Handling player's drive to heal after every combat

[Exocist]

I’ve just handwaved healing by now provided at least one person has some spammable out of combat healing (continual recovery, focus powers, everyone has white spindle aeon stones, etc.)

I think healing would be a more interesting choice if there was more things for people to do with their downtime between combats. Currently, there is not (most of my players have only had either medicine or refocusing), so for me at least it’s a non-choice and should be removed.

If there was a guideline on how long of a break you should allow between encounters (I’ve used 25 min but probably better to do 35 or 45 min) along with additional exploration activities that felt powerful enough to warrant not healing, it would feel a bit better to me.

[Zapp]

thenobledrake wrote:

Zapp wrote:

Sure, but don't forget that the encounter math pretty much prevents the burgeoning GM from doing what works in other games - smushing together encounters.

The math simply doesn't allow that in PF2. If you add a Low encounter to a Moderate encounter you don't end up with a "moderately hard" encounter the way you might in another iteration of D&D.

Other games not having accurate enough estimations as to how difficult an encounter will be, thus allowing multiple encounters that on their face are supposed to be individually challenging to group together and produce an encounter that is actually also just a pretty standard challenge is not a feature; it's proof that other games may as well not even have the encounter-building guidelines they have because they don't even do anything.

Pathfinder 2e's encounter guidelines, on the other hand, are at least accurate enough that if you put together an XP budget that goes off the high end of the chart the game says it's probably going to be ridiculously tough and it plays out as ridiculously tough (especially when not just filling the budget with the lowest-level creatures that you can) - rather than there being room like there is in D&D 5e for every encounter in an adventure to be off the chart past the "deadly" rating, and then the party just ploughs through 5 or so of those a day.

Yes and no.

Yes as in "this is true".

No as in "you can't just ignore how other games have shaped expectations. Your comments makes sense only in a void where Pathfinder 2s accuracy is the default. In the real world, however, D&D is the default, and so we need to phrase this to be useful and instructive in practice. Dismissing the experience of just about everyone coming to PF2 just because you might have internalized the workings of PF2 a long time ago is just not useful. When Pathfinder 2 really means a deadly encounter is deadly that is the outlier (by far) and not the norm."

Have a nice day.

[Zapp]

Exocist wrote:

I’ve just handwaved healing by now provided at least one person has some spammable out of combat healing (continual recovery, focus powers, everyone has white spindle aeon stones, etc.)

Yes, in other words, ignoring the nitty gritty of the various healing rules is what you, a good GM, decided to do.

The observation I am making is that rules that good GMing best ignores are probably not well designed.

[Zapp]

Deriven Firelion wrote:

I do it all the time.

So in other words, "once you are as experienced as I am you can ignore Zapp's recommendations".

Yep, that checks out.

But you are likely underestimating exactly how far removed you have become from a new PF2 GM or one only with, say, 5th Edition experience.

so my summary holds: if you (you the audience needing advice, not you Deriven) approach PF2 like you did your last game, you will get your heroes slaughtered. To avoid this, never smush encounters together, full stop.

[Zapp]

Ascalaphus wrote:

This is a very interesting thread. It strikes me as a bit of a return to earlier debates with Zapp

I guess I should be flattered, but no, I will remind you this is not one of my threads :)

[Zapp]

Ascalaphus wrote:

I'm currently playing Agents of Edgewatch and Age of Ashes. Both of them feature dungeons with LOTS of encounters in them, often close to each other. So close that it's hard to believe they don't overflow, but if they did, they'd be too hard.

I think for Edgewatch this is more of an issue. It makes more sense for that campaign to conduct some dungeon crawls as SWAT style raids - at high speed, so that perps don't get a chance to escape. Narratively speaking, you want encounters to come quite quickly after another, the PCs busting into room after room to arrest folks before they can reinforce, destroy evidence/hostages or flee.

If you really played like that with a Paizo adventure it'd go horribly wrong. Way too many level-appropriate encounters. Just plain too hard.

