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It works fine when players are at higher levels though, a +3 monster works well at level 7+ for instance. Hard fight but players have enough tools and hp to deal with it in most instances.
It's not quite as insanely deadly but no, I don't think it's really much fun. The "bounce rate" when you fail to land anything on the monster is just too high which is not fun. You might win just by throwing enough at it, but it's not fun to see most of your attempts failing. Often, it's a process of hitting lots of times until some debuff finally gets through and then you have chink in the armor that you can start widening.
Just because you'll probably win, doesn't make it enjoyable. Compared to an on-paper same difficulty encounter against a L+2 enemy with some flunkies, it's just not a good time.
But I'll grant you that it's not as insane at higher levels. The "level 5 hump" is very noticeable.
So while there is an argument that can be made for GMs not needing to know the encounter building section if they are running premade content, if it is an Age of Ashes / Plaguestone issue then it isn't really an issue imo (and one that could be corrected with an errata document imo/updated pdf even without a print run)
These things really could do with a few pages of "hey new GM, here's some stuff you need to know about this adventure" yeah. The evil thing is that someone who's new to the game hopes to use an out of the box AP to learn the ropes, but that rope is a snare.
Also as for the crb, please let us remember that the book is quite clear that a +3 creature is a "extreme or severe threat", so the developers are well aware that the tipping point exists. Anyone GM who has read the section should be aware, if they forget then that is something for them to learn.
Yeah so how I read that is "it could be the solo boss in a severe encounter"/"the boss with mooks in an extreme encounter". I think that's what they mean with that style of writing.
I just don't agree. L+3 just doesn't play as Severe, ever. I think they were too hung up on a nice linear progression in their table but it doesn't work that way in reality.
This is to say, the encounter building rules aren't perfect. But they are better in estimation than near any other encounter guidelines I have used for other systems, if only because they roughly work.
Like I said. They're not quite right - mostly right, but with a few big pitfalls.
If you want luck to be a non-factor, why do you even play a game with dice?Maybe, but that extension doesn't work with most combat things which are a single check to complete and thus that slight edge you have between a trained level 10 and master level 10 can be outshone by sheer luck for an entire combat.
Remember, my gripe isn't so much about some simulated skill check for running.
My gripe is, my character feels like an idiot because the success rates are too low for my personal taste, and when I compare to someone else on the same level with even basic training I'm not substantially better to where luck is a non-factor.
One of the main reasons I am so pro 1st ed/anti new classes/just the way I am is because of a game with I played with a good friend who wholeheartedly believed this. It lead to a very interesting conversation that I guess lead to me being more in my corner in turn.
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It's not quite as insanely deadly but no, I don't think it's really much fun.
The "bounce rate" when you fail to land anything on the monster is just too high which is not fun.
You might win just by throwing enough at it, but it's not fun to see most of your attempts failing.
Often, it's a process of hitting lots of times until some debuff finally gets through and then you have chink in the armor that you can start widening.Just because you'll probably win, doesn't make it enjoyable. Compared to an on-paper same difficulty encounter against a L+2 enemy with some flunkies, it's just not a good time.
this is spot on
I’ve sat at too many tables where, despite victory after such an encounter, each player felt like they were a wearing Jar-Jar mask and not a young Wan-sie| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
It's not quite as insanely deadly but no, I don't think it's really much fun.
The "bounce rate" when you fail to land anything on the monster is just too high which is not fun.
You might win just by throwing enough at it, but it's not fun to see most of your attempts failing.
Often, it's a process of hitting lots of times until some debuff finally gets through and then you have chink in the armor that you can start widening.Just because you'll probably win, doesn't make it enjoyable. Compared to an on-paper same difficulty encounter against a L+2 enemy with some flunkies, it's just not a good time.
this is spot on
I’ve sat at too many tables where, despite victory after such an encounter, each player felt like they were a wearing Jar-Jar mask and not a young Wan-sie
I know your party played this specific encounter three times (which no one is claiming to be an easy one, and most people agree that, without careful GMing, it is tuned too hard for where it falls in the adventure AND it happens to fall at a particularly bad level to face a level +3 monster), but that was all with the same players in the same party with the same GM, largely running that specific encounter the same way.
What other "such an encounter" have you sat at to project this pretty antagonistic description of the pathfinder 2nd edition system?
As a matter of fact, you have claimed that you like your adventurers to feel like heroes, but then you have also claimed that you want the GM to throw the book at you and not pull any punches when they GM, implying that you want the GM to play monsters at a tactical level that might not be a good fit for the narrative of the creature or the encounter (very much the case in THE encounter we are talking about most frequently here).
To many of us, that sounds like you are wanting to feel like you are playing the game on hard mode, but want the challenges of hard mode to be easily defeat-able without having to use the best possible tactics to survive the games most difficult encounters. It sounds a lot like you and your party want to be able to feel like you are winning against the design of the game, as opposed to what happened, which is that a specific encounter, in a specific AP was a little overtuned, and your GM didn't realize that running that encounter takes a very light touch not to overwhelm the PCs. As a consequence you (and many others who have had similar experiences) are saying that the system is designed to beat down players and never let them be heroes.
I actually do think that this is a problem, even though I loved that encounter as a player and how we barely escaped it with our lives, (Well our barbarian and an NPC did not, and the rogue only did because of their hero point to stop from dying) even with our GM bringing in a 2nd NPC in the vicinity to help support us (whom we had successfully befriended and promised to help, earlier, so it didn't feel like a deus ex machina situation at all). Other than that fight, we have mostly not been scraping by by the skin of our teeth. We tromp about 80-90% of the encounters we face. If we didn't get a real challenge every 8th or 9th encounter, the game would feel way, way too easy.
What is cool about PF2, is that it is really easy to tell, as a GM, which encounters are going to be the ones that are really going to challenge the PCs and for you to think about how to present them to your party based upon how your party handles challenges.
