMing.
Clearly. I was speaking of the home brew case where you design encounters yourself.
There's also another way to deal with that if you don't want to cheat overtly: Give higher level equipment. This one is highly satisfying to players but asks for a bit more work on the GM side. But giving a +1 armor and a Striking weapon at level 3 will surely please your players while giving them the edge they really need.
That's what I plan to do when I'll be able to launch Extinction Curse (damn pandemy...): Characters will start with low level magical equipment so I'll be able to gauge the combat ability of my party early on. I don't care if the beginning of the campaign is too easy, but I really don't want to kill characters so early as it's a common way for a campaign to meet a quick end. It will also allow me to see if my players are having fun with the tactical side of the game. I have a player who doesn't like complex combat, a beginner, a player who dislikes difficulty and a Scoundrel Rogue. So, I'm pretty sure I'll have to tune the campaign difficulty down!
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The wrecker demon is also a great example of non-mathmmatics tactics. It has several exploitable weaknesses. In my group someone scouted the wrecker demon (used Impersonate to do so, but usually this would involve one player moving ahead with Avoid Notice, not the poorly named Scout tactic) and made some knowledge checks. They did some shopping and came back.
One of them opened the door and took a pot shot at the demon before falling back. The demon gave chase, and emerged to find several mirrors flanking the door and every party member holding a polished steel shields and several cold iron weapons. The wrecker demon completely destroyed a couple shields but didn't actually land a hit on a character before dropping.
My other group just kicked down the door and charged it, including the 13 AC sorcerer getting within 30 feet of it and such. Predictably, they had a grueling fight they barely survived, with half of the players just being tied up just keeping the other half from dying.
Examples like this are also why I'm skeptical when people downplay the advantages of a good ranged weapon, incidentally. At low levels especially being good with a bow is huge.
My party also went for bringing mirrors to the wrecker demon fight after learning what it was and it went a lot better for them being able to control where the creature was headed.
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Mmm... Pretty interesting, Ravingdork's initial post makes sense now that I think about it, lately I've noticed that the party in which is my swashbuckler with 10 str and a bard is handling Encounters better than my previous party in which we had a fighter and barbarian (I was an investigator in charge of knowledges and skills).
The thing is that both the bard and my swashbuckler tend to use demoralize at the start, the bard then use inspire courage and I use one for all every turn to aid our ranger or monk (the monk hit like a truck) and just use finishers, we hit more often and enemies die faster yet we aren't that tactical, we just buff and attack, rarely flank or bother about positioning.
In comparison in our previous game the barbarian miss a lot and the fighter while more accurate wasn't capable of pulling a third attack, it always missed.
I think that everyone explained that the +4 adds a lot of damage but there are a lot more to tactics that can be exploited in PF2 compared to PF1/5e.
This is a much harder thing to explain though. The biggest ways to do it are with recall knowledge and movement.
Basically anything that can "take away" a monsters actions can super effective. As simple as just attacking twice and walking away from melee monsters. Especially if you are faster than the monster since you can make them "waste" 2 actions.
Pathfinder 2e really does give a lot of tactical decisions. Sadly it seems like a lot of players just want to walk up attack/block. Which playstyle definitely can work but if you have 1 or 2 melee players who do that every round it can make other tactics impossible.
Since it turns out if you walk away from a monster and your ally doesn't that ally just gets killed and you wasted your action but if you both move away the monster could be at a huge disadvantage.
This isn't possible in PF1/5e since moving away just gets you hit and it cost NOTHING to chase enemies in 5e. PF1 sometimes it cost stuff othertimes not so much.
If players cooperate the amount of things you can do to be impactful is crazy, I admit this is hard to do. Just causing a monster to fall prone and everyone moving away from them can destroy a monster.
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Basically anything that can "take away" a monsters actions can super effective. As simple as just attacking twice and walking away from melee monsters. Especially if you are faster than the monster since you can make them "waste" 2 actions.
Yeah I noticed that when theory crafting a Rogue, the skirmish strike feat looks too good if you consider that the monsters without reach must waste an action to follow you even if it's just stepping one less action is almost the same as stun 1
or addle-brained fighter
No need to be rude. I've seen as many fighters with those modifiers as not.