I fully recognize this from my own campaigns. Several dungeons in Extinction Curse are also like that. In fact, it would be appropriate to say that nearly every low- to mid game experience penned by Paizo is like this. So it's not unreasonable to conclude the game was intended to feature game play like this.

So I totally understand Unicore (the OP). The game works best when you nearly always just allow the party to heal up between encounters, and nearly never make the downtime an issue.

You could follow the rules, and find out whether this downtime took 70 minutes or maybe only 30. But you could also throw all those finicky little rules out the window, together with all the die rolling, decisions, arithmetic etc since their sole impact on game play I have found is to force players to burn brain capacity and take time away from the adventure.

After all, if the game needs your heroes to heal back up, which we concluded is the case, why not simply have the rule say "you heal back up"...? :-)

(Then, there could be a optional variant, in the GMG perhaps, containing what now is in the CRB, though ideally still simpler and easier than what Paizo now have saddled every game with)

[Zapp]

Megistone wrote:

If other games allow the GM to put two or more encounters together and have the party come on top, it's because those encounters are not challenging by themselves. You can easily do the same in PF2.

This is technically true but in practice false.

[Zapp]

WatersLethe wrote:

I make sure my players have realistic expectations about time. If they're going to attack a heavily guarded building or castle, they're not going to have 10 minutes between each fight. Same with any dungeon that has lots of moving enemies.

This is obviously entirely reasonable and natural and logical.

Except it isn't supported by the PF2 combat model or its encounter creation guidelines.

[Queaux]

Zapp wrote:

WatersLethe wrote:

I make sure my players have realistic expectations about time. If they're going to attack a heavily guarded building or castle, they're not going to have 10 minutes between each fight. Same with any dungeon that has lots of moving enemies.

This is obviously entirely reasonable and natural and logical.

Except it isn't supported by the PF2 combat model or its encounter creation guidelines.

It is certainly supported by the rules. Taking on an engagement like that is suicide without a solid plan of action, but it's well supported in the rules. Some of the best encounters I've run have the shape of a spread out double or triple extreme encounter where my players use their skills and out of combat abilities to split up the engagements into chunks they can take on. Age of Ashes with minor variations has been incredibly fun for me and my group played in this way.

Like most of PF2, the rules get handwaved when they aren't important. The majority of the time, the detailed healing rules aren't important, so I simply say they work and give a short time frame without any rolling. Like most of PF2, however, the detailed rules are there when you need them. I really like that rules dynamic. That way of applying rules is explained pretty thoroughly in the GMG as it is core to the way PF2 is played.

[Deriven Firelion]

Zapp wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

I do it all the time.

So in other words, "once you are as experienced as I am you can ignore Zapp's recommendations".

Yep, that checks out.

But you are likely underestimating exactly how far removed you have become from a new PF2 GM or one only with, say, 5th Edition experience.

so my summary holds: if you (you the audience needing advice, not you Deriven) approach PF2 like you did your last game, you will get your heroes slaughtered. To avoid this, never smush encounters together, full stop.

True enough. It would be tougher for a new GM to gauge. Hopefully they would seek advice from experienced GMs on the forums.

[Watery Soup]

Zapp wrote:

you can't just ignore how other games have shaped expectations. Your comments makes sense only in a void where Pathfinder 2s accuracy is the default. In the real world, however, D&D is the default, and so we need to phrase this to be useful and instructive in practice. Dismissing the experience of just about everyone coming to PF2 just because you might have internalized the workings of PF2 a long time ago is just not useful. When Pathfinder 2 really means a deadly encounter is deadly that is the outlier (by far) and not the norm.

Maybe Paizo should stop publishing Pathfinder Second Edition and try to develop a new game called D&D5e Second Edition.

[thenobledrake]

Zapp wrote:

No as in "you can't just ignore how other games have shaped expectations.

Yeah, you kind of can.