What has gone wrong somewhere, (ie. old game systems) is that solo monsters stopped being scary to veteran players because action economy supremacy was so easy to exploit in PF1 and other D&D variants. In PF2 it is not. It takes different tactics to win against a more powerful solo monster than a horde of lower level monsters. Being ready to face both is a part of being a well prepared party.
These are deep dive issues in PF2, and it is unfortunate one got exposed so transparently in the first of the system's APs. However, it is a really, really easy issue for the GM to fix. They are not cheating by changing the encounter to fit the needs of their players. There isn't a special medal to be won for completing and AP "by the book." In fact, there really shouldn't be an AP run "by the book" as that means that nothing about the game was modified to make the player's characters to make them the focus point of the world. They are just random adventurer number 7890 to be thrown into dungeon meat grinder.
I could see that being a funny campaign to run, but then players should probably expect to get treated like meat for the grinder.
I know your party played this specific encounter three times (which no one is claiming to be an easy one, and most people agree that, without careful GMing, it is tuned too hard for where it falls in the adventure AND it happens to fall at a particularly bad level to face a level +3 monster), but that was all with the same players in the same party with the same GM, largely running that specific encounter the same way.
Actually we played the greater barghest fight twice. The previous encounter was a TPK fighting one of the primary antagonists of the module. New characters were made, and we continued the campaign.
The first fight against Ralldar was just a horribly negative experience for the players, and I ended the session as a result mid fight, taking the remaining time to just talk about the experience and what the PF2 expectations are. That includes such things as 'Fight something 3 levels above you, expect it to crit you on die rolls that you miss it on'.
I was able to convince the group to give it another try. The players agreed to try again. It nearly went south at the outset, but very good luck won it for the PCs at the end. I was really happy they won, and thought it was a cool win. But after a debrief with the players they were not excited about it. Just didn't have the right heroic vibe.
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I know your party played this specific encounter three times ...
this is slightly off
group agreed to make new characters;
next week, Ralldar fight went sideways - GM commented (paraphrased) ‘through no fault of the PCs’ - session called mid-fight, time spent discussing what the group wants;
next week, redo Ralldar, final round is 4 of 5 PC attacks hit, included one maybe two crits; alchemist misses (again), monk hits then gets knocked out (again), cleric goes Divine Lance instead of waking the monk with a heal (hero point reroll to get that hit), then I [ranger] attacked twice for a hit,crit combo)
two weeks, two TPKs (well, second called mid-PK)
third week, victory - which all of us felt was due to ‘roll better’ not ‘played better’
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I see I’m duplicating (well, repeating) my friend
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As a matter of fact, you have claimed that you like your adventurers to feel like heroes, but then you have also claimed that you want the GM to throw the book at you and not pull any punches when they GM, implying that you want the GM to play monsters at a tactical level that might not be a good fit for the narrative of the creature or the encounter (very much the case in THE encounter we are talking about most frequently here).
To many of us, that sounds like you are wanting to feel like you are playing the game on hard mode, but want the challenges of hard mode to be easily defeat-able without having to use the best possible tactics to survive the games most difficult encounters. It sounds a lot like you and your party want to be able to feel like you are winning against the design of the game, as opposed to what happened, ...
yes, we want to be heroes
pound-for-pound, better than the restnot a bunch of off-the-benchers vs the A-Listers
and never ever meet an off-the-shelf NPC whose numbers it is impossible for anyone in the group to match
I’m not taking monsters, or polymorphed/shape-shifted whatevs in humanoid form - I mean an NPC of a race a PC could play,
and the PC following RAW able to achieve, at the same level as the NPC, the same or better crunch
(if a PC cannot achieve what that NPC did, what’s up with that?)
ignoring the L+-#s under the hood stuff, more free style prosing it, what do we want?
- the foes to pull no punches, to play well if not the very best they can be played; if they’re dumb animal-level intelligence, then sure attacking that barely damaged champion in full plate that just hit them hard makes sense over Stride and Strike the squishy caster that’s sustaining hideous laughter on them
- no one wants a cake walk: we want to be challenged and to come out on top by ‘playing better’
- except for the Extreme-threat encounters, for player choices aka tactics, character coordination, individual decisions to be thee determining factor in the outcome of any combat encounter; for that to be 80-90+% weighted as to why the fight result was what it was, with the other 10-20% being the random element, an aspect whose primary role is dictating the flow of the melee (you miss there, it crit fails a save here, the ranger gets rocked but the fighter had two great rounds, ...) and only a minor influence on the situation at the end
- for Extreme-threat level fights to be the be all end all
requiring every choice made to be top tier, the best or you’re inviting failure
to be ready to disengage if that random element becomes problematic or the group has a realization (uh guys, it’s fire and cold resistant - half my spells do that ... let’s bail)
yeah, that’s a lot
and what my DnD and all its scions RPGing experience had been ...
until the last year
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It's very interesting reading all of the responses to this thread. Lots of useful and informative opinions.
For myself I find that I don't feel like a 'hero' in PF2 the way I did in PF1. As Claxon and others have said I do appreciate the spreading out of class features and so forth in order to make everything more flavorful but I really don't like combat - at all.
I can appreciate what people say about 3 actions allowing for much more versitility and interest in combat, but actually it's the opposite for me. I play PF specifically to role-play, rather than roll-play and in PF2 I end up defaulting to a "Move+2attacks" or "3 attacks" type turn just as much as I did in PF1, in large part because of options paralysis. Yes I have fifteen different things I can do, including three cool skill tricks and a couple of combat maneuvers but a. I have no idea which one to do, leading to me defaulting to the basic option of just attacking and b. I probably fail at them when I do them. I can absolutely appreciate PF2 as a mathematical construct - its a wonder of tight limits and ranges... but I don't like it. I don't feel satisfied by almost anything my character does - I think because I feel like the skill has been removed from the game.
It's entirely true that PF1 can be won and lost at character creation, and maybe I'm fortunate that the group I play with prioritises their character's personality and reflecting that in the mechanics rather than simply building 'Optimal Wizard 2.0' and then going "Oh yeah, they... umm... like puppies", but I think that a system where your choices are meaningful is important. People have said its impossible to build a bad character in PF2 unless you try - cool, but then what's the point in bothering with your build? If it's all going to work then what's the significance of your choices?
