Nobody Seems to Die

[Unicore]

When you take a hit that is 2x your total HP, you notice it pretty quickly.

Fall off a 120ft cliff? You immediately ask yourself if you have at least 30 HP. Same with a 500ft cliff and 125 hp.

I think the 2x total HP is about exactly the right number to allow for really swingy damage numbers on spells, environmental effects and some strikes, without turning into a game where characters just die randomly every 10 or 20 encounters.

The key is to having a damage threashold that you know could flat out kill you without you having anything you can do about it, without having that be a number that you face all the time.

Level 1 is, and always has been, the most dangerous level for players, but until you are at the highest levels of the game, you know there are creatures out in the world who can just flat out kill you with a single action. It makes the world feel dangerous.

[Ferious Thune]

Unicore wrote:

Level 1 is, and always has been, the most dangerous level for players, but until you are at the highest levels of the game, you know there are creatures out in the world who can just flat out kill you with a single action. It makes the world feel dangerous.

I think what I’ve been trying to say at least is that while there are creatures out there that can flat out kill a level 1 character 5, 10, 15, or even 20% of the time... you shouldn’t be fighting those creatures at level 1. But the game routinely sets you up to do so in the published adventures from Paizo. Those fights might otherwise be evenly matched, except for the massive damage rule, because being dropped to 0 in one hit is definitely a possibility at most levels except for very strong builds, but at least you can get better. A level 1-2 character that gets instant killed can’t even get a resurrect or raise dead without some kind of intervention from the GM (in the case of PFS by spending achievement points). The only thing the rule is accomplishing at the levels when it is by far the most likely to occur is to make players feel bad about the game, and more likely at first level to be brand new players who may not give it a second chance. So if you don’t want players to have that experience you either ignore the rule, or you roll both crit dice instead of doubling to lower the chances of massive damage, or you roll secretly and fudge the damage.

[Squiggit]

Unicore wrote:

Massive damage is one of the things that makes the higher level boss threats compellingly dangerous.

I dunno, "The GM got one weirdly lucky roll and now you need a new character" seems just about the least compelling way to end someone possible.

[Ascalaphus]

Massive damage from creatures is unlikely at higher levels, but Simple Hazards stay risky for longer.

Let's say we have a level 3 party with a rogue up ahead, checking for traps. The rogue is a halfling (because) and has Con 14. This gives (6) + (3*10) = 36HP.

The rogue fails to spot a level 6 hazard that's coming straight from GMG tables. The hazard has +20 to hit vs. the rogue's AC of (10 + L3 + 4dex + 2trained +1item) = 20. The hazard rolls a 10 and crits.

The hazard then rolls damage: 4d8+18 and happens to roll exactly average damage: 36. Multiplied by the crit and... dead rogue. So on running into this trap, that was a 27.5% death of sudden death for a fairly normally built character.

The lesson of course is that as the GMG says,

GMG wrote:

Simple hazards deal about twice as much damage

as complex hazards and have an attack bonus even
higher than the extreme attack bonus for a creature

So you should probably not use L+3 simple hazards anywhere at all. I think with simple hazards they were kinda going for a Temple of Doom kind of thing that you can spot and think "nope, not gonna facetank that".

Let's backtrack and instead look at a L+0 hazard. With damage of 2d10+13 it just can't kill the rogue by massive damage. But going by XP terms, that's a 40XP Trivial encounter so you won't run into it. You might run into a L+2 (Moderate) trap, or maybe have this one trap stuffed into an encounter as an added danger.

Let's consider the L+2 Moderate trap. A L5 Simple Hazard would have a +19 to hit so it needs to roll an 11 to crit the rogue. It does 4d8+14 damage, so with the crit to kill the die roll needs to be 36-14=22 on 4d8. Crunch some numbers, the odds of getting a crit and rolling enough dice are 11.487%.

That's a bit much for something that on a casual reading of the CRB looks like a reasonable encounter.

I do think simple hazards are actually one of the few places where death by massive damage has a place, but you should never deploy a hazard that has BOTH potential for death by massive damage AND is not trivial to spot. Rather, you spot it easily but the whole point is what do you do then, knowing that it's there and that trying to disable it could go oh so very wrong?

[Staffan Johansson]

Ascalaphus wrote:

Massive damage from creatures is unlikely at higher levels, but Simple Hazards stay risky for longer.

