My experience from level 12 to 16 in Age of Ashes has led me to the conclusion the fights with monsters from the Bestiary or humanoids are easy to moderate challenges. Every single creature that is homebrew punch WAY above their level. These creatures have at will abilities equal to nearly top level spells you can cast or better then any combination of class feats including capstones. If this trend is throughout the books and present in other APs then I think most GMs should compare the encounters with creatures in the Bestiary and see how things line up.
After my last brutal fight that I thought was going to be an easy TPK, I started thinking back and even with an all caster party at times, the only difficult fights were with custom creatures. Some regular monsters were tough, but I only ever thought we were going to TPK against these custom creatures. Has anyone else had similar experience?
Age of Ashea monsters does have some overtuning, but that feels pretty specific to thar being written while the core rules were also being rewritten, to say nothing of the monster building rules.
I haven't really noticed this problem with later books but I haven't read as much of them.
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If joining two encounters doesn't make the resulting fight very dangerous, it means that the two combats taken one at a time are rather easy. Many people will then complain that there's no challenge, that the encounters are meaningless and boring and should rather be cut to go straight to the 'interesting' ones.
It's hard to find the right balance, because everyone likes a different thing.WOOSH is the sound of the point flying over your head if that's your takeaway.
Fights in 3E and indeed almost every fantasy games aren't always on a razor's edge. PF2 is very much oriented towards only fights with real danger.
Joining two encounters were a trivial thing before, but aren't in Pathfinder 2.
When a GM or DM might intuitively feel "sure adding a couple of retreating mobs will turn a moderate encounter into an exciting tense game" the reality of PF2 encounter math is that it will likely turn that moderate encounter into a bloodbath.
Also, obviously it's possible to find encounters (maybe final boss battles) in that other game where more reinforcements isn't a good idea, but my point is that those cases are obvious. In PF2 *almost every* smushing of encounters significantly increase the risk of a player (character) death.
I'm not saying things can happen in PF2 that cannot happen elsewhere. I'm saying the risks of a clueless GM inadvertently TPKing his players is sharply increased.
This becomes trivial if I explain with numbers:
While adding a moderate encounter to another moderate encounter is inituitively expected to become a "slightly harder than moderate, right?" it in actual reality becomes an Extreme encounter (80+80=160 XP) in Pathfinder 2.
This is a real problem, and Megistone's response is actually quite instructive in showcasing how this phenomenon is downplayed or outright dismissed.
My comment wasn't specifically related to PF2 or PF1 or any other particular system. In whatever system you put two actually challenging enemies one near another, the risk of them stomping the heroes if they join forces is there.
Yes, it looks like in PF2 official adventures most encounters are challenging enough that they carry the risk we mentioned. And still I have read about GMs who prefer to cut away some 'uninteresting' fights that are just speedbumps. If they were easier, this fact would be amplified.
If in other systems you could actually combine encounters together, it means that those individual fights were rather easy - like 40XP trivial encounters, so that joining two would make an 80XP moderate challenge. As I said, it's all about adventure design, and not the game system, unless (I can speak about PF1 and a little D&D5) the designed fights were functionally easier only because the PCs are overpowered in comparison.
The problem with chaining encounters one after another, with only a few rounds in between, is that PF2 assumes you enter each encounter with full HP. A Moderate encounter could still be too much if your front-liner have too few HP.
If this doesn't happen too often, for such situations you have healing spells and consumables to quickly recharge your HPs. If you don't, it's time to retreat and try to buy enough time to recover.
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I guess that I'm in the minority here, but my players love PF2E precisely because of the difficulty (we all came over from 5E). They want tactics to matter, for combats to be dangerous, and to be thoughtful about resources (including Hero Points). Same goes for social encounters. They want creative PC solutions to hard situations and for the story beats to be dramatic. We're at the end of Book 4 of Age of Ashes (plus have done Plaguestone and 4-5 PFS scenarios) and I've generally been moving to fewer, deadlier combats based on their feedback.
I'm about to introduce some new players via the Beginner's Box, so will soon have an opinion about both the Menace Under Otari adventure and how a different set of players respond to the system. But I'm generally finding the complaints about danger in PF2E to be hard to comprehend, especially coming from 5E where character death felt extremely remote.
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That said, I think the concept of chaining encounters is separate from AP difficulty (which seem not only to not chain encounters, but to rest between them). And the newer APs, I've heard, have done solid job addressing this with sidebars to help GMs decide when or when not to do this.
I don't know if Agents of Edgewatch has such sidebars - I'm only playing it, not GMing. But on multiple maps, we've had encounters pretty much parked around every corner from each other. And also, which I find really offensive for the "police, trying to be civilized" AP, if you try to negotiate it just gets taken as an excuse for enemies to clump up into bigger mobs of multiple encounters.
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I'm about to introduce some new players via the Beginner's Box, so will soon have an opinion about both the Menace Under Otari adventure and how a different set of players respond to the system. But I'm generally finding the complaints about danger in PF2E to be hard to comprehend, especially coming from 5E where character death felt extremely remote.
I guess it really depends on the kind of players you play with in the end. People are people, and they're all different. Most of the friends I've played with actually prefer character death to be something remote that almost never happens, especially in a game that sells itself as an "epic hero adventure" like Pathfinder.
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I guess it really depends on the kind of players you play with in the end. People are people, and they're all different. Most of the friends I've played with actually prefer character death to be something remote that almost never happens, especially in a game that sells itself as an "epic hero adventure" like Pathfinder.
Yeah, not so much with my friends. We just want PC death to be cinematic and to matter to the story. And to be clear: the danger in encounters doesn't take away from the "epic hero"-ness of the game for us... the current characters at 14th level feel like superheroes that can do truly amazing things. It's just that there are opponents who are just as impressive.
