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You might be mistaking me: Temperans has never played PF2. This is something they are very adamant about.
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Hey, all I've done is asked of you've played PF1 and noted that you don't play PF2, this isn't a condemnation of you nor do I want this to turn into yet another ridiculous back and forth where you seem to think I'm out to get you.
Someone replying to you on a public forum is not an attack on your character. If you feel that way, it certainly changes how everyone should be interacting here. Much like having an opinion on a game system I've never played, I don't need to get tit for tat on every post in a thread. You're literally just someone who posts a ton repeating the same bizarre talking points, and it's so much easier to get that recap out of the way before we get another thread shutdown in the midst of CS upheval.
While I may not understand posting on game forums weekly or daily for a game one doesn't play, I certainly think one should be allowed to. It's still going to get the same reaction from me: How much of your information comes from any point of actual reference? Especially when people are doing playtesting.
Anyway, if you DO get in a game, I hope you enjoy it. I am still wounded by the time that you said you were in a game, but you were just... Well, I have no idea what you were trying to say back then.
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@Deriven
Maybe I wasn't very clear for that I am sorry. I meant to say that I understood why we had such difference in opinion. You clearly have more experience and so the way you see things are clearly different from the narrow experience that I have. Also I agree and never debated that PF2 is much easier to run for GMs, there is no denying that. Also yeah I wont deny it has faster character creation, a large part because of the reduced feat pools.
Also I can understand wanting a new game when you have already done a lot in another.
PF2 doesn't have reduced feat pools. It has more feats than before.
What makes it easier to run is the following:
1. Lack of long-term stacking buffs. Buffing and preparing to fight was one of the longest aspects of PF1.
2. Lack of multi-creature summoning. This became a real problem later on when multiple creatures were summoned and each had to take turns. This is also a problem in 5E.
3. Lack of excessive magic items where casters carried around multiple buff wands with 50 charges making it easy to buff up heavily before fights.
4. Spells with a duration requiring sustain actions limiting how many you can have active.
5. 3 action limitation. You don't swing 5 or more times for attacks very often.
6. Limited bonuses and penalties. You don't have to take forever to calculate luck, enhancement, unnamed, dodge, morale, and all the other bonuses that stacked in PF1. They kept it simple.
There are a lot more feats to build characters with, but far less to do to prepare for and calculate in battle.
Feats are not what were cut out. Class abilities were cut out and made into feats. Each chassis is pretty basic, then you flesh out the character with all the different feats making a variety of combinations. PF2 is a lot more modular and allows for more unique character concepts than PF1 which made every paladin, every rogue, and every class the same until they later came out with optional means to replace class abilities which turned into class feats in PF2.
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To me, it's like reading about driving a car. You might know all the theory, but you have absolutely no idea what it feels like to drive in New York vs the UK vs Boston, let alone how it feels to drive different cars, or in different weather conditions.
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One change I absolutely adore, that I haven't heard many people bring up, is that "ability damage" is no longer a thing. While ability damage in PF1 makes sense, having to recalculate my character sheet is the opposite of fun for me. I am *so happy* that PF2 replaces ability damage with easy conditions that do functionally the same thing without having to recalculate all the fiddly numbers that key off abilities in PF1.
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The arguments about who has enough experience to judge PF1 and PF2 are beside the point. A person who read the PF2 rules and decided that they didn't want to play the system is justified in their opinion.
I have a reasonable amount of experience in PF1 and PF2. I ran three campaigns, Rise of the Runelords, Jade Regent, and Iron Gods, under PF1 and played in two other PF1 campaigns run by other GMs. I continued the Rise of the Runelords campaign to 20th level. My sole experience with PF2 is the playtest Doomsday Dawn, which we got only halfway through, and the PF2-converted Ironfang Invasion campaign I have been running since October 2019.
Yet that experience has limits. When I wrote my list of 8 known problems with PF2 (comment #124 and I left off a 9th problem, the Christmas tree effect and the big six magic items), I was speaking from what I learned by reading other people's comments in these forums. My players and I largely avoided those problems. They did not want to powergame, they did not want to rely on expensive equipment, they adopted skirmishing tactics rather than stand-still tactics, etc. And I still had to double the challenge of their encounters because they excelled through teamwork. I would claim that my players were unique, except that different campaigns had different players. Except my wife was in all of the campaigns, because I especially like playing RPGs with my wife.