Put that differently: he crits three times as often. ("Three times as often" sounds better than "20% more", and happens to be more mathematically accurate too.)
Good point!
Let see with my 3rd level hammer and board Paladin of Torag.
...
Unassisted +10 to hit, damage 1d8+4 (average 8.5)
Assisted...Average damage for a full attack is 17,425 HP.
!!!
XD
I'm hoping to generate some evidence to convince my players that, unlike the previous edition, 2nd Edition isn't about building powerful characters, but employing intelligent tactics. I fear if I don't set them on a better course, the continued TPKs are going to cause them to burn out.Your players have multiple TPKs and still don't think they need to change what they're doing? The situation might be hopeless.
It's not entirely their fault. I keep forgetting to give out hero points, combined 1.5 encounters, and this whole play remotely thing has taken a lot of their enthusiasm out of it (I suspect many of them are reading articles, playing games, or doing other activities while they roleplay on VTT). For specific info on our most recent TPKs, simply go here and here.
It is probably easier to give characters a level boost, if using an AP rather than having to adjust the written encounters.
But I can be kind of lazy when it comes to GMing.
We've added an extra player and are currently hoping that will help with the difficulty they appear to be having. We also had a post mortem after the most recent TPK to try and identify the problems as a group.
The wrecker demon is also a great example of non-mathmmatics tactics. It has several exploitable weaknesses.
My players haven't taken a Recall Knowledge action against a creature in some time. And when they do, I often seem to get poor results on the Secret check. I don't believe they even know about the mirrors. Even I forgot that the steel shield the champion was raising might potentially have a reflective surface.
Mmm... Pretty interesting, Ravingdork's initial post makes sense now that I think about it, lately I've noticed that the party in which is my swashbuckler with 10 str and a bard is handling Encounters better than my previous party in which we had a fighter and barbarian (I was an investigator in charge of knowledges and skills).
The thing is that both the bard and my swashbuckler tend to use demoralize at the start, the bard then use inspire courage and I use one for all every turn to aid our ranger or monk (the monk hit like a truck) and just use finishers, we hit more often and enemies die faster yet we aren't that tactical, we just buff and attack, rarely flank or bother about positioning.
In comparison in our previous game the barbarian miss a lot and the fighter while more accurate wasn't capable of pulling a third attack, it always missed.
We started with an bear instinct barbarian (with bear companion), bard, thief rogue, and abjurer wizard. The barbarian usually charged in, rather than let the enemies come to him, and only took advantage of his animal companion every other round. The bard did little more than inspire courage and produce fire (which always seems to miss since he didn't max Charisma and always seems to be trying to fire past the barbarian). The rogue often separated from the party and would sometimes bring additional heat on everyone else when he was forced to run away. The wizard relied entirely too much on her crossbow when her cantrips were better in every way, never bothered to remember how her spells functioned, AND made inexplicable decisions at times (like opening a barricaded door to confront the enemies after the entire rest of the party spent several rounds trying to keep them out). Furthermore, they're still trying to grow out of the whole static "stand your ground and full attack" paradigm of 1st Edition. And these are 20-year roleplaying veterans!
I'm starting to think it has less to do with their knowledge of the game/tactics and more to do with a general dissatisfaction with quarantined online roleplay.
Their new party is a aasimar human cleric, a catfolk paladin champion, a hobgoblin grenadier alchemist, a kobold fire sorcerer, and a tengu battledancer swashbuckler. The general quality of the builds is lower than the last party of characters I think.
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Yeah I noticed that when theory crafting a Rogue, the skirmish strike feat looks too good if you consider that the monsters without reach must waste an action to follow you even if it's just stepping one less action is almost the same as stun 1Basically anything that can "take away" a monsters actions can super effective. As simple as just attacking twice and walking away from melee monsters. Especially if you are faster than the monster since you can make them "waste" 2 actions.
Yes, but keep in mind you can't really use opportune backstab if you do this (which is a BIG part of rogue damage), nor can you provide flanking for any of your allies. If everyone does 'hit and fade' attacks, no one will get flanking bonuses at all.
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Yes, but keep in mind you can't really use opportune backstab if you do this (which is a BIG part of rogue damage), nor can you provide flanking for any of your allies. If everyone does 'hit and fade' attacks, no one will get flanking bonuses at all.