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Well, to be fair, things only need to turn into a bloodbath once to potentially ruin a campaign. Which is why I think conditional stuff like "most monsters are dumb" or "not all monsters fight to death" are not good solutions/excuses for the baseline difficulty being unfriendly.
It isn't always likely to turn into a bloodbathThis.
Or rather, my main beef is: why are Paizo completely silent on the issues brought up by this thread?
You mean besides the part where making an official statement about it without extremely careful wording and hedging would be like stepping directly into a bear trap that would be quoted in forum arguments until the end of time?
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Well, to be fair, things only need to turn into a bloodbath once to potentially ruin a campaign. Which is why I think conditional stuff like "most monsters are dumb" or "not all monsters fight to death" are not good solutions/excuses for the baseline difficulty being unfriendly.
It isn't always likely to turn into a bloodbathThis.
Or rather, my main beef is: why are Paizo completely silent on the issues brought up by this thread?
Have you looked at abomination vaults? I think they are speaking with actions, by showing that they are listening to these conversations and integrating some feed back into actual APs.
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Unless you play it safe, and by safe I mean inflexible (simply never combining encounters) you need to learn rather advanced GMing techniques where you aim for the illusion of a combined encounter but without the heroes actually having to feel the full weight of that combined encounter at any one time. (Have some monsters appear one or two rounds late, or invent a reason why some monsters start out using suboptimal tactics, and so on)
I am an experienced GM who has embraced those advanced GMing techniques. However, my uncannily wise GMing instincts guided me away from the PF2 adventure paths. Instead I converted the PF1 Ironfang Invasion adventure path (Released March 2017–July 2017) to PF2. Thus, I avoided the troubles.
Okay, I am joking about uncanny instincts. Really, I began my PF2 campaign in October 2019 when Age of Ashes was the only PF2 adventure path available. The description of its plot and setting did not appeal to my players, so I selected an older adventure path that sounded interesting to them.
But about those advanced GMing techniques--those techniques are actually player techniques. My players know how to control the battlefield and slow down the arrival of their opponents.
This needs examples to explain. Fortunately, I have been chronicling the game sessions in detail for the last month for the Inventor playtest: Arkus, playtest inventor.
For those who don't want to spoil the Fangs of War module in the Ironfang Invasion AP, the party faced about 240 xp of enemies split into 10 separate encounters: 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th-level opponents facing an 8th-level 8-member party (I increased the level of several opponents). The enemies would all respond to the guards sounding an alert. The party took out about 80 xp of enemies in secret before the alert sounded. The remaining 160 xp of enemies are streaming toward them (some enemies were 170 feet away), but a stream is less damaging than all at once. The party took down 30 xp of the stream with only minor injuries, so they should defeat the remaining 130 xp of enemies. And a sorcerer in the party just cast Spike Stones as a barrier to slow down the stream.
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Don't understand a thing about 2E, but death issues are not a linear function. This is super important to get in modeling the scenarios. Delaying a second combat by a round undoubtedly has a significant effect on the AVERAGE difficulty of the encounter. Which is important to recognize, but the issue with this phenomena is that it dramatically increases the risk of super hard encounters. Think about it this way. In the 1 round delay scenario half the time your dice will have rolled above average in the first round meaning the combined combat following that is going to be less deadly in those cases then you would expect by trying to calculate it as a linear behavior (aka just adding XP). Those encounters will rarely result in the problems described. In the other half of the combats though you rolled poorly in round 1, and are now dealing with the much harder combined combat without the benefit of having done as much damage as you should have in the first round (or you took more...) In any event you only need to TPK once in a campaign and it is going to happen at a much higher frequency in these situations.
Another mathematical factor in back-to-back encounters, or in my case a double-sized encounter with an 8-member party, is variance. With extra combat, the chance of bad luck on one particular PC increases. (Statistically, it goes up by the square root of size, but the dice rolls are too few to be statistically smooth, so luck overrules statistical trends.) Once again, this ended up in the hands of my players rather than in my hands. They use teamwork to protect each other.
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It isn't always likely to turn into a bloodbathWell, to be fair, things only need to turn into a bloodbath once to potentially ruin a campaign. Which is why I think conditional stuff like "most monsters are dumb" or "not all monsters fight to death" are not good solutions/excuses for the baseline difficulty being unfriendly.This.
Or rather, my main beef is: why are Paizo completely silent on the issues brought up by this thread?
I don't have it all figured out, and I have read these forums, asked my players, and analyzed the mathematics. What I have figured out is that Pathfinder 2nd Edition is a new paradigm, different in combat style than D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder 1st Edition. The Paizo writers are probably still figuring out how to handle the new paradigm themselves.
Players switching from Pathfinder 1st Edition to Pathfinder 2nd Edition have to rethink their builds. Monsters of the same level as PCs are more min-maxed than the PCs and deal more damage than them. The PF2 designers wanted to avoid the powergamed builds and the amateur builds. Yet a side effect of making all builds closer to typical for their class despite specialization is that every build is also a generalist. And a generalist can switch tactics to bring out the "min" in that min-maxed monster rather than the "max." It is a new way of winning, except to my players, who always loved winning by roleplaying.
Also, challenges in PF1 modules are often built on an attrition plan. The module deliberately throws a lot of easy encounters in the path of a party on their way to defeat the boss. Those easy encounters have no risk of death, but they consume the party's resources, such as hit points and spell slots and consumables. The notorious Wand of Cure Light Wounds as a way to regain full hit points after any encounter broke than plan, so they were a problem. Pathfinder 2nd Edition drops the attrition plan. The party can recover focus spells and hit points with a 10-minute rest for Refocus and Treat Wounds. This means that a PF2 module has fewer plot-based reasons to add easy encounters. The module writers went overboard on the harder encounters in Age of Ashes and The Extinction Curse.
