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I'm new to the system, and my group has only been playing for a few months, but I've noticed that our characters are getting hit-- and crit-- waaaay more often than in other editions.
It has gotten to the point where we have had players opt out of playing melee characters because no matter what they do, the enemies seem to be able to knock our teeth in with casual ease.
Am I imagining things? Or is this system designed in such a way that the odds of getting missed are lower than average?
Granted, we are only 3rd level, but even characters optimized for high AC are routinely getting crit by random mooks, let alone boss level enemies. Are we supposed to be that fragile?
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This is intended. PF2 was designed such that enemies still have a good chance of hitting you, even if you play the tankiest character with the highest AC you can.
It's also intended that you have someone using the medicine skill (and associated feats) to be able to heal your team up to full in between combats, with guidance to GMs to make sure you're adjusting the difficulty down if you have players going from one fight to the next without healing.
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Yes getting hit happens, this is why the optimal melee strategy is seldom standing next to a monster and just whacking away at each other.
It also depends on the type of encounter. 1 or 2 higher lvl enemies will hit more often than say fighting a group of 6 lower level enemies.
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Use debuffs and hit and run tactics whenever possible. You will get hit, and even crit, especially if you haven't maxed out your armor+dex equation, but in-and-out-of-combat healing is more powerful and there are more ways to deal with enemies than trading blows.
For example, a monk can get in, punch-punch, and get out and likely rarely have to deal with more than one attack from their target.
As for a Fighter, they're downright dangerous. Many enemies should simply fear them.
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Yep, you're supposed to get walloped at all stages of the game, and you can't optimize your way out of any problem.
If enemies are hitting a lot you can use more actions to Raise a Shield, or you can debuff their chance to hit with conditions like frightened or dazzled. You can also try to prevent damage with things like the Champion's reactions, or bring some spells like false life to give some padding.
In general your first attack has a decent chance of hitting, your second is a gamble, and your third is usually going to miss. It's better to attack and move and do something like Raise a Shield or take a demoralize action than to stand still and swing three times. Classes like Monk or characters that invest in movement speed can often move out of range of melee monsters, so they need to use two actions just to get into range.
If you have to sit still and trade hits, that's what Medicine (and having someone with Battle Medicine and some free hands) is for. Someone who can cast heal for an emergency pick-me-up is also good. And while a Fighter or Champion in heavy armor is still going to take hits, their AC is 1-3 points less likely to take a crit, even more so if they take the +2 AC from a shield. Not getting crit is mostly what a "tank" does in this edition, and every point of AC reduces the chances to be crit by an actual, significant amount.
If you're really taking a ton of damage, the group might want to employ some more tactics that separate enemies or line up initiative (you can delay your turn) so that the debuffers go first. Illusory object, for example, can turn a pack of enemies into two smaller packs of enemies by creating a wall between them that they have to spend actions disbelieving. Grease can make the big beater's club less effective, or trip it up. Something like dazzling flash or even obscuring mist can help mitigate a lot of enemy attacks, because concealment creates a solid chance to miss.
Good luck!
I'm new to the system, and my group has only been playing for a few months, but I've noticed that our characters are getting hit-- and crit-- waaaay more often than in other editions.
It has gotten to the point where we have had players opt out of playing melee characters because no matter what they do, the enemies seem to be able to knock our teeth in with casual ease.
Am I imagining things? Or is this system designed in such a way that the odds of getting missed are lower than average?
Granted, we are only 3rd level, but even characters optimized for high AC are routinely getting crit by random mooks, let alone boss level enemies. Are we supposed to be that fragile?
Yes PF2 have more hit rate (usually around 50% if you are facing opponents with same level of party) and any bonus in AC/Saves to Hit are very important because they can increase the critical rate.
For other side the game uses others tool for defense. Shield blocks reduces de damage, many class or spells receive resistances or temp HP and combat tactics could avoid damage using movement actions to force the opponents to use their actions to move too avoiding specially 3-actions maneuvers.
Attacking at range also helps a lot. The game have little AoO but usually even for GM controlling use many actions to move a creature to attack a party backline usually have bad action economy allowing rangers stays relative safe while are at last more than 25 feet (7.5 meters) distant.
Also except from humanoids is relatively rare have battles with long range creatures too.
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That's... disappointing.
Heh, I guess I won't be playing a melee focused character in this edition. Constantly getting pounded into paste with no ways of avoiding sound unfun and definitely not how I would want to play a swordsman.
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That's... disappointing.
Heh, I guess I won't be playing a melee focused character in this edition. Constantly getting pounded into paste with no ways of avoiding sound unfun and definitely not how I would want to play a swordsman.
There are plenty of ways to mitigate or even avoid the damage.
Not ending your turn within melee reach is a good start.
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That's... disappointing.
Heh, I guess I won't be playing a melee focused character in this edition. Constantly getting pounded into paste with no ways of avoiding sound unfun and definitely not how I would want to play a swordsman.
There are plenty of ways to mitigate or even avoid the damage.
Not ending your turn within melee reach is a good start.
Please enlighten me!
I'm trying to get a feel for the game, but so far my experience is watching players get brutalized by everything, and magic just being crappy one round debuffs-- because I also notice most bad guys seem to make their saves the majority of the time.
Are pc's supposed to be pathetic in this system?
