Extreme / unfair encounters


Pathfinder Second Edition General Discussion

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I was playing an AP and encountered perhaps the most unfair extreme encounter I have ever seen.

At the time it just mullered us and everything we tried didn't seem to work.

But then I looked up its stats and I was amazed that it was chosen.

The monster is a voidglutton and it had a couple of unique features that make it the nastiest +4 level encounter I have faced.

First it has extreme AC (a +4 enemy is hard to hit anyway but extreme ac means that a level 4 martial needs a 19 to hit it.)

Second its immune to nearly all magic (wisps are like that) so you can't debuff it, or ware it down with half damage spells.

Which means your strategies besides spamming magic missiles are trying to flank it and praying for a crit (dangerous given it hits a heavy armor shield warriors on a 4 and everyone else on a 2).

Am I missing any viable strategies against this monster ?

Also have any of you seen even meaner +4 level encounters you want to share?


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To give the direct answer to your specific encounter: You aren't supposed to fight that creature at the point in which you are.

Abomination Vaults:
Abomination Vaults is an open-ended dungeon crawl with the expectation that groups will know when they're in over their heads and cut and run. This also leads to encounters throughout the dungeon which function as places to return to once you have more information and power.

The voidglutton is hidden behind a powerful illusion that far outstrips what players in book 1 should be capable of seeing through easily, though a persistent group could discover the secret entrance. That encounter in particular guards fairly impressive treasure for the level and the encounter even notes that the voidglutton has little interest in pursuing fleeing characters. There's little to be gain from actually fighting it and more serves as a dangerous encounter for more powerful characters. It will slaughter most parties who had just gone through book 1.

That said, with extreme encounters (at low-levels), you want to use things that cannot miss, or in the very least have a high chance of inflicting status effects that will slow it down. Stopping within range of the creature allows it to attack more often with a significantly higher chance to crit or in the very least hit. Spells like fear, goblin pox, blur, or obscuring mist are very helpful as they allow you to typically tilt the odds more in your favor (mostly) risk free. Magic immune creatures (such as this voidglutton) are still not immune to environmental effects that your spells create, so granting concealment is a powerful tool that can turn crits into misses.

Bombs typically deal chip damage, along with magic missile, reflex save spells typically can plink away at hit point totals, depending on the opponent's saves. Generally, the party should view such a threat as potentially life-ending with a single good attack and an extreme-level encounter should be treated as such, so movement and denying movement is key. Frontline characters should be attempting to Trip or otherwise stop the opponent rather than deal damage and the move away before it can retaliate.


Reminds me of early 3.X modules where low-level creatures meet a Roper and a Succubus (separately, not that it matters since both can TPK the party easily). Of course, the party wasn't meant to fight either of them and the GM was specifically told this, and the encounters were meant to drive home the point that PCs should not hack/slash their way through everything.
Hard lesson if a few PCs die first...

While I probably wouldn't go meta and tell the players when they faced one of those creatures, I do normally say as much as the beginning of a campaign, and might mention that notion again before such a session.

Hopefully your GM played the encounter as written because Paizo has a (fine IMO) habit of including difficult monsters with subpar tactics or situations to account for that. If you're not meant to fight this one, it's doubtful your party would know that it seems unless the adventure had a clue or signal somewhere. Hmm.


We just fought this monstrosity too. One thing I did notice looking in the book-specifically the Advancement Track on page 3:

Spoiler:
"The heroes advance to 5th level after speaking to Otari's ghost."

If, like us, you encountered everything else already, everyone should have leveled up before meeting out mutual friend.


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I just TPKd a group of three lv8s using 4x lv5s and 1x lv6 NPC.

Sometimes life surprises you.

(and next week, rescue mission / escape session! I'll have to work something out...)


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Castilliano wrote:
Reminds me of early 3.X modules where low-level creatures meet a Roper and a Succubus.

Still one of my favorite modules and definitely taught me that my players will happily feed a roper anything to get past it. They practically started a cult around that thing.


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Ruzza wrote:
Castilliano wrote:
Reminds me of early 3.X modules where low-level creatures meet a Roper and a Succubus.
Still one of my favorite modules and definitely taught me that my players will happily feed a roper anything to get past it. They practically started a cult around that thing.

I'm hoping to convert it to PF2 in a "Best of Greyhawk" campaign. :)

(Though not the series it's a part of.)


siegfriedliner wrote:
Also have any of you seen even meaner +4 level encounters you want to share?

Not a +4 Encounter, just a Moderate one: 2 Brimoraks for level 4 PCs. It lasted one round.

The Voidglutton is quite easy to run away from. If you player stayed despite the obvious invulnerability of the creature, I think they missed the fact that a sandbox dungeon is a place where you can meet monsters above your league.


Castilliano wrote:
Reminds me of early 3.X modules where low-level creatures meet a Roper and a Succubus

What is that module called? Sounds like a fun one


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siegfriedliner wrote:

I was playing an AP and encountered perhaps the most unfair extreme encounter I have ever seen.

At the time it just mullered us and everything we tried didn't seem to work.

But then I looked up its stats and I was amazed that it was chosen.

The monster is a voidglutton and it had a couple of unique features that make it the nastiest +4 level encounter I have faced.

First it has extreme AC (a +4 enemy is hard to hit anyway but extreme ac means that a level 4 martial needs a 19 to hit it.)

Second its immune to nearly all magic (wisps are like that) so you can't debuff it, or ware it down with half damage spells.

Which means your strategies besides spamming magic missiles are trying to flank it and praying for a crit (dangerous given it hits a heavy armor shield warriors on a 4 and everyone else on a 2).