Mainly because it doesn't at all matter if Pathfinder doesn't hold up to the expectations [insert any game here] gave someone because it never said it would and it's not actually a reasonable expectation to think that it would. If it were failing to match the expectations it set, that'd be an it problem - but it failing to match expectations you brought in from somewhere else is actually a you problem (with "you" in this case being whomever didn't base their expectations for this game on what this game said to expect).

But also because, despite being the currently "bigger" game, there's zero guarantee that anyone coming into Pathfinder 2nd edition has play D&D before - or any other TTRPG for that matter.

And I'm not trying to argue what is or isn't the norm; I'm saying a rule or bit of guideline actually performing as advertised is the desired goal - and if a different game's similar section of guideance doesn't perform as advertised, that's a bug not a feature, and is entirely unreasonable to point to and say "that game let me do this thing, so this one should too."

Zapp wrote:

...you might have internalized the workings of PF2 a long time ago...

You're phrasing this as if I did something special or unexpected, when the reality is just that I read the book (most of it, at least - even now there's still some feats, spells, and items I haven't read - but I didn't skip any of the actual rules parts)

[thenobledrake]

Zapp wrote:

Megistone wrote:

If other games allow the GM to put two or more encounters together and have the party come on top, it's because those encounters are not challenging by themselves. You can easily do the same in PF2.

This is technically true but in practice false.

You're insisting that differing experiences from your own are impossible again. You should really stop, it makes every point you make overly antagonistic.

[Themetricsystem]

Watery Soup wrote:

Maybe Paizo should stop publishing Pathfinder Second Edition and try to develop a new game called D&D5e Second Edition.

Too late, enough fans of 5e already got sick of the game and its problems so have taken this up as a community project, no joke.

[Watery Soup]

Themetricsystem wrote:

Watery Soup wrote:

Maybe Paizo should stop publishing Pathfinder Second Edition and try to develop a new game called D&D5e Second Edition.

Too late, enough fans of 5e already got sick of the game and its problems so have taken this up as a community project, no joke.

D&D5e Vista, then.

[Arachnofiend]

Themetricsystem wrote:

Watery Soup wrote:

Maybe Paizo should stop publishing Pathfinder Second Edition and try to develop a new game called D&D5e Second Edition.

Too late, enough fans of 5e already got sick of the game and its problems so have taken this up as a community project, no joke.

God can you imagine having so much brand loyalty that you would go through the trouble of revising 5e to satisfy "dedicated gamer" brain rather than playing literally any other tabletop rpg

[pauljathome]

Arachnofiend wrote:

Themetricsystem wrote:

Watery Soup wrote:

Maybe Paizo should stop publishing Pathfinder Second Edition and try to develop a new game called D&D5e Second Edition.

Too late, enough fans of 5e already got sick of the game and its problems so have taken this up as a community project, no joke.

God can you imagine having so much brand loyalty that you would go through the trouble of revising 5e to satisfy "dedicated gamer" brain rather than playing literally any other tabletop rpg

Um, that seems very very unfair.

It's quite reasonable for somebody to really like a game but want to tweak it. To decide that Game+tweaks is a better route to what they want than OtherGame (maybe also with tweaks).

[Squiggit]

Not just reasonable but common. Most games I've seen contain some sort of tweaking one way or another.

[OrochiFuror]

I wish I found enough good things in 5e to want to revise it. I'll have to settle with a dozen plus optional and homebrew rules and systems tacked into PF2.

[Arachnofiend]

Squiggit wrote:

Not just reasonable but common. Most games I've seen contain some sort of tweaking one way or another.

There is a distinct difference between tweaking a system that is not quite suited to your needs and revising a system that is fundamentally hostile to those needs. I put trying to inject complexity into 5e in the same boat as the people who hate the the tight math of PF2's proficiency system; this just isn't a game for you and you'd have an easier time finding one that's closer to your needs than trying to rip the core out of the system.

