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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.
I find that monsters rarely have much in the way of abilities or powers that synergize particularly well with their allies. There a a couple that do have such abilities, but monsters are pretty much designed to do one thing well and that is pretty much it. My experience has been equal level enemies do well when they can separate a party out and fight them one on one, but 4 on 4, the party is usually much better at aoE, and being able to concentrate fire. Abilities like hero points, consistent healing, buffing and rebuffing are just not things monsters get to do much of.
I don’t think I’ve seen any character deaths against an equal number of equal level enemies.
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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.
I find that monsters rarely have much in the way of abilities or powers that synergize particularly well with their allies. There a a couple that do have such abilities, but monsters are pretty much designed to do one thing well and that is pretty much it. My experience has been equal level enemies do well when they can separate a party out and fight them one on one, but 4 on 4, the party is usually much better at aoE, and being able to concentrate fire. Abilities like hero points, consistent healing, buffing and rebuffing are just not things monsters get to do much of.
I don’t think I’ve seen any character deaths against an equal number of equal level enemies.
Sounded like you were talking about one on one before.
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Sounded like you were talking about one on one before.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.
I find that monsters rarely have much in the way of abilities or powers that synergize particularly well with their allies. There a a couple that do have such abilities, but monsters are pretty much designed to do one thing well and that is pretty much it. My experience has been equal level enemies do well when they can separate a party out and fight them one on one, but 4 on 4, the party is usually much better at aoE, and being able to concentrate fire. Abilities like hero points, consistent healing, buffing and rebuffing are just not things monsters get to do much of.
I don’t think I’ve seen any character deaths against an equal number of equal level enemies.
Comparing one to one is easier to phrase. However, the Bestiary creatures usually have better numbers for a simple Strike or special ability. A one-on-one battle tends to favor the creature unless the single PC has an attack that exploits a weakness of the creature. (And I don't mean only a Weakness ability that adds extra damage to a type of damage. I mean any vulnerability or nullification.)
Change that to four different PCs against four identical monsters of the same level, and the chance of being able to exploit a weakness is four times as great. No, make that ten times as great, because sometimes a combination of two abilities on two PCs works. The Bestiary creatures don't have that versatility. They either have an advantage against a PC or they don't.
Let me look at a Specter because my party will fight one next week. They have one attack:
Melee [Single Action] vile touch +18 [+13/+8] (finesse), Damage 6d6 negative plus spectral corruption
The spectral corruption could put the victim under the specter's control on a failed DC 25 Will save, turning him or her against the party for a few turns. Staying out of range of the melee attack is difficult, because the specter has speed Fly 40.
A typical 7th-level player character one-on-one against the specter would suffer. Bow Strikes at range will initially deal a bunch of damage to the specter, but in two turns it will fly into melee range. One vile touch and a failed Will save later, that bow will be at the bottom of a well.
Yet my party has a ranger and a druid who can attack from 150 feet away. The druid has the Disrupt Undead cantrip, too, which she can combine with Reach Spell. They also have a monk who is master of Will saves due to 7th-level path of perfection and ghost-touch handwraps. He probably could take on a specter alone at 7th level. And they also have a primal sorcerer leshy with lots of positive-energy magic. The other half of the 8-person party just have ranged attacks, sneak attacks, or massive damage. Throw 8 specters against this party and the party will win.
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Comparing one to one is easier to phrase. However, the Bestiary creatures usually have better numbers for a simple Strike or special ability. A one-on-one battle tends to favor the creature unless the single PC has an attack that exploits a weakness of the creature. (And I don't mean only a Weakness ability that adds extra damage to a type of damage. I mean any vulnerability or nullification.)
Change that to four different PCs against four identical monsters of the same level, and the chance of being able to exploit a weakness is four times as great. No, make that ten times as great, because sometimes a combination of two abilities on two PCs works. The Bestiary creatures don't have that versatility. They either have an advantage against a PC or they don't.