Thus, my observations are mostly from reading, too.
And I still have to double the challenges in my PF2 campaign. My players broke the tight math of encounter budgets in PF2 through teamwork and tactics.
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The arguments about who has enough experience to judge PF1 and PF2 are beside the point. A person who read the PF2 rules and decided that they didn't want to play the system is justified in their opinion.
I have a reasonable amount of experience in PF1 and PF2. I ran three campaigns, Rise of the Runelords, Jade Regent, and Iron Gods, under PF1 and played in two other PF1 campaigns run by other GMs. I continued the Rise of the Runelords campaign to 20th level. My sole experience with PF2 is the playtest Doomsday Dawn, which we got only halfway through, and the PF2-converted Ironfang Invasion campaign I have been running since October 2019.
Yet that experience has limits. When I wrote my list of 8 known problems with PF2 (comment #124 and I left off a 9th problem, the Christmas tree effect and the big six magic items), I was speaking from what I learned by reading other people's comments in these forums. My players and I largely avoided those problems. They did not want to powergame, they did not want to rely on expensive equipment, they adopted skirmishing tactics rather than stand-still tactics, etc. And I still had to double the challenge of their encounters because they excelled through teamwork. I would claim that my players were unique, except that different campaigns had different players. Except my wife was in all of the campaigns, because I especially like playing RPGs with my wife.
Thus, my observations are mostly from reading, too.
And I still have to double the challenges in my PF2 campaign. My players broke the tight math of encounter budgets in PF2 through teamwork and tactics.
You did not break the math. The math has little to do with encounter budgets. I have never used encounter budgets in any edition of the game.
Breaking the math means you can't use creatures as is out of the book. Breaking the math is when I have to give a bridge guardian hydra 4000 hit points to last 5 rounds against a group in PF1. Breaking the math is when I have to spend 10 ten hours plus designing a group of enemy NPCs because I have to account for every spell, ability, and magic item of the PC party to make them even remotely challenging.
I've read your groups. I wonder if you account for party size. Encounter guidelines are built with 4 person parties in mind. If you have a larger party, you should expand the number or capabilities of a creature by an equal percentage.
If I'm running a six person party, I boost the numbers of creatures or hit points of BBEG creatures by 50%. Action compounding by a larger party is powerful, especially against single target creatures. I have not tried to increase the actions of individual powerful monsters by 50% because they often have multiattack abilities that allows them to attack larger groups, so I've only done hit points to this point for larger parties to ensure they last a relatively equivalent length of time to their original design.
Teamwork is helpful, but it doesn't break the math. If you haven't played high level 3E or PF1 over numerous campaigns, you won't quite understand what "breaking the math" means where you have to throw the math out the window and redesign monsters in the bestiaries and NPCs in APs from the ground up to challenge min-max built PCs that deal 1000s of points of damage a round using their single target attacks. If they do AOE damage, they do even more. And they hit their first three attacks on a 2 or better.
PF2 has nothing like that, not even close. My players use teamwork comparable to anyone I've read on here. It doesn't break the math at all. I can still pull some giants out of the bestiary, throw them at the party, and give them a good fight. That was not the case in PF1 at around 7th level.
I still recall playing Kingmaker where the primary enemy at the end of a module was fairly powerful single target creature against a 7th level party. I think it had maybe 215 hit points in the module. Supposed to be a legendary creature that terrorized the area for years. I boosted its hit points to 950. I had to boost up its save and AC. Still only lasted 3 rounds in PF1.
But I have to say, that still wasn't as bad as 5E where Demogorgon was kited by a 5E party with a bow and sorlock beam attacks because it lacked a good ranged attack and the bounded accuracy made it easy to hit with bless. That is when I knew 5E was not for me. If you can't make Demon Lords into fearsome creatures in 5E that can't be easily kited and killed, then that game is all done in my mind.
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Deriven Firelion, you know my reputation for overthinking mathematics. I do take party size into account. Adjusting an encouter budget for party size is elementary-school mathematics.
I once hastily created a roadblock manned by the hobgoblins Ironfang Legion in a village just off the map in Trail of the Hunted. The 4th-level party had decided to visit the next village east of their own conquered village to see how they fared. Really, the hobgoblins had conquered that village, too.