Am I missing any viable strategies against this monster ?

Reminds me of the Dahaka from Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. You don't fight it - you run. And to be fair, running from the Dahaka was some of the most fun scenes from that game.


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Barbarian Scholar wrote:
Castilliano wrote:
Reminds me of early 3.X modules where low-level creatures meet a Roper and a Succubus
What is that module called? Sounds like a fun one

Good ol' Forge of Fury. Not sure if it's just my personal experience, but I remember that module being hard to run in my area because so many people had played through it before. Absolutely going from my gut feeling here, but it seems like it was more common for starting groups to cut their teeth on that than they were something like the Sunless Citadel.

Silver Crusade

Castilliano wrote:

Reminds me of early 3.X modules where low-level creatures meet a Roper and a Succubus (separately, not that it matters since both can TPK the party easily). Of course, the party wasn't meant to fight either of them and the GM was specifically told this, and the encounters were meant to drive home the point that PCs should not hack/slash their way through everything.

Hard lesson if a few PCs die first...

While I probably wouldn't go meta and tell the players when they faced one of those creatures, I do normally say as much as the beginning of a campaign, and might mention that notion again before such a session.

Hopefully your GM played the encounter as written because Paizo has a (fine IMO) habit of including difficult monsters with subpar tactics or situations to account for that. If you're not meant to fight this one, it's doubtful your party would know that it seems unless the adventure had a clue or signal somewhere. Hmm.

Uh, this thing has IMMOBILIZE on its ranged attack. When we encountered it fleeing really was NOT an option (I assure you, we would have done so if we could have). Fortunately the GM made sure we were level 5 before meeting this and we still came uncomfortably close to a TPK.


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We are paying in the same AP and almost TPK in every session. Welcome to PF2 I guess.


Orville Redenbacher wrote:
We are paying in the same AP and almost TPK in every session. Welcome to PF2 I guess.

I am running RoG atm and my party tends to yoyo from destroying encounters to forgetting all tactics and getting themselves in real danger.

Silver Crusade

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Orville Redenbacher wrote:
We are paying in the same AP and almost TPK in every session. Welcome to PF2 I guess.

The first book at least is extremely over tuned.

My character essentially died 3 times in a single session (twice it was basically a TPK, saved by GM fiat, the other time I ran into Vampiric touch at level 1).

We ended up playing most of book 1 at 1 level higher than recommended. And still had plenty of tough fights.

I just hope no beginner groups play this. If this was anything close to my first adventure in PF2 (not at all unlikely since it is a low tier AP set in the same location as the beginner box) it would almost certainly have been my last.


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pauljathome wrote:
Orville Redenbacher wrote:
We are paying in the same AP and almost TPK in every session. Welcome to PF2 I guess.

The first book at least is extremely over tuned.

My character essentially died 3 times in a single session (twice it was basically a TPK, saved by GM fiat, the other time I ran into Vampiric touch at level 1).

We ended up playing most of book 1 at 1 level higher than recommended. And still had plenty of tough fights.

I just hope no beginner groups play this. If this was anything close to my first adventure in PF2 (not at all unlikely since it is a low tier AP set in the same location as the beginner box) it would almost certainly have been my last.

Yeap, its over tuned in my player experience for sure. My GM is using roll20 so I am seeing his foes numbers. My PC has little ability to do much against them. Sure, we could run, but everything is faster than use with debilitating range attacks to boot.

Could be my GM isnt running this well, I do get the impression the GM is a very busy person. Though, every week its like a few rolls go our way and thats all thats keeping us alive. Tactics have nothing to do with it, its all in the math; we are simply way outclassed.


Our GM last night told us not to go down some stairs after we did a +2 encounter that dropped our fighter and everyone else was at half or lower HP. Could count the number of times the party as a whole rolled 10 or above on one hand, was a rough night. Good to know everything is staying on par.

Grand Lodge

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This sounds like it is primarily focused on a single AP book or at least a limited list of just a few adventures. IMO that does not represent a problem with the game system or even the authors. More so just perhaps a developer or two who either need more experience or a talking to if they are "killer" type GMs. I don't find the majority of the Pathfinder 2E content to be "overtuned." Generally, OP encounters have more to do with party make-up, player tactics, bad dice, or overly aggressive GMs than intentionally written. YMMV


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I'd just like to point out that the voidglutton is a fair bit faster than any PC is likely to be with its 40ft fly speed.
Sure the GM is told it shouldn't pursue, but the PCs don't know that.

Higher level encounters in APs are already nasty without overtuned monsters like this one.

Grand Lodge

I don't have this AP so just for clarity, at what level is the party expected to deal with said voidglutton?


4 or 5, depending on what the party chooses to do.

But as Ruzza points out, they can nope out and come back at any time with no penalty.

Edit: It is listed as an "Extreme 4" encounter, to be specific.


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TwilightKnight wrote:
This sounds like it is primarily focused on a single AP book or at least a limited list of just a few adventures. IMO that does not represent a problem with the game system or even the authors. More so just perhaps a developer or two who either need more experience or a talking to if they are "killer" type GMs. I don't find the majority of the Pathfinder 2E content to be "overtuned." Generally, OP encounters have more to do with party make-up, player tactics, bad dice, or overly aggressive GMs than intentionally written. YMMV

I was going to comment something related to your points here.

There's three kinds of "overtuned" that may be at work here: the first kind, is the author of the AP using a higher number of Severe and Extreme budget encounters than they should, putting more party level or higher creatures into encounters than they should, or setting up the narrative so that players feel required to push on through nearly a dozen encounters without taking time to rest somewhere in the middle.