This right here is where I think a lot of the problems I mentioned in the original post come from. The game's baseline assumption is a well-built party with a good, diverse set of powers; where all characters have their stats and feats well-distributed; and played tactically to a level where it becomes a real advantage against the monsters, so much so that they need to have the advantage in raw numbers and individual ability strength to compete. This is certainly true for your parties (I've been looking at your reports since the PF2 Playtest, they're very interesting, btw). Heck, I've played in a party where it was true as well. But for each one where it was, I've played in another four where it wasn't.
The game expects a very high level of optimization and especially tactical play, in my experience considerably more than what the average player will have, and that's what causes a lot of the feeling that the game is too difficult or punishing. Of course, the level of play that the average player has varies a lot with who you're playing with, but whether my anecdote holds true in the general scope or not, I still find it odd to balance stuff towards the higher end.
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Comparing one to one is easier to phrase. However, the Bestiary creatures usually have better numbers for a simple Strike or special ability. A one-on-one battle tends to favor the creature unless the single PC has an attack that exploits a weakness of the creature. (And I don't mean only a Weakness ability that adds extra damage to a type of damage. I mean any vulnerability or nullification.)
Change that to four different PCs against four identical monsters of the same level, and the chance of being able to exploit a weakness is four times as great. No, make that ten times as great, because sometimes a combination of two abilities on two PCs works. The Bestiary creatures don't have that versatility. They either have an advantage against a PC or they don't.
This right here is where I think a lot of the problems I mentioned in the original post come from. The game's baseline assumption is a well-built party with a good, diverse set of powers; where all characters have their stats and feats well-distributed; and played tactically to a level where it becomes a real advantage against the monsters, so much so that they need to have the advantage in raw numbers and individual ability strength to compete. This is certainly true for your parties (I've been looking at your reports since the PF2 Playtest, they're very interesting, btw). Heck, I've played in a party where it was true as well. But for each one where it was, I've played in another four where it wasn't.
The game expects a very high level of optimization and especially tactical play, in my experience considerably more than what the average player will have, and that's what causes a lot of the feeling that the game is too difficult or punishing. Of course, the level of play that the average player has varies a lot with who you're playing with, but whether my anecdote holds true in the general scope or not, I still find it odd to balance stuff towards the higher end.
The system itself is not built around this assumption. Adventure design might be averaged around the assumption of having 4 players who want to play together in a collaborative function and face an array of challenges, some of which will potentially be life threatening. But the system is incredibly flexible for adapting around that. You can have a lot of fun playing with more than 4 players (another great way tackle an AP that might feel too challenging for your party could be to adopt milestone leveling, add a 5th or 6th player even, and only add lower level monsters to encounters that were not over the party’s original level anyways.
In fact, that is probably the easiest and most consistent way to see exactly the kind of results you are asking to be baked in to current adventure writing.
I think it is also true that the threat of character death in RPGs is something that the community assumes that there is a baseline average level of acceptance of, that is the right way to play, and any GM or player wanting something different is playing the game wrong. I would argue that they would only be playing the game wrong if they feel like their response to the question, “how often should characters feel like they are in life or death threatening encounters?” Was more important than everyone else’s at the table.
I do think that having things like the beginner’s box and having more sidebars around monsters that are are put in the dungeon to be severe threats with advice for handling situations where the party might get in over their heads Is a good addition to the game. They are also things already happening in more recent APs.
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The game expects a very high level of optimization and especially tactical play, in my experience considerably more than what the average player will have, and that's what causes a lot of the feeling that the game is too difficult or punishing. Of course, the level of play that the average player has varies a lot with who you're playing with, but whether my anecdote holds true in the general scope or not, I still find it odd to balance stuff towards the higher end.
PF1-style extreme optimization is impossible in PF2. The system fights against it, because the designers wanted predictable character power levels at each level.
However, everyday optimization works, by which I mean picking stats and feats that work with the character concept. For example, the rogue Binny in my campaign uses a simple tactic on most turns: ranged shortbow Strike from hiding, shortbow Strike again, and Hide again. She is a sniper. A rogue can optimize for sniping easily: high Dexterity, damage from sneak attack, expert in Stealth early, enchanted shortbow, and a few good feats, such as Quiet Allies and Swift Sneak. She most recently took Sly Striker at 8th level for that second Strike that lacks sneak attack.
