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Starting with a 16 is a bit suboptimal, but you can tough it out. Starting with a 14, yes, that will be painful.
People raised in older editions may have a prejudice that "18 is powergaming" but that's just not true in this edition. If you build most classes just kind of going with the flow, making obvious but not forced or strained decisions, you'll tend to end up with an 18 or maybe 16 in your primary stat.
And in this edition, +1 is what a +2 used to be in the previous edition. It matters.
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With all that said, you can still do it but you can just dial the difficulty down a bit as a GM. There's no jury standing by to award prizes for headbutting your way through normal difficulty with awkward builds. If you enjoy those awkward builds, just tune down the difficulty a bit so that you have a fun game.
Some easy ways to do that:
- Don't use level+3 enemies at all; I wouldn't even recommend them for normal (i.e. using 18s) characters unless the players were hardcore and happy to take regular beatings.
- Go easy on the level+2 enemies, because the characters will be a bit weaker than typical.
- Use the Weak adjustment where needed, if the enemies are flavorful for that part of the story but the numbers are just higher than is good for your game.
- Give the players plenty of opportunity to heal in between combats. The difficulty is designed around going into most fights fresh.
- Consider setting a lower difficulty on Recall Knowledge checks to learn about good ways to fight the monsters.
- Be pretty generous with the party trying to run away if things are going badly. Just because the monster could pursue doesn't mean it has to.
- When facing multiple monsters, don't let the get into the action all at once. Maybe they're overconfident and enemies A and B wait for a few rounds until it's clear that C and D can't beat the PCs on their own. Or maybe they're in the next room/toilet and it takes them a few rounds to get there.
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No 18 can be done. A bunch of 14s will lower your accuracy a lot and probably be a problem, but you can probably survive if your players are experienced.
PF2 only allows a single stat enhancing item at around lvl 17. Most people will probably never get a stat enhancing item. So start with an 18 and building up your stats through ability boosts is built into the game design and starting your main stat low is going to hurt.
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Every +1 helps noticeably because of the +10/-10 critical rules - it changes two dice roll results.
However, because of the removal of stacking bonuses, no amount of +1's is going to outweigh the d20 entirely. If the player's dice are on fire, the players will win. If the GM's dice are on fire, the enemies will win - or at least the players will have to pull out more resources in order to succeed.
What will help more than a +1 to their primary attack stat is good teamwork and tactics.
Will be running modules mostly as is. Starting with beginner box which I think is like playing with training wheels, which is exactly what we want. :)
Since we're trying out the new rules (I've play tested and then tried a few short introductions at cons but that was it) our group has made some well, fluffy decisions which are not really optimal. We're not using the pre-gens unless we get some last-minute players dropping in.
So I was just wondering for folks who have played and run, if you party basically has mostly PCs in the 14-16 range for their primary stat...are they going to run into major issues?
Our group aren't really optimizers and we usually play more DWorld and FATE.
Cheers!
Yes you will run into problems if you are running published adventures as they are. PF2 can give some very tight combats. My group likes that but it sounds like yours won't. If the success numbers are too difficult for your group it will lessen their enjoyment.
Your GM should be flexible, and adjust the number and level of enemies to compensate. I'm mostly playing in Foundry VTT. There you can simply apply an Elite or Weak modifier to a monster with the click of a button. Or just do the adjustments manually.
Play the game you want!
I would encourage that they take full advantage of debuffs/skill actions in combat (something that fits well with an rp centric party anyway).
The enemy getting a -2 to AC from flat footed or a -1 to AC and attacks (and ability/spell DCs) from frightened gives your entire party a better chance of winning and has the potential to make a bigger difference than having a +1 to attack.
Heck, making suboptimal ability score choices makes some of the skill actions work better, because a fighter or barbarian who didn't max out strength is more likely to have a better than average charisma for stuff like intimidate.
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16s are perfectly doable. Primary stats of 14? I can't advise it except for purely supporty characters and even then they'll probably not have as much fun as they could.
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14 would have a difficult/unfun time already in a party of 18.
In a party of 14/16 : TPK waiting to happen IMO.
Now, a party of 16 will have things rough. If they are also inexperienced PF2 players (and worse experienced 3.5/ PF1 players), I would give them a free level as soon as possible. And, if it is still too hard, a second one.
I find it easier than tweaking all monsters, hazards and DCs.
I've played an adventure with a 14 Strength Fighter. Even with Fighter accuracy, they were mostly useless.
16 is also quite bad if you don't plan to go over level 4. Otherwise it's fine.