I also feel like a lot of the options are downright terrible. When I was playing a level 12 cleric I went looking for skill feats. He has master healing and religion as I recall and there wasn't a single feat I could find that did something useful. Once very cool sounding feat let me call divine anathema on my enemies or something like that - it sounded amazing, but it was a DC30 skill check for something like d6 damage. Wow, I rolled a 40+ religion check and my god smites you for 7 damage, which your 300 HP doesn't even notice.
More recently, playing Agents of Edgewatch, we came up against a fight that's described in the book as being "not meant to take up too many of the PC's resources". It's two monsters with over 300 HP each! It might not have taxed our mechanical resources, but our interest was drained away faster than anything! You have to do X-thing , it's important and... oh yeah... spend five minutes in-world and about 45 minutes out of it rolling attacks against massive HP sinks. It just wasn't fun and I feel like that happens a lot.
Compare and contrast PF1. My barbarian recently failed 5 fort saves in a row that she had a 55% chance of passing, this while suffering a curse that prevented her raging. Terrible for the character but great because it gave her a lot of RP - she was extra grouchy and did some downright stupid things because she was running short on sleep, fatigued and so on. When she was healed and confirmed a massive crit on the big bad that felt awesome - she'd got better, the dice gave me some good luck and it was easy to write about her running into battle laughing massively because she just felt so alive! I could really empathise with that. By contrast, I never get that feeling about PF2 combat. A crit is 'ahh, cool, it died.' I killed a T-Rex with three crits in a single round and my response was just 'Oh. *shrug*'. It just didn't feel epic, and I can only think of one fight in PF2 which did genuinely feel that way - and that was because I rolled two natural 20's in successive rounds and won a fight by myself. Even then it was only awesome because my cleric managed to sear a devil to death with holy fire - it was fitting for the character, but I knew it only happened because I happened to get a hot streak on the dice, not because of anything I'd done.
In the end PF2 combat for me feels like I could just sit down with the GM, roll 2d20 each and the highest total wins the combat. Since you can't do much to unbalance the numbers why bother? Every fight against a level appropriate enemy I'll have a ~40% (making this number up btw) chance of hitting, so why bother upgrading my axe, or investing in feats related to it, or naming it? Cause mechanically I might as well trade it in for the next longsword that comes up, and then for the scythe that comes up after that with a better rune. Because everything works, nothing feels special.
That's the crux of my problem with PF2. In PF1 I feel like my choices matter. If I pick a greataxe and invest in weapon focus then I'm tying myself into being "the big guy with the axe". I'm ok with that, I made the choice and that means I get to live it, adopt it as my own and have fun with it. Half orc + gladiator alternate trait + scarred trait + spiked chain tells me a story about a former slave in Nidal who fought his way to freedom with the chains that they bound him with. Then I go looking for some Desna elements, maybe a trait or Deific Obedience and then I feel like I have a real person rather than a stat block. Conversely in PF2 because there are so many different feats to choose from there's no way that they can all 'matter' to the character so they matter less to me. My level 13 barbarian has 19 feats from at least three categories. There are precisely two of those that actually helped me define who the character was. You could take the other 17 away and I'm not sure a thing about him would change. That just feels crap to me.
TL;DR. I can't tell stories with PF2 the way I can with PF1. Life isn't always perfectly balanced mathematically, something PF1 reflects and PF2 doesnt, and the number of choice you make in PF2 devalues them for me. Especially when you have to spend so long slugging through a selection of terrible options (like skill feats). DnD 3.5 was a nightmare at a feat every three levels - no wonder you had to dip 15 classes to get everything you needed in bonus feats. PF1 made that better, feats every other level got me what I needed soon enough, without ever making me feel like my choices weren't important. If I wanted to TWF then I knew that it would take me a while and I'd have to accept being less than optimal until I got there - ok, my choice. (And once I was there too - but who cares? Dual-wielding katana's is cool!) I never felt like I had to play a human just because of the extra feat, but my feat choices still felt like they mattered. In PF2 I do genuinely think I could play a character and never use either my skill or general slots, and not suffer a bit. Possibly not my ancestry feats either...
Different horses for different courses - I don't really care for combat and PF1's '5ft step and full attack' is easy and quick. I can kill my enemies, take their stuff and get on with the character building and relationships that makes the game fun. That's my jam. Those people who like nuanced tactical combat are going to like PF2 more - good for them. At least we both have something we can like!
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- except for the Extreme-threat encounters, for player choices aka tactics, character coordination, individual decisions to be the determining factor in the outcome of any combat encounter; for that to be 80-90+% weighted as to why the fight result was what it was, with the other 10-20% being the random element, an aspect whose primary role is dictating the flow of the melee (you miss there, it crit fails a save here, the ranger gets rocked but the fighter had two great rounds, ...) and only a minor influence on the situation at the end
- for Extreme-threat level fights to be the be all end all
requiring every choice made to be top tier, the best or you’re inviting failure. To be ready to disengage if that random element becomes problematic or the group has a realization (uh guys, it’s fire and cold resistant - half my spells do that ... let’s bail)
This is a really good description of the feelings I waffled around in my above post. I want to feel as though I had more to do with us winning the fight than the dice did. PF2's maths means there won't be many "filler fights" that the PC's nuke in a round and move on from, but equally there won't be many/any fights where they can pat themselves on the back and say "we did really well there". It just comes down to 'did the dice present the mathematically expected distribution and who benefited most from standard deviation?'
with the other 10-20% being the random element
^^^^^^^ THIS!
In PF1 you can get that down to around 5% - which I absolutely agree isn't ideal, but I prefer it a lot more than the dice roller accounting for 50-70% of the variance in every fight. I want to be the deciding factor in a fight, rather than the dice - otherwise I'm not a hero, I'm just a guy who got lucky. And I play to be a hero, damn it!