In my games easy encounters provide opportunities for verisimilitude, mystery, and humor. I don't need them to be key to the plot.
I remember a thread where JJ (I think) actually stepped in to say something on the matter.
Besides, I'll make a slight derail to ask Mathmuse if he has found some kind of formula to use for 'wave' encounters. Like: a party is expected to defeat an average of 40XP worth of enemies per round of combat, so you can actually chain a certain number of such waves coming in every round without overwhelming the PCs.
I know it heavily depends on the specifics, but I would really appreciate finding some guidelines about this because I like to design gauntlet-like fights and I tend to go too easy with them because I'm scared of making them unwinnable.
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I'm sorry, but your numbers are off.
If you join two encounters and put them on the players all at once, yes, you are right. But if you allow one enemy to run away and come back with reinforcement, it is not an Extreme encounter.No... and...?
In another case, the GM decides a group of monsters hear the heroes do their thing, and they get cold feet and decide to fall back to their friends. Now you've combined encounters B and C in both their entirety.
In general, when a bunch of guards hear combat in a room nearby, the natural reaction is to come and investigate. Also, if the guards have cold feet and get back to another room, you're just moving the monsters in the dungeon. Your players may realize that the guards have left their room (hot meals on the table) and understand that the whole dungeon is now on red alert and as such they should retreat.
Now, if your players are in DMT mode (door, monster, treasure) and you are playing the dungeon reactively, you'll crush them. In PF2, PF1, D&D5 and every edition of the game. But that is a difference in expectations, not an issue with the rules.
I remember a thread where JJ (I think) actually stepped in to say something on the matter.
Besides, I'll make a slight derail to ask Mathmuse if he has found some kind of formula to use for 'wave' encounters. Like: a party is expected to defeat an average of 40XP worth of enemies per round of combat, so you can actually chain a certain number of such waves coming in every round without overwhelming the PCs.
I know it heavily depends on the specifics, but I would really appreciate finding some guidelines about this because I like to design gauntlet-like fights and I tend to go too easy with them because I'm scared of making them unwinnable.
Your number is right. If you take Citricking's tool, you can calculate the average damage of a character expressed in average enemy's hit point pool. And, roughly, a party of four eliminate 40XP of enemies per round.
Still, be careful if you have overly defensive enemies, try to use more offensive oriented enemies. Also, there's more variance for high level monsters so you should try to use monsters up to character's level if you don't want a high level monster to stick around because players can't reach it thanks to all the mooks coming regularly.
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In general, when a bunch of guards hear combat in a room nearby, the natural reaction is to come and investigate. Also, if the guards have cold feet and get back to another room, you're just moving the monsters in the dungeon. Your players may realize that the guards have left their room (hot meals on the table) and understand that the whole dungeon is now on red alert and as such they should retreat.I'm sorry, but your numbers are off.
If you join two encounters and put them on the players all at once, yes, you are right. But if you allow one enemy to run away and come back with reinforcement, it is not an Extreme encounter.No... and...?
In another case, the GM decides a group of monsters hear the heroes do their thing, and they get cold feet and decide to fall back to their friends. Now you've combined encounters B and C in both their entirety.
This makes it impossible to attack an enemy stronghold, since the party must retreat after every encounter. That's assuming the GM never combines encounters because that's what the NPCs would do.
Simulating guards reacting to intruders is good in stealth games but complicated in TTRPGs.
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This makes it impossible to attack an enemy stronghold, since the party must retreat after every encounter. That's assuming the GM never combines encounters because that's what the NPCs would do.
Simulating guards reacting to intruders is good in stealth games but complicated in TTRPGs.
I partly disagree.
First, stealth and infiltration can be a big part of the stronghold attack. I even think it should be like that. Banging at the door of a stronghold all swords drawn is not my way of handling a stronghold attack.Second, not all monsters are disciplined. I expect a hobgoblin stronghold to be really hard to take over, but if you face more chaotic enemies, or if there are multiple races inside the stronghold, you can play on their suboptimal reactions.
As a player, I expect a stronghold attack to be half combat and half infiltration. If the GM lets all the monsters in their rooms waiting to die I won't have the feeling of attacking a stronghold but just some random dungeon with monstrous creatures in it. For me, a stronghold attack is a very tough nut to crack as I expect enemies to raise alarms and react as a unified (or at least coordinated) entity.
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This makes it impossible to attack an enemy stronghold, since the party must retreat after every encounter. That's assuming the GM never combines encounters because that's what the NPCs would do.
Simulating guards reacting to intruders is good in stealth games but complicated in TTRPGs.
I partly disagree.
First, stealth and infiltration can be a big part of the stronghold attack. I even think it should be like that. Banging at the door of a stronghold all swords drawn is not my way of handling a stronghold attack.
Second, not all monsters are disciplined. I expect a hobgoblin stronghold to be really hard to take over, but if you face more chaotic enemies, or if there are multiple races inside the stronghold, you can play on their suboptimal reactions.As a player, I expect a stronghold attack to be half combat and half infiltration. If the GM lets all the monsters in their rooms waiting to die I won't have the feeling of attacking a stronghold but just some random dungeon with monstrous creatures in it. For me, a stronghold attack is a very tough nut to crack as I expect enemies to raise alarms and react as a unified (or at least coordinated) entity.
Well, not all PCs are stealthy, and it doesn't matter anyway if the GM decides that the guards withdraw to sound the alarm when they see the PCs.
It's very well to say the players must do XYZ or face a Extreme+ encounter, but unless the GM telegraphs that ahead of time you're looking at a TPK.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I remember a thread where JJ (I think) actually stepped in to say something on the matter.