[Squiggit]

I don't really agree. If I'm a big fan of 5e's math and basic options but wish it had more customization, it seems easier to try to inject my own flair into the system than just abandon it entirely.

If I really like PF2's character building and action economy and underlying mechanics but think the math is broken, I can apply my own homebrew there too.

Again, from my experience stuff like this isn't even particularly uncommon... I'd even go a step further and say that modifications that makes 5e meatier and tweaks PF2's math are some of the most common types of homebrew I see for both of those systems.

[Benchak the Nightstalker]

One of my players is a Medic, with Ward Medic, so a 10 minute rest is usually enough to add a good chunk of HP to the party. Given that, I don't feel bad about jumping them if they spend too long resting in one place.

I like that it gives the Medicine checks some consequences, and ratchets up the tension.

A 10 minute rest? Doesn't feel too risky.

Oh no, you biffed the roll. I guess we're resting another 10 minutes...I don't like it, but we need the hit points.

Oh wow, the monk really took a beating in that last fight, and he's still at half-health? Well, we're not going forward like that. I guess 10 more minutes it is, gods help us. Get the fighter and the swashbuckler guarding the doors!

*GM Cackles in glee*

[WatersLethe]

I will 100% check out a revised 5e. If it's good, I can add it to my repertoire. It'd be nice to have a decent version of the game to play with people who refuse to play anything else.

[Staffan Johansson]

WatersLethe wrote:

I will 100% check out a revised 5e. If it's good, I can add it to my repertoire. It'd be nice to have a decent version of the game to play with people who refuse to play anything else.

Well, there's this coming later this year.

[Ravingdork]

Staffan Johansson wrote:

WatersLethe wrote:

I will 100% check out a revised 5e. If it's good, I can add it to my repertoire. It'd be nice to have a decent version of the game to play with people who refuse to play anything else.

Well, there's this coming later this year.

How are they not getting sued?

That's like starting a company called Advanced Toyota. Toyota is going to bury you.

[thenobledrake]

Ravingdork wrote:

Staffan Johansson wrote:

WatersLethe wrote:

I will 100% check out a revised 5e. If it's good, I can add it to my repertoire. It'd be nice to have a decent version of the game to play with people who refuse to play anything else.

Well, there's this coming later this year.

How are they not getting sued?

That's like starting a company called Advanced Toyota. Toyota is going to bury you.

Do you see anything that WotC actually holds a trademark on? I don't.

I see "Advanced 5th Edition" ...there's 5th edition of a lot of games, not just D&D, and even though "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" is a trademarked thing, "Advanced" isn't because it's just a word that could be applied to anything.

Now, all that aside, I think the product shouldn't exist as-is - not because it's derivative or deliberately skating the edge of trademark and/or copyright, but because I wish the creators had the gumption and belief in their work for it to stand on it's own with a name entirely it's own like how Pathfinder 1e was Pathfinder, even though it used "works with that other game too, kinda" as part of it's marketing, instead of the game title being "Advanced v3.5"

[Megistone]

Zapp wrote:

Megistone wrote:

If other games allow the GM to put two or more encounters together and have the party come on top, it's because those encounters are not challenging by themselves. You can easily do the same in PF2.

This is technically true but in practice false.

Why would it be false? What is different in PF2?

[Staffan Johansson]

Ravingdork wrote:

Staffan Johansson wrote:

WatersLethe wrote:

I will 100% check out a revised 5e. If it's good, I can add it to my repertoire. It'd be nice to have a decent version of the game to play with people who refuse to play anything else.

Well, there's this coming later this year.

How are they not getting sued?

That's like starting a company called Advanced Toyota. Toyota is going to bury you.

It's more akin to "Advanced 911". Or maybe "Souped-up: Advanced 911". They aren't using WOTC's trademarks (because you can't trademark something as simple as "5th edition" - at least I don't believe you can, though this should not be considered legal advice), and EN Publishing has been making supplements for both 3.5e and 5e since forever by way of the OGL. This is just a more ambitious step in that direction.