Yeah, hazards are poorly balanced IMO. Their DCs are overtuned in order to pose a serious challenge to a same-level character who is specialized in dealing with hazards (compare trap DCs to level-based DCs), but then their XP is set so you are encouraged to use hazards that are several levels above the party which then become near-impossible to deal with. That's an area that could use some errata.

"Solo" traps are, I think, a relic of a bygone age, when hp were a much bigger part of resource management. That is, let's say the AD&D fighter steps into a pit trap and gets hit for 10 points of damage out of their 25 or so hp - that's a serious hit, and you're going to either want to drink a potion to recover it, or the party healer's going to need to spend a spell or two to fix you up. Either way, those are resources you need to expend to deal with it. But in 3e and PF1, that's just two charges from your wand of cure light wounds – super easy, barely an inconvenience. And in PF2, that's a ten minute break while the healer patches you up. Ironically, 4e is probably the most "old-school" of the modern D&D versions in dealing with this, because healing is limited by healing surges. So, since a mildly damaging trap is just a small inconvenience, you need to use stronger traps in order to make PCs take notice.

Damn, I miss healing surges...

[The Gleeful Grognard]

Staffan Johansson wrote:

super easy, barely an inconvenience.

Oh really?

(Sorry, I couldn't help myself)

[Ubertron_X]

The Gleeful Grognard wrote:

Staffan Johansson wrote:

super easy, barely an inconvenience.

Oh really?

(Sorry, I couldn't help myself)

Not helping yourself is tight.

[thenobledrake]

Staffan Johansson wrote:

...their XP is set so you are encouraged to use hazards that are several levels above the party...

I don't think that is something that the writer intended, and I'd be interested in hearing why you feel "encouraged" by the XP value rather than by the threat-level.

Do you similarly feel encouraged to use higher-level monsters because of how their XP reward is set?

[Proven]

Agreed with thenobledrake. I assumed that the simple hazards were so low in XP because you use them in an encounter with other creatures, like a pitfall trap that enemies push you into, or trip wire trap that triggers while you're chasing after an enemy (e.g. Plaguestone). You never do an encounter that's just a simple trap, and instead simple traps are meant to fill in the gaps of XP in an encounter's math and make it more interesting than just a Party Level -4 creature.

Complex traps can be their own encounter, and that's what's done with the infamous trap in Age of Ashes. Even then, the damage isn't what makes that so risky but the mechanics behind the damage. And even then, they give you the chance to retreat with just a double or triple move action (or maybe my GM changed something; haven't read the book myself).

[Queaux]

The system is pretty easy to manipulate as a GM to make player death more likely when the story calls for it. If you want a villain to be especially despicable or efficient, you can have them spend actions attacking downed PCs until they are dead. The death of a PC can give a villain a standing that they wouldn't have otherwise. Normally, you wouldn't do such a thing because the story and experience would suffer for it, but there are times it is called for and the system is capable of enacting a fair PC death.

In other situations, you can make random death more possible by including persistent damage sources or something like explode on death swarms of enemies. That's also a tool to use sparingly, but it can be used to get across a storytelling point.

I don't think death is far from the mind of my players when they are in my games because I flirt with deadly mechanics like the above. That said, I do my best to make sure encounters don't kill the PCs in the games I run unless there's a really good reason for it.

[Staffan Johansson]

thenobledrake wrote:

Staffan Johansson wrote:

...their XP is set so you are encouraged to use hazards that are several levels above the party...

I don't think that is something that the writer intended, and I'd be interested in hearing why you feel "encouraged" by the XP value rather than by the threat-level.

Do you similarly feel encouraged to use higher-level monsters because of how their XP reward is set?

This particularly applies to complex hazards, not to simple hazards used to "spice up" an encounter. But in the archetypal complex hazard scenario, it's the hazard versus the party – the party runs into a haunt, or a death trap, or a dangerous wilderness situation, or something like that. But a single same-level complex hazard is just 40 XP, which is a "trivial" encounter. In order to get to a "moderate" encounter, you need 80 XP which is a level+2 hazard, and a level+2 hazard is fiendishly hard to deal with. Take a 10th level character and make them a Master in Thievery (by no means certain) and give them Dex 20 and infiltrator's thieves' tools for a total bonus of +23 — that's pretty much as good as you're going to get at level 10. You'll also have a Perception check of +21 (Master +16, Wis +4, Goggles of Night +1), +23 against traps with Trapfinder. We're talking an ultra-specialist trapfinder: Master in the skill, one class feat spent specifically on traps, and good gear.