That kind of overtuning is easy to measure, and can be seen in Age of Ashes, Extinction Curse, and Agents of Edgewatch, though it does seem to be trending towards less frequent over the course of them.

The second kind is the creature stats themselves, which can be a little harder to measure because the guidelines for building creatures are deliberately loose. However, there are some clear cases present in at least Agents of Edgewatch where some custom creatures for the adventure are, in effect, as good as a PC can be for their level - but in two classes at once. That's a clear "this creature has too much kick" but many other creatures are more subtle where it comes down to having an extreme value, some high values, and some moderate values but maybe somethign high should be moderate or something moderate should be low.

And last, but possessing the most dramatic results in my experience, is the kind of overtuning that is very hard (at least for the person doing it) to realize even exists: GM overtuning. Looking over an encounter area, seeing what can be used, then seeing the creature's abilities and how they can interact with that area, and how those abilities interact with each other and be used to affect a party, is a skill. As is realizing that you can use that information to hit a variety of difficulty levels as opposed to there being such a thing as "I just ran it normally." which results in the "intended" difficulty.

From what I can gather of the anecdotes I've seen, and of my own group's experiences, a lot of the "the APs are causing TPKs" folks are actually having GM overtuning be the cause, and aren't realizing it because the other 2 kinds of overtuning are easier to spot, especially when viewed from the perspective of a GM who is not deliberately being a killer GM, but also isn't tailoring the difficulty they play toward to match their players' current skill level. Which is most likely how come my group, and many others, have gone through the very same "TPK machine" sections and found them to not actually be that bad.


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Thunder999 wrote:
Sure the GM is told it shouldn't pursue, but the PCs don't know that.

...why would the PCs need to know that?

Players should know that retreat is actually an option, even if it uses the Chase mechanics, not feel like the existence of creatures with higher Speed traits than their characters makes it impossible to ever say "Nope, this was a bad choice, I'd like to leave now."

Oh, and it also doesn't actually require knowing whether it will or won't chase you to try to run, so it's extra irrelevant that the PCs don't know this creature won't chase.

Grand Lodge

Just looking at the creature in isolation* (since I don't have the AP) using Nethys and comparing it to the GameMaster Guide creature build rules, I think it would serve fine as a boss fight for a level 5 party, or maybe a level 4 group if the PCs had a tactical or environmental advantage to balance the severity of the challenge. Though I think the creature would just be better served classified as a level 9 instead of 8. I assume the designer rationalized that its very low hit points and low average damage output would be the balance against its high to extreme Perception, skills, AC, saves, DCs and attack modifiers. Course comparing the lists of high to extreme numbers vs the moderate to low, one column is a bit heavy.

*I don't know what the adventure looks like leading up to this encounter. Whether the PCs are level four or five they would definitely want to be fresh going into this fight.

Grand Lodge

thenobledrake wrote:
The second kind is the creature stats themselves, which can be a little harder to measure because the guidelines for building creatures are deliberately loose.

I think this has a lot to do with the issue. The designers intentionally made the creature rules less rigid than 1E so we could see much more diversity without "breaking" the rules. However, it also means it is much harder to judge what is a fair/balanced encounter and what level is appropriate for a creature's assignment. Over the course of the first year especially, but even the 2nd, it can be challenging to design consistently balanced encounters, especially over the course of a lengthy adventure path. Due to deadlines and the availability of "good" players it can also be challenging to playtest adventures before they make it to print.

Silver Crusade

AnimatedPaper wrote:

4 or 5, depending on what the party chooses to do.

But as Ruzza points out, they can nope out and come back at any time with no penalty.

Edit: It is listed as an "Extreme 4" encounter, to be specific.

Again, as long as the GM ignores one of its attacks. The ranged attack that almost can't miss that immobilizes the target. Kinda hard to run away when you're stuck.


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To help add some context to this specific concern, a post from the writer, James Jacobs. There are a few important things to note it reference to both difficulty and sandbox design. In particular...

James Jacobs wrote:
That said, it's impossible to set up a range of encoutners that are varied and interesting that EVERY group will experience in that valley between "too easy" and "too hard." We have to lean on GMs to moderate things as best works for their table in that category.
James Jacobs wrote:
Some encounters, thus, are meant to be tough. The idea of finding something too tough to fight and then having to flee and nurse your wounds and ego and then come back when you're higher level to get "revenge" is a big part of the sandbox experience as well.
James Jacobs wrote:
Of course, that does mean that GMs need to be ready to adjust the standard "monsters fight as best as they are able to kill PCs." If a fight ends up looming toward the TPK range, you as the GM should consider having the monster make tactical mistakes, not attack characters who have fallen, or otherwise give out hints to the players as how they can best escape.

Edit: Speaking for myself here and not the designers, but please be careful throwing around terms like "overtuned" or "unbalanced" so quickly. The writers put a lot of effort into this material and also read these forums (among others, I assume) and it's got to be disheartening to see people so easily dismiss a project you poured a lot of care into.


I plan to boost up the characters a level before they face that encounter. I think they should be lvl 5 before they square off in that encounter.


Also keep in mind that the encounter building rules do not take into account the party level meta, as in 4 vs 8 is probably a lot harder than 16 vs 20, especially as there seems to be a major power spike in between party level 4 and 5 (e.g. level 3 spells) and as such many (early) APs seem to struggle with level 4 groups and their respecive extreme encounters.