Yeah that's right, many tactical options to keep in mind... With more context I imagined to use it in a solo encounter against a single foe or to get away if I'm low on HP, for doing damage I'd put my bet on gang up, opportune backstab and preparation, and of course one or more friends attacking the same target.
We started with an bear instinct barbarian (with bear companion), bard, thief rogue, and abjurer wizard. The barbarian usually charged in, rather than let the enemies come to him, and only took advantage of his animal companion every other round. The bard did little more than inspire courage and produce fire (which always seems to miss since he didn't max Charisma and always seems to be trying to fire past the barbarian). The rogue often separated from the party and would sometimes bring additional heat on everyone else when he was forced to run away. The wizard relied entirely too much on her crossbow when her cantrips were better in every way, never bothered to remember how her spells functioned, AND made inexplicable decisions at times (like opening a barricaded door to confront the enemies after the entire rest of the party spent several rounds trying to keep them out). Furthermore, they're still trying to grow out of the whole static "stand your ground and full attack" paradigm of 1st Edition. And these are 20-year roleplaying veterans!
I'm starting to think it has less to do with their knowledge of the game/tactics and more to do with a general dissatisfaction with quarantined online roleplay.
Their new party is a aasimar human cleric, a catfolk paladin champion, a hobgoblin grenadier alchemist, a kobold fire sorcerer, and a tengu battledancer swashbuckler. The general quality of the builds is lower than the last party of characters I think.
All I can say is PF2E is very flexible but it feels like your group doesn't really want to do much Tactical Gameplay. PF2E APs especially seem brutal and seem to expect players to know what they are doing. So you really have a few options...
1. Try to explain tactics more thoroughly but if they don't want to play that way there really isn't much else to do. The whole standing there swinging thing is the most boring combat ever and still it is just super hard to get players to stop doing it. I feel your pain on that.
2. If players 100% don't want to do tactics you pretty much will just have to make the game easier. I would probably just raise their level by 1/2 and have encounters give experience based on being 1/2 levels lower. As a GM/Tactical player I would hate this but for the players who just want to "have fun and not think" this is an option. Also once everyone learns the game better you can return the difficulty to normal.
3. Like I said the game is quite flexible with some variant rules and other options to help people enjoy the game. Sadly by default APs/PF2E in general isn't really based around having suboptimal things all the time.
For example things like having a Rogue be seperated... having one character charge in is really bad, it is so easy to get your main attack stat to 16/18 there really isn't a reason not to. Just seems like a mess.
Maybe these things players work in PF1 but in PF2 you can't run around doing whatever you want and expect to succeed. I am pretty sure those tactics would even end badly in most PF1/5e games though.
Also I also in the same boat where our group doesn't really want to put any effort into learning new things. I actually wanted to inspire a player to what you can really do in 2e and he said "I don't want to put any effort into learning my options". That made me sad.
2 of the players in my game actually stated they like 5e combat more when 2e has lots of tactical choices and crazy player options. This is our first time "trying to convert" players though and it has been worse than expecting.
I just am so confused. PF2E has crazy about of options and lots of tactical options but players still aren't happy. Our first 6ish levels the Monk/Ranger just kept running into monsters attacking and were upset that they got knocked out every fight. Finally it "looks" like maybe things are looking up.
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I'm hoping to generate some evidence to convince my players that, unlike the previous edition, 2nd Edition isn't about building powerful characters, but employing intelligent tactics. I fear if I don't set them on a better course, the continued TPKs are going to cause them to burn out.Your players have multiple TPKs and still don't think they need to change what they're doing? The situation might be hopeless.Well, in a TPK, the responsability is shared between the DM and the players. Sometimes, the best way to deal with a party lacking strategy is just... to reduce difficulty. Not everyone enjoys tactical play.
And PF2 is excellent for difficulty reduction. Just give your players a level and boom, you are in easy mode. 2 levels and it's cakewalk mode. Or if you are designing encounters, just reduce a bit the levels of severity. 60 xp for a Moderate encounter, 90 for a Severe, 120 for an Extreme one, and 800xp per levels.