A level 12 hazard will typically have Stealth and Disable DC 35 (often one at 38). That means the specialist will need to roll 12+ (or 15+) to even find it, and once they find it they need 11+ (or 14+) to disable it. And that's assuming you can get to where you need to be to disable it, as it's common for complex hazards to have their weak points protected.

And again, that's assuming a character that has spent a fair amount of resources specifically on dealing with that sort of threat. If the group lacks a rogue specializing in traps, we might instead have a Thievery skill of +19 and a Perception value of +19 without trap-specific bonuses. Good luck dealing with that trap.

[thenobledrake]

Staffan Johansson wrote:

This particularly applies to complex hazards, not to simple hazards used to "spice up" an encounter. But in the archetypal complex hazard scenario, it's the hazard versus the party – the party runs into a haunt, or a death trap, or a dangerous wilderness situation, or something like that. But a single same-level complex hazard is just 40 XP, which is a "trivial" encounter. In order to get to a "moderate" encounter, you need 80 XP which is a level+2 hazard, and a level+2 hazard is fiendishly hard to deal with.

I still don't see what part of this has "encouraged" you to aim for a moderate or harder difficulty of encounter using a hazard, but not get there by doing something like using a complex hazard and some creatures that know it's there (or even that don't, and will have to deal with the hazard during the encounter as well).

I'm not seeing any reason to draw a line between simple and complex hazards to say one side of the line is for spicing up an encounter, and the other side of the line is supposed to be it's own encounter, either...

So you being encouraged in this way seems like a you-caused thing, not a game-caused thing.

[Squiggit]

thenobledrake wrote:

So you being encouraged in this way seems like a you-caused thing, not a game-caused thing.

Staffan's not the one who decided on the XP budget for hazards, though.

Your argument seems to boil down to "you should know better"... but in order to do that you essentially have to concede that the information provided by the game is misleading. Otherwise the GM wouldn't need to know better than to trust the XP budgets put forward by the game.

[The Gleeful Grognard]

Squiggit wrote:

thenobledrake wrote:

So you being encouraged in this way seems like a you-caused thing, not a game-caused thing.

Staffan's not the one who decided on the XP budget for hazards, though.

Your argument seems to boil down to "you should know better"... but in order to do that you essentially have to concede that the information provided by the game is misleading. Otherwise the GM wouldn't need to know better than to trust the XP budgets put forward by the game.

We come back to there being two parts to the encounter budget system though.

Exp budget
Creature level

If you want to fit hazards into an exp budget then a +2 hazard will be, as written "Moderate- or severe-threat boss", ignoring the boss element ofc.
A +2 creature is more likely to cause a party wipe at level 1 than a level +2 simple hazard imo. (Although both can, because level 1 is, not safe)

If a GM wants to hold the system advice accountable when it comes to encounter building, then they should take all of the system advice into account.

[Djinn71]

Proven wrote:

Agreed with thenobledrake. I assumed that the simple hazards were so low in XP because you use them in an encounter with other creatures, like a pitfall trap that enemies push you into, or trip wire trap that triggers while you're chasing after an enemy (e.g. Plaguestone). You never do an encounter that's just a simple trap, and instead simple traps are meant to fill in the gaps of XP in an encounter's math and make it more interesting than just a Party Level -4 creature.

That doesn't seem to be what the designers intended when writing the CRB, in fact it mostly implies the opposite.

"HAZARDS
Exploration can get broken up by traps and other hazards
(see Hazards on page 520). Simple hazards pose a threat
to the PCs only once and can be dealt with in exploration
mode. Complex hazards require jumping into encounter
mode until the hazard is dealt with. Disabling a trap or
overcoming a hazard usually takes place in encounter
mode. PCs have a better chance to detect hazards while
exploring if they’re using the Search activity (and the
Detect Magic activity, in the case of some magic traps)."
~ Page 498 of the Core Rule Book

Honestly, simple hazards become much more dangerous in fights with creatures (who use them smartly) and should honestly have more xp in that situation. Simple Hazards just seem undervalued xp/level wise both on their own and in conjunction with monsters.