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thenobledrake wrote:

There's three kinds of "overtuned" that may be at work here: the first kind, is the author of the AP using a higher number of Severe and Extreme budget encounters than they should, putting more party level or higher creatures into encounters than they should, or setting up the narrative so that players feel required to push on through nearly a dozen encounters without taking time to rest somewhere in the middle.

That kind of overtuning is easy to measure, and can be seen in Age of Ashes, Extinction Curse, and Agents of Edgewatch, though it does seem to be trending towards less frequent over the course of them.

This can probably be chalked down to using established PF1 writers with habits that are... well, bad sounds harsh, but maybe "no longer fit for purpose" is more accurate?

Thing is, PF1 encounter building guidelines were pretty much a joke, because of the extreme disparities in power level (as well as the wand of cure light wounds which negated the concept of hp attrition which was a core part of the assumption behind those guidelines). So traditionally, PF1 adventures skewed pretty heavily toward higher-level than expected encounters in order to provide a proper challenge. And when those writers started making PF2 adventures instead, they carried those habits over without properly internalizing the fact that when PF2 says an encounter is severe, it means it.


pauljathome wrote:
AnimatedPaper wrote:

4 or 5, depending on what the party chooses to do.

But as Ruzza points out, they can nope out and come back at any time with no penalty.

Edit: It is listed as an "Extreme 4" encounter, to be specific.

Again, as long as the GM ignores one of its attacks. The ranged attack that almost can't miss that immobilizes the target. Kinda hard to run away when you're stuck.

Ranged attack with a 10’ increment. And decent odds of breaking the effect if you burn a hero point.

You’re correct about that being scary, but what range is important here, given it’s non interest in pursuit.


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Staffan Johansson wrote:
thenobledrake wrote:

There's three kinds of "overtuned" that may be at work here: the first kind, is the author of the AP using a higher number of Severe and Extreme budget encounters than they should, putting more party level or higher creatures into encounters than they should, or setting up the narrative so that players feel required to push on through nearly a dozen encounters without taking time to rest somewhere in the middle.

That kind of overtuning is easy to measure, and can be seen in Age of Ashes, Extinction Curse, and Agents of Edgewatch, though it does seem to be trending towards less frequent over the course of them.

This can probably be chalked down to using established PF1 writers with habits that are... well, bad sounds harsh, but maybe "no longer fit for purpose" is more accurate?

Thing is, PF1 encounter building guidelines were pretty much a joke, because of the extreme disparities in power level (as well as the wand of cure light wounds which negated the concept of hp attrition which was a core part of the assumption behind those guidelines). So traditionally, PF1 adventures skewed pretty heavily toward higher-level than expected encounters in order to provide a proper challenge. And when those writers started making PF2 adventures instead, they carried those habits over without properly internalizing the fact that when PF2 says an encounter is severe, it means it.

Yup, I identified this pretty much immediately when transitioning over the PF2 because some of the encounters that were rough were stuff that clearly would have worked in PF1 - and, even though it can be hard for customers to remember, the authors of APs don't necessarily have the special early access to the rules necessary to have them all re-learned in advance, so it's to be expected for a while at the start of a new edition for there to be a period of the authors getting used to the new ways in which the game functions just like the rest of us are.

Which is why the only author I'm actually disappointed in the work of (I won't say which) is one that didn't just have mechanical things match up to the new style, but also organizational and narrative elements just not where they should be in a Paizo product.

Silver Crusade

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Ruzza wrote:


Edit: Speaking for myself here and not the designers, but please be careful throwing around terms like "overtuned" or "unbalanced" so quickly. The writers put a lot of effort into this material and also read these forums (among others, I assume) and it's got to be disheartening to see people so easily dismiss a project you poured a lot of care into.

The writers also have to be told when they are creating material that IS just too hard or built incorrectly or they'll keep doing it.

I am playing Gauntlight with experienced players and a very good GM. Admittedly, some of the characters are slightly suboptimal deliberately because the players wanted to try out something different.

But is it really the case that Paizo thinks that any low level rogue who isn't a thief is so weak that it isn't viable? That an alchemist isn't really viable? A front liner who doesn't have a con of 16 isn't viable?

And, to repeat myself, if something is designed to teach players that their characters should run away then do NOT give them an attack that immobilizes their characters !!!!!. We WANTED to run away in this fight, we didn't have the option unless we abandoned some of the characters.

I'm a little bit sorry if saying that disheartens the author but I think getting Paizo the message is far, far more important. And we ARE being at least somewhat polite. We're calling the encounters over tuned and NOT insulting the author. Unless you think criticizing a work is the same as criticizing the author, of course.


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I 100% agree that Abomination Vaults is really tough. I play with 6 players and I haven't changed any encounters. And my players are still experiencing tough fights, even character deaths. I play it mean, as I want the fights to be merciless, but a difference of 50% extra characters should easily account for that.

At the same time, I have players who really like the odds. But these are ones who haven't lost a character, so I'm not sure they'll have the same point of view if it happens...


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Not to fight you on this, but we still seem to be going back to an assertion that simply isn't true.

pauljathome wrote:
The writers also have to be told when they are creating material that IS just too hard or built incorrectly or they'll keep doing it.

Like I noted up-thread, this wasn't built too difficult or incorrectly. It's entirely "working as intended" and is a base assumption for a sandbox game. While it's not as overt as saying "this AP ends at level 11, so don't plan beyond that," it's absolutely something that should have come up in session 0. On top of that, the material in the AP itself specifically calls to the GM to play it safe.