Perhaps you were thinking of this post in particular? He talks about how the AP dungeons and such are presented as a "snapshot" in time, and playing it as shown can be fine. They cannot account for every action groups will try to do, and if they did it would probably mess with their page limit, if they have one.
I imagine the intent is to use the encounter building rules, what constitutes a certain level of encounter, and use the tools provided in the ruleset to decide if you really want encounters to merge together or if you want to come up with reasons for it to not happen. All table-dependent, of course, and also this is just my opinion on the matter. If there needs to be some sort of blog post or guide to point out encounter-merging math, or extra sidebars in APs for people, then it wouldn't bother me any. As long as people find it helpful, I'm all for it.
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Yes, that's the one, thank you for linking it.
About the stronghold attack, well, what's the expectation? Of course a party can't win against a big group of enemies of comparable level. If the PCs' subtlety fails, their only chance is retreating.
If you want to give the PCs a chance at fighting, the bulk of the enemies must be of a level low enough that their numbers don't matter too much. If you calibrate the level gap well enough, you can still have an interesting fight because the mooks can probably land some hits.
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I remember a thread where JJ (I think) actually stepped in to say something on the matter.
Besides, I'll make a slight derail to ask Mathmuse if he has found some kind of formula to use for 'wave' encounters. Like: a party is expected to defeat an average of 40XP worth of enemies per round of combat, so you can actually chain a certain number of such waves coming in every round without overwhelming the PCs.
I know it heavily depends on the specifics, but I would really appreciate finding some guidelines about this because I like to design gauntlet-like fights and I tend to go too easy with them because I'm scared of making them unwinnable.Your number is right. If you take Citricking's tool, you can calculate the average damage of a character expressed in average enemy's hit point pool. And, roughly, a party of four eliminate 40XP of enemies per round.
Still, be careful if you have overly defensive enemies, try to use more offensive oriented enemies. Also, there's more variance for high level monsters so you should try to use monsters up to character's level if you don't want a high level monster to stick around because players can't reach it thanks to all the mooks coming regularly.
I don't have a formula yet; instead, I extrapolate from other difficult encounters that they overcame.
SuperBidi's post, however, is a good start for creating a formula. His numbers feel right, that a party of four can take down a 40-xp enemy in one round. Let me suppose that that 40-xp enemy has X hit points and that each party member deals (0.3)X damage per round on average. Let me also assume that each party member has X hit points, too, but the monsters deal (0.4)X damage per round on average, since monsters hit harder than PCs in PF2.
Let me make the monsters mindless, too, such as zombies, because monster tactics would complicate the combat. A 40-xp encounter with one zombie would end in one round, but the zombie would deal (0.4)X damage to the party, all to one PC. That PC would still be battle-ready, but would appreciate a 10-minute Treat Wounds.
Two zombies in an 80-xp enounter would take 2 rounds to to finish. Concentrating on one zombie would take it down in one round, so it hits for (0.4)X damage. But its buddy fightes for 2 rounds of (0.8)X damage. That would be a total of (1.2)X damage, enough to knock a PC unconscious, but sensible positioning would distribute it among two or three PCs, so they would be battered but still battle-ready. Note that though the xp suggests that two zombies is merely twice as hard as one zombie, the really dealt three times as much damage.
Three zombies in an 120-xp encounter would take 3 rounds to finish. The 1st zombie could drop in the 1st round, the 2nd zombie in the 2nd round, and the 3rd zombie in the 3rd round. But the zombies would deal (0.4)X, (0.8)X, and (1.2)X damage, respectively, for a total of (2.4)X damage. That could be evenly distributed as (0.6)X damage per PC to keep every PC on their feet, but distributing it evenly would take coordinated teamwork. Most likely, one PC would drop unconscious, so perhaps that last zombie would last an additional round and drop a 2nd PC, too. This is why 120 xp is called a Severe Threat.
In contrast, three zombies in a stream would deal (0.4)X damage each and die in the round that they reached the party. That is only (1.2)X damage, the same damage as the 80-xp encounter with two zombies.
Likewise, a 160-xp Extreme-Threat encounter of four zombies would deal (4.0)X damage in 4 rounds, enough to kill off the entire party. Yet a stream of four zombies in 4 rounds would deal only (1.6)X, which is equivalent to a 100-xp less-than-severe-threat encounter.
As a rough rule of thumb, the damage from an encounter increases quadratically by the triangular numbers 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21 and the damage from a stream increases linearly 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
Of course, when we apply tactics, such as hitting three clumped zombies with an area effect, the difficulty changes. But tactics are too versatile to analyze case by case. All we have is the rough estimate.
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PCs who decide to attack headfirst a stronghold without any prior scouting or information gathering deserve their likely TPK. Especially if they refuse to retreat.
May their successors be wiser.
Well, I haven't read the pre-written adventure that features the stronghold in question since I'm a player in that campaign.
It's
So if there are chances to perform research ahead of time, the GM didn't tell our party. Likewise, it simply doesn't matter how stealthy the party is (ours wasn't) if a single combat alerts all enemies within the stronghold and leads to chained encounters.
It's fine to have stealth-and-infiltration campaign (like the Ironfang Invasion), but that needs to be obvious at character creation so that the party can build around that expectation. Throwing challenges at the PCs that they can't handle, but must do in order to advance the plot, and then blaming them when they fail is bad GM'ing.
If a GM consistently ignores encounter guidelines and every fight is Extreme+, then they players aren't having fun and may choose not to continue the campaign when their PCs die.
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My experience in GMing 3.5, PF1, and PF2 is that a lot of people just.. aren't that good at the game.
I am mostly in PF2, but I have one PF1 game wrapping up. And in this game, my group almost gets slaughtered constantly. Is it hard? Yea. But it's a lot harder considering the cavalier almost never uses his challenge ability. The wizard doesn't know what to do when he runs out of fireballs.