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It's very interesting to me to read a lot of these responses genuinely dislike the random chance aspect of tabletop gaming. I have no experience playing 1e, but when I heard that you could optimize the die roll away I figured this was exaggeration. After all, 1e has this reputation of being incredibly complex in terms of its mechanics such that you need to have guides to filter out what actually works for your concept versus what sounds like it works.
But then, if you can do remove random chance why roll dice to begin with? What about the mechanical framework of 1e do you actually use if you can ignore the only operator, and what about 1e is there to use that you couldn't with more abstract systems or just collaborative storytelling with no rules outside of some table limits? Is it just the higher amount of variance in 2e? Genuinely curious here, as someone who plays these games specifically because the random chance provides more unique outcomes than if I had written them myself.
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It's very interesting reading all of the responses to this thread. Lots of useful and informative opinions.
thanks for adding your thoughtful post
... not because of anything I'd done.
This is exactly how I too often feel.
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It's very interesting to me to read a lot of these responses genuinely dislike the random chance aspect of tabletop gaming. ...
Is it just the higher amount of variance in 2e? ...
I am inferring you are using the term variance in the probability theory and statistics definition.
If so, yes, that is exactly the issue as I see it.The variance is high, far far too high, in PF2e.
In PF1e, it was also quite high except you, the player, had a myriad of ways in PF1e to reduce the variance to a reasonable level to where your choices were the overriding factor, not the inherent variance of the system, as to what the final result of the combat would be.
There are much much fewer variance mitigating options in PF2e.
This leads to what you see being discussed here:
which had the greater influence in what happened?
- the dice aka variance
- the choices made aka player agency
as can be readily inferred from my posts, in almost all fights, I want player agency to be weighted at a 80-90+% range - and for that to obviously display to the players
the exception being the top most fights the game recommends (the ones with an encounter budget of 40 XP per character), in which the random element; i.e., the variance; will have a larger roll, perhaps as high as 30-40% - an amount where it will be clear to the players they needed some dice help, but more than that they needed to ‘play well’; that is, it was still mostly player agency which carried the day
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- for Extreme-threat level fights to be the be all end all
requiring every choice made to be top tier, the best or you’re inviting failure
to be ready to disengage if that random element becomes problematic or the group has a realization (uh guys, it’s fire and cold resistant - half my spells do that ... let’s bail)yeah, that’s a lot
and what my DnD and all its scions RPGing experience had been ...
until the last year
With respect, that's exactly what you got in that fight. We've provided exact examples of things that could have been done to affect the fight massively in your favour (and yes, part of it was in your party composition having a low variety in what you could affect).
Meanwhile, your cleric decided to have a 15 ft move speed when the vast majority of people move at 25 ft, making it very difficult to escape even if you wanted to.That's a far cry from PF1's "oops I have pure numbers that no level of tactics can affect". Most notably to me, recently, in a recent campaign where the martial character had AC and saves that the GM severely struggled to do anything about. They also had strong levels of melee damage (and decent ranged), meaning that any fight that was in melee was to their advantage, to the point where the rest of the party could literally walk away from a large number of level-appropriate encounters as that character soloed it.
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In the end PF2 combat for me feels like I could just sit down with the GM, roll 2d20 each and the highest total wins the combat. Since you can't do much to unbalance the numbers why bother? Every fight against a level appropriate enemy I'll have a ~40% (making this number up btw) chance of hitting, so why bother upgrading my axe, or investing in feats related to it, or naming it?
My swashbuckler at level 7 can personally affect my allied martial character's attack by +5 through flanking and Aid. That generally equates to ~70% increase in effectiveness on that attack. He can boost the effective DC of Will save spells by 2. Even if his finisher rolls go badly (which they always do, he's literally crit once on a finisher in 6 levels), he has planned for that, and also has quite a few options for if he can't get panache.
You not being able to change the game's numbers is completely on you, since there are tons of ways to do so.
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As someone who GM’d 1e (and now 2e) if you go 80-90% then ...
I feel I failed to communicate.
As my use of the phrase “player agency to be weighted at a 80-90+% range” seems incongruous with the use of “if you go 80/90%” in the above.I’ll try an analogy yet using analogies has, so far, proved to not be much better.
Backgammon is such a game of skill, not a game of chance, that there are many backgammon programs that play above the level of the top human players in the world.
And do so to a degree of winning over 90% of 19+ point matches vs even the best human players.
Yes, backgammon is a game that each player rolls dice every turn (sound familiar?).
Yet the better player (the one that makes the better choices) wins the majority of the matches.
Greater the skill difference, greater the odds the better player wins.
In PF2e, ‘greater skill’ comes in two forms:
- higher level
- better tactics, group coordination, ...
This is what I mean when I say I want “player agency to be weighted at a 80-90+% range”.
Yes, there are dice rolled.
No, there are not so few rolls that the dice decide the outcome.
Player Agency is what decides who wins.
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My swashbuckler at level 7 can personally affect my allied martial character's attack by +5 through flanking and Aid.
Could you provide the details of this character’s use the Aid action?
part of the Aid action (CRB, p470; italicized emphasis added):
Trigger An ally is about to use an action that requires a skill check or attack roll.
Requirements The ally is willing to accept your aid, and you have prepared to help (see below).
You try to help your ally with a task. To use this reaction, you must first prepare to help, usually by using an action during your turn. You must explain to the GM exactly how you’re trying to help, and they determine whether you can Aid your ally.
When you use your Aid reaction, attempt a skill check or attack roll of a type decided by the GM. The typical DC is 20, but the GM might adjust this DC for particularly hard or easy tasks.
Our group has had multiple discussions about the vague phrasing scattered through out the CRB.
Based upon those chats, all of the italicized portions ... smart money is none of them hold.
To be fair PF2 is quite complicated and there are 10+ characters which can bring crazy amount of things to a table.
"Skill" as you call it quite complicated in PF2 and TTRPGs in general.
Outside of a fight skill just has so many factors and adding roleplaying to the mix too.
-Making good characters is of course important.
-Knowing what the enemy does makes most battles a lot easier. Generally players shouldnt use out of game knowledge though.