Binny's sniper tactic depends on circumstances. She needs places to hide, such as in the underbrush in the forest or behind crates in a warehouse. Hiding in darkness would work, too, since Binny is an Umbral Gnome, except that most of her opponents have darkvision like her. She would also have trouble Hiding against enemies with level-appropriate perception. Fortunately, my party typically fights armies of low-level characters. The high-level commanders might spot Binny, but the troops are sitting ducks against Binny. Binny has had to fight in melee when circumstances don't work out.
She pulls her weight in her party. Outside of combat, she is a master of Thievery and opens locks for the party.
Parties can also be empowered by teamwork, but that is another topic.
This right here is where I think a lot of the problems I mentioned in the original post come from. The game's baseline assumption is a well-built party with a good, diverse set of powers; where all characters have their stats and feats well-distributed; and played tactically to a level where it becomes a real advantage against the monsters, so much so that they need to have the advantage in raw numbers and individual ability strength to compete. This is certainly true for your parties (I've been looking at your reports since the PF2 Playtest, they're very interesting, btw). Heck, I've played in a party where it was true as well. But for each one where it was, I've played in another four where it wasn't.
Ten years ago, I read about the Stormwind Fallacy, where some players mistakenly argued that strong roleplaying and strong optimization are not compatible with each other. The delightful irony in PF2 is that a well-built party with a good, diverse set of powers can naturally come out of good roleplaying. Binny's character concept was that she was a stealthy criminal (her background) who had gone straight and learned some wilderness skills to find work as a messenger between towns. The party relied on her expertise in Stealth for Follow the Expert to keep out of sight from the invading Ironfang Legion, so she also learned Quiet Allies. The choice was not carefully calculated optimization; instead, it was enhancing the role she already played.
I don't own Age of Ashes nor the full Extinction Curse adventure path, but I did buy the Fall of Plaguestone stand-alone module and The Show Must Go On, first module of Extinction Curse. The first encounter in Fall of Plaguestone, before the player characters learn to work together or learn local events, is Severe Threat. That is not appropriate. The Show Must Go On starts at a reasonable pace with Low and Moderate Threats with time to rest, but some parties were overwhelmed by back-to-back Moderate and Severe Threats with no good way to rest in a later chapter.
I hope those were merely early mistakes. A lower degree of threat would be more appropriate. We experienced GMs with experienced players can enhance the challenge. The newbies are less skilled at adjustments.
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Ten years ago, I read about the Stormwind Fallacy, where some players mistakenly argued that strong roleplaying and strong optimization are not compatible with each other. The delightful irony in PF2 is that a well-built party with a good, diverse set of powers can naturally come out of good roleplaying. Binny's character concept was that she was a stealthy criminal (her background) who had gone straight and learned some wilderness skills to find work as a messenger between towns. The party relied on her expertise in Stealth for Follow the Expert to keep out of sight from the invading Ironfang Legion, so she also learned Quiet Allies. The choice was not carefully calculated optimization; instead, it was enhancing the role she already played.
I guess this bit depends a bit on luck. And by luck, I mean lucking out in having the concept that you want to play the most at a given moment, roleplay-wise, be one that the game has good support for and will fulfill the needs of your party well. It has happened to me before, like when my party needed good damage, a good frontline and someone to be a secondary healer for when the Cleric has some kind of impediment, and I was already fiddling with the concept of a grizzled medic that fought in the war a long time ago and now had to re-learn to fight to find a cure for her husband's monster-inflicted disease. I didn't think twice: one-handed Fighter with the Medic archetype. It fit like a glove.
However, I've also had the less-than-pleasant experiences of having to pre-plan the skill distribution of a party out of game in a way that we could actually cover the required roles. If we took what would actually make the most sense for each character, we'd have enough overlap that some very important things would be missing. In my opinion that's partly due to non-Rogue, non-Investigator characters having an extremely narrow set of skills they can specialize in (two up to level 10, 3 for 11+), but I guess that's a different conversation for a different thread.