I did not want to run a battle there, so I made the garrison an 280-xp encounter with yet more hobgoblins sleeping in a barracks who could bump it up to 320 xp. I have a description at link and another at link). By the PF2 encounter budget, Table 10-1, an extreme-threat encounter for a 5-member party is 200 xp. The initial encounter was 40% more than that. The party stealthily scouted from the forest, saw the strength of the garrison, and decided to take it out.
Their first tactic was divide and conquer. They set up snares along a side path in the forest, hid in ambush, and sent their champion moseying along as if she were an unsuspecting traveler. The champion suddenly reversed in sight of the hobgoblins and ran back. Four 1st-level Hobgoblin Soldiers gave chase and died to the snares and ambush. 60 xp down, 220 xp to go.
The party crept over to an empty two-story inn and started shooting the hobgoblins from the windows. They would shoot twice or cast one spell and then Take Cover. The rogue preferred to Hide instead for the sneak attack the next turn. The front doorway was guarded by the shield-bearing champion and her velociraptor. This gave them terrain advantage. The hobgoblins smart enough to try the back door were ambushed by the ranger.
Some party members took their lumps, but the druid and champion had healing. The ranger did end up fighting two Hobgoblin Archers and went unconscious. She used a hero point to stabilize. The other party members stayed on their feet.
The tactics were straightforward. Take advantage of their stealth and later go for terrain advantage. Put PCs where they could use their strengths, such as a defensive character to block the doorway and ranged characters where they had cover but the enemy didn't. Heal to keep PCs active while the enemy was willing to sacrifice lowly 1st-level soldiers. The party also made opportune use of consumables. It was enough to let them fight as well as 7 characters instead of fight like 5. And that 40% advantage breaks the tight PF2 encounter budget math.
They won other battles that were also beyond extreme. Currently the 10th-level 7-member party has been defending the city of Longshadow from 24 9th-level Hobgoblin Formations and 7 other units, but they had city walls, the city militia, and 4 NPC recruits to help. Only 7 Hobgoblin Formations and 4 other units remain alive after today's game session. Two party member are down to half their hit points, the rest are nearly untouched.
In PF1 40% better through tactics is rounding error compared to the 3 or 4 times better that powergaming design can offer. However, my players discovered in PF1 that optimizing for teamwork is even more efficient than optimizing for individual power. Combat is slower, but no-one in the party ever dies and every player has a good story about their contribution to victory.
Breaking the math means you can't use creatures as is out of the book. Breaking the math is when I have to give a bridge guardian hydra 4000 hit points to last 5 rounds against a group in PF1. Breaking the math is when I have to spend 10 ten hours plus designing a group of enemy NPCs because I have to account for every spell, ability, and magic item of the PC party to make them even remotely challenging.[/url]
Since I am converting the Ironfang Invasion AP to PF2 rules, I have to convert the opponents to new rules. I replaced the CR 1/2 Ironfang Recruits (regular hobgoblins from the PF1 Bestiary 1) with 1st-level Hobgoblin Soldiers from the PF2 Bestiary 1, but I also had to build the 2nd-level Ironfang Heavy Troopers by advancing the Hobgoblin Soldiers a level and giving them heavy armor. I spent 10 hours designing the 9th-level Hobgoblin Formations based on the PF2 Bestiary 3 troops. Then I playtested a pair of Hobgoblin Formations in a small encounter, tossed out some troop abilities as not worth the trouble, and invented new ones.
I have played only one PF1 campaign to 20th level, so my experience at 17th to 20th level is small. But I have modified creatures to challenge my players at 16th-level PF1. My players don't powergame, so I don't have to counter overpowered exploits, but their tactics with known abilities are often surprising. I want them to surprise me, because it's fun. A 15th-level 5-member party once defeated an evil CR 23 solar angel with vampire minions by clever combination of battlefield-control abilities to keep it stunned and disarmed while they took out the minions and then they overwhelmed the angel via action economy.
In PF1 the encounter math breaks down on its own past 10th level. PF2 is designed so that the encounter math works as well at 14th level as it does at 4th level. However, my players broke the math at 4th level because both editions of Pathfinder reward teamwork.
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Deriven Firelion, you know my reputation for overthinking mathematics. I do take party size into account. Adjusting an encouter budget for party size is elementary-school mathematics.