I don't entirely disagree-- I recently had a nasty loss where I realized it was very much my fault, because having seven players breaks the encounter guidelines a bit (you have enough exp to have more higher level creatures, but when those creatures pack AOE, the players lose the value of that exp in a defensive sense, since AOE makes the damage scale proportionally to the number of players-- it makes encounters really swingy.) I dealt with it by smoothing the retreat and resurrections mechanically (I was told after it was one of our best sessions, because of the ensuing RP and the sense of dramatic conflict, amusingly enough.) In the future, I need to make sure they aren't going to get multiple blasts of high level AOE to the face, regardless of it technically being in exp budget.
But I also think there's a dark side to this where it can be used to rationalize taking out frustrations on the GM, which I've had happen to me by players I no longer play with.
It can become the 'applying pressure to the GM is easier than improving' mentality very quickly where suddenly players are expecting you to do whatever you have to for them to succeed, and considering you a bad GM when they take damage, or their rolls don't go as they wish (the classic example, is a 5e player I had who told me just as I was about to roll damage, that they were quitting if their character went down to 0 HP, i don't play with them anymore)--
I picked up on it again recently, when a dungeon had four encounters and one of my players was heavily pushing me to not have more than one encounter remaining after the second fight, because they were getting short on slots. The other caster was like "wait how are you running low, I've got plenty of gas."
It wasn't so much that their assessment of what the party could handle was accurate, its that their expectations for resource management were bad, and that they felt so strongly against the idea that they might be in a situation where they were running low on slots, the handful they did still have didn't feel like enough for more than one encounter. They rationalized it as 'you need to design according to our resource consumption' instead of 'we need to conserve resources.'
It's a complicated issue, because you don't want to listen your way into having your design be completely subordinate to the players pressure (it would ruin it for those players, I've seen it happen) but you do need to adjust somewhat and identify responsibility when it needs to be taken.
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Isn't the tactical side somewhat optional? I mean, every GM I've played irl tends to change a few things in combat to make sure everyone is having fun, not every player is an expert and neither are the monster they face, my GM often make enemies do stupid things since they are actually stupid, or at least not as smart as the party, a troll for once is unlikely to think tactically, it just... Moves closer and attack you, mostly.
I would definitely agree it is optional. APs are really tough if players dont play tactically though.
Also I kind of feel like if players dont want to play tactically they also normally dont want a super deadly campaign.
So if players arent enjoying the game and dont want to play differently I feel the logical step would be to make the game easier.
If players just attack and monsters just attack I feel monsters will knock out players a lot which they might not enjoy.
I have played 5e,2e and PF1. For the most part players can win by mostly attacking except casters of course. 2e in Extinction Curse monsters just feel so much tougher.
I just feel players main advantages are tactics and being able to specialize in multiple things while from pure number monsters attack just as hard as players.
PF2 is more tactical than PF1 for certain. Tactical play greatly improves the ability of the players to achieve victory.
or addle-brained fighterNo need to be rude. I've seen as many fighters with those modifiers as not.
Put that differently: he crits three times as often. ("Three times as often" sounds better than "20% more", and happens to be more mathematically accurate too.)Good point!
Let see with my 3rd level hammer and board Paladin of Torag.
...
Unassisted +10 to hit, damage 1d8+4 (average 8.5)
Assisted...Average damage for a full attack is 17,425 HP.
!!!
XD
I'm hoping to generate some evidence to convince my players that, unlike the previous edition, 2nd Edition isn't about building powerful characters, but employing intelligent tactics. I fear if I don't set them on a better course, the continued TPKs are going to cause them to burn out.Your players have multiple TPKs and still don't think they need to change what they're doing? The situation might be hopeless.It's not entirely their fault. I keep forgetting to give out hero points, combined 1.5 encounters, and this whole play remotely thing has taken a lot of their enthusiasm out of it (I suspect many of them are reading articles, playing games, or doing other activities while they roleplay on VTT). For specific info on our most recent TPKs, simply go here and here.
It is probably easier to give characters a level boost, if using an AP rather than having to adjust the written encounters.
But I can be kind of lazy when it comes to GMing.
We've added an extra player and are currently hoping that will help with the difficulty they appear to be having. We also had a post mortem after the most recent TPK to try and identify the problems as a group.
The wrecker demon is also...