A lower degree of threat would be more appropriate. We experienced GMs with experienced players can enhance the challenge. The newbies are less skilled at adjustments.
Well, that was exactly my starting premise for the thread, so I'm glad we agree on that.
One thing I haven't seen brought up that is specific to AP volumes is page space limitations. There's so many higher level challenges per level in AP adventures specifically because they're trying to squeeze 4 levels of play into 55 pages or so, which should be about 50 encounters but that they often pare down to about 40-45.
Abomination Vaults may well do better on this task than the others because of the "in media res" opening. They flatly devote more page space to encounters than most other AP volumes.
The approximate length of each of the level 1-5 adventures so far.
Plaguestone: 46 pages
Hellknight Hill: 56 pages
Show must Go On: 52 pages
Devil at the Dreaming Palace: 58 pages
Ruins of Guantlight: 58 pages
Menance Under Otari/Troubles in Otari: 73 pages
These page lengths include substantial amount of roleplay and descriptive encounters. AV has as many descriptive rooms as the others, but the 3-4 pages of in depth background is largely absent.
Edit: My preferred fix for this, as others have mentioned, is just starting at 2nd level. Loot is an issue, but APs usually have extra treasure, so not as much of one as you might think. If I ever get to the end of an AP, that would mean the players spend an extra level at 20, but that might be acceptable.
Trying to cram XP in is definitely a thing, since, and since harder encounters give more XP it is more page efficient. But they also already give out story and achievement XP blocks, and it doesn't seem too difficult to just up those.
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Trying to cram XP in is definitely a thing, since, and since harder encounters give more XP it is more page efficient. But they also already give out story and achievement XP blocks, and it doesn't seem too difficult to just up those.
Spending 9 pages describing a murder investigation that results in an XP reward, including story rewards, about equal to about three times the encounter on half of the 1st page probably didn't help in plaguestone.
... 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.I'm lurking this discussion, but this lack of perspective deserves comment.
I'm guessing you've played/GM'ed the hard cover version...
RotRL WAS a brutally difficult AP when it came out. They toned down a bunch of encounters (eg. Xanesha) in the hardcover, and PC power increased with time as more PC options became available (at the time, everyone was playing CRB only, because that was what was available)...
I didn't play it or GM it back then, but a good friend of mine did run it and TPK'd his party 3 times. Age of Ashes, should probably be looked at in the same context as an AP that was released before the rules were really lined up precisely around the expectations of adventure writers and some things got through that were more challenging than probably intended.
I think Plaguestone was always intended to be hard though, with a strong possiblity of death. Persistent damage is just a serious killer in PF2.
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Note, Rise of the Runelords was written in 3.5, about, what, 2 years before Pathfinder even came? A year before even the alpha rules came out, in fact.
To add to Staffan's point, Life's Long Shadow with Shoonies came out in March of last year. That was apparently too late for the Lost Omen's team to realize how much players liked Shoonies in time to add them into the Ancestry Guide.
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PF1-style extreme optimization is impossible in PF2.
Disagree with this assertion.
PF2 is a system that very much rewards optimization, it's just shifted how you optimize by putting a greater emphasis on party composition and tactics than character building.
Your own examples in various threads have illustrated just how meaningful optimization is in PF2. It's the difference between struggling with moderate fights and being able to trivially handle encounters in excess of extreme.
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PF1-style extreme optimization is impossible in PF2.Disagree with this assertion.
PF2 is a system that very much rewards optimization, it's just shifted how you optimize by putting a greater emphasis on party composition and tactics than character building.
Your own examples in various threads have illustrated just how meaningful optimization is in PF2. It's the difference between struggling with moderate fights and being able to trivially handle encounters in excess of extreme.
I agree with you mostly, but I read Mathmuse "PF1-style" as meaning build (and only build) optimization.
And making incredibly powerful builds (so much so that you do not need to care about tactics or the roll of a die) or abysmally inefficient ones are both indeed impossible in PF2.