Going from my limited experience martials seem to have an easier time going with lower starting attributes than casters as you can much easier influence probabilities using teamwork at much earlier levels (mostly via flat-footed condition), especially as martials can usually just try again next round as long as their HP allow them to do so. Missing 1 to 2 points to your spell attack (and early game you might use to-hit cantrips quite a lot), spell DC (for AoE spells later on) or general counteract modifier (Dispel Magic or any condition curing) seemed so much harder than our switch hitting Ranger only starting with 16 strength, especially when you keep in mind that your supply of spells / specific spells usually is not unlimited.
Starting with a 16 is passable, but the system is designed that you are intended to start with an 18 in a stat. If you choose a race that has a bonus to your class' main stat and a background that's the same then you're there. And that's level 0 of "optimization".
From my perspective, you don't gain much from telling players they can't start with an 18. With an 18 in their main stat it will still be a struggle. PF2 plays very differently from PF1.
Give it a try as written before you attempt to patch it.
As a player who played with an 18 in their main stat, I still felt very weak (not compared to the other players who had the same struggle, but to the enemies).
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Our group aren't really optimizers and we usually play more DWorld and FATE.
I answer to this sentence especially. Putting an 18 in your primary stat is not "optimization", it's part of the world. You are supposed to play heroes, not average guys who happened to live extraordinary things.
In my opinion, your players are not in line with what the game expects. They will at some point save the world, bend reality and perform superhuman deeds. Their characters are supposed to be way outside the norm. They will be heroes, soon.From my experience, when players play a bit too realistically, the game doesn't work. The Fighter is not supposed to be scared of an ogre, they're supposed to kick doors and charge a creature twice their size without a second thought. That's why they have 18 in their primary stat, because they start at "maximum level for a human" right away and will even continue to improve above that.
If you want to play a more nuanced game, with less stereotyped characters, I'm not sure Pathfinder will meet your desire.
I've only played lower levels so far, but a 16 in your "main stat" seems perfectly doable. Especially since the stat bonuses at 5, 10, 15, 20 don't increase as much once you hit 18+. At levels 5-9 and 15-19, you'll have the same modifier as someone who started at 18. You'll have one less to hit, which can be tricky, but not end-of-the-world painful. A 14 seems just... unadvisable.
Will be running modules mostly as is. Starting with beginner box which I think is like playing with training wheels
I mean this in the best way, but you're starting off with, like, two yellow flags.
1. Unless your players are very cool with struggling, I strongly suggest altering the modules. Start off erring on the "too easy" side, and increase the difficulty until you reach the No Fun Limit, rather than erring on the "too hard" side and bringing down the difficulty to reach the Fun Zone.
2. The Beginner Box is ... surprisingly deadly. I played it with a group of veterans and we should have been TPKed twice (the GM let us off the hook once, and another time we were headed towards a TPK when we rolled like 3 nat 20s in a row to abruptly turn the tide).
In general, starting with 16s in primary stats is fine, but probably not if a GM isn't adjusting the scenario or the GM is new (and in your case that'd be both). Starting with 14s on unaltered scenarios is going to make things very difficult for new players, and is likely to be difficult enough to detract from the enjoyment significantly.
I'd probably look into some shorter games to warm up. The Pathfinder Society Bounties are 1-hour standalone adventures, and most of them have good scaling (that is, they'll include instructions that teach you how to scale encounters). I've heard, but not experienced personally, horror stories about poor scaling in Bounties 1, 2, and 6.
The rule of thumb, which I mention because it's doubly- or triply-important when primary stats are <18, is that scaling up should be done wider (more low level enemies), not higher (stronger high level enemies). The latter gets very deadly very quickly, because characters will need nat 13-15 to hit, and get hit on nat 4-6. When primary stats are low, it gets REALLY tough to hit APL+2 creatures.
Feels like this might be relevant to y'all.
https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1aO5JSdq_9tjjSfb8yIWfPa2eyItNV-B0lYe OAiS3xsM/mobilebasic
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16 works fine for a main stat and is the standard that allows for well rounded characters, 14 is trouble, 18 is specialized and you'll end up with mostly 12s in your other stats.
That being said it will be a little more work on the dms part but if this is how your character's want to play you can always just use weaker encounters. Level 1 might be rough because it's harder to do weaker encounters but it's doable.
You may also consider the variant rule that spreads out the ability boosts you get every 5 levels that way your players can "course correct" slightly and not have to wait till level 5 to get stronger.