I once hastily created a roadblock manned by the hobgoblins Ironfang Legion in a village just off the map in Trail of the Hunted. The 4th-level party had decided to visit the next village east of their own conquered village to see how they fared. Really, the hobgoblins had conquered that village, too.
I did not want to run a battle there, so I made the garrison an 280-xp encounter with yet more hobgoblins sleeping in a barracks who could bump it up to 320 xp. I have a description at link and another at link). By the PF2 encounter budget, Table 10-1, an extreme-threat encounter for a 5-member party is 200 xp. The initial encounter was 40% more than that. The party stealthily scouted from the forest, saw the strength of the garrison, and decided to take it out.
Their first tactic was divide and conquer. They set up snares along a side path in the forest, hid in ambush, and sent their champion moseying along as if she were an unsuspecting traveler. The champion suddenly reversed in sight of the hobgoblins and ran back. Four 1st-level Hobgoblin Soldiers gave chase and died to the snares and ambush. 60 xp down, 220 xp to go.
The party crept over to an empty two-story inn and started shooting the hobgoblins from the windows. They would shoot twice or cast one spell and then Take Cover. The rogue preferred to Hide instead for the sneak attack the next turn. The front doorway was guarded by the shield-bearing champion and her velociraptor. This gave them terrain advantage. The hobgoblins smart enough to try the back door were ambushed by the...
I've read your descriptions of how you run encounters. It sounds very nonlethal and like you are very kind in allowances to your players. And you play the monsters in a very nonlethal manner. That's fine. It's your group's playstyle and they enjoy it.
But you run younger players and your wife. I doubt I would run kids and my wife in a game like I run for my buddies who I've been playing with for 30 years. My buddy runs his daughter and her friends in 5E and he runs a much different game for them than for us. They like to roleplay and are not interested in RPG war games.
I'm not sure what you mean by using percentages for powergaming. You list no powergaming combinations in your description. There are too many to name that I learned over the years playing PF1. There are so many power gaming combinations in PF1, no single percentage or mathematical analysis is going to provide some percentage effectiveness increase no matter how much someone likes math.
All I can say for certain is PF2 monsters are better designed out of the box for lethal play than PF1 monsters. I don't look at encounter budgets. They never much worked in my opinion. After you DM a number of years, you don't really need them. You know what the party can or cannot handle.
In PF1 40% better through tactics is rounding error compared to the 3 or 4 times better that powergaming design can offer. However, my players discovered in PF1 that optimizing for teamwork is even more efficient than optimizing for individual power. Combat is slower, but no-one in the party ever dies and every player has a good story about their contribution to victory.
Power gamers use teamwork. They even design their entire team from the ground up for maximum team power.
No one ever died in PF1 because it was enormously easy to avoid when you included hero points. And even if they died, it was easy to bring them back. Gold was easy to come by. High level players had easy access to resurrections.
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I really love Pathfinder 1, and strongly dislike Pathfinder 2. But sometimes PF1 take away your will to live, and there is a world where I want to love PF2 with all my hearth but it seems I am unable to do it.
Bakckground:
- PF1: Played and Dmed Iron Gods, Hell's Rebells, Rise of the Runelords, Mummy's Mask, Reign of Winter, Jade Regent, and homebrew one shot.
- PF2: Played and DMed Plaguestone, Extinction Curse, and a Hombrew Campaign of 8 scenarios.
- Other: Played and Dmed a lot in Warhammer, Demon Lord, L5R, Cypher System, Star Wars Edge, 5e (a loooot) and many other in one shot or 2-3 shots.Pathfinder 1:
- I played a Brawler with an Automail from Full Metal Alchimyst and Hook Fightning. It was awesome.
- I killed as a DM my cleric player in our first campaign with grapple/grab/constrict in 2 rounds and the group was powerless to stop me.
- We run Iron Gods with a Summoner in the group and his eidolon became a diety, fitting with the fact that it was the most powerfull member of the group, it was awesome.
- One day I played a Barbarian/Alchymyst Orc in a Hombrew level 4, and I made the DM quitt. It was terrible.
- As a DM, one Psychic player of mine Possessed in one spell the three big dragons of the campaign (at 3 different time of the story) with a stupid DC and Persistent Metamagic. It was awesome. He killed the henchman of the Dragons with the Dragons, and made them bow to suffer coup de grace from the group. Awesome.