In my PF2 games, the warriors seem to get on all sides of a creature except, ya know, the opposite sides. They don't flank. They never make recall knowledge rolls to find out why their attacks aren't as effective.
A lot of people just aren't that good at playing. So I take reports of an adventure being "too hard" with a grain of salt.
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This makes it impossible to attack an enemy stronghold, since the party must retreat after every encounter. That's assuming the GM never combines encounters because that's what the NPCs would do.
Simulating guards reacting to intruders is good in stealth games but complicated in TTRPGs.
I partly disagree.
First, stealth and infiltration can be a big part of the stronghold attack. I even think it should be like that. Banging at the door of a stronghold all swords drawn is not my way of handling a stronghold attack.
Second, not all monsters are disciplined. I expect a hobgoblin stronghold to be really hard to take over, but if you face more chaotic enemies, or if there are multiple races inside the stronghold, you can play on their suboptimal reactions.As a player, I expect a stronghold attack to be half combat and half infiltration. If the GM lets all the monsters in their rooms waiting to die I won't have the feeling of attacking a stronghold but just some random dungeon with monstrous creatures in it. For me, a stronghold attack is a very tough nut to crack as I expect enemies to raise alarms and react as a unified (or at least coordinated) entity.
Well, not all PCs are stealthy, and it doesn't matter anyway if the GM decides that the guards withdraw to sound the alarm when they see the PCs.
It's very well to say the players must do XYZ or face a Extreme+ encounter, but unless the GM telegraphs that ahead of time you're looking at a TPK.
Skilled at Stealth is not always necessary for a stealth invasion. I recall strongholds in two Paizo modules that had a secret escape tunnel that could be found with a DC 25 Perception check near the river. Of course, those tunnels were loaded with deadly traps, so the party would need a Thievery or Crafting expert.
Deception could work, too.
BARD: I bear a message from Count Cowardly to Duke Dastardly.
GATE GUARD: And the two men behind you?
BARD: My guards, men at arms like you. The road is dangerous.
GATE GUARD: You must surrender your weapons and armor to enter.
BARD: Of course. Here are our swords. Could we remove our armor in the stables? We rode hard and must tend to our horses.
GATE GUARD: Our stable boys will take your horses.
BARD: A horse is a courier's life. I will tend him myself.
GATE GUARD: Fine.
In the stable, the druid transforms from horse to human again and hands out their favorite weapons from the bag of holding he carried.
However, maybe roleplaying is not the strength of this non-stealthy party. For them, I recommend the blitzkrieg, German for lightning war. Take out the stronghold at a non-stop run. Kill the enemies in each room quickly and then hit the next room and the next room. Use consumables, daily spells, once-a-day special abilities, everything to keep up the pace. The stronghold won't have time to group together, so they will encounter a stream of small encounters instead.
My players did this in my Iron Gods campaign in a 14-room dungeon called the Dominion Hive. They had the advantage that the skald in the party had learned Greater Skald's Vigor that gave the entire party fast healing 4 as long as she sang her raging song.
I remember a thread where JJ (I think) actually stepped in to say something on the matter.
Besides, I'll make a slight derail to ask Mathmuse if he has found some kind of formula to use for 'wave' encounters. Like: a party is expected to defeat an average of 40XP worth of enemies per round of combat, so you can actually chain a certain number of such waves coming in every round without overwhelming the PCs.
I know it heavily depends on the specifics, but I would really appreciate finding some guidelines about this because I like to design gauntlet-like fights and I tend to go too easy with them because I'm scared of making them unwinnable.Your number is right. If you take Citricking's tool, you can calculate the average damage of a character expressed in average enemy's hit point pool. And, roughly, a party of four eliminate 40XP of enemies per round.
Still, be careful if you have overly defensive enemies, try to use more offensive oriented enemies. Also, there's more variance for high level monsters so you should try to use monsters up to character's level if you don't want a high level monster to stick around because players can't reach it thanks to all the mooks coming regularly.I don't have a formula yet; instead, I extrapolate from other difficult encounters that they overcame.
SuperBidi's post, however, is a good start for creating a formula. His numbers feel right, that a party of four can take down a 40-xp enemy in one round. Let me suppose that that 40-xp enemy has X hit points and that each party member deals (0.3)X damage per round on average. Let me also assume that each party member has X hit points, too, but the monsters deal (0.4)X damage per round on average, since monsters hit harder than PCs in PF2.
Let me make the monsters mindless, too, such as zombies, because monster tactics would complicate the combat. A 40-xp encounter with one zombie would end in one round, but the zombie would deal (0.4)X damage to the party,...
My thanks to Superbidi, I was floating around that 40XP thing and it's nice to have it confirmed by others, and to Mathmuse of course, his analysis makes a lot of sense.
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I strongly agree with the point dmerciless is making with this thread. How popular do you think D&D would have been if the very first module released along-side AD&D1e was the deadly Tomb of Horrors? Sure, any players and DMs that actually stuck with it could eventually learn to reduce the lethality of it, and create their own less deadly dungeons themselves, but as a "welcome to a whole new game you are just learning!" module, I think it would have turned many people off from ever playing D&D again.
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I'm staring down the barrel of a TPK myself.
The one mitigating factor that I probably should have played with more is the monsters should have been making non-lethal attacks more often to try and take the targets alive, but I dunno how much that would have shifted it and it probably should have built into their stat blocks if it was supposed to be constant. (Oh, and I don't think everyone picked out 12th level class feats, but their math was in the right places.)
Now the gug savant is gonna have its captive ghast nibble on the captured 3 PCs, turning them into "fully seasoned" tastier ghasts. This create a window for rescue if the remaining PCs can Teleport or otherwise get past this 10 foot cube of stone. I'm half tempted to have the dwarves of Kolvar show up and finish the savant off, though. Not sure if that feels dramatically satisfying, but...
