Hey folks,
Is it me, or are AP encounters very easy? Playing through Hells Vengeance my players are level 15. CR 13-15 encounters all have DC 20 or even lower (Some are SIXTEEN) and attacks that do like 15 damage. My players do 150 damage and have 15-20 saves so they breeze through everything.
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If they are level 15, they should be in book 6, or at least at the very end of book 5. Book 5, part 4, has several CR 13 to 15 encounters, true, with a CR 17 finale. In theory, that's good enough for level 14, but a tad weak for level 15.
Skimming through book 6, it seems to suffer from "too many APL & APL + 1 encounters" and "single opponent / trap too often". Try to fuse two encounters, preferably with very different challenges, to make it more interesting.
Average primary ability DC is supposed to be 22 for CR 14 (see Bestiary table 1-1). So if the DCs are really consistently too low, there is one more reason for the advanced template Firebug already proposed.
I'm running five new to PF players through RotR atm. I've been keeping them a level below the suggested level throughout and it's been working quite well. Until I added in Dawn of the Scarlet Sun halfway through the second book. That was a tough module.
Did someone say Aerial Leech Swarm?
Leech Swarm
CR 5 (w/ template)
XP 1,600 (w/ template)
N Diminutive vermin ( aquatic, swarm, air)
Init +4; Senses blindsight 30 ft.; darkvision 60'
Perception +0
DEFENSE
AC 18, touch 18, flat-footed 14 (+4 Dex, +4 size)
hp 39 (6d8+12)
Fort +7, Ref +6, Will +2
DR 3/-
Resist electricity 15
Immune mind-affecting effects, swarm traits, weapon damage
Weaknesses susceptible to salt (see giant leech)
OFFENSE
Speed 5 ft., swim 30 ft., fly 30' (perfect)
Melee swarm (2d6 plus poison)
Space 10 ft.; Reach 0 ft.
Special Attacks blood drain, distraction (DC 15)
STATISTICS
Str 1, Dex 18, Con 15, Int —, Wis 10, Cha 2
Base Atk +4; CMB —; CMD —
Skills Stealth +16 (+24 in swamps), Swim +12; Racial Modifiers +8 Stealth in swamps, uses Dexterity to modify Swim checks
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Blood Drain (Ex)
Any living creature that begins its turn with a leech swarm in its space is drained of its blood and takes 1d3 points of Str and Con damage.
Poison (Ex)
Swarm—injury; save Fort DC 15; frequency 1/round for 2 rounds; effect 1d4 Dexterity drain; cure 1 save.
ECOLOGY
Environment temperate or warm marshes
Organization solitary, pair, or infestation (3–6 swarms)
Treasure none
This horrifying cloud of ravenous, blood-draining parasites eschews the stealth of a lone leech’s methods in favor of swift and merciless feeding.
Aerial Creature
This template can be applied only to a non-outsider with none of the subtypes that follow: air, cold, earth, fire, or water. An aerial creature’s CR increases by 1 only if the base creature has 5 or more HD.
Rebuild Rules
• Type The creature gains the air subtype.
• Senses The creature gains darkvision 60 ft.
• Defensive Abilities The creature gains DR and resistance to electricity as noted on the table below (DR 3/-, electricity resistance 15)
• Speed The creature gains a fly speed equal to its highest speed with perfect maneuverability (maximum fly speed of 10 feet per HD)
On a more serious note, I think that keeping the players a level behind is one way to do it. That immediately should help.
If not, then you have to increase the number of enemies.
Or both.
For minions, I like to focus on accuracy... I remove anything that subtracts from accuracy unless it is prerequisite to something more useful. I rely on continuous damage... not literal "continuous damage" like the condition in PF1... but the concept of taking damage again and again every round. I try make it so my minions have the best chance of hitting as possible.
Then I just add more minions to get to the right amount of damage being dished out.
A lot of the published adventures seem to go down the ‘one big monster to save page count’ route, which tends to lead to either party getting horribly mauled because they don’t have the one specific thing needed to defeat that opponent or the monster getting steamrollered due to action economy. Paizo also seem overfond of setting encounters where the party and monsters start the fight 30’ apart in open terrain.
So add mooks, add terrain and (if feasible) make the area the fight takes place in bigger, so the opposition aren’t all nicely bunched up for a killer spell, and PCs have to spend rounds, or spells, to get to their opponents.