[thenobledrake]

Squiggit wrote:

Staffan's not the one who decided on the XP budget for hazards, though.

They are the one deciding the XP budget that they feel they are supposed to be aiming for, though.

Because the book doesn't say to use a moderate budget when there is nothing in the encounter except a complex hazard.

I feel like what the book does do (equate same level as characters as the start of "boss" tier of threat, provide XP values for a wide variety of levels of thing, provide difficulty budgets for not just 'normal difficulty' and harder encounters but also easier ones) can, and in my case did, lead a reader to believe "encounters with just a hazard are meant to be low-difficulty" rather than encourage said reader to use higher level hazards to try and fill a higher XP budget.

Squiggit wrote:

Your argument seems to boil down to "you should know better"... but in order to do that you essentially have to concede that the information provided by the game is misleading. Otherwise the GM wouldn't need to know better than to trust the XP budgets put forward by the game.

That's way off base.

My argument boils down to "I read the same section of rules, and don't see the part where 'aim for moderate instead of trivial encounter budget' was part of what it said about complex hazards.

[Proven]

Djinn71 wrote:

Proven wrote:

Agreed with thenobledrake. I assumed that the simple hazards were so low in XP because you use them in an encounter with other creatures, like a pitfall trap that enemies push you into, or trip wire trap that triggers while you're chasing after an enemy (e.g. Plaguestone). You never do an encounter that's just a simple trap, and instead simple traps are meant to fill in the gaps of XP in an encounter's math and make it more interesting than just a Party Level -4 creature.

That doesn't seem to be what the designers intended when writing the CRB, in fact it mostly implies the opposite.

"HAZARDS
Exploration can get broken up by traps and other hazards
(see Hazards on page 520). Simple hazards pose a threat
to the PCs only once and can be dealt with in exploration
mode. Complex hazards require jumping into encounter
mode until the hazard is dealt with. Disabling a trap or
overcoming a hazard usually takes place in encounter
mode. PCs have a better chance to detect hazards while
exploring if they’re using the Search activity (and the
Detect Magic activity, in the case of some magic traps)."
~ Page 498 of the Core Rule Book

Honestly, simple hazards become much more dangerous in fights with creatures (who use them smartly) and should honestly have more xp in that situation. Simple Hazards just seem undervalued xp/level wise both on their own and in conjunction with monsters.

Maybe I need more experience with Hazards, but my experience with them so far still matches up with the book. A Simple Hazard is way less threatening than a monster mostly because they’re one and done. You either have the hazard at party level or higher as part of an exploration mode challenge/puzzle and then the players Treat Wounds afterward, or you put the hazard in a combat and use ones that are below party level. Simple Hazards are designed to do 2-3 creatures worth of attacks and then automatically kill itself.

Then Complex Hazards can be an encounter, but there’s no reason then that you can’t A) have it be a Trivial Encounter, B) opt to have it threaten an NPC instead of the party, or C) treat it like just another monster in the enemy party as it’s essentially a monster that needs one good roll to disable since hazards essentially have 1 hit point when you can immediately attempt to disable them.

One of my favorite examples for Complex is Quicksand. How is Quicksand a threat without a larger encounter ongoing? You pull a player out and then dodge it for the rest of the encounter. There’s a threatening moment at first but it can be quickly managed unless the enemies use Shove or similar actions. And nothing stops you from using the hazard against the enemies. Quicksand comes off as a way to either create a dilemma for part of the encounter, or to give lower level creatures a combo opportunity that would just be baked into their normal actions at higher levels. And like Death Saves the party should always have an opportunity to come to the rescue.

Maybe it’s about expectations? Are Hazards death traps or are they ways to make combat encounters and exploration challenges more interesting?

Or maybe it’s because I’ve never used a Hazard that’s higher than party level yet. Too many creatures in the Bestiary I still want to try stuff with, so weaker Hazards are my way of spicing up an encounter when I don’t want to just add more enemies or a higher level enemy. Anything else is just a skill challenge in disguise.

[breithauptclan]

thenobledrake wrote:

My argument boils down to "I read the same section of rules, and don't see the part where 'aim for moderate instead of trivial encounter budget' was part of what it said about complex hazards.

Build the scenario from the other direction - story first.

Let's say I have a group of kobolds that are in a small cave. Our noble murderhobos come along and kill them all, then heal up over their dead corpses. Then they go farther into their cave and find their box of loot. But wait, these pesky kobolds placed a trap to protect their valuables.