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But I want to draw attention again that Extinction Curse and Agents of Edgewatch don't seem to have Age of Ashes style encounter spikes (unless the GM skips reading encounter text, and even then nothing as dangerous as that Grikitog, Greater Barghest or Clay Golem).The problems I've seen with Extinction Curse (though I'm only on book 2 so far) haven't really been difficulty spikes (though the Nemmia encounter is damn tough), but rather the endurance factor. Except for part 2 in book 1, each level is essentially a single dungeon. Particularly at level 1, the PCs are supposed to clear out the area around the camp in one night, which consists of eight encounters (after dealing with shenanigans during the actual show).
I think a common mistake of running the first chapter of this book is assuming all of the locations and events have to happen, regardless of how well the party is handling them. Many of them don't need to be dealt with that night and as a GM, you are even encouraged to have Nemmia spring her attack early if necessary. That is kind of what I was talking about when I was saying that "by the book" doesn't mean running every encounter one right after the other without consideration of the party and their level of preparedness. The book pretty much actively discourages this idea.
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I think a common mistake of running the first chapter of this book is assuming all of the locations and events have to happen, regardless of how well the party is handling them. Many of them don't need to be dealt with that night and as a GM, you are even encouraged to have Nemmia spring her attack early if necessary. That is kind of what I was talking about when I was saying that "by the book" doesn't mean running every encounter one right after the other without consideration of the party and their level of preparedness. The book pretty much actively discourages this idea.But I want to draw attention again that Extinction Curse and Agents of Edgewatch don't seem to have Age of Ashes style encounter spikes (unless the GM skips reading encounter text, and even then nothing as dangerous as that Grikitog, Greater Barghest or Clay Golem).The problems I've seen with Extinction Curse (though I'm only on book 2 so far) haven't really been difficulty spikes (though the Nemmia encounter is damn tough), but rather the endurance factor. Except for part 2 in book 1, each level is essentially a single dungeon. Particularly at level 1, the PCs are supposed to clear out the area around the camp in one night, which consists of eight encounters (after dealing with shenanigans during the actual show).
Agreed. I explained to my players up front "You aren't on a time limit unless I explicitly say you are. Don't be afraid to take rests, be it 10 minutes or be it the full night."
I guess this bit depends a bit on luck. And by luck, I mean lucking out in having the concept that you want to play the most at a given moment, roleplay-wise, be one that the game has good support for and will fulfill the needs of your party well. It has happened to me before, like when my party needed good damage, a good frontline and someone to be a secondary healer for when the Cleric has some kind of impediment, and I was already fiddling with the concept of a grizzled medic that fought in the war a long time ago and now had to re-learn to fight to find a cure for her husband's monster-inflicted disease. I didn't think twice: one-handed Fighter with the Medic archetype. It fit like a glove.
However, I've also had the less-than-pleasant experiences of having to pre-plan the skill distribution of a party out of game in a way that we could actually cover the required roles. If we took what would actually make the most sense for each character, we'd have enough overlap that some very important things would be missing. In my opinion that's partly due to non-Rogue, non-Investigator characters having an extremely narrow set of skills they can specialize in (two up to level 10, 3 for 11+), but I guess that's a different conversation for a...
I stacked the odds in my players' favor by holding a Session Zero where the premise and setting of Trail of the Hunted was revealed before character creation. However, that did result in all the characters training in Nature, Stealth, and Survival, reducing the diversity.
Also, the party has two rogues. One skill increase per level beyond 1st is powerful. Two other characters took Untrained Improvisation to try to keep up with the rogues.
They still have only one character out of eight trained in Religion, the skill for knowing about specters.
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PF1-style extreme optimization is impossible in PF2.Disagree with this assertion.
PF2 is a system that very much rewards optimization, it's just shifted how you optimize by putting a greater emphasis on party composition and tactics than character building.
Your own examples in various threads have illustrated just how meaningful optimization is in PF2. It's the difference between struggling with moderate fights and being able to trivially handle encounters in excess of extreme.