General rule of thumb… AP encounters are typically designed around being played with a party comprised of either 5 unoptimized characters or the specific premade heroes included in the AP’s player guide… which means encounters might be overtuned or under tuned for your players at any given moment… so it is always a good idea to do some encounter simulations using your players character sheets and see which direction the encounters are going and then make adjustments to the encounters from there…
Assume your players roll perfectly average on everything, calculate out how quickly they can end the encounter with those values… if enemies are dropping in one hit and the encounter will be over in less than 5 rounds… add the advanced template to the enemies that should be the most problematic… upgrade armor worn (but keep the loot unchanged) to give your mooks a better chance of avoiding an attack or two… add a few extra mooks and if you need a solid guarantee of extra combat rounds, have them waiting just out of sight ready to join the fray right when the party thinks they have the upper hand.
If the encounter would normally wipe the floor with your party, discreetly alert them to upcoming dangers and help them to have the tools they will need to succeed… for example if a troll is comming up and your party lacks any means of dealing fire or acid damage, present them with a few vials of acid or alchemists fire and provide them with some sort of non-combat encounter in which they have a chance to learn what lies ahead… of course don’t outright tell them it’s a troll, misleading information can often help to improve a parties awareness… for example, they finger signs of a giant humanoid creature lurking about and amidst the carnage of a slain group of travelers they find three unbroken bottle of alchemists fire… there are any number of giant humanoids that could have caused the scene, so the party might not be lead to immediately conclude “troll” but with the alchemists fire they found they would be adequately geared to deal with one now. For all they know however you could be about to throw an ogre at them…
AP encounters simply arnt designed with a one size fits all mentality and it is ludicrous to expect them to be as well…
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Hey folks,
Is it me, or are AP encounters very easy? Playing through Hells Vengeance my players are level 15. CR 13-15 encounters all have DC 20 or even lower (Some are SIXTEEN) and attacks that do like 15 damage. My players do 150 damage and have 15-20 saves so they breeze through everything.
It is not just you, the AP (and other 1E module adventures) are very easy. When you are talking about an even remotely optimized party.
There are a myriad of reasons, but the easiest way to visualize this is to compare the level 1-20 example characters in the NPC Codex to your players' PCs. (Or look at them on the Archives of Nethys page.) See just how much better the PCs are from the "baseline" that Paizo expects. Attacks that do 15 points of damage at level 15? Yeah, that's the 15th-level barbarian.
The simple fact is that most players build much, much more optimized characters than the "simple" characters Paizo tries to accomodate. It's a design choice that we may not agree with, but that's where they set the line.
1. NPCs almost always use a 15-point buy (20-point buy is a +1CR adjustment)
2. NPC wealth is less than PC wealth.
3. Paizo likes NPCs to be "all-around" rather than supertuned. So while a PC monk might be 7-Int 7-Cha you won't find anything close to that on an NPC. This makes a big difference in point-buy.
4. For your party of four or five 15th level characters, a CR15 encounter is "average" and a CR14 encounter is rated "easy." CR13 should be "cakewalk."
5. A big, big reason isn't very obvious. There is a soft cap on the number of sources writers are allowed to use in an adventure. Core Rulebook, Bestiary(s), two additional hardbacks, and two or three softcovers. The reason for this is to limit complaints from GMs about having to buy too much material. I say soft cap because there was some flexibility to use more, especially in later APs.
So while a single PC might have material from a dozen books, the AP author has to make 6 books stretch across every class-based NPC in the adventure. That makes a big difference when it comes to synergizing abilities.
For some players APs or modules are the first contact with Pathfinder. If they would be too difficult, they would frighten off most of these players, weaken Paizo's business model and change the hobby's reputation to the worse.
Lately I've seen casual players (not completely new ones) struggle in Rise of the Runelords, so Paizo might have hit a good spot for them.
For the most part all of the above is true. However, I have seen some AP encounters that are far too hard for the suggested party CR.
an example is in Carrion Crown, in the first book when they are 1st or second level they encounter animated manacles, which are hardness 10. not many characters at that level can overcome DR10.
But yes as characters level up, they typically surpass the AP's encounters. the Combat Manager program is an easy way of adding advanced templates to monsters, also, maxing the HP's helps a lot too.