-Having a group that synergizes.
-Using combat tactics effectively, I real feel PF2 feels better in this department. Main issue is if you dont know what monsters use it is hard to play smart.
Then the game tries to balance 4 seemingly random characters together against an "encounter rating" of random creatures with different abilities.
Overall I really think it is crazy to think every encounter will be balanced great where 4 random character will almost always win every fight when they have bad luck.
Some groups will be better than others and some of that falls on the GMs shoulders. That is why most video games have easy/medium/hard.
I think PF2 does a decent job with this but as everyone can tell everyone experience in PF1/PF2 is so much different. I really feel PF2 does a great job with how many factors are in the game.
I think with a decently synergistic group and good tactics most severe fights should be doable. I think PF2 does quite good with this and feeling challenging.
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My swashbuckler at level 7 can personally affect my allied martial character's attack by +5 through flanking and Aid.Could you provide the details of this character’s use the Aid action?
My guess is that it's a Swashbuckler with One for All (which removes a lot of the uncertainty) and Master in Diplomacy. The Aid gives a +3 on a 30 Diplomacy (doable) and flanking applies a -2 penalty to AC
For what it's worth, I think the encounter your party experienced is unfair, your party of relative newbies cannot be reasonably expected to have optimal tactics (no swashbuckler like Cyouni), and I would change the entire encounter if I ran it as a GM. But I might not know to do that if I were a less-experienced GM.
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My swashbuckler at level 7 can personally affect my allied martial character's attack by +5 through flanking and Aid.Could you provide the details of this character’s use the Aid action?
My guess is that it's a Swashbuckler with One for All (which removes a lot of the uncertainty) and Master in Diplomacy. The Aid gives a +3 on a 30 Diplomacy (doable) and flanking applies a -2 penalty to AC
For what it's worth, I think the encounter your party experienced is unfair, your party of relative newbies cannot be reasonably expected to have optimal tactics (no swashbuckler like Cyouni), and I would change the entire encounter if I ran it as a GM. But I might not know to do that if I were a less-experienced GM.
This is precisely what's going on in that example, but using Aid on attack rolls - especially if you could attack the enemy - is super standard. It's so easy, in fact, that Fighter's Assisting Shot was errataed because it was something everyone could already do.
Honestly, I should remember to use Aid more with other characters since it's quite handy, and things like Cooperative Nature grant gigantic bonuses to it.
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My swashbuckler at level 7 can personally affect my allied martial character's attack by +5 through flanking and Aid. That generally equates to ~70% increase in effectiveness on that attack. He can boost the effective DC of Will save spells by 2. Even if his finisher rolls go badly (which they always do, he's literally crit once on a finisher in 6 levels), he has planned for that, and also has quite a few options for if he can't get panache.
You not being able to change the game's numbers is completely on you, since there are tons of ways to do so.
Yeah, I'm sure it is down to me not being able to optimise. I haven't played much PF2 compared to PF1. The problem is that I don't have the inclination to sit down and learn all the things I'd need to learn in order to achieve what you've managed. I have considerable system mastery in PF1 and none in PF2. The sheer range of possibilities in PF2 puts me off (perhaps oddly since I play PF1 happily :) ) but option paralysis is real and makes me much less inclined to play, in part because I always have the sense that I'm playing 'badly'/'wrong'. That effects my enjoyment (since combat is an unavoidable part of PF) which then effects my roleplaying which then makes the whole game less fun.
I think the changes to PC HP which Temperans mentioned are a good thing, at low levels at least - the extra HD from ancestry is good for making low level combat less insane, and I'd be tempted to do something similar in future games of PF1. I do think it goes a little bit nutty later on though. Monsters, and PC's, have such high hit points because attakcs for 90+ aren't uncommon. My barbarian has over 200 HP at level 13 and a good thing too since he regularly has 150 points of HP swing in a turn, losing ~90 to the enemies attack actions (in a single hit in one notable recent encounter) and then the cleric slams 60-70 back on with heal. Gotta say that feels equally rocket-tag like to me.
@Snowsong For myself at least I'd answer thusly. Life is random, at least to some degree - therefore having dice to be the final arbiters of our success or failure makes sense, and I don't want a game where there is no chance of me failing - then there are no consequences and I might as well just write fanfiction instead. However I like to be able to feel that my skill level can have some positive impact on the dice rolling. If I set out to build a champion swimmer for exmaple, and I expend skill points, feats and stats into being good at swimming then I want to actually be good as swimming. I want to be able to swim circles around a shark and butterfly through a tidal wave because that was my goal. If, after have expended lots of effort (and IC years of training) to be a great swimmer I then find that the barbarian from the desert who's never seen a pool of water deeper than his waist in his life has almost the same odds at succeeding as I do then I say "Well why did I bother?" and if the results of our swimming competition come down to him needing to roll 2 higher than me on a d20 then it doesn't feel very satisfying to me.
In a recent PF1 solo-game I played a mesmerist who was unapologetically nuts. She had more charisma than you could shake a stick at, grabbed every method I could think of to up her enchantment DC's and had almost no HP, absolutely no damage dealing capacity and only cracked 20AC at level 14. If I'd gone to all that effort and then found NPC wizards enchanting almost as well as me I'd have been really upset. She was designed to be really good at one thing, and was correspondingly pants in a lot of others. The game then became, for me, seeing how I could survive/win situations that were blatantly not in my favor. I had to manipulate situations and play to my strengths - which felt very suitable for the mesmerist in question. She ran into an NPC enchanter and dominated her almost immediately - that was satisfying, because I'd put in the effort to be quantitatively better than the NPC at enchanting. Whereas in PF2 I feel as though I can never be really good at something. I can be 'good', such that I probably need the lowest expected range on the dice roll, say 8+, as opposed to being 'not good' and needing 12+ but it still doesn't feel as though my effort returns much in the way of reward...
As I've said, I don't have system mastery in PF2 - that's for sure, so it may be that I could achieve these things if I set my mind to it, I just don't know how and, at the moment at least, don't like the system enough to learn.