I don't object to the difficulty per se, or that it resulted in a really dire cliff hanger. I do object to these being a a bunch of random monsters with no real warning and no way to bypass who simply block the only path forward towards the plot. "Random" encounters shouldn't be severe.
It is weird because the CRB says severe encounters "are most appropriate for important moments in your story, such as confronting a final boss." It feels like the writers of the APs have a very different definition of final boss than I do. Again, this is probably early adoption pains, but it does kind of make me want to drop AoA. At the very least, I am gonna start pruning encounters.
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So I take reports of an adventure being "too hard" with a grain of salt.
Why though?
I mean the group you described sounds pretty bad, optimzationally speaking, but if that's the benchmark for players, wouldn't it make sense to design the game around those expectations to at least some degree?
So I take reports of an adventure being "too hard" with a grain of salt.Why though?
I mean the group you described sounds pretty bad, optimzationally speaking, but if that's the benchmark for players, wouldn't it make sense to design the game around those expectations to at least some degree?
I have two main groups. Group 1 is my group I've played with since I was a kid. These guys are serious.
Group 2 is every other group I've played with who isn't my main group.The only solution I could think of to cater to the lowest common denominator while not boring actual good players would be to scale difficulty. Basically like a video game has easy, medium, and hard settings. Make the adventures easy by default, with a sidebar letting the GM know that this adventure is for no0bz, and to add more/tougher creatures if his group actually employs tactics and uses all their abilities.
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The only solution I could think of to cater to the lowest common denominator while not boring actual good players would be to scale difficulty. Basically like a video game has easy, medium, and hard settings. Make the adventures easy by default, with a sidebar letting the GM know that this adventure is for no0bz, and to add more/tougher creatures if his group actually employs tactics and uses all their abilities.
This... sounds pretty ideal to me, actually?
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This... sounds pretty ideal to me, actually?
The only solution I could think of to cater to the lowest common denominator while not boring actual good players would be to scale difficulty. Basically like a video game has easy, medium, and hard settings. Make the adventures easy by default, with a sidebar letting the GM know that this adventure is for no0bz, and to add more/tougher creatures if his group actually employs tactics and uses all their abilities.
I'd probably call them Normal, Hard and Nightmare or something - a lot of people balk at the "easy" label, even if it's actually appropriate for them.
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I'd probably call them Normal, Hard and Nightmare or something - a lot of people balk at the "easy" label, even if it's actually appropriate for them.
Actual difficulty levels may include:
"I'm too young to die"
"Hey, not too rough"
"Hurt me plenty"
"Ultra-Violence"
"Nightmare!"
...and considering by how much player defenses have been lowered in PF2 "hurt me plenty" seems strangly appropriate for most groups. ;)
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“Difficulty settings” in a TTRPG have always existed. They are, and have to be, controlled by the GM, hopefully with an awareness of her player’s expectations. PF2 is a collaborative game, not a video game. As a GM, learning how to get better at changing the dials on the game is as important as players learning the tactics and abilities of their players. There is this kinda strange attitude that has been growing more common of needing to play the game by the book, which maybe coming from the success of PFS, but PFS is designed around the expectation of players who might not know each other and who might have brought 6 dex based redeemer champions to the party (who’s abilities are going to end up stepping all over each other). I enjoy PFS very much, and the stories are interesting and fun as a player. As a GM, if I was in to running things “by the book” they would probably be fun, but they can’t hold a candle to the feeling of developing a story around your PCs, which very much requires going off script when it is to the benefit of everyone having fun.
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There is this kinda strange attitude that has been growing more common of needing to play the game by the book...
Why do you find this attitude strange?
For starters many GM's don't have the time or will to adjust the contents of a bought product because this would probably result in extra working steps which for many is the exact opposite of the reason they bought the adventure or AP in the first place (apart from witnessing the sometimes epic in-world story of course).
Second many GM's expect the default difficulty settings to be "right" for an average group of average gamers (think 4 not overly optimized pregen characters and their players using decent tactics) and do not want to temper with this setting in order to not make challenges too easy or too hard.
Note that I do not object to the idea that the ideal solution is to adjust any bought out content to the needs of your specific group of players, however I easily understand why many people do not want to do this for varying reasons (preparation time, inexperience, insecure GM etc).
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“Difficulty settings” in a TTRPG have always existed. They are, and have to be, controlled by the GM, hopefully with an awareness of her player’s expectations. PF2 is a collaborative game, not a video game. As a GM, learning how to get better at changing the dials on the game is as important as players learning the tactics and abilities of their players. There is this kinda strange attitude that has been growing more common of needing to play the game by the book, which maybe coming from the success of PFS, but PFS is designed around the expectation of players who might not know each other and who might have brought 6 dex based redeemer champions to the party (who’s abilities are going to end up stepping all over each other). I enjoy PFS very much, and the stories are interesting and fun as a player. As a GM, if I was in to running things “by the book” they would probably be fun, but they can’t hold a candle to the feeling of developing a story around your PCs, which very much requires going off script when it is to the benefit of everyone having fun.
That is all fine and dandy (and in fact, very correct), but people aren't born knowing how to do these things. And most people wouldn't really care to invest the time and learn a game if the base experience it grants you before you have the knowledge to do these things is frustrating. To me having the base difficulty high and saying GMs can adjust it if they want to is like having a video game that starts with only the Hard difficulty setting and only unlocks Normal and Easy once you beat 30% of it. Which is... um, yeah.
There is definitely a case of GMs playing monsters by the stat block instead of by the adventure description, and I wonder if the tendency to use pre-loaded modules in VTTs is making some GMs approach encounters without reading carefully about how they fit into the adventure or immediate plot.