AP's are based on races with 0 RP and 15 pt buy. So if you're allowing Aasimars and Drow with 25 pt buys, then they're going to steamroll everything in an AP.
If this is the case, then I would start adding additional monsters to beef up the encounter's CR. If a particular encounter in the AP calls for 3 X's and 4 Y's, consider going 5 X's and 5 Y's instead. And then use that as a metric for making encounters in the future.
Pathfinder CR Calculator <--- If you know that monster X is a CR7 creature, and monster Y is a CR8 creature, you can use this calculator to find out that 5 monster X's plus 5 monster Y's = a total of CR14 encounter.
So use this as the metric. If your party is 4 level 15's and they're smoking through CR15 encounters, then use this calculator to increase the monster count and put them up against a CR17-18 and see how they do. Have a DM contingency in place to prevent any accidental TPK from over-challenging them, though. But if they smoke a CR17-18 encounter, try a CR19 or CR20 and see how they do.
CR is a loose term for challenging a group though, so keep this in mind. Every group has a weakness to something, and if your group happens to be weak to poisons/diseases and acid, then keep that in mind for throwing higher-CR encounters that feature a lot of poison/disease and acid at them. Because you want to challenge them, not TPK them.
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I came up with some better easy math to show how the playing field is tilted in favor of the PCs.
*An NPC with class levels only (such as a human fighter) has a CR equal to its class levels -1.
*An NPC with PC stat buy (20-point) gets +1 to CR.
*An NPC with PC wealth gets +1 to CR.
*So a 4th level NPC human fighter that's built to PC rules is CR5.
Now picture an adventuring group of five 4th-level fighters (silly, I know, just simplifying the example). They come across two bandits who are exactly identical in every way to two of their party members. This 5-on-2 fight maths out to an Epic CR7 encounter.
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I'll just pop in to offer a bit of advice and words of caution. Don't attempt to make every single encounter a challenge to the party. Not every fight is supposed to be memorable or difficult. Most of those encounters are meant to drain the party's resources in one way or the other, so that the more challenging fights ahead become that much more challenging.
From a roleplaying standpoint, if every single fight that the PCs engage in is an intense, escape death by a hair's breadth, emerging bloody but victorious ... well, there would be a lot LESS adventurers and people willing to be adventurers. It is already bad enough trying to convince reasonable people to take on an entire Giant army when every fight is near death and a single misstep or poor roll of the dice will alert the entire army to your presence.
Tweak the fights to make them more challenging if they are not presenting any kind of resource depletion. But resist the urge to test their mettle every time the initiative is rolled.
I'll just pop in to offer a bit of advice and words of caution. Don't attempt to make every single encounter a challenge to the party. Not every fight is supposed to be memorable or difficult. Most of those encounters are meant to drain the party's resources in one way or the other, so that the more challenging fights ahead become that much more challenging.
From a roleplaying standpoint, if every single fight that the PCs engage in is an intense, escape death by a hair's breadth, emerging bloody but victorious ... well, there would be a lot LESS adventurers and people willing to be adventurers. It is already bad enough trying to convince reasonable people to take on an entire Giant army when every fight is near death and a single misstep or poor roll of the dice will alert the entire army to your presence.
Tweak the fights to make them more challenging if they are not presenting any kind of resource depletion. But resist the urge to test their mettle every time the initiative is rolled.
^----- Yep, this. Your party should *theoretically* be able to take on 4 encounters per day, as each equal level CR encounter is *supposed* to use 1/4th of the party's resources.
So if you find that your party is spending 1/4th of their resources in a given encounter at CR18, then that's an entirely appropriate metric for bumping up your avg CR to 18 for encounters, rather than having your encounters set by the AP at CR15.
Given enough time, I will make every NPC built like a PC. NPC's should be built with the exact same rules as the PC's... same point buy, same WBL, same access to magical or interesting toys. Otherwise, they just won't compete. And how can you expect them to?
It is not hard to understand how the party of 20-25pt buy characters with full WBL+crafting and multiclassed/fully optimized builds is smashing on cookie-cutter NPC's with half the money and literally no optimization. Like, duh.
This 14th level bandit somehow got to level 14, and has nothing to show for it? Come on. It's not even believable... fantasy game realism. Lol. The guy is almost the same level as you, but it's literally not even worth searching his gear? How does this happen? In my games, it doesn't... they are built and equipped and optimized as if they, themselves, had played just like you to get where they are. They are not here by accident, and they think they actually have a chance against you.