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If I set out to build a champion swimmer for exmaple, and I expend skill points, feats and stats into being good at swimming then I want to actually be good as swimming. I want to be able to swim circles around a shark and butterfly through a tidal wave because that was my goal. If, after have expended lots of effort (and IC years of training) to be a great swimmer I then find that the barbarian from the desert who's never seen a pool of water deeper than his waist in his life has almost the same odds at succeeding as I do then I say "Well why did I bother?" and if the results of our swimming competition come down to him needing to roll 2 higher than me on a d20 then it doesn't feel very satisfying to me.
It's funny, because this is literally why skill feats exist.
The barbarian may be able to get close to your odds of success, but you're significantly better at fighting in the water (Underwater Marauder) and faster in the water (Quick Swim).
Similarly, my swashbuckler may have similar odds of success to the rogue in my party, but because I took Steady Balance and Cat Fall where he took Acrobatic Performer, I can dive off the back of our ship mid-combat, or run along beams at high speed because that's what I've trained to do. He, on the other hand, makes more money through fancy acrobatic performances.
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The assurance feat pretty much defines the kind of difference between professionalism and just raw ability that it seems like people are talking about really effectively.
Assurance athletics for example is going to make a very professional climber or swimmer
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This is precisely what's going on in that example, but using Aid on attack rolls - especially if you could attack the enemy - is super standard. It's so easy, in fact, that Fighter's Assisting Shot was errataed because it was something everyone could already do.
Honestly, I should remember to use Aid more with other characters since it's quite handy, and things like Cooperative Nature grant gigantic bonuses to it.
Its kind of surprising how much people forget about aiding in games on both editions. Its a great thing that anyone can do, but only a handful of people remember about it.
I tried to aid on a skill in one of my first PF2 games, so at first level. I critically failed because that DC 20 is harsh at low level unless you build for it, thus making my friend fail where they would have succeeded.
I decided to never aid again until I play high level.
I discovered cooperative nature when reading about the Swashbuckler's build based on aiding in Superbidi's guide. I will try this build.
In all other circumstances, I do not try to aid.
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Its kind of surprising how much people forget about aiding in games on both editions. Its a great thing that anyone can do, but only a handful of people remember about it.This is precisely what's going on in that example, but using Aid on attack rolls - especially if you could attack the enemy - is super standard. It's so easy, in fact, that Fighter's Assisting Shot was errataed because it was something everyone could already do.
Honestly, I should remember to use Aid more with other characters since it's quite handy, and things like Cooperative Nature grant gigantic bonuses to it.
I might be wrong and perhaps it is only our group that misinterpreted the rule, but I expect a lot of table variance on Aid simply based on how the rule is worded ("typical"). For example at our table you will need to beat the original DC or 20, whichever is higher, in order to Aid successfully. While this still makes it a lot more worthwhile than e.g. a -10 penalty 3rd attack it is not as easy as rolling versus a fixed value of 20, especially versus higher level challenges. We had a lot of discussion when the rule was used for the first time, finally deciding to use the above approach but may revert to the more generous interpretation based on forum feedback.
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As a GM I find the idea that the usual DC to aid another is the equivalent to an Expert task pretty bad for the game. If you have ever tried to climb a tall fence, and you have ever received help doing it, you realize pretty quickly that a little bit of help goes a long way.
The difficulty of aiding another is actually one of my biggest gripes with PF2 as you need to set DCs that are not impossible at level 1 or else no players get in the habit of doing it. Picking that arbitrary DC and setting it so high for no logical reason was a massive mistake erring on the side of not wanting to make +1 circumstance bonuses too easy to get.
Instead, I almost always just use the simple DC chart and I err towards the side of letting PCs help each other. If the task itself is incredibly complex, then I go with an Expert or even master DC, and if it is against another creature or leveled game element, I will typically pick a DC by level with a bonus or penalty based on feasibility.
The math of PF2 is tight, but if I, as a GM, ever let it break, I let it break towards players working together to solve difficult problems.
I only have experience with PF1 through the Kingmaker Game by Owlcat which is fantastic despite the TTRPG system imo. Not just were there too many things that were far too punishing, *cough* poison lowering ability scores *cough*, but also far too many ways to build characters wrong.
Stupid hold person spells setting your dex to 1 and then dying to poison because it puts your dex to 0.
But idk if that's a thing in the TTRPG just the same.
PF2e it's imo easier to not misbuild characters and you don't need to have a plan from lvl 1 on because your options are more limited.
I'm GMing for a group of 2e beginners but not to Pen and Paper and the hardest thing for them is picking spells.
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I might be wrong and perhaps it is only our group that misinterpreted the rule, but I expect a lot of table variance on Aid simply based on how the rule is worded ("typical"). For example at our table you will need to beat the original DC or 20, whichever is higher, in order to Aid successfully. While this still makes it a lot more worthwhile than e.g. a -10 penalty 3rd attack it is not as easy as rolling versus a fixed value of 20, especially versus higher level challenges. We had a lot of discussion when the rule was used for the first time, finally deciding to use the above approach but may revert to the more generous interpretation based on forum feedback.Its kind of surprising how much people forget about aiding in games on both editions. Its a great thing that anyone can do, but only a handful of people remember about it.This is precisely what's going on in that example, but using Aid on attack rolls - especially if you could attack the enemy - is super standard. It's so easy, in fact, that Fighter's Assisting Shot was errataed because it was something everyone could already do.
Honestly, I should remember to use Aid more with other characters since it's quite handy, and things like Cooperative Nature grant gigantic bonuses to it.
I'm nearly certain you should be using DC 20, adjusted using the modifiers on page 503 for things that would modify the situation. DC 20 or original, whichever is worse, is basically completely unusable - in the vast majority of cases, the person Aiding would be better off just doing it themselves.
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The fact that only the crit success for Aid scales should be your hint that you are expected to crit succeed most of the time at higher levels; the DC is always 20 unless it's getting modified +2/-2 by a situation that makes it difficult to assist.