So, what encounter level should I choose for this single one-and-done trap, and what hazard level should I place it at?

If I choose to have an on-level hazard, it will end up being a trivial encounter. One that the PCs will just find a minor annoyance at best. Even if someone triggers the trap and takes full damage, a 10 or 20 minute patch-up job will fix that like it didn't ever happen. No resources spent.

On the other hand, if I want a more challenging encounter level, then the hazard level ends up in the one-hit-kill territory.

[Proven]

breithauptclan wrote:

thenobledrake wrote:

My argument boils down to "I read the same section of rules, and don't see the part where 'aim for moderate instead of trivial encounter budget' was part of what it said about complex hazards.

Build the scenario from the other direction - story first.

Let's say I have a group of kobolds that are in a small cave. Our noble murderhobos come along and kill them all, then heal up over their dead corpses. Then they go farther into their cave and find their box of loot. But wait, these pesky kobolds placed a trap to protect their valuables.

So, what encounter level should I choose for this single one-and-done trap, and what hazard level should I place it at?

If I choose to have an on-level hazard, it will end up being a trivial encounter. One that the PCs will just find a minor annoyance at best. Even if someone triggers the trap and takes full damage, a 10 or 20 minute patch-up job will fix that like it didn't ever happen. No resources spent.

On the other hand, if I want a more challenging encounter level, then the hazard level ends up in the one-hit-kill territory.

Narratively, if I wanted one last trap as a sort of Final Boss, then I’d either risk the single Complex Hazard (but make it a custom hazard and control for its damage and design a whole encounter around it, since it is a boss fight), or I’d have 2-4 Complex Hazards that would interact with each other (and maybe even some

Simple Hazards) like a self-rewinding Rube Goldberg machine.

Otherwise, narratively, there’s no reason to have a final trap unless it’s interactive and takes multiple steps to disable.

[Ched Greyfell]

If the party invested that much in healing and such, they deserve to benefit from their choices.
Keep in mind getting dropped from a crit instantly takes you to Dying 2.
Also, part of players' benefit, I've noticed comes from total meta transparency. Players saying out loud, "I'm at Dying 3. Hope someone can heal me soon."
I don't allow this. No one else should know anything but they've dropped. Are they dead yet? Go find out.
But if PCs survive from good choices, good for them. I like smart play. I TPK'd a group who were acting moronically in AoA last week.

[thenobledrake]

breithauptclan wrote:

So, what encounter level should I choose for this single one-and-done trap, and what hazard level should I place it at?

Trivial sounds right to me, since the narrative of the hazard is not a big important thing. I wouldn't, for example, want the "...and they left a trap, too" part of the story to be competing with the "you do battle with a group of kobolds..." part of the story for with part was the main event of the tale.

But more so what I think you've done with this example is just highlighted how to make a hazard narratively dull - because to me you aren't describing a choice between a "minor annoyance at best" and an important challenge, but between a low-impact annoyance and a high-impact annoyance, because that's just about all that a trapped treasure chest can be in the first place; a thing which happens because it makes narrative sense and fits the tropes of the genre, but has never actually been interesting, and the best-case scenario for is that the players are going to have it dealt with and moved on to an actually interesting moment of story or game-play without it giving them time to think about how much of a waste of time a post-script hazard is game-play-wise, or having enough effect to stick in their memory as a time something bad happened.

And again... no part of what the book says about hazards says anything along the lines of "hazards being trivial encounters is bad" or "aim for a higher encounter budget when picking out hazards, even though a quick glance at the stats for one should make it clear how deadly that is for characters."

[Captain Morgan]

Whether someone can tell their teammate is stable or not is such a wonky decision.

[Schreckstoff]

I managed to kill a full tank lvl 6 champion via Death Knell recently, and that was through BM, Lay on Hands x2 and a Heal.

Was surprised at first but the encounter was severe.

[Unicore]

If you really want to kill party members, all you have to do is make them face a level +2 enemy with the ability to poison party members with high DC poisons/or lots of persistent damage. Those are brutal.

[Ravingdork]

Unicore wrote:

If you really want to kill party members, all you have to do is make them face a level +2 enemy with the ability to poison party members with high DC poisons/or lots of persistent damage. Those are brutal.

Every. Single. Time.