Also, both Level Up and Advanced 5th edition were listed as "working titles" on the website, but now that they've shown off covers they still have the name "Level Up" on it. I guess that has joined TORG in the list of working titles that became so ingrained they couldn't make a better title for it.

[Ravingdork]

Guess I'm just too used to people referring to it simply as "5th Edition." That not being the proper product name would probably be a big boon in a court case. :P

[Staffan Johansson]

To paraphrase the Doctor: "Lots of games have a 5th edition."

[breithauptclan]

Actually, it reminds me a lot of the 486 microprocessor clones. Which is why for the 586 line of processors Intel switched to the Pentium brand name. Because you can't copyright a version number.

[graystone]

Staffan Johansson wrote:

To paraphrase the Doctor: "Lots of games have a 5th edition."

LOL Not just game books... Are they going to sue Merrriam Webster over their 5th edition scrabble dictionary? Or the Penn-VA Center for Studies of Addiction for The Fifth Edition of the Addiction Severity Index. :P

[Zapp]

Ravingdork wrote:

How are they not getting sued?

That's like starting a company called Advanced Toyota. Toyota is going to bury you.

Had the product been called Dungeons something Dragons it might have been a Toyota situation.

But "5th edition"? Nah.

Instead it's as if Toyota had a truck called "Advanced 2000", and this other company selling a "Truck 2000".

2000, like "5th", is just generic. Anyone can use it.

Which is why you never see auto models with generic numbers, by the way. It's always "Toyota Madeupname this or that" and rest assured, they wouldn't use "Madeupname" unless they were able to trade mark it first.

[Tristan d'Ambrosius]

Zapp wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

How are they not getting sued?

That's like starting a company called Advanced Toyota. Toyota is going to bury you.

Had the product been called Dungeons something Dragons it might have been a Toyota situation.

But "5th edition"? Nah.

Instead it's as if Toyota had a truck called "Advanced 2000", and this other company selling a "Truck 2000".

2000, like "5th", is just generic. Anyone can use it.

Which is why you never see auto models with generic numbers, by the way. It's always "Toyota Madeupname this or that" and rest assured, they wouldn't use "Madeupname" unless they were able to trade mark it first.

I mean 911 is a generic number. Well outside of the call for help phone number. 944 is a generic number. 918 is a generic number. So are 356, 550, and 718.

I guess, "since you never see auto models with generic numbers" I've never seen a Porsche 911. Or a Porshe 944. Or a Porsche 918. And so on for the others.

[Ravingdork]

The point has been made, friends. :)

[Orville Redenbacher]

I was very surprised they could make TV shows called 9-1-1 and F.B.I.

[Timeshadow]

I think having consequences for excessive resting and timelimits are very important to a multi encounter day/setup/adventure.

If the portal you arrived through will close in 2 hours stranding you in enemy territory then you are gonna be very aware of time.

If you are in a harsh environment causing damage or some other effect like fatigued, or drained, or weakened ect. every 30 mins or every hour again players will step up their games.

If an important NPC is gonna die in exactly 3 days and it's a days travel to the tree of life through hostile territory this will effect how players rest.

Now the GM has to take these things into consideration when using them cause if they don't then they will kill their players but they can make things dynamic and fun for many adventures.

[Tender Tendrils]

Whether or not to take a rest between combats should always be a decision with potential consequences, otherwise it ceases being an interesting decision and undermines much of the games difficulty.

D&D & Pathfinder are built around the idea that you face multiple small encounters, usually followed by one or two big encounter - on their own, the small encounters aren't something the party is likely to fail - what gives those encounters any meaning at all is that they expend resources that the party might need for the big encounters at the end of the dungeon.

If the party can take as much time as they like to rest, this resource expenditure becomes very mitigated (or removed almost entirely if they can rest up fully and come back tomorrow) at which point you may as well skip any encounter that doesn't have a meaningful chance of defeating the party on it's own as the resource expenditure from anything less becomes meaningless.