I also personally disagree that the onus falls upon the players to report to writers about difficulty, especially when we are acting on limited information (such as a player lacking GM-side information), misunderstanding the intended purpose (like noting that a room is too small for a party to fight effectively, when the writer included that for the very reason), or just plain not engaging with the encounter (like hunting an invisible creature by swinging at adjacent squares randomly).

pauljathome wrote:

I am playing Gauntlight with experienced players and a very good GM. Admittedly, some of the characters are slightly suboptimal deliberately because the players wanted to try out something different.

But is it really the case that Paizo thinks that any low level rogue who isn't a thief is so weak that it isn't viable? That an alchemist isn't really viable? A front liner who doesn't have a con of 16 isn't viable?

I have no idea what this tangent is about. None of thread is about "optimal play." PCs are likely to have a very difficult time with an Extreme encounter especially when they shouldn't be encountering it. If both you as a player and in-character are faced with something quite deadly and life-threatening, there are more solutions than just "die."

pauljathome wrote:
And, to repeat myself, if something is designed to teach players that their characters should run away then do NOT give them an attack that immobilizes their characters !!!!!. We WANTED to run away in this fight, we didn't have the option unless we abandoned some of the characters.

The encounter is not meant to teach players to run, as far as I can see. It's meant to be a fairly well hidden section of the fourth floor of a ten floor dungeon. It's a difficult encounter if you...

AV Book 1:

1. State you're Searching the northern hall and pass a DC 20 Perception, Arcana, or Occultism check to notice that there's something unusual about the wall.

2. Then interact with or Seek on the wall to attempt a DC 26 Will save to disbelieve. A level 4 character with Expert Will and a Wisdom of 18 has 35% to disbelieve.

Absolutely not impossible for a group, which we can see. But these bars in the way should be at least some indication that things are getting over the heads of lower level parties. From there, the voidglutton even bargains with PCs, agreeing to let them go in exchange for a survivor to keep for the months to come. (Which is absolutely a built-in "rescue mission," instead of a TPK)

pauljathome wrote:
I'm a little bit sorry if saying that disheartens the author but I think getting Paizo the message is far, far more important. And we ARE being at least somewhat polite. We're calling the encounters over tuned and NOT insulting the author. Unless you think criticizing a work is the same as criticizing the author, of course.

Paizo forums taught me the "why wasn't I consulted" phrase and I can't believe it took me this long to learn about it. We, as consumers, do seem to feel that we are the experts in our passions and that we know best in how they should be handled. I think that it makes itself evident even at the small scale in gaming groups where people have very strong opinions. But you also have to consider that you're just... wrong. You can definitely say, "Man, this feels like it's an unbalanced encounter," and be completely correct. It's another thing to state, "This is an unbalanced encounter." Moreso when you're lacking the information to make that statement.

Also, what message are you sending to Paizo? Stop making fights hard? Don't publish work that will potentially TPK your team? Give me the freedom to explore, but guide it along a safe path?


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I think a lot of the balance issues stem from a disconnect between what Paizo assumes an average party will look like versus what an actual average party looks like.

For example:

Does Paizo expect that an average party will always bump their save-related stats plus their key stat or do they assume that characters will only bump two save stats and two key stats? One assumption versus that other can really change encounter design given how tight the math is.

Another example:

How often does Paizo expect a party to be gaining a circumstance bonus against at least one enemy? If they misjudge this it can easily be the difference between one group getting TPK'd and another group barely even needing to heal in combat.

Last example:

How does Paizo's tight math account for a key player's dice going cold in a fight? If your party's tactics work best when the fighter lands his combat maneuvers by no later than round 2, it means that fights where that doesn't happen could easily be 20% more difficult. That extra spike of difficulty caused purely by dice could easily be the difference between a win and a TPK.

If we don't know what Paizo's base assumptions are how are we supposed to tweak encounters before they get too much for our group? Do we just accept that the first boss fight or two are always going to TPK some groups because some DMs won't realize that their party is enough below average to fall into that range? Given that TPKs are more likely to happen to new groups (or even just groups with certain styles of GM), is it not better to err on the side of too easy while expecting long term GMs used to other looser systems to be accustomed to beefing up encounters that aren't challenging their players?


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SuperBidi wrote:

I 100% agree that Abomination Vaults is really tough. I play with 6 players and I haven't changed any encounters. And my players are still experiencing tough fights, even character deaths. I play it mean, as I want the fights to be merciless, but a difference of 50% extra characters should easily account for that.

At the same time, I have players who really like the odds. But these are ones who haven't lost a character, so I'm not sure they'll have the same point of view if it happens...

I'm finding AV to be just about right for challenging, while not being a death trap.

The only Paizo AP that has been really deadly has been Age of Ashes. AV is challenging, but pretty well built not to murder the group. Though low level groups are always at the mercy of dice. You get some bad dice rolls coupled with good enemy dice rolls with a low level group and you can get destroyed in those early levels.


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I can't speak for the modules, but as a GM who designs his own scenarios for play I have also noticed I have to be exceptionally careful, enough so that I avoid anything over Challenge +2 or -2 if I can help it, since a CL+3 or greater can lead to a party wipe at lower levels unexpectedly, and I even had something similar happen twice when my first campaign hit Level 18 and again at level 20. My players were getting genuinely frazzled at their repeated bad luck (we use Roll20), and starting to blame me for provoking extreme encounters (@thenobledrake I am taking your advice on GM overtuning to heart, as I may have been guilty of that!) Meanwhile I was trying to balance out a range of encounters by the book religiously, and would find ways in-game to actively broadcast if a fight would be near lethal (CL+3 or +4) or impossible (+5 or greater; we do sandbox and on rare occasion they run into things).