Given enough time, I will make every NPC built like a PC. NPC's should be built with the exact same rules as the PC's... same point buy, same WBL, same access to magical or interesting toys. Otherwise, they just won't compete. And how can you expect them to?
Well... You don't. PCs are the focal point of the narrative. They are "SPECIAL" and generally have access to greater amounts of wealth and the ability to skyrocket in levels far faster than most average or above average people in the world.
Sure, if EVERYONE got access to the same resources, intense risks vs rewards and sheer exposure to danger at every turn, that the PCs do ... you'd have a world full of increasing powerful threats. But, very few do that, because adventuring is a near death sentence if you don't quit while you are ahead. We see the stories from the player's perspective and don't generally see the heaping piles of bodies of previous, failed adventurers that just couldn't cut it.
Most NPCs in the world grow slowly. Amass wealth the SLOW way. They don't go out and just buy stuff to enhance their survival ability in combat, because they probably RARELY, if ever face direct combat. They purchase and buy things that serve them in the moment or to improve their quality of life.
I fully support using the exact same rules to create PCs and NPC. But NPCs and PCs have vastly different approaches to gaining power and spending their wealth. And the game reflects that.
Without getting into especially cunning individuals that work smarter, not harder... consider a bandit. They literally go out of their way to get into risky situations, and they made a career out of it.
Going about being a bandit "the slow way" sounds like a hungry bandit. Sounds like a bandit with holes in their boots.
My bandits do not like to go hungry, and they like to take other people's boots that don't have holes in them. So much so, that the bandits are brazen enough to confront the party. They didn't just do this by accident, or random, or because the book told them to. They want your gear and honestly think that they can get it.
Bandits raid caravans guarded by literal knights... party of who? What do you guys call yourselves, again? Haven't heard of it... but I like your armor, should fit me just fine.
And these are just Bandits, desperate scavengers piecing together what they can take, and no special hatred of the party. They are what the game considers a random encounter.
Now, imagine the Rogue sent after the party by someone who hates the party. Imagine someone who is like, today I am going to kill that PC. You think that clown is showing up with NPC gear/WBL? No, he knows your weakness, studied your habits, and prepared just for this. He ain't no "iconic Rogue" BS that barely qualifies as anything more than a Commoner... this is a Slayer built to freaking kill you. Why? Because it's more fun that way.
Playing NPC's that are built like NPC's is like watching adults beat up children. It's not fun. It's not even funny. People dedicate their time to sit at my table, I ain't going to waste that time with pathetic BS encounters...
I get what you are saying, and your examples of someone DIRECTLY targeting one of the players (or the group) is going to be the exception to the general rule of NPCs wealth and strength when compared to the party. They are going to BE THE CHALLENGING encounter when they get everything lined up.
As for your bandit examples... most bandits die horribly from starvation, in their first few fights, or from disease and/or law enforcement eventually coming after them. They rarely get an opportunity to get very powerful. Bandits, however, don't have the luxury of doing things the 'slow way' as I stated, and as such, shouldn't be expected to follow that same line of reasoning.
General Statement + specific instance of event that doesn't apply to the premise of general statement = An exception. It does not overturn the general statement.
Most NPCs gain power and wealth the SLOW way + bandits don't because they'll starve = Bandits are within the remaining number of NPCS that does not include the 'MOST' classifier.
But, hey. Its your table, your rules. I'm just offering a different perspective on the matter, one that aligns itself a little closer (IMO) to the core exceptions that game was designed around. The game is not fair or equal to all parties by design.
I wasn't trying to be argumentive. Bandits are just a classic example of an encounter with NPC's that aren't animals or monsters. I wasn't even picking them to be an exception to any general rules... if anything, I thought bandits WERE the general rule for NPC's.
Your average NPC that has made a career of playing it safe never stands toe to toe with a fully equipped party of adventures. Why would they do that? They fold or run immediately, and hope to fight another day. But that does not make for interesting encounters.
So we have to decide which NPC's we will have face the fully equipped party of adventures... because somebody has to do it. Are these NPC's that cannot afford to feed themselves enough to be healthy? Are these NPC's that have barely upgraded their gear? Like, they have HD and levels and stuff... think about what a PC would have and be capable of given the same number of levels in the same class. Like what 3rd level Ranger is still running around with a masterwork weapon and masterwork armor? You have literally found better stuff by now, guarded by spiders or wolves.