That's not to say PCs shouldn't get opportunities for some resting, but it should be an interesting decision (which requires that it be a trade off of some kind) and ideally be a bit of a gamble.

[Squiggit]

I don't think that really squares with PF2's math. Those 'normal' encounters can cause serious harm to the party and things like focus definitely feel balanced as an encounter resource. The ability to take a break between fights definitely feels like an important factor for mitigating that and a key component of the game's balance.

If I made a habit of putting them in situations where they couldn't reist, I would have a LOT of TPKs simply because of how swingy the game can be at times.

[Watery Soup]

Tristan d'Ambrosius wrote:

911 is a generic number.

That's why you should use the name brand emergency number, 0118 999 881 99 9119 725 ... 3.

[Mathmuse]

Tender Tendrils wrote:

Whether or not to take a rest between combats should always be a decision with potential consequences, otherwise it ceases being an interesting decision and undermines much of the games difficulty.

D&D & Pathfinder are built around the idea that you face multiple small encounters, usually followed by one or two big encounter - on their own, the small encounters aren't something the party is likely to fail - what gives those encounters any meaning at all is that they expend resources that the party might need for the big encounters at the end of the dungeon.

If the party can take as much time as they like to rest, this resource expenditure becomes very mitigated (or removed almost entirely if they can rest up fully and come back tomorrow) at which point you may as well skip any encounter that doesn't have a meaningful chance of defeating the party on it's own as the resource expenditure from anything less becomes meaningless. ...

My players threw away the paradigm of passing through the gauntlet of little encounters back during Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 while I was one of those players and not the GM. Our party motto was, "Never enter by the front door." If the stronghold had no back door, my cleric often made one via Stone Shape. In Pathfinder 1st Edition campaigns while I was the GM, the party would gather information and scout ahead to determine which encounters could be skipped. Then they would find a way to skip them. They had more fun concentrating on the important battles.

Pathfinder 2nd Edition threw away that paradigm, too. The 10-minute Treat Wounds activity was invented during the playtest and proved popular. It fit well with the 10-minute Refocus activity. And it greatly reduced a problem known as the "15 Minute Workday" in which the spellcasters would use up their spells and other characters would use up their once-a-day abilities thriftlessly and then leave the dungeon for the day.

As for the massive healing from resting, another D&D 3rd Edition and Pathfinder 1st Edition problem was spamming large quantities of Wands of Cure Light Wounds to heal quickly between encounters. They did not even require a 10-minute break, so had less chance of being interrupted. I think PF2 handles healing better than PF1.

Enemy patrols interrupting a rest is always a risk, a similar risk as beasts attacking while the party camps in the wilderness for the night. But the tension from the risk is best handled by such interruptions being rare if the party uses proper precautions.

[Zapp]

Mathmuse wrote:

Pathfinder 2nd Edition threw away that paradigm, too. The 10-minute Treat Wounds activity was invented during the playtest and proved popular. It fit well with the 10-minute Refocus activity. And it greatly reduced a problem known as the "15 Minute Workday" in which the spellcasters would use up their spells and other characters would use up their once-a-day abilities thriftlessly and then leave the dungeon for the day.

While I agree the 15 minute workday isn't a thing in PF2, I have several issues with this statement:

The 15 minute workday isn't caused by lack of healing and thus isn't solved by free healing. The 15 minute workday is instead a manifestation of "once spellcasters run out of spells there seldom is any good reason to keep adventuring." Sure, casting healing spells is part of running out of spell slots, but far from the only cause. Getting free healing doesn't help a Wizard last longer, for instance.

The main reason the 15 minute workday isn't a thing in PF2 is instead unfortunately due to something that in itself is more of a problem than a solution: the very fact slotted spells are relatively low-powered (with the two-action Heal spell as the sole exception). Basically speaking, you could retire your party Wizard and replace her with a second Fighter, and your party's ability to adventure would go up, not down. Not just in the sense that you could go on for longer each day, but more in general: weapons just are plain better at dealing with the by far most common obstacle to successful adventuring (i.e. monsters) than low-level spells.