As a former academic, I am embarrassed that I did not define my terms well enough. By "PF1-style extreme optimization" I meant individual optimization to become unstoppable in one area of expertise, such as the fighter who never misses on the first attack of many, the stealthy rogue who is never spotted, the wizard who can succeed on every single Knowledge check, etc.
Optimizing for teamwork is available in PF1, too. It gives better combat results than individual optimization. However, I don't see any optimization guides on how to do that. My players learned building for teamwork on their own or from my wife. To their advantage, they did that at the beginning of our PF2 campaign. I learned the harshness of PF2 combat only from reading the forums here.
In November 2020 I began writing an optimization guide for teamwork in PF2. But I put it aside for two months.
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You think your 8 person party would win against 8 intelligently played specters? I'm not sold. Incorporeal, +17 stealth, darkvision (you can assume the specters are being encountered at night/in a building due to sunlight powerlessness) means that hitting them at range is going to be difficult if the specters (basic int +0, like humans) are played smart. How many of your PC's can handle 8 consecutive DC 22 will saves (30ft frightful presence - it gives you frightened 1 even on a success, so after the 1st, each PC is very likely rolling at -1)... Play it out sometime for sh!ts and giggles. I think you'll find your party dies.
I asked my wife, who knows the party's capabilities better than me. She said, "It would be very challenging, but we would win." She added that it would require a lot of retreating: the specter is in a building and the time is dawn, so they have a full spring day of sunlight available.
Also note that 8 intelligently played specters are not going to act like a coordinated commando force deftly exploiting their stealth and incorporealness. Specters have a pain starvation liability. So a group of specters would act like a loose cluster of evil beings competing for food. One reason for table variance in adventure path challenges is that some GMs play monsters as a well-trained, dedicated enemy force when the monsters are simply hungry.
The PCs handled the Frightful Presence of an 11th-level adult black dragon. That dragon challenged them to deal with the specter as they tried to negotiate with him rather than fight against him.
I cannot justify 8 specters in the upcoming challenge for the campaign itself. The dragon's friend Jang already told them about 1 so-called ghost in the abandoned building. Nor should I say, "This week, ignore the story. Your characters revert to 7th level and have to fight 8 specters in the middle of the night." However, I could double the challenge to 2 specters in the current campaign for a plot twist. I think I will do that.
... 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.I'm lurking this discussion, but this lack of perspective deserves comment.
I'm guessing you've played/GM'ed the hard cover version...
RotRL WAS a brutally difficult AP when it came out. They toned down a bunch of encounters (eg. Xanesha) in the hardcover, and PC power increased with time as more PC options became available (at the time, everyone was playing CRB only, because that was what was available)...
I was a player in the original D&D 3.5 version of Rise of the Runelords. My wife was converting it to Pathfinder rules using fan-created material from www.d20pfsrd.com. The Advanced Player's Guide was published as we began the 2nd module, The Skinsaw Murders, so we adjusted our characters with the new options.
We encountered Xanesha at 5th level instead of 6th. She wiped the floor with us. We lived only because my wife improvised and Xanesha decided to charm half the party as her new minions. The other half ran. We recruited more players and had the rematch at a formal dinner party under more favorable circumstances. Xanesha Dimension Doored away to escape the mayor's personal guard.
The next module, Hook Mountain Massacre, had ogres with ogre hooks. On a critical hit, an ogre hook in the hands of an ogre deals 70 to 80 damage. My character had 58 hit points at the time. Fortunately, the first crit was on Anastasia, a battle oracle with 84 hit points. She was the only character who could take that much damage and stay on her feat. She used Surprising Charge in reverse, protected by Grace, to retreat from the front line (hm, that is two immediate/swift actions. Perhaps I misremember). She healed herself up, returned to the front line, and survived a second crit.
That battle inspired my first post to the Paizo forums: What to do with a Gnome Ranger Monk?
Two weeks later, my wife retired as GM and I took over (see comment #99 above). Despite being a newbie GM, I altered encounters so that the PCs' information-gathering abilities gave them an advantage. I returned Xanesha to the game as a double agent playing both sides against each other for her personal advantage.