I can't speak for how my GM is approaching this, but what I have noticed is that the fog of war that our VTT implements definitely makes encounters more difficult than they would be at a real tabletop.
I feel like when using fog of war in a VTT there needs to be either some allowance from the GM for things like metagaming and out-of-character strategizing or else more XP needs to be given out to account for the increased difficulty. Otherwise its just really difficult not having the same situational awareness as everyone else in a game that assumes a high level of teamwork and complementary tactics.
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I actually do not recommend GMs try to adjust star blocks for monsters up or down to reach the right balance for their players. I think “fixing the numbers” is much too temperamental and difficult to pull off effectively on the fly.
I recommend GMs take the time to really look over the encounters that pop out as severe and extreme in the books and make sure they understand the motivations of the monster so that they are not creating too many encounters where a creature is out to actively kill them all, as that should be a rare motive for all but the most serious End Boss murderous villain encounters. Adventure writers have a long history of being bad about this, but PF2 APs are getting much better about not encouraging “everyone fight to the death” because that motive is boring and nonsensical.
When a situation feels hopeless, really and completely hopeless to the PCs, the GM should be looking to always offer the players a choice. For some, glorious death will be the choice they want to make. Make it glorious. Make character death meaningful. But players should not often feel like death is the only possible outcome. A player getting captured or some of the party choosing to run while the ooze devours the only party member capable of damaging it, is a much, much easier narrative outcome to build upon than the monster kills everyone just because it can.
The first time that major tragedy like this strikes your party, it is time to check in. Did everyone find that encounter fun and exciting, even though x died? Yes? Ok, be careful to make sure your not pushing them too hard, but otherwise the party is probably in the right place as far as expectations and difficulty. If the answer is no, give the surviving party XP as if they did beat it. Let them have some time to regroup and include research and strategizing be a part of that time. Give them down time to retrain or make some consumables that will let them have a massive and targeted advantage on the rematch. If they are close to leveling up give them do for a research or social encounter that gets them there. Doing any one of these things will probably help them through that encounter and help them have ideas about how to prepare for challenging threats in the future. The ability to escape quickly as a party should be something parties figure out how to do effectively by the mid levels of the game and GMs need to make sure they are helping players establish the right balance of playing too cautiously vs too aggressively. Usually, their propensity to do one or the other is indicative of player play style and expectation. Talk to them about it. “You seem to be playing really aggressively, always attacking, and never considering an escape route. You know that mighty get your player killed eventually right? The rest of your party might not be able to save you?” At least then, when it happens people shouldn’t be inclined to rage quit and can talk about adopting a different play style as a team.
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This... sounds pretty ideal to me, actually?
The only solution I could think of to cater to the lowest common denominator while not boring actual good players would be to scale difficulty. Basically like a video game has easy, medium, and hard settings. Make the adventures easy by default, with a sidebar letting the GM know that this adventure is for no0bz, and to add more/tougher creatures if his group actually employs tactics and uses all their abilities.
More/tougher creatures was the way to try and heighten the difficulty in PF1, even though it did not always work so well.
I have the nagging feeling that it is easier in PF2 to start with higher difficulty and, if wishing for the easy mode, the GM gives some power-up to the PCs and plays the adventures as written rather than have the GM change every NPC and DC.
Otherwise, with easy adventures, you could have the PCs wait longer before leveling up. I did it once in PF1 and the players were getting really frustrated and asking me every session's end if this time they would gain a level.
I am happy to be able to avoid this in PF2 just by playing the adventures as written.
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Its not that the difficulty of PF2 is high. The difficulty of an equal level monster is just equal to a player, and that is higher than some other games of the past. Starting here is a much better place for mechanics reasons, but the threat of higher level solo monsters for some parties is much more dangerous than in the past due to action economy advantage being something relatively easy to squander in PF2, especially against higher level enemies.
And the First book of Abomination vaults handles that really really well. There are some higher level enemies, but their place in the story makes them fights that can be navigated without being stumbled into accidentally and with no chance of escape.
Everyone is learning how this system handles and doing a better job of it now than they did a year ago. I have heard directly from folks whol played it when it came out that Rise of the Rune Lords was a brutally difficult AP at first, with many monsters capable of killing an entire party in a round or two if they caught the party off guard.
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I recommend GMs take the time to really look over the encounters that pop out as severe and extreme in the books and make sure they understand the motivations of the monster so that they are not creating too many encounters where a creature is out to actively kill them all, as that should be a rare motive for all but the most serious End Boss murderous villain encounters. Adventure writers have a long history of being bad about this, but PF2 APs are getting much better about not encouraging “everyone fight to the death” because that motive is boring and nonsensical.
When a situation feels hopeless, really and completely hopeless to the PCs, the GM should be looking to always offer the players a choice. For some, glorious death will be the choice they want to make. Make it glorious. Make character death meaningful. But players should not often feel like death is the only possible outcome. A player getting captured or some of the party choosing to run while the ooze devours the only party member capable of damaging it, is a much, much easier narrative outcome to build upon than the monster kills everyone just because it can.
The first time that major tragedy like this strikes your party, it is time to check in. Did everyone find that encounter fun and exciting, even though x died? Yes? Ok, be careful to make sure your not pushing them too hard, but otherwise the party is probably in the right place as far as expectations and difficulty. If the answer is no, give the surviving party XP as if they did beat it. Let them have some time to regroup and include research and strategizing be a part of that time. Give them down time to retrain or make some consumables that will let them have a massive and targeted advantage on the rematch. If they are close to leveling up give them do for a research or social encounter that gets them there. Doing any one of these things will probably help them through that encounter and help them have ideas about how to prepare for challenging threats in the future. The ability to escape quickly as a party should be something parties figure out how to do effectively by the mid levels of the game and GMs need to make sure they are helping players establish the right balance of playing too cautiously vs too aggressively. Usually, their propensity to do one or the other is indicative of player play style and expectation. Talk to them about it. “You seem to be playing really aggressively, always attacking, and never considering an escape route. You know that mighty get your player killed eventually right? The rest of your party might not be able to save you?” At least then, when it happens people shouldn’t be inclined to rage quit and can talk about adopting a different play style as a team.