That Treat Wounds fits well with Refocus is definitely an intended outcome of how those exploration rules were written. It just doesn't work out in practical play. Why? Because Medicine the skill just isn't fast enough. You nearly never heal enough in just 10 minutes, or 20 or 30 for that matter. You very often need 40, 50 or even 70 or 80 minutes to heal back up fully using Treat Wounds (and I'm obviously assuming someone in the party has Continual Recovery). What's the problem? The problem is that if you routinely rest for 40 or 70 minutes, you have enough time to make the question of which exploration activity to take and in which order entirely moot since you simply go "I'll take all of them". Thus, I would say Treat Wounds do not fit well with Refocus. I would say the entire exploration menu choice falls apart: good and interesting on paper but not so much in practical play. (Just ditch all the rules and say "during a short rest you heal back up fully, recovering any and all points you can recover, and now what do you do?" In one sentence I reduced loads and loads of rules clutter and pointless administration to a single five-second sentence. You're welcome.)

So yes, the game definitely threw out the resource management mini-game (what you call the paradigm of little encounters) except nobody told the writers of several subsystems that remain written as if that paradigm was still in place. It most definitely isn't - it is exceedingly clear the combat engine assumes heroes enter fights fully healed up, and it is equally clear adventures are designed to make it outright stupid to press on before you have healed back up (the risk of getting a TPK is massively increased, much more so than in any comparable game I know of, since every new encounter can easily be a Severe one without warning, and at low level it is sheer lunacy to give this handicap to the monsters when healing costs nothing but perhaps another half hour).

[Planpanther]

I know 5E has an expectations of 6-8 encounters between long rests. Did the designers for PF2 ever mention the expectations along these lines?

[Benchak the Nightstalker]

Zapp wrote:

Because Medicine the skill just isn't fast enough. You nearly never heal enough in just 10 minutes, or 20 or 30 for that matter. You very often need 40, 50 or even 70 or 80 minutes to heal back up fully using Treat Wounds (and I'm obviously assuming someone in the party has Continual Recovery).

That has not been my experience.

My skill healers almost always top the party off in ~20 minutes.

Are your players/groups getting knocked all the way to single digits every fight?

Are your skill healers investing fully in skill healing, or did they stop at Continual Recovery and call it good? Ward Medic is pretty easy to pick up, and by 7th level can by quadrupling the amount of healing the medic is dropping each 10 minutes.

That's not even getting into the Medic Archetype, which really ramps things up.

[Ascalaphus]

Tender Tendrils wrote:

D&D & Pathfinder are built around the idea that you face multiple small encounters, usually followed by one or two big encounter - on their own, the small encounters aren't something the party is likely to fail - what gives those encounters any meaning at all is that they expend resources that the party might need for the big encounters at the end of the dungeon.

This was true at least in theory for past editions - the classic 4 level appropriate encounters that ought to tire out a party just right.

It didn't work so well back then, due to for example spamming wands of cure light wounds, or just gaming groups whose 3 hours on a workday night didn't really allow for such a long slog.

I'd say PF2 tried to do with this annoying requirement to go through the motions of attrition fights, as well as the players' obvious answer: the 15 minute adventuring day. And it succeeds very nicely: a fight can easily be challlenging on its own, without any attrition before it required, so that's great for a gaming group that likes having only one or two fights per session. And a shift away from nova spells to cantrips and focus spells on the other hand also reduces the push for 15 minute adventuring days.

[thenobledrake]

Ascalaphus wrote:

...And a shift away from nova spells to cantrips and focus spells on the other hand also reduces the push for 15 minute adventuring days.

I'm sure some people would disagree with me, but I think trimming down the power of slot-using spells to the point PF2 does is perfect for making it no longer actually feel worth the effort to players to try and skip the "downside" and only ever face encounters with the casters in the party having slots ready to spend.