In the end, we took a break about two months ago, went back to 3.5 for a bit, while I mulled over what I was doing wrong with the math. Challenges too low feel too trivial (-3 or greater feel like time wasters), and +3 or higher dramatically increases the risk. The +10/-10 crit mechanic, which we all like, does feel like a contributing factor....it dramatically shifts the difficulty in both directions.

I'm planning a new long term campaign to start soon, and keeping this experience in mind as a plan out future encounters, but in contrast with PF1E/3.5 or even 5E the threat range in PF2E is rather narrow due to how quickly difficulty ramps up (or drops off).

Silver Crusade

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Ruzza wrote:

But you also have to consider that you're just... wrong. You can definitely say, "Man, this feels like it's an unbalanced encounter," and be completely correct. It's another thing to state, "This is an unbalanced encounter." Moreso when you're lacking the information to make that statement.

I'll absolutely accept that as long as YOU accept that it is equally incorrect for you to state "this is a balanced encounter".

So, I'll amend my statement.

In the opinion of myself, 3 other experienced players, and an experienced GM (and at least 2 of the players have very substantial GM experience as well which DOES affect judgement on difficulty) some of the encounters in level 1 of Abomination Vaults are significantly too difficult.

Quote:


Absolutely not impossible for a group, which we can see. But these bars in the way should be at least some indication that things are getting over the heads of lower level parties. From there, the voidglutton even bargains with PCs, agreeing to let them go in exchange for a survivor to keep for the months to come. (Which is absolutely a built-in "rescue mission," instead of a TPK)

Well, we perservered long enough that we found the way in. We didn't realize that this was meant to warn us that it would be guarded by a deadly monster. We thought it meant either really good loot or really cool information (probably guarded by a tough but reasonable monster).

Don't forget the players are operating withOUT perfect knowledge and making reasonable decisions from their point of view.

So, I'm sorry but I completely disagree that hiding this meant anything much in terms of how reasonable an encounter it was.

And the voidglutton bargaining never came up. We went in, had a couple of characters immobilized, and thought that we had no choice to fight to the death. A fight that we barely won despite being level 5 characters. I don't know if that was the GM screwing up or deciding that since we were 5th level we could handle it.

Not sure how viable that rescue mission is either. Absent getting some NPC help we weren't going to be able to beat it a second time while one character down (we had already gotten ridden of the darkness). So, absent NPC help we'd probably need to level up. Which means the player of the absent character is going to get REALLY bored :-(.

Getting NPC help "feels" like another TPK avoided by GM fiat. I greatly dislike those. And I think the idea that building an extremely hard encounter that is ok because there is a safety valve is BAD design.

Quote:

Also, what message are you sending to Paizo? Stop making fights hard? Don't publish work that will potentially TPK your team? Give me the freedom to explore, but guide it along a safe path?

Actually, the primary message that I'd send to Paizo is "Follow your own guidelines". They routinely create unique monsters that do NOT follow their own guidelines and that are overpowered BY THEIR OWN RULES.

The secondary message that I'd send to Paizo is "greatly reduce the number of encounters with a single boss that is an Extreme or Severe encounter. They may or may not be "fair" but they aren't fun and "seem" unfair to a lot of people.

In my opinion it is the job of a published adventure to set reasonable challenges. I define "reasonable" as something along the lines of
"A reasonably well built group of 4 characters of the appropriate level should be able to overcome the challenge without character death barring bad tactics or very bad luck. If they can't overcome it then they should be able to run away AND it should be obvious to the characters that running away is an option". Yes, that is insanely subjective but its the best I can do.

A GM can then tweak those challenges to be more or less difficult.

But the baseline with OUT GM tweaks SHOULD be that the players are expected to win barring bad tactics, bad builds or extremely bad luck. And by bad I mean actively bad, not slightly sub optimal.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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We do hear folks, and I just started a big discussion about how, going forward, we need to be a lot more sparse with severe or extreme encounters in our adventures. It's a learning game for us as well, remember, and we run a fair bit behind when it comes to player feedback.

We do still want to present challenging encounters, but too many overwhelming ones isn't good for the game.

If you're a GM who has run into this before with our published adventures and you're finding them too tough or "overtuned," the EASIEST solution is to just add "1" to the recommended level for play. Just go ahead and bump the party up by one level and go from there, and all the encounters will automatically shift down one category (with, say, a Severe 5 encounter becoming a Moderate 6 one).

We'll continue to adjust and take feedback into account, of course.

THAT ALL SAID: I really really reallly don't think that Milestone XP awards work well with classic sandbox play, such as what we're doing in the Abomination Vaults. If you're awarding XP by the encounter for fights, story awards, and quests, chances are good that a group will level up a bit more quickly and even be a little higher level than expected, ESPECIALLY if you augment the Adventure Path with stuff rom Troubles in Otari. Figuring out how to time and schedule points where characters artificially level up from milestones in print for a sandbox dungeon like Abomination Vaults is clumsy and awkward, since neither we as the adventure creators nor you as the GMs can control when or where a PC group will have those encounters that trigger said milestones.


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camazotz wrote:

I can't speak for the modules, but as a GM who designs his own scenarios for play I have also noticed I have to be exceptionally careful, enough so that I avoid anything over Challenge +2 or -2 if I can help it, since a CL+3 or greater can lead to a party wipe at lower levels unexpectedly, and I even had something similar happen twice when my first campaign hit Level 18 and again at level 20. My players were getting genuinely frazzled at their repeated bad luck (we use Roll20), and starting to blame me for provoking extreme encounters (@thenobledrake I am taking your advice on GM overtuning to heart, as I may have been guilty of that!) Meanwhile I was trying to balance out a range of encounters by the book religiously, and would find ways in-game to actively broadcast if a fight would be near lethal (CL+3 or +4) or impossible (+5 or greater; we do sandbox and on rare occasion they run into things).