It's not fair to the players to waste their time with predestined losers. Might as well just narrate how they kill everyone, hand out XP or level via milestone, and move to an actual encounter that will be determined by the dice. Playing the NPC in their generic and pathetic as-written state isn't worth asking people to show up every week.
If I am coming off as argumentative, that is not intentional. You approach the game differently than I do and I am comparing notes on how I approach the game versus how you do.
I am not sure how you approached the idea that bandits are the general rule for NPCs, unless you are looking at the game from a purely (or nearly pure) combat perspective. I approach the issue from a world-building and narrative perspective, and use the mechanics to interpret the way the players interact with the world. To that end, I see the general rule of NPCs to apply to the NON-combatants that fill the world. The farmers, the merchants, the crafters, etc. Bandits in this regard have FAILED to make use of the normal means to progress as an NPC and have to rely on the combat mechanics (and semi-adventuring status) to make their way, and they die more often than other NPCs.
I am a storyteller at heart, even though I've got an optimization streak that runs deep. Honestly, the mechanics have stopped being the most 'fun' part of the game to me, though it is still highly enjoyable. I live more for the moment where the players discover something new, when I tie something into the narrative on the fly because they did something unexpected and it gave me a new plot hook.
As far as predestined losers... That is how I see the Pathfinder game in general. The players are PLAYING to win the game, but not easily and not without some risk of negative consequence. In the back of my mind, I always know that the players are destined to WIN, unless something unexpected happens.
I am not good of a GM/storyteller, yet. I will be the first to admit that.
It's easier for me to surprise the players with something unexpected in combat, than it is for me to make them jump or cry or gasp or laugh with story alone. I will get there eventually, hopefully, but until then... having bandits chop your arrows out of the air is like "Whhaaat?"
Your homeboys are looking at you, like "did you just miss?"
You're staring at your bow in disbelief, "I... I don't think so... did I... miss?"
Storytime just seems to be a call to arms, despite how much I try tug on the heart-strings. And it's my fault for not being able to properly tell the story... the players at my table have been wonderful and are not nearly as murderhobo as I make them sound.
Ah, I see the bigger picture now. Thank you for sharing. That is not too dissimilar from where I was when I first got into the GM seat. It just takes time and exposure to how other people run their games. We all have our own unique way of telling the stories, and we borrow more than we think from other storytellers we meet and learn from. Hell, I've finally got a fairly good use for all those fantasy books I grew up reading (and still read to this days, though more now on audiobook because ... well, its the best form of storytelling IMO). I borrowed from them until I found my little niche in which my own unique ideas grew and evolved.
My secret for immersive storytelling is that most of the work occurs within the minds of your players. As long as you can get them invested in their character and their character's LIFE, as they would with a favorite character from a novel, the story writes itself. Just don't give them everything they want. It never satisfies them if they don't earn it first. As far as storytelling inevitably leading to conflict, yes, that is entirely true. But, and this is a big concept people miss all the time, building up to that conflict is where all the gratification stems. The older I get the more I enjoy the delayed gratification of a well built and paced story arc. Yes, you will eventually be pulled into combat, but do it with style. It feels so much better.
PCs generally do adventuring as a full-time job and go places where there's interesting treasure and face CR-appropriate opponents because that's what's in the scenario to make a good story and a fun game. A bandit isn't trying to save the world or overthrow the duke or whatever. He wants to beat up peasants and pilgrims and merchants and take their stuff. He does that because he needs to make a living. And he's not going to take unnecessary risks and probably wasn't born with the brains, muscle and good looks of the typical 25-point PC. He's just a yokel who got driven off his land by the greedy baron, or the mercenary who's out of a job, or the hill tribesman who does cattle raids because it's traditional.
There will be a few above-average bandits in the band, and they'll be smarter and stronger and may have been luckier and somehow found a +2 falcata they actually have the right feats for. Or instead of finding a +2 falcata they might have found a suit of Small +3 Parade Armour designed for the young prince which they can't use or sell because, you know, bandits.
The way to make the bandit encounter balanced and realistic is not to have 25-point 8th level rangers with +2 gear, but to have lots of 1st-4th level mooks with whatever motley kit they've got.