Note, Rise of the Runelords was written in 3.5, about, what, 2 years before Pathfinder even came? A year before even the alpha rules came out, in fact.
Rise of the Runelords (August 2007–January 2008) was the first adventure path and was written under Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 rules.
Council of Thieves (August 2009–January 2010) was the fifth adventure path and the first written under Pathfinder 1st Edition rules.Age of Ashes (August 2019–December 2019) was the twenty-fifth adventure path and the first written under Pathfinder 2nd Edition rules.
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Sounded like you were talking about one on one before.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.
I find that monsters rarely have much in the way of abilities or powers that synergize particularly well with their allies. There a a couple that do have such abilities, but monsters are pretty much designed to do one thing well and that is pretty much it. My experience has been equal level enemies do well when they can separate a party out and fight them one on one, but 4 on 4, the party is usually much better at aoE, and being able to concentrate fire. Abilities like hero points, consistent healing, buffing and rebuffing are just not things monsters get to do much of.
I don’t think I’ve seen any character deaths against an equal number of equal level enemies.
Comparing one to one is easier to phrase. However, the Bestiary creatures usually have better numbers for a simple Strike or special ability. A one-on-one battle tends to favor the creature unless the single PC has an attack that exploits a weakness of the creature. (And I don't mean only a Weakness ability that adds extra damage to a type of damage. I mean any vulnerability or nullification.)
Change that to four different PCs against four identical monsters of the same level, and the chance of being able to exploit a weakness is four times as great. No, make that ten times as great, because sometimes a combination of two...
Fun fact. You picked a monster that's actually in the errata pipeline. Specter's are broken with a capitol B.
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Fun fact. You picked a monster that's actually in the errata pipeline. Specter's are broken with a capitol B.
I had considered writing up the Extreme-Threat challenge of my original four party members facing one specter at 3rd level. However, the PCs had not enchanted their weapons with Weapon Potency runes until 4th level, two levels later than expected, which would have given them a major disadvantage against the incorporeal specter. Also, the Frightful Presence messing with Will saves hits low-level PCs especially hard.
However, a specter seems more balanced against 7th-level PCs.
How would I learn what is in the errata pipeline?
Fun fact. You picked a monster that's actually in the errata pipeline. Specter's are broken with a capitol B.I had considered writing up the Extreme-Threat challenge of my original four party members facing one specter at 3rd level. However, the PCs had not enchanted their weapons with Weapon Potency runes until 4th level, two levels later than expected, which would have given them a major disadvantage against the incorporeal specter. Also, the Frightful Presence messing with Will saves hits low-level PCs especially hard.
However, a specter seems more balanced against 7th-level PCs.
How would I learn what is in the errata pipeline?
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I'm running Rise of the Runelords in PF2. I'm keeping the CRs all the same. All the NPCs I'm using either pre-made ones from a PF2 source or using the GMG to build them.
My players' characters are absolutely not optimized. They built them for fun and story, not lopsided at all. And they're absolutely killing it. And since PF1 and 3.5 are all old school and way hard, according to the people arguing for easier PF2 paths, I still say that a lot people have a hard time because they build optimized one-trick pony characters, don't pay attention in the story or take notes (and pass up on opportunities to know a Big Bad Guy's weakness, for example), and don't work as a team.
And, yea, sometimes bad rolls happen to good characters. It's a thing that happens. But I just don't see that there's a systemic problem.
I'm running Rise of the Runelords in PF2. I'm keeping the CRs all the same. All the NPCs I'm using either pre-made ones from a PF2 source or using the GMG to build them.
My players' characters are absolutely not optimized. They built them for fun and story, not lopsided at all. And they're absolutely killing it...
What difficulty did your encounters amount to in PF2's encounter building system?
I have been converting Rise of the Runelords to PF2 as I run it, and I've found that keeping the CRs the same from a PF1 adventure tends to make adventures somewhat easy. In PF1, encounters gravitated around APL+1. Whereas in PF2 the difficulty of encounters gravitates around Moderate, what in PF1 would APL+2.