- One of my noob player made once a Knife Master Rogue, and realized that he was a noob looking at the Vivisectionist and oversized kukri. That was terrible.
- I TPK my party in Rise of the Runelords at the end boss, winning Initiative and Casting Mage Disjunction on the group. It is as of today my biggest failure as a DM, and the most anticlimatic end of a campaign.
- One of my player in the current campaign is a Witch with the SLumber Hex. She can make every boss fall to sleep with an awesome catchphrase, it is awesome, and the whole group love her.
-...
Thank you very much for your precise post. I feel that the type of play you want was likely not the one most voters in the playtest surveys wanted. And that is what was used in creating the final PF2.
Now, PF2 can be adjusted to fit another style of gameplay with not so much effort. So I think you can find the relevant modifications to bring to it that will make you and your party feel better. For example with homebrew items or feats that add to spell DCs and To-hit.
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I feel one change in PF2 that's not been addressed very much in this thread is the simplification and improved consistency of the rules. Specifically:
- No more CMB, CMD, and convoluted rules for combat maneuvers. Instead, checks like Athletics vs Fortitude DC are used, a much more straightforward way to resolve this type of action.
- No more Touch AC. Casters use their spell attack bonus vs AC.
- The jungle of full-round action, standard action, move action, swift action, immediate action and free action is gone, replaced with just 3 types: action, free action, and reaction.
- No more special 5-ft step action-that's-not-really-an-action, gone along with its slew of special rules. The equivalent is the Step action: The creature moves only 5-ft and avoids provoking reactions.
- No more surprise round. This was a special round with all sorts of rule exceptions that I always found hard to remember. It's gone entirely. Instead, those who win initiative get to act first, and that's it. It barely changes the feel of early combat, and it's way easier to handle.
- Broad consolidation of skills. Highly situational skills like Swim, Sleight of Hand, Appraise, Fly, Escape Artist, Linguistics etc. were consolidated, so that all skills now can be expected to be used reasonably often (the only exception is Lore in specialized fields, which is mostly there for flavor).
- Damage resistance, energy resistance and vulnerability mechanics replaced with a unified, streamlined version.
- No more spell resistance. Monsters' resistance to magic is now represented by high saves: A critical success means the spell has no effect.
- This one has been mentioned before: radical reduction in the number of bonus types.
- Another one that's been mentioned above is the removal of ability damage and temporary ability bonuses. Ability damage was replaced by clear and consistent conditions like stupefied, clumsy etc. that apply easy to understand penalties. Ability bonuses have become straight bonuses to relevant stats. We no longer need a spreadsheet or Hero Lab to manage stats during combat.
- Greatly reduced impact of creature size (no impact on attack rolls, AC, or base weapon damage).
- Greatly streamlined rules for lighting and vision.
- Greatly streamlined encumbrance rules. This one was controversial because the new rule, Bulk, isn't a very realistic representation of the real world. But many groups didn't use encumbrance at all in PF1 because it was such a pain. Bulk is at least usable.
- Enormously simplified rules for polymorph. Each polymorph spell basically replaces the creature's stats with a fixed set, depending only on the specific spell.
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Deriven Firelion, you know my reputation for overthinking mathematics. I do take party size into account. Adjusting an encouter budget for party size is elementary-school mathematics.
I once hastily created a roadblock manned by the hobgoblins Ironfang Legion in a village just off the map in Trail of the Hunted. The 4th-level party had decided to visit the next village east of their own conquered village to see how they fared. Really, the hobgoblins had conquered that village, too.
I did not want to run a battle there, so I made the garrison an 280-xp encounter with yet more hobgoblins sleeping in a barracks who could bump it up to 320 xp. I have a description at link and another at link). By the PF2 encounter budget, Table 10-1, an extreme-threat encounter for a 5-member party is 200 xp. The initial encounter was 40% more than that. The party stealthily scouted from the forest, saw the strength of the garrison, and decided to take it out.
Their first tactic was divide and conquer. They set up snares along a side path in the forest, hid in ambush, and sent their champion moseying along as if she were an unsuspecting traveler. The champion suddenly reversed in sight of the hobgoblins and ran back. Four 1st-level Hobgoblin Soldiers gave chase and died to the snares and ambush. 60 xp down, 220 xp to go.