It strikes as a bit odd to me how you're always talking about teaching the players how to play the 'proper' way, or that they should always learn how to retreat. I mean, if that's what the people you play with enjoy, all the props to you, but have you considered that a lot of people just... don't find this fun? They don't want to have to do that in a game about epic heroes doing epic things. I apologize if I'm misinterpreting you, but the solutions you suggest usually sound like you want people to play in one specific way, and the people who don't should be eased in and taught until they also start playing that way you consider the correct one.
The only thing telling people it's their fault they didn't have fun with the game and they need to improve first might achieve is making them leave and go play Underground Complexes & Fire-Breathing Reptiles instead. People do this a lot in the fighting game community and I don't think I've seen it work even a single time.
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My very first piece of advice was figure out what your players play style is and adjusting to meet their expectations. If your players don’t ever have to want to consider retreat against a difficult opponent, give them one or two free levels, or access to the awesome cool gear that is a couple levels ahead of them. Those are incredibly easy ways to meet their expectations for Super heroic play.
I recommend GMs take the time to ...
The first time that major tragedy like this strikes your party, it is time to check in. Did everyone find that encounter fun and exciting, even though x died? Yes? Ok, be careful to make sure your not pushing them too hard, but otherwise the party is probably in the right place as far as expectations and difficulty. If the answer is no, give the surviving party XP as if they did beat it. Let them have some time to regroup and include research and strategizing be a part of that time. Give them down time to retrain or make some consumables that will let them have a massive and targeted advantage on the rematch. If they are close to leveling up give them do for a research or social encounter that gets them there. Doing any one of these things will probably help them through that encounter and help them have ideas about how to prepare for challenging threats in the future. The ability to escape quickly as a party should be something parties figure out how to do effectively by the mid levels of the game and GMs need to make sure they are helping players establish the right balance of playing too cautiously vs too aggressively. Usually, their propensity to do one or the other is indicative of player play style and expectation. Talk to them about it. “You seem to be playing really aggressively, always attacking, and never considering an escape route. You know that mighty get your player killed eventually right? The rest of your party might not be able to save you?” At least then, when it happens people shouldn’t be inclined to rage quit and can talk about adopting a different play style as a team.
It strikes as a bit odd to me how you're always talking about teaching the players how to play the 'proper' way, or that they should always learn how to retreat. I mean, if that's what the people you play with enjoy, all the props to you, but have you considered that a lot of people just... don't find this fun? They don't want to have to do that in a game about epic heroes doing epic things. I apologize if I'm misinterpreting you, but the solutions you suggest usually sound like you want people to play in one specific way, and the people who don't should be eased in and taught until they also start playing that way you consider the correct one.
The only thing telling people it's their fault they didn't have fun with the game and they need to improve first might achieve is making them leave and go play Underground Complexes & Fire-Breathing Reptiles instead. People do this a lot in the fighting game community and I don't think I've seen it work even a single time.
I didn't see the word "proper" in Unicore's post. Instead, he said, "Give them down time to ..." I highlighted his sentence about checking whether the players had fun.
Most of my players play tactically, but I have had some exceptions. David simply liked to hit big monsters with massive damage. Fortunately, the Jade Regent adventure path had a lot of big monsters and good excuses to add more. Rich liked to prepare for everything but chose melee with a reach weapon 95% of the time. The tactical players adapted to his predictable combat style.
And the tactical players try different styles. When I took over the combat-heavy D&D 3.5 version of Rise of the Runelords from my wife, she made a lyrakien bard that served as scout and diplomat. We ended up with a set of player charaters that would have worked great in a game of intrigue, such as a scholarly wizard and a crafty rogue. And therefore, the meatgrinder shifted focus and became a game of intrigue. They made alliances among the insanely hostile factions in the Runeforge! Mostly the same players in Jade Regent created explorers and soldiers who dealt well with the world travel from Varisia to Minkai. Another set of players created mobile skirmishers for my Iron Gods campaign, since they had no squishy characters to protect with a front line and lots of ranged technological weapons. Mostly the same players in my Ironfang Invasion campaign built stealth experts and mastered the art of ambush. Playing tactically is not a single way to play.
Unicore talked about giving the players a chance to find a style that works for them. Players can start with an unworkable style and gradually learn workable style that suits their characters.
Some players hate to retreat. My current characters, who wanted to play Ironfang Invasion even though the first module is about escaping and hiding from the Ironfang Legion, showed no qualms about retreating. Once while retreating in a cave, they climbed to the upper level as they ran away, the xulgath warriors chasing them threw spears at them from down below, and the party instantly thought as one, "Spears? Their only ranged attack is spears? We are archers. If this has become a ranged battle, then we are going to win." And they stopped retreating and won. But if they had not retreated to a position that favored them, then they would probably have lost. The retreat became epic.
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Its not that the difficulty of PF2 is high. The difficulty of an equal level monster is just equal to a player...
First, I assume you meant "equal to a player character. Second, that hasn't been my experience. Not even close. Most equal leveled monsters that I've seen will trounce most individual PCs more often than not.
I can imagine an extremely min/maxed character pulling it off more regularly (maybe 40/60 in favor of the NPC rather than 25/75), but I suspect it wouldn't be a regular event, and most PCs aren't min/maxed to the nines to begin with.