Also note how the One For All swashbuckler feat has to note an entirely separate DC for getting panache from it; this is because if you used the Aid DC mid/high level wit-bucklers would get panache every time they rolled.
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I'm nearly certain you should be using DC 20, adjusted using the modifiers on page 503 for things that would modify the situation. DC 20 or original, whichever is worse, is basically completely unusable - in the vast majority of cases, the person Aiding would be better off just doing it themselves.I might be wrong and perhaps it is only our group that misinterpreted the rule, but I expect a lot of table variance on Aid simply based on how the rule is worded ("typical"). For example at our table you will need to beat the original DC or 20, whichever is higher, in order to Aid successfully. While this still makes it a lot more worthwhile than e.g. a -10 penalty 3rd attack it is not as easy as rolling versus a fixed value of 20, especially versus higher level challenges. We had a lot of discussion when the rule was used for the first time, finally deciding to use the above approach but may revert to the more generous interpretation based on forum feedback.Its kind of surprising how much people forget about aiding in games on both editions. Its a great thing that anyone can do, but only a handful of people remember about it.This is precisely what's going on in that example, but using Aid on attack rolls - especially if you could attack the enemy - is super standard. It's so easy, in fact, that Fighter's Assisting Shot was errataed because it was something everyone could already do.
Honestly, I should remember to use Aid more with other characters since it's quite handy, and things like Cooperative Nature grant gigantic bonuses to it.
I agree, although Age of Ashes and maybe another AP or module does set the DC at the same point, which is bizarre.
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I did some stats on the Trained vs Legendary, supposing that every other factor (level, ability scores) were the same, and using the 4 degrees of success.
The probability of the Trained having a degree of success strictly better than the Legendary maxes out at 17% when the DC is basically average for both. If the DC gets to very low or very high values, this probability falls as low as 3.5%.
And that is in a single event of comparison, so not really reflecting the structure of Olympic games where there are several events before the finale, and where there have already been selection events before that to separate the Trained from the Legendary ;-)
After all, even a week-end athlete can hope to beat Usain Bolt once if the latter sprains his ankle at the start of the race while the former runs as they never did before.
Also, aid isn't a flat check... it being difficult at level 1 is fine, my players use aid actions all the time. By the time you have a +15-20 you crit often enough to feel it matter.
Follow the expert takes the place of low level aid actions in most cases imo, like the climbing example. But there is a reason that the difficultly adjustments exist. I. The case of a playyer helping another player climb it is reasonable to assume they would be climbing from a higher position to start with.
And I believe AP design past AoA tends to represent this quite well for encounters where combat is meant to be the resolution toolI would further revise this by saying that Paizo has been in a continuous learning process when it comes to stacking encounters back-to-back for low-level parties, which was discussed extensively in a recent discussion thread. I ran the first chapter of volume 1 of Extinction curse, and that Adventure expects a level one party to go through 1000 XP of encounters in a single adventuring day. Way too much. And it tops the day off with a Severe boss battle.
My group of 3 casters (oracle, bard, druid) with the free archetype rule (circus theme restricted) managed it in one sitting and had spells to spare with no adjusments.
It helped that the severe boss is a ranged caster with less than optimal strategies though.
Actually, they didn't do the mephits, but they did everything else.
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I'll share a very recent PF1 experience.
Our group of 3 (witch, swashbuckler and bloodrager) is struggling against a dragon, to the point that we had to hastly teleport away twice: the first time we were surprised and unprepared, but on the second attempt we had several appropriate buffs on, and they still didn't help. The dragon was hitting on a 6, while the bloodrager (with heroism and haste on, but also shaken) needed a 17. I know that dragon is APL+3.
So, we have very low chances to inflict damage, while the enemy is easily mauling us (a single round was enough to leave the swashbuckler with low enough HP that another hit would have had a serious chance of killing him outright; during the first encounter the witch went down from 90% to zero with a breath only). Spells are failing all the time due to very high SR paired with high saves. A summoned Shadow Demon didn't help much, because while it was mostly impervious to the dragon's attacks, it also couldn't beat neither the SR with its spells, nor the DR with its attacks. Hexes work, but the dragon saved against Retribution, and we really didn't have the time to start stacking Evil Eye since the martials were taking such a beating - and by the way, staying within 30ft of the beast may not be a good idea - it has got See Invisibility too. Dispelling its buffs is not going to work easily due to the CL difference. Also, it has much better mobility than the group.
The feeling is that if the GM decides to play it smart (since it has basically toyed with us so far), we have absolutely no chance.
How does this compare with what people have said about some PF2 encounters?
It looks more or less the same, if not worse, except that in PF1 we could have followed some guides to build our characters, instead of making them like we wanted them to be. Not that they are bad, every choice is sound and useful, we just didn't stack everything to excel at a single type of check or ability, just to spam it in every fight. That's not the kind of fun we are looking for.
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How does this compare with what people have said about some PF2 encounters?
It looks more or less the same, if not worse, except that in PF1 we could have followed some guides to build our characters, instead of making them like we wanted them to be. Not that they are bad, every choice is sound and useful, we just didn't stack everything to excel at a single type of check or ability, just to spam it in every fight. That's not the kind of fun we are looking for.
I think this is a good observation.
You are aware, in your PF1 game you've made sub-optimal choices and thus the fights are more challenging.
You say it's not the kind of thing you're looking for. For me that is exactly what I'm looking for, but it's not really an option in PF2.
Stupid hold person spells setting your dex to 1 and then dying to poison because it puts your dex to 0.
But idk if that's a thing in the TTRPG just the same.
It's not. In PF1, being helpless (such as by being paralyzed) means you're treated as if your Dex is 0, but it does not actually change your Dex. Poisons and the like would still operate off your actual Dexterity. In addition, having Dex damage equal to your Dexterity score* doesn't kill you, it just makes you unconscious.