The party crept over to an empty two-story inn and started shooting the hobgoblins from the windows. They would shoot twice or cast one spell and then Take Cover. The rogue preferred to Hide instead for the sneak attack the next turn. The front doorway was guarded by the shield-bearing champion and her velociraptor. This gave them terrain advantage. The hobgoblins smart enough to try the back door were ambushed by the...
I'm a bit surprised that after the first few losses at the inn the Hobgoblins didn't try to burn the PCs out. It seems like something an intelligent and warlike group would have as a standby for 'sieges such as that.
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Deriven Firelion, you know my reputation for overthinking mathematics. I do take party size into account. Adjusting an encouter budget for party size is elementary-school mathematics.
I once hastily created a roadblock manned by the hobgoblins Ironfang Legion in a village just off the map in Trail of the Hunted. The 4th-level party had decided to visit the next village east of their own conquered village to see how they fared. Really, the hobgoblins had conquered that village, too.
I did not want to run a battle there, so I made the garrison an 280-xp encounter with yet more hobgoblins sleeping in a barracks who could bump it up to 320 xp. I have a description at link and another at link). By the PF2 encounter budget, Table 10-1, an extreme-threat encounter for a 5-member party is 200 xp. The initial encounter was 40% more than that. The party stealthily scouted from the forest, saw the strength of the garrison, and decided to take it out.
Their first tactic was divide and conquer. They set up snares along a side path in the forest, hid in ambush, and sent their champion moseying along as if she were an unsuspecting traveler. The champion suddenly reversed in sight of the hobgoblins and ran back. Four 1st-level Hobgoblin Soldiers gave chase and died to the snares and ambush. 60 xp down, 220 xp to go.
One encounter, 4 1st level hobgoblin soldiers. Yes, it is their tactics that made it into a separate enciounter.
The party crept over to an empty two-story inn and started shooting the hobgoblins from the windows. They would shoot twice or cast one spell and then Take Cover. The rogue preferred to Hide instead for the sneak attack the next turn. The front doorway was guarded by the shield-bearing champion and her velociraptor. This gave them terrain advantage. The hobgoblins smart enough to try the back door were ambushed by the...
Guards went missing yet the party had time to sneak up on the garrison. Then the party created a terrain advantage such that they did not have to deal with the whole encounter at once. Closer to the 220 xp that is an extreme encounter, but the party had several advantages and played smart.
I imagine if the NPCs had concentrated forces and led out the back with their strongest person the encounter would have gone worse for the PCs. Once out of the building, they use the cover provided by it to force the snipers to move.
If you allow the party to split an encounter into multiple parts — especially if they have any chance between the parts to recover — it is no longer a single encounter.
Personally, I find nothing wrong with how you ran it. It made for a good story. Still, it isn’t an example of breaking the math of PF2.
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I'm a bit surprised that after the first few losses at the inn the Hobgoblins didn't try to burn the PCs out. It seems like something an intelligent and warlike group would have as a standby for 'sieges such as that.
The party crept over to an empty two-story inn and started shooting the hobgoblins from the windows. They would shoot twice or cast one spell and then Take Cover. The rogue preferred to Hide instead for the sneak attack the next turn. The front doorway was guarded by the shield-bearing champion and her velociraptor. This gave them terrain advantage. The hobgoblins smart enough to try the
I have told this story before and someone asked me the same question. I looked up on the internet how long burning down a building requires. People have 15 minutes to escape an older burning house (newer designs burn faster). The battle was over before the party would need to evacuate.
Of course, the main reason is that I did not think of it. Running so many enemies leaves me too busy to be creative.
Guards went missing yet the party had time to sneak up on the garrison.
When the first group of four hobgoblin soldiers did not return immediately, the other soldiers sent two more to sneak up and scout what happened. The party had not yet finished hiding the bodies (yes, they do that, too, to fool their enemies), so the scouts spotted a dead hobgoblin guard and sneaked back to report their defeat. The party, with 4th-level perception, spotted the 1st-level scouts and stealthily followed them. The party was not totally successful in stealth, were spotted near the inn, and retreated into the inn.
Then the party created a terrain advantage such that they did not have to deal with the whole encounter at once. Closer to the 220 xp that is an extreme encounter, but the party had several advantages and played smart.
I imagine if the NPCs had concentrated forces and led out the back with their strongest person the encounter would have gone worse for the PCs. Once out of the building, they use the cover provided by it to force the snipers to move.