Because it used to be "these potent effects are balanced because you can only do them a certain number of times per day" in theory, but "these effects are extremely potent and you can do them in every encounter you face, unless your GM attacks your character in their sleep" in practice, and it has now been brought into more of a "these slightly more potent effects are balanced because you might actually do enough stuff before resting to run out of them, and your options other than these are slightly less potent." both in theory and in practice because players don't feel so reliant on the more potent spells.

[Planpanther]

thenobledrake wrote:

Ascalaphus wrote:

...And a shift away from nova spells to cantrips and focus spells on the other hand also reduces the push for 15 minute adventuring days.

I'm sure some people would disagree with me, but I think trimming down the power of slot-using spells to the point PF2 does is perfect for making it no longer actually feel worth the effort to players to try and skip the "downside" and only ever face encounters with the casters in the party having slots ready to spend.

Because it used to be "these potent effects are balanced because you can only do them a certain number of times per day" in theory, but "these effects are extremely potent and you can do them in every encounter you face, unless your GM attacks your character in their sleep" in practice, and it has now been brought into more of a "these slightly more potent effects are balanced because you might actually do enough stuff before resting to run out of them, and your options other than these are slightly less potent." both in theory and in practice because players don't feel so reliant on the more potent spells.

I've been thinking about trying to split the middle. Put some type of limit on short rests per day. You can only do it 4X and every time you just heal up to full. After that, you have to rely on your resources to keep you upright. Not sure if it will work as intended, but I'd love to get back to resource attrition style gaming and bust up the 15 lunch break adventuring day of PF2.

[Megistone]

You can have attrition when you want: a gauntlet with waves of incoming enemies, a dungeon to clear in a tight time frame, or whatever you can think of.
You can't do that with all severe encounters, of course, but with how monsters are designed, even a trivial/low threat one will probably consume some resources.

[Planpanther]

Megistone wrote:

You can have attrition when you want: a gauntlet with waves of incoming enemies, a dungeon to clear in a tight time frame, or whatever you can think of.

You can't do that with all severe encounters, of course, but with how monsters are designed, even a trivial/low threat one will probably consume some resources.

I would need to do this all the time every time to get it to play like I'd like. With some type of mechanic, I could have the option of time constraints or waves of enemies along with other types too.

[thenobledrake]

Planpanther wrote:

I've been thinking about trying to split the middle. Put some type of limit on short rests per day. You can only do it 4X and every time you just heal up to full. After that, you have to rely on your resources to keep you upright. Not sure if it will work as intended, but I'd love to get back to resource attrition style gaming and bust up the 15 lunch break adventuring day of PF2.

In my experience, the best method of generating a particular style of play is to get players that want that to be how the game works and make sure there aren't any deal-breaker-level disincentives to playing that way.

Every attempt I've ever seen at trying to make the rules force a particular style of play upon players that don't want it just results in ignoring the rule, working around the rule, outright changing the rule, or finding a different game to play. That's where the 5/15 minute workday originates; the game rules set up the expectation you'd push on until your entire party was genuinely spent (and either had prayers that no encounter would interrupt their rest or had just enough resources left to hopefully endure any interruptions while resting), but it delivered that expectation by having encounters be speed-bumps if you have your resources and death marches if you don't, so players figured out how to genuinely avoid the death march.

I believe a house-rule that limits a party to 4x per day healing up to full without spending precious resources, and after that you're left with whatever you've got would just result in parties having exactly 4 encounters and then refusing to press on further that day (5 encounters if their willing to hope for uninterrupted rest for the night), whereas PF2's current rules I've seen (and been in) parties that pressed on for 10+ encounters in a single day because the narrative suggested that was the thing to do, and the game didn't make the difference in difficulty between the first few encounters and the last few encounters significant enough for the players to say "narrative gets to wait, my character needs rest now."