In the end, we took a break about two months ago, went back to 3.5 for a bit, while I mulled over what I was doing wrong with the math. Challenges too low feel too trivial (-3 or greater feel like time wasters), and +3 or higher dramatically increases the risk. The +10/-10 crit mechanic, which we all like, does feel like a contributing factor....it dramatically shifts the difficulty in both directions.

I'm planning a new long term campaign to start soon, and keeping this experience in mind as a plan out future encounters, but in contrast with PF1E/3.5 or even 5E the threat range in PF2E is rather narrow due to how quickly difficulty ramps up (or drops off).

Looking at a recent encounter my party had an insane amount of trouble with (elite Storm Lord [level 10] plus two elite living thunderclaps [level 5]), part of it was bad dice, and part of it was GM overtuning. Because of the way the party was separated at the start of combat, together with the fact that the party is predominantly melee while the GM spent a solid amount of time solely firing off their flying ranged attacks, early combat was rough. That combined with the GM's propensity to roll 17+ on the Storm Lord, getting two crit hits for ~60 damage each, a crit success and a success on Fort saves, and the fact that the party's dice were garbage to-hit, definitely did not help.


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James Jacobs wrote:

We do hear folks, and I just started a big discussion about how, going forward, we need to be a lot more sparse with severe or extreme encounters in our adventures. It's a learning game for us as well, remember, and we run a fair bit behind when it comes to player feedback.

We do still want to present challenging encounters, but too many overwhelming ones isn't good for the game.

If you're a GM who has run into this before with our published adventures and you're finding them too tough or "overtuned," the EASIEST solution is to just add "1" to the recommended level for play. Just go ahead and bump the party up by one level and go from there, and all the encounters will automatically shift down one category (with, say, a Severe 5 encounter becoming a Moderate 6 one).

We'll continue to adjust and take feedback into account, of course.

THAT ALL SAID: I really really reallly don't think that Milestone XP awards work well with classic sandbox play, such as what we're doing in the Abomination Vaults. If you're awarding XP by the encounter for fights, story awards, and quests, chances are good that a group will level up a bit more quickly and even be a little higher level than expected, ESPECIALLY if you augment the Adventure Path with stuff rom Troubles in Otari. Figuring out how to time and schedule points where characters artificially level up from milestones in print for a sandbox dungeon like Abomination Vaults is clumsy and awkward, since neither we as the adventure creators nor you as the GMs can control when or where a PC group will have those encounters that trigger said milestones.

Hey James,

Thanks for the response in this thread. For all that I'm not the player PF2 was designed for, I love that you interact with the community the way you do.

While you're here could I ask what kinds of optimization the design team is basing their encounters around? I asked a few questions above that I'm going to repost here. I think that your feedback could help some GMs on these boards better balance APs for their groups.

Does the designer team expect that an average party will always bump their save-related stats plus their key stat or do they assume that characters will only bump two save stats and two key stats? One assumption versus that other can really change encounter design given how tight the math is.

How often does the designer team expect a party to be gaining a circumstance bonus against at least one enemy? If they misjudge this it can easily be the difference between one group getting TPK'd and another group barely even needing to heal in combat.

How does the design team account for a key player's dice going cold in a fight given the game's tight math? If your party's tactics work best when the fighter lands his combat maneuvers by no later than round 2, it means that fights where that doesn't happen could easily be 20% more difficult. That extra spike of difficulty caused purely by dice could easily be the difference between a win and a TPK.

If you can't answer these that's 100% cool. I just think that a peek behind this particular curtain might help a lot of people.


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Staffan Johansson wrote:
thenobledrake wrote:

There's three kinds of "overtuned" that may be at work here: the first kind, is the author of the AP using a higher number of Severe and Extreme budget encounters than they should, putting more party level or higher creatures into encounters than they should, or setting up the narrative so that players feel required to push on through nearly a dozen encounters without taking time to rest somewhere in the middle.

That kind of overtuning is easy to measure, and can be seen in Age of Ashes, Extinction Curse, and Agents of Edgewatch, though it does seem to be trending towards less frequent over the course of them.

This can probably be chalked down to using established PF1 writers with habits that are... well, bad sounds harsh, but maybe "no longer fit for purpose" is more accurate?

I've noted that I've seen this in adventures produced for a number of D&D and D&D offshoots in the last couple decades; there were early D&D3e adventures that were clearly written by people who were thinking in an AD&D2e mindset, and then similar things happened with D&D4e and a couple early adventures. It seems to be an intrinsic hazard that during edition changeover, people are prone to fighting the last war here.

Quote:


Thing is, PF1 encounter building guidelines were pretty much a joke, because of the extreme disparities in power level (as well as the wand of cure light wounds which negated the concept of hp attrition which was a core part of the assumption behind those guidelines). So traditionally, PF1 adventures skewed pretty heavily toward higher-level than expected encounters in order to provide a proper challenge. And when those writers started making PF2 adventures instead, they carried those habits over without properly internalizing the fact that when PF2 says an encounter is severe, it means it.

Yup. This would be my assumption too.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Verdyn wrote:

While you're here could I ask what kinds of optimization the design team is basing their encounters around? I asked a few questions above that I'm going to repost here. I think that your feedback could help some GMs on these boards better balance APs for their groups.