When their commander, a 5th-level spriggan lieutenant, showed up, he took one of the two 4th-level hobgoblin archers and raided the back door. He left the other archer in charge of the soldiers still trying the front door. Two party members, ranger and trickster rogue, teamed up against the lieutenant and defeated him despite his spriggan growth and blur abilities (the rogue had looted Dust of Appearance and remembered to use it). The archer had dealt damage but fled after the lieutenant's death. The ranger followed, and in the long run the ranger splitting from the party led to his takedown.
If you allow the party to split an encounter into multiple parts — especially if they have any chance between the parts to recover — it is no longer a single encounter.
Personally, I find nothing wrong with how you ran it. It made for a good story. Still, it isn’t an example of breaking the math of PF2.
Allow? Are you suggesting that I should forbid a shootout from a building, a classical tactic seen in movies about the U.S. Old West, because those tactics make the party more effective?
The PF2 Core Rulebook has GM guidance on Building Encounters and gives XP budgets: against 5 party members, 75 xp of enemies for low threat, 100 xp of enemies for moderate threat, 150 xp of enemies for severe threat, and 200 xp of enemies for extreme threat. It gives no advice on party members tactically splitting the enemy forces into multiple encounters run back to back with no rest in between. Yet a wall spell, such as Wall of Thorns, can split the enemy like that in a room.
Another time the 6th-level 7-member party faced a small army of 40 hobgoblin soldiers (grouped into 10 5th-level troop units of 4 soldiers each), 2 6th-level sharpshooters, an 8th-level captain, and his 3rd-level dire wolf. That is 475 xp when the extreme threat against a 7-member party is 280 xp. The party had a great terrain advantage, because they had set up an ambush in a mountain pass for the next 12-soldier hobgoblin patrol. I sent an army instead, heh heh. The enemy column was 120 feet long, so I knew the party would not have to fight the entire army at once. The back would need time to catch up.
The trickster rogue was taken down to 2 hit points. The sorcerer had to follow behind the druid in Dinosaur Form casting Heal to keep the druid on his tyrannosaurus feet. And the monk followed the sorcerer as her bodyguard. When the trickster rogue was down to 2 hit points, the monk picked up the small leshy sorcerer and ran her to within 30 feet of the rogue to perform emergency healing. Perhaps that bent the rules, but I loved the teamwork. The champion, ranger, and sniper rogue were undamaged.
I had three of those players in my PF1 Iron Gods campaign, and they played with tactical teamwork there, too. Deceiving the enemy, dividing the enemy, nullify enemy tactics, and taking terrain advantage are perfectly possible in PF1.
The tactical difference with PF2 is that tactics are necessary since brute force favors the monsters, and many tactical options are more readily available.
For a PF1 character to trip enemies well they need the Improved Trip feat. Likewise for Improved Bull Rush, Improved Disarm, Improved Grapple, and Improved Sunder. Shortage of feats limits them to one or two. For three of those combat maneuvers in PF2, the character needs only training in Athletics, not a feat (Sunder was dropped and Disarm was nerfed). Thus, a character who learned Athletics for climbing and swimming could suddenly use a combat maneuver never tried before just because it is the best action at the right time. When my party faced a barbarian with Deny Advantage preventing the two rogue's sneak attacks from flanking, the ranger tripped the barbarian to enable sneak attack due to being prone.
Allow? Are you suggesting that I should forbid a shootout from a building, a classical tactic seen in movies about the U.S. Old West, because those tactics make the party more effective?If you allow the party to split an encounter into multiple parts — especially if they have any chance between the parts to recover — it is no longer a single encounter.
Personally, I find nothing wrong with how you ran it. It made for a good story. Still, it isn’t an example of breaking the math of PF2.
I have bolded the section you seem to have ignored. I meant no insult, only to illustrate that what you budgeted as a single encounter became multiple encounters.
Although I can not claim to have studied them in detail, I have reviewed the encounter budget system. I believe it gives a fair estimate of what a group can handle in one shot and how difficult it is likely to be. It doesn’t do as well with the Elite adjustment when the creature(s) are already above the party level.
It does not (nor do I believe any system for this game system could) perfectly predict the outcome of every encounter. It does not say anything about positioning nor does it go into details of how to choose an appropriate strategy. Except in the most general terms, I don’t think I would want any system to do that.