I feel ya. That VTT fatigue is real. It also exacerbates the diffusion of responsibility. No one feels obligated to answer questions or propose ideas because they figure someone else will do it. And I think normal to large sized groups make this worse. I'm running Extinction Curse with only two players and it is a BLAST. The two of them HAVE to be dialed in. I needed to include a couple meat shield DM PCs to make it work, but it works.
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In my case I like to be tactical or at least have a plan on how to use my three actions and reaction if I have one, my friends usually just want to hit hard or use spells (they favor hazards and terrain stuffs) depending on what class they are playing.
Intimidate and demoralize is almost always there but beside that they usually look for ways to lessen their map or similar stuffs like double slice or monk's flurry.
I tend to compare it to Pokémon, they're playing the story and taking on gyms, they just need to level up and hit hard, I however try to figure out the best uses for what I've, I'm not taking the gyms but the battle tower where levels doesn't matter anymore instead is the strategy what matters, that being said I am still kinda lacking since I favor more Skill focused classes like investigator, rogue, wizard... So our current gm still leave fights easy to us.
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I keep forgetting to give out hero points,Right there with you. We've started chanting "Hero points, hero points" at the beginning of our sessions now to deal with that problem, and we've been able to turn some pretty dire situations into wins as a result.
I mean, other than the times we roll nat 1s, and then spend a hero point ... to roll another nat 1.
I've set alarms for 1 hour into our games to serve as a reminder in the future. If all goes well, my phone will literally go *CHIRP!* "Have you given out hero points today?" XD
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Since this has turned into a general PF2e tactics discussion, I'd like to ask about a tactic that I have heard some claim is viable, but that I feel like I haven't seen done well in my games: Hit-and-run or hyper-mobility
My groups tend to be tactically aware. We move to flank, use terrain, demoralize occasionally, and sometimes see grabs or trips. But overall, I'm not seeing the hyper mobile battles. What does that look like in real gameplay? Are we just set in 1e ways?
I get that moving away from an opponent can be more beneficial than a third attack at -10. I get that forcing an enemy to move wastes a precious action for them. But doesn't that just invite the enemy to close with my wizard and crit him? Perhaps twice, since a second attack at -5 might still have a decent crit chance on a squishy? Sure, if I don't have an AOO, he could just go around me anyway, but there feels like a difference between in an enemy's face and just stepping away so he can attack the cleric. Has anyone played a battle where everyone is spring attacking and you just kite the enemy to death?
And there are still times when you want to stand there and be the immovable rock, right? Bottlenecks or doorways? Boxing in the enemy? Keeping them in a flank?
Is it more a function of how a GM runs the enemies? If my opponents are very mobile, I have to match them?
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Since this has turned into a general PF2e tactics discussion, I'd like to ask about a tactic that I have heard some claim is viable, but that I feel like I haven't seen done well in my games: Hit-and-run or hyper-mobility
My groups tend to be tactically aware. We move to flank, use terrain, demoralize occasionally, and sometimes see grabs or trips. But overall, I'm not seeing the hyper mobile battles. What does that look like in real gameplay? Are we just set in 1e ways?
I get that moving away from an opponent can be more beneficial than a third attack at -10. I get that forcing an enemy to move wastes a precious action for them. But doesn't that just invite the enemy to close with my wizard and crit him? Perhaps twice, since a second attack at -5 might still have a decent crit chance on a squishy? Sure, if I don't have an AOO, he could just go around me anyway, but there feels like a difference between in an enemy's face and just stepping away so he can attack the cleric. Has anyone played a battle where everyone is spring attacking and you just kite the enemy to death?
And there are still times when you want to stand there and be the immovable rock, right? Bottlenecks or doorways? Boxing in the enemy? Keeping them in a flank?
Is it more a function of how a GM runs the enemies? If my opponents are very mobile, I have to match them?
Hit and run does depend on a certain amount of teammate buy in. One player hitting and running while the others don't can lead to the ones being left behind soaking the hits rather than enemies wasting actions to chase you.
But you can also use it if there is someone y'all actively want to get focused on, like a summoned creature or a tanky class.
Not the right move all the time, but a nifty arrow in the quiver.
About hit and running the main thing is to do it at the right time and requires team work.