* Ability damage or penalties in PF1 actually do not decrease your ability score, though many players use this as a holdover from 3.5e. Instead, every 2 points of ability damage applies a -1 penalty to a number of things based on that ability. For example, let's say you're wearing full plate, which allows no more than a +1 AC bonus from Dexterity. Your Dexterity is 16, which gives you +3, but you only get to apply +1 to your AC. If you then take 2 points of Dexterity damage, you would still reduce your AC by 1, because AC is one of the things reduced by Dexterity damage. Similarly, if you take 6 points of Strength damage, all your melee attacks would take a -3 penalty to damage, but you wouldn't have to worry about whether it's a main-hand, off-hand, or two-hand attack — it's just -3.
that's good to hear and to be fair to owlcat, they added ways to make the game easier, which included options for long rests fully clearing poison, with a patch.
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How does this compare with what people have said about some PF2 encounters?
It looks more or less the same, if not worse, except that in PF1 we could have followed some guides to build our characters, instead of making them like we wanted them to be. Not that they are bad, every choice is sound and useful, we just didn't stack everything to excel at a single type of check or ability, just to spam it in every fight. That's not the kind of fun we are looking for.I think this is a good observation.
You are aware, in your PF1 game you've made sub-optimal choices and thus the fights are more challenging.
You say it's not the kind of thing you're looking for. For me that is exactly what I'm looking for, but it's not really an option in PF2.
Uh, I think that saying they made "sub-optimal" choices is an assumption you're making. They did not state they were not optimal, only that they hadn't hyperspecialized for this encounter.
In PF1 there are plenty of optimal choices this party could have made, they just aren't the right ones to beat this encounter. You can be optimized and still not be able to beat the SR of the dragon if you didn't stack Elf and Spell Penetration feats.
That's the problem with PF1, optimizing for one set of things still leaves you pretty exposed at any of the things you didn't optimize against and unless your entire party optimized against all the different things you could face, you can still be fully optimized for your respective paths/ideas and not be optimized in the right places to beat an encounter.
Not to say you can't make terrible characters in PF1, it's not even difficult to do, but Megistone did not state anything that makes me believe that their party "sub-optimal" that I can see, only that they didn't optimize to beat that particular encounter.
And keep in mind this would have to be done during build time, not at the table. One could actually make the same argument for people that find PF2 to difficult in that you "aren't playing optimal at the table", but at least you can actually make adjustments at the table (rewriting a whole character build path isn't even possible in PF1).
How does this compare with what people have said about some PF2 encounters?
It looks more or less the same, if not worse, except that in PF1 we could have followed some guides to build our characters, instead of making them like we wanted them to be. Not that they are bad, every choice is sound and useful, we just didn't stack everything to excel at a single type of check or ability, just to spam it in every fight. That's not the kind of fun we are looking for.I think this is a good observation.
You are aware, in your PF1 game you've made sub-optimal choices and thus the fights are more challenging.
You say it's not the kind of thing you're looking for. For me that is exactly what I'm looking for, but it's not really an option in PF2.
Uh, I think that saying they made "sub-optimal" choices is an assumption you're making. They did not state they were not optimal, only that they hadn't hyperspecialized for this encounter.
In PF1 there are plenty of optimal choices this party could have made, they just aren't the right ones to beat this encounter. You can be optimized and still not be able to beat the SR of the dragon if you didn't stack Elf and Spell Penetration feats.
That's the problem with PF1, optimizing for one set of things still leaves you pretty exposed at any of the things you didn't optimize against and unless your entire party optimized against all the different things you could face, you can still be fully optimized for your respective paths/ideas and not be optimized in the right places to beat an encounter.
Not to say you can't make terrible characters in PF1, it's not even difficult to do, but Megistone did not state anything that makes me believe that their party "sub-optimal" that I can see, only that they didn't optimize to beat that particular encounter.
And keep in mind this would have to be done during build time, not at the table. One could actually make the same argument for people...
This is a really strong point. At higher levels, PF1 is brutal if you miscalculate your enemy. Its not called rocket tag because you always win. GMs often chose not to use the tactic that would let an enemy spell caster auto win if they won initiative, but a smart enemy caster should have contingency spells in place and be doing all of the broken magical stuff that PCs are capable of doing if you want to have the "we beat the boss on hard mode" feel that people are saying is too difficult in PF2.
I wonder how many people saying you can't specialize in PF2 are comparing how much specialization low level characters are capable of in both systems and not higher level characters. PF2 definitely cut back on your ability to hyper specialize by stacking bonuses from different feats, traits and abilities at lower levels to create a more even balance for expected number variance.
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We are probably sub-optimal in some way: as the witch player, for example, I avoided making what is usually considered the most powerful choice - Slumber Hex + everything I can add to make sure it lands.
The fact is, first of all I didn't want to build 'the best' character, but have my own instead. Second, having such an option and spamming it to win every fight, or even most of them, is not what I'm looking for in a GdR: you could have a ragelancepounce barbarian, a grappler monk, or indeed a slumber witch, repeat the same routine everytime and have success, but I find no fun in that. Third, hyperspecializing in something means that the character utterly sucks when using their preferred tactic is not possible. Dragons are immune to sleep, for example.
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We are probably sub-optimal in some way: as the witch player, for example, I avoided making what is usually considered the most powerful choice - Slumber Hex + everything I can add to make sure it lands.
I mean if the definition of sub-optimal is "not using this one specific build path", then that's a pretty ridiculous definition and demonstrates the flaws of PF1 heavily.
The definition of sub-optimal to me would be picking Skill-based General Feats, not "I decided not to take the specific Class option that's the strongest due to SoS being busted in PF1".
The fact is, first of all I didn't want to build 'the best' character, but have my own instead. Second, having such an option and spamming it to win every fight, or even most of them, is not what I'm looking for in a GdR: you could have a ragelancepounce barbarian, a grappler monk, or indeed a slumber witch, repeat the same routine everytime and have success, but I find no fun in that. Third, hyperspecializing in something means that the character utterly sucks when using their preferred tactic is not possible. Dragons are immune to sleep, for example.
This demonstrates how even the "optimal" described choice would actually suck against the opponent almost as much (if not more so) than your current Witch.