Divide and conquer, creating choke points that hamper the enemy, laying traps and such are all good strategies. Not every group does that and not every situation lends itself to it. The encounter system has to give a reasonable approximation of what will happen in a battle where neither side has a strong advantage.
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An important thing to note is that just as how splitting an encounter in two reduces its danger, it's very easy to combine encounters to make something that a party can't handle. Combine two moderate encounters and it's really easy for that to go wrong for the party.
If the party has enough time to Treat Wounds, Refocus, or similar things in between two broken encounters, it's hard to say the first one provides the full XP to the second. (Or even if they're connected, but aren't all coming at the party at once.)
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This is indeed a very interesting topic I closely follow, especially the pros and cons.
I come from 3.5 and jumped on the PF2 train when the playtesting started. Many concepts of PF2 sounded very promising and I really like the 3 actions economy and the wealth of feats for customization in theory.
But then when I played AoA as a thief I ran into some issues. You really have to consider the traits of everything, is it an action, a spell or whatever, it's very easy to overlook details. And especially as a thief I was crushed under the mountain of feats thrown at me at every level up, especially the skill feets. As I progressed into the two digit levels, I actually had all the skill feats I envisioned for my character concept and was forced to choose skill feats as a filler I wasn't interested in from then on, as all skill, class, ancestry, skill feats, general feats... are very segregated from each other with nigh no option to tap into other types of feats if there is nothing interesting in the feat type I was presented with. So to me personally the abundance of choice of feats in PF2 turned into what some others already mentioned as an illusion of choice comparing to PF1.
Funny anectode, when I started the Wrath of the Righteous PC game I took a deeper look at PF1 character advancement and am now buying every PF1 HC I can lay my hands onto.
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Doubling the enemies in an encounter more than doubles the damage the PCs take. Imagine a 2nd-level fighter, 30 hp, AC 19, melee greatsword +10 (versatile P) Damage 1d12+4 slashing, wandering through a dinosaur-infested jungle. A velociraptor rushes him via Leaping Charge, for 5 damage (average value for its talon attack) followed by another talon Strikethat misses. The fighter kills it in two Strikes. A round later a second velociraptor leaps on him. This time the 2nd attack succeeds, so the fighter takes 10 damage before he kills the velociraptor. Since the fighter is alone, these count as two 120-xp Severe-Threat encounters. The fighter has taken 15 damage, an average of 7.5 damage per velociraptor.
But if two velociraptors leap on him at the same time, he takes the 15 damage before he kills the first velociraptor and then the second velociraptor in its 2nd turn Strikes with a jaws attack (1d6+3 piercing damage) followed by a probably-missing talon attack, so the fighter takes 6 more damage than against the two velociraptor separately. That is an average of 10.5 damage per velociraptor. A fighter is an optimal class against a velociraptor, so despite this combined challenge being a rescaled 240 xp total, beyond extreme threat, the fighter will win. However, he will be left with only 9 hp out of 30 hp.
This is essentially what battlefield control is about. If the party can divide a 120-xp threat into two back-to-back 60-xp threats, then they take less damage with less risk. Well-armored characters can practice battlefield control by bottlenecking the enemy with a narrow hallway or a doorway so that only the first two enemies can engage in melee. Spellcsters have Grease, Web, and wall spells to delay opponents. My wife once constructed a PF1 battlefield-control gunslinger with Experimental Gunsmith archetype (trades away massive damage for special firearm features) who would trap opponents with a grappling gun and later could shoot weapons out of their hands.
Battlefield control works fine in both editions of Pathfinder, but PF2 puts more buffs, debuffs, and control into the actions of martial characters and set up the encounter balance so that the PCs have to use those options.
Also, a thread started yesterday,
Is it just me, or is it way too easy to get hit in this edition? that has many people explaining which tactics are necessary in PF2 and how some PF1 strategies no longer work.
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Also, a thread started yesterday,
Is it just me, or is it way too easy to get hit in this edition? that has many people explaining which tactics are necessary in PF2 and how some PF1 strategies no longer work.
I actually share your impression. PF2 seem to have high hit point pools because the chars are supposed to be hit with a higher frequency and more damage. It's a constant attrition you couldn't overcome if PF2 hadn't those myriad options to quickly heal people up easily.