If I were to convert CRs as-is into PF2, the encounters would average out at Low encounters, with Severe encounters being rare.
When I was converting Second Darkness, which is also 3.5 like Rise of the Runelords instead of PF1, I wound up adding 1-2 encounters per level to keep things on track. Leveling was faster in 3.5 than in PF1, so that should be enough for the most part, where converting PF1 to PF2 would need more fine tuning once into mid levels.
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I'm running Rise of the Runelords in PF2. I'm keeping the CRs all the same. All the NPCs I'm using either pre-made ones from a PF2 source or using the GMG to build them.
My players' characters are absolutely not optimized. They built them for fun and story, not lopsided at all. And they're absolutely killing it. And since PF1 and 3.5 are all old school and way hard, according to the people arguing for easier PF2 paths, I still say that a lot people have a hard time because they build optimized one-trick pony characters, don't pay attention in the story or take notes (and pass up on opportunities to know a Big Bad Guy's weakness, for example), and don't work as a team.
And, yea, sometimes bad rolls happen to good characters. It's a thing that happens. But I just don't see that there's a systemic problem.
Rise isn't hard in PF2 though. As the Rot Grub indicates, doing a straight conversion of CR to level leaves tons of encounters trivial to low. Book 2 doesn't even have an encounter with a credible threat until half way through, and even that is probably a push over if you explored the dungeon thoroughly before hand. It is also chalk of full of tricks like that-- things you can do through role-play, infiltration, and planning that let you make encounters significantly easier.
The thing that made Rise dangerous in PF1 is fixed in PF2: save or dies. A couple of ghouls could still be frightening to level 5 PCs in PF1 because it just took one failed save to be left vulnerable for coup de grace. Coup de grace is now gone and the incapacitation trait makes it less likely to happen. Similarly, things that could really disrupt a party like a Yeth Hound's Bay only take people out of the fight on a critical failure.
Now, I stopped right before Black Maga, which would have definitely been dangerous, but it also has opportunity to sign post how dangerous it is. She's got a higher relative level than you would see in a PF2 adventure, but you also don't just open a door and get forced into a fight with her. Comparing Rise to Age of Ashes really just reinforces the central thesis of the thread: PF1 adventures were designed to be easier, and that's quite likely the better baseline to use for entry to the system.
In converting Ironfang Invasion to PF2, I usually go with convenient substitutions.
The invasion of the village Phaendar in Trail of the Hunted had many CR 1/2 Ironfang Recruit hobgoblins, a CR 1 Irongfang Scout, and a CR 2 Ironfang Heavy Trooper. The PF2 Bestiary had Hobgoblin Soldier, creature 1. I build the invasion force out of Hobgoblin Soldiers, increasing the difficulty, skipped the Ironfang Scout, and converted the Ironfang Heavy Trooper to a creature 2 and gave her 4 Hobgoblin Soldiers to command. I had several armed villagers fighting against the invasion to help out the party.
Two other challenges at 2nd level were a Wasp Swarm CR 3 and an advanced boar CR 3. The Bestiary had Wasp Swarm creature 4 and Daeodon (Giant Boar) creature 4. The typical Ironfang Patrols hunting the party in the Fangwood were supposed to be a CR 1 Ironfang Scout and 2 to 4 CR 1/2 Ironfang Recruits, but I used an Ironfang Heavy Trooper creature 2 and 3 Hobgoblin Soldiers creature 1 (a 130-xp threat).
Note that I routinely raised their PF1 challenges in my Iron Gods campaign by 2 levels, so going up only 1 level was going easy on them. Strangely, my players think I am a cupcake.
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I only converted books 3-6 of Ironfang, but it was pretty reasonable yeah. The fights that should have been tough were tough but there was plenty of room for PCs to feel like badasses. We also had way less PC death. I think we had more deaths in PF1 book 2 than than the rest of the campaign under PF2.
One X factor that can also sway difficulty a little is loot conversion. That's much harder to do on an equivalent basis, so table variance is more likely there.