Lone assassins are a different matter.
Back to AP's, and the encounters found therewithin... most AP's have pretty good guides for running them with large parties. These guides are generally written be people with more conventional aapproaches to building NPC's, and follow the AP pretty true. There are just more enemies, some Advanced templates (but nothing silly), a little better gear in some cases (but a lot of times the overall treasure seems to be about the same).
These party of six guides can be used for more optimized parties of four, or gestalt parties of three. More often then not, it's easier to adjust downwards (just remove enemies) than it is to adjust upwards.
PS. Because I enjoy a good debate involving people's GM'ing strategies... I believe that bandits would be more willing to grab a few of their boys and march into a Goblin lair than your average townsfolk. Sure, compared to a lot of enemies one can encounter, bandits are cowardly scum... but compared to your average Joe, these are hardened criminals that have chosen a life of danger over selling potatoes.
A bandits' day job includes the possibility of being ran through with a sword, taking an unlucky bolt to the throat, or a sling bullet to the head then being shackled then caged then hanged by the neck until dead. When loot is a possible reward, what are a few Goblins or Kobolds?
Is that not exactly how adventurers get a lot of their loot?
They might indeed beat up the local goblins, not just because they might have loot but because they're competition preying on the caravans the bandits are after. And by clearing out the goblins they might also make friends among the local peasants, bolstering their local protection racket.
But they won't take stupid risks, as that's a way to end up dead. They're not slaying goblins because it's the right and noble thing to do that just happens to be CR-equivalent and leads to the Vital Clue To The Next Adventure.
They pick their targets carefully, if they can. Their friends in town will have told them about the caravan, its cargo and the apparent strength of the guards, and they'll use that information. If it's too strong, they'll leave it (unless stupid/desperate/unlucky).
The reason they attack the caravan with the PCs in it and finally meet their match is because that's the story, made a bit more plausible because this caravan is "guarded" by 3 goons and a misfit band of a halfling with a piccolo, a gnome with an outsize pet cat, some blonde girl with tattoos and far too few clothes and a guy with no armour or weapons to speak of.
If this is how you design your bandits, how about the local prize-fighter, soldier or town guard? Are they PC-level with PC-stats and PC-gear? And for what level of PC?
The other reason not to have NPCs with PC gear is that the PCs will become far too wealthy...
Playing NPC's smarter can go a long ways... even Warrior 4/Adept 4 NPC's can be equipped with different feats/gear, assembled into teams that include both reach and range, and set up with semi-advantageous positioning.
They each be but CR~3, 8HD, a little over 36 HP...
BAB +6
Base Saves +5/+2/+5
CL 4, 2nd level spell (DC~15)
A Familiar
And enough feats for:
A) Power Attack, Furious Focus, Spell Focus, Improved Initiative
B) Combat Reflexes, Bodyguard, Spell Focus, Improved Initiative
C) Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Spell Focus, Improved Initiative
D) Weapon Focus, Dazzling Display, Spell Focus, Improved Iniative
There's your CR~7 team... two teams to a CR~9 squad...
*An NPC with PC stat buy (20-point) gets +1 to CR.
Where do you take this from? I don't think this is true.
It's definitely untrue in practise - most players and GMs overvalue point buy hard. The difference between a 15PB and a 20PB (or heroic NPC array and 20PB) is around the value of 1-2 feats, that's not even close to being worth +1 CR. In comparison, the Advanced template is +4 to all ability scores (and natural armor), and that's worth but +1 CR.
NPC's should be built with the exact same rules as the PC's... same point buy, same WBL, same access to magical or interesting toys. Otherwise, they just won't compete. And how can you expect them to?
There are ways, you just have to understand that PCs and NPCs are not equal. Never were, never will be. An NPC can spend all aviable recources (equipment, class recources like spells, even point buy) on the one single encounter they'll have in their imaginary lives, unlike a PC who has to be able to face different challenges, and/or multiple challenges in a day. Add in the +1 class level, initial positioning (and other minor terrain benefits not big enough to up the CR), and in-group synergy, and it's not hard to create challenging NPCs using the intended rules. Of course, it take an CR=APL+4 encounter for an actually (on paper) fair fight (which the CRB outright tells you not to use), everything else is notably stacked in the PC's favor.