It mostly has been me theorycrafting. So I havent got to try it much.
Our first 4-5 levels players would just stand there at like 20-40% and just get knocked out.
Generally speaking the Wizard would move with you or you would do the tactic when low on life so that the other characters can take some hits.
There are lots of other examples but in combat I admit it isnt easy to use teamwork and think of them on the spot.
Theoretically if you slow a melee enemies movement you can all move+attack 2 time while the monsters would take two actions and could only attack once.
This is something that really couldnt be done in PF1/5E since you just get hit by attacks of opportunities if you are in melee range and try running.
The lack of monster attack of oppurtunities really allows for some fun tactics imo that a lot of players ignore. It is mostly just theorycrafting for me though. Since in PFS players love to just attack and in our current campaign we just recently started using tactics more.
I find hit and run much harder to manage in online games. Screen realestate becomes a problem.
Isn't the tactical side somewhat optional? I mean, every GM I've played irl tends to change a few things in combat to make sure everyone is having fun, not every player is an expert and neither are the monster they face, my GM often make enemies do stupid things since they are actually stupid, or at least not as smart as the party, a troll for once is unlikely to think tactically, it just... Moves closer and attack you, mostly.
Well... Yes and no in the case of 2E. Using default encounter guidelines, I would say tactics are not optional in 2E - the game can be quite punishing for parties who miss out on the +4, so to say.
You can remove the need for tactics very easily as a GM by just giving the party an extra level or similar - and I don't think a group is wrong for doing that, in fact I think it's a good call if it's what the table wants. However, tactics is still something built into the game you have to go out of your way to remove. I think a lot of groups feel a certain resistance to making the game easier in that way even if it was in their best interest to do so.
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I prefer if everyone were tactical so it would be more interesting than managing your 3 actions but many players like my friends like things simple and my GM don't like to kill us so... Things are somewhat easy.
I also just take a look at the first book of extinction course and the fights look a little too hard for me, gotta read a little more to Device new tactics, I for once struggle to do much with low level casters without eating all my slots x.x
Yes Extinction Curse has some insanely hard fights in the first book. It was considered the "easiest" compared to Plaguestone/Age of Ashes when we decided on it, so I have no idea what those are like.
I understand they want them to be fun for "veterans" some of the monsters if a player runs up to them they just end up killing them outright.
It is hard for a new group of players to know what can happen in the game. Now that we are level 8 it is better but there were a lot of times where a player would walk up to a monster attack 2-3 times and end up unconscious.
I only played PF1 Iron Gods and kind of felt the same way about earlier fights being super deadly. Maybe it is just me but I kind of feel like level 1-4 should be the tutorial/learning about the storyline but some of the fights are just crazy for potential players who barely even know what their character can even.
That was even with me using Heal/Magic Fang to make those battles easy if a random player was the Druid using worse spells I am not sure we could have even beat some fights.
Yeah I doubt 2 of the players read any of the book. I think they just looked at archives of nethys and made their character and that is about it.
I am pretty sure if I wasnt in the game pretty much everyone would still just move>attack>attack every round. Even the GM pretty much does that admittingly he has a lot more on his plate then I do while playing.
Only reason I even think about tactics is because I look at things all the time in these forums and reddit so I knew what I was getting into to.
It really is tough to have cooperation between players. This is true in video game too, I have played tactical video games the same things happens.
In both TTRPG/Video games with friendly fire you just see melee people run into mobs of enemies and then you cant use aoes.
I actually am thinking about getting rid of all my cone spells in PFS because players just clump up all the time in fights.
I ran this through my duel program.
Using a single example demon vs fighter
First combat gives me
Combat took an average of 2.5 rounds.
Your first combatant(demon) won 99.55 percent of the time! Their average Damage per round was 21.99.
Your second combatant(fighter) won 0.45 percent of the time! Their average Damage per round was 7.68.
Second combat using the +4 for various bonuses gives
Combat took an average of 2.49 rounds.
Your first combatant(demon) won 95.52 percent of the time! Their average Damage per round was 21.61.
Your second combatant(fighter) won 4.48 percent of the time! Their average Damage per round was 12.64.
So this is only one character, not the entire party. But the +4 is obviously a significant increase to damage and win percentage.