I'm not on the design team so I can't answer for them. I do know that there wasn't a lot of support or advice at the onset for how to design adventures, though—the vast majority of the focus on Pathfinder's 2nd edition was spent on making sure that the player-facing side of things like character creation and combat was as smooth as possible. My authors and I had to make best guesses for how to present adventures with "Age of Ashes" as a result; we didn't have much more than what's in print in the Core Rulebook, and even that information wasn't available for me to reference until VERY late in the process. Remember that the Core Rulebook and "Hellknight Hill" came out at the same time. Hellknight Hill being a softcover meant that the post editorial window was narrower, but still, we had only a matter of weeks, not months, to reference the completed Core Rules (particularly the treasure and the Running the Game content, which was done last) to support the adventure.

For pretty much all of the Age of Ashes adventures, the writers had to basically write them as if they were writing 1st edition adventures. The last few were able to get some 2nd edition philosophies in there, but only after I adjusted their initial writing deadlines so I could get some help from them so I wasn't doing it all myself.

We're still learning, obviously, how to present adventures, but the fact that there's a one year or more time delay between writing an adventure and getting a sizable amount of player feedback makes that tricky to incorporate in a timely manner.

So alas I can't answer your questions 100%. Or really, even 1%. It's not my job, and when I do post answers in those categories, it tends to cause confusion and frustration with other employees or customers.


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James Jacobs wrote:
Verdyn wrote:

While you're here could I ask what kinds of optimization the design team is basing their encounters around? I asked a few questions above that I'm going to repost here. I think that your feedback could help some GMs on these boards better balance APs for their groups.

I'm not on the design team so I can't answer for them. I do know that there wasn't a lot of support or advice at the onset for how to design adventures, though—the vast majority of the focus on Pathfinder's 2nd edition was spent on making sure that the player-facing side of things like character creation and combat was as smooth as possible. My authors and I had to make best guesses for how to present adventures with "Age of Ashes" as a result; we didn't have much more than what's in print in the Core Rulebook, and even that information wasn't available for me to reference until VERY late in the process. Remember that the Core Rulebook and "Hellknight Hill" came out at the same time. Hellknight Hill being a softcover meant that the post editorial window was narrower, but still, we had only a matter of weeks, not months, to reference the completed Core Rules (particularly the treasure and the Running the Game content, which was done last) to support the adventure.

For pretty much all of the Age of Ashes adventures, the writers had to basically write them as if they were writing 1st edition adventures. The last few were able to get some 2nd edition philosophies in there, but only after I adjusted their initial writing deadlines so I could get some help from them so I wasn't doing it all myself.

We're still learning, obviously, how to present adventures, but the fact that there's a one year or more time delay between writing an adventure and getting a sizable amount of player feedback makes that tricky to incorporate in a timely manner.

So alas I can't answer your questions 100%. Or really, even 1%. It's not my job, and when I do post answers in those categories, it tends to cause confusion and frustration...

This explains a lot as to why Age of Ashes is as it is. Extinction Curse, Agents of Edgewatch, and Abomination Vaults have all been much more well-connected.

I'm really enjoying Agents of Edgewatch and AV I like playing up the fantasy cop drama tropes. AV is a good dungeon crawl with a loose story.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Deriven Firelion wrote:

This explains a lot as to why Age of Ashes is as it is. Extinction Curse, Agents of Edgewatch, and Abomination Vaults have all been much more well-connected.

It's very much the same sort of thing that hit us with Council of Thieves when we launched the Pathfinder RPG in the first place, but in that case, the difference between how adventures were built in 3.5 vs. Pathfinder were much less... and even then it resulted in an adventure path that was barely able to reach 14th level and ended up with one of the only cases where a cover illustration featured an encounter we simply couldn't put into the final adventure (and requried us to invent a brand new monster, the calikang, when it was apparent that we couldn't have the PCs fighting a four armed advanced stone golem, which was what we originally thought the cover to part 5 was going to be).


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James Jacobs wrote:
We do hear folks, and I just started a big discussion about how, going forward, we need to be a lot more sparse with severe or extreme encounters in our adventures.

I don't think that's particularly necessary, though the number of one big boss vs many mook encounters might be a good thing to look at.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Guntermench wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:
We do hear folks, and I just started a big discussion about how, going forward, we need to be a lot more sparse with severe or extreme encounters in our adventures.
I don't think that's particularly necessary, though the number of one big boss vs many mook encounters might be a good thing to look at.

Thanks for the feedback!

That said... this is why it's so important for folks who think the adventures we publish are good or fun or "well tuned" to let us know. If all we ever hear is negative feedback (and that's fine if that's all that folks have to say overall!), then we can't responsibly assume that there's a "silent majority."

Customer feedback only works if it's given.

Silver Crusade

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James Jacobs wrote:


Customer feedback only works if it's given.

First, thank you very much for your post above. It helps to know that we're being listened to :-).

As somebody who has been quite vocal about how difficult this Adventure Path is (at least in book 1, which is where we currently are) let me ALSO give you the feedback that this is actually a VERY well designed and fun dungeon crawl. Since the GM decided to let us be 1 level higher than expected I've been enjoying it a great deal. Its amongst the best dungeon crawls I've ever played in D&D like games.

The voidglutton was, for a level 5 party, a very tough fight but one where we DID win. In fact, in retrospect, it was a perfect boss fight (albeit NOT against a boss monster :-(). We thought we were going to lose but pulled out the stops and managed to beat it without loss.

But that was with is being level 5. At level 4, we'd have almost certainly lost.


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James Jacobs wrote:
<snip>

Thanks for the insight, James. These kinds of stories really help us players understand the time crunch your various teams are always working under.

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