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Actually, Martial characters are relatively stronger in pf2 than casters. And with good tactics and teamplay, getting hit doesn't matter, if you kill the enemy fast enough. Have buffs (bless, inspire courage, magic weapon), give enemies debuffs (intimidate), flank before you attack, prevent being flanked. And concentrate attacks, take out enemies one by one, don't all go fight a different enemy. And choose your tactics to fit the occassion. Sometimes that is hit and run, sometimes its stand and fight.
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That's... disappointing.
Heh, I guess I won't be playing a melee focused character in this edition. Constantly getting pounded into paste with no ways of avoiding sound unfun and definitely not how I would want to play a swordsman.
Anecdotally, the fighter at one of my tables is sword and board. He does the most damage round-to-round of anyone in the group because he crits the most, has the most HP, and the most armor. He's focused on demoralizing enemies so they usually have a -1 or -2 on everything against him. He has a shield that can soak up less consequential hits, and between the demoralizing and the shield AC bonus he's often avoiding crits himself.
He's realistically the only one who can go toe-to-toe with a big bruiser of a monster in the party, and when he gets buffs and has support from the Rogue and Cleric he's the staunch core of the party.
Plenty of ways to avoid or mitigate damage, but regardless of what you play you'll be taking damage. The game is designed to have a steady stream of pain coming towards the players.
Use hero points liberally. If you come from an earlier edition where you can optimize the risk out of most things, or from 5e where there is no risk, then it might take some getting used to.
Edit: Also, if your GM is running Age of Ashes or Fall of Plaguestone those are a bit overtuned, as casualties of the edition change. My group didn't have much problem, but I've heard some tables really struggle. There's a particular boar that was almost a TPK though...
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I don't have an issue with getting hit; it comes with playing a game like this. My issue is with how often you get hit, and how hard. I guess I don't agree with a game design that is based around having *maybe* a 50% chance of getting hit if you optimize that way.
As it stands, if almost feels like if you don't have max points put in Dex or Con, you are dead meat most of the time.
Then maybe this isn't the game for you, because 50-60% odds of success is par for the course in P2e.
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That's... disappointing.
Heh, I guess I won't be playing a melee focused character in this edition. Constantly getting pounded into paste with no ways of avoiding sound unfun and definitely not how I would want to play a swordsman.
PF2 is balanced. By that word, I mean that if you follow the encounter guidelines a severe encounter is actually severe and a moderate encounter is not a cakewalk. An extreme encounter is a 50% chance of TPK and a near automatic character death.
That's the main difference with previous editions where danger was extremely light and where optimized characters were able to trivialize most fights.In most APs, the difficulty is on hard. In PFS, it's on average. If you feel that you are going down too often, then maybe is it also because you prefer encounters to be simpler. If for you, an encounter where a character goes down is "extreme", then you should ask your GM to tune the difficulty down. Giving characters an extra level is the best way to tune difficulty down.
Many GMs have chosen to tune the difficulty down. I did it for my group. If the difficulty hits the fun, the difficulty needs to be addressed.
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The idea is to use tactics (eg. move-attack-move) and teamwork in combat instead of winning fights at the character development/advancement stage where you twink yourself into being most unhittable and in turn hitting everything on anything but a natural one.
If you try to fight in PF2 like you did in PF1 (move in and then full attack until something dies) you won't get far, and that's intended.
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The optimum for starting stats is 18 in your attack stat, max DEX to you heaviest armor cap, then max saves stats with WIS being the prime target because of Perception/Initiative.
Can you provide us with examples of the encounters?
Veteran PF1 players are prone to using tactics that were excellent in PF1 and will end up in TPK in PF2 (example : putting all your actions into attacks).
And veteran PF1 GMs might not realize that tactics that made encounters challenging in PF1 (play the monsters as smart and ruthless as possible, merge encounters because it makes sense) will turn them into TPK in PF2.
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I don't have an issue with getting hit; it comes with playing a game like this. My issue is with how often you get hit, and how hard. I guess I don't agree with a game design that is based around having *maybe* a 50% chance of getting hit if you optimize that way.
As it stands, if almost feels like if you don't have max points put in Dex or Con, you are dead meat most of the time.
We are in Age of Ashes Book 2 and had a devil of a fight where a TPK was getting close. But we changed our tactics and took advantage of the fact that Attacks of Opportunity are rare, we all started doing hit-and-run tactics and getting the enemies bottled up at a bridge and then in a house.
If you are just going up to a monster and hitting it three times and then giving it three chances to hit you, yes you are going to be in more trouble than in 1e. IMO, 2e needs all of us old TTRPGers to change our tactics and I think that's good.
As an aside, my Gnome Alchemist ended up being a tank at one point because I had treated my wounds (Battle Medicine), quick alchemy created an elixir of life and drank it, so I ended up with more hit points and could take two hits from the big bad. A great moment in Mira's adventuring career!
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Then maybe this isn't the game for you, because 50-60% odds of success is par for the course in P2e.
Ugh. Maybe you're right.
But it feels as if you still have to heavily optimize in this version-- but rather than being god-tier, optimization makes you decent. If you, say, play a fighter with only a 14 in Str and Dex, then you are pretty bad.
Say what you will about 5e-- believe me, I have issues with that system as well-- but at least I can play a character that doesn't require constant work just so that I can maybe have 50% odds of not getting hit.
I think I just don't like that this system seems to be based around avoiding getting crit, rather than avoiding getting hit.
My fighter fantasy of playing the dashing lightly armored fencer who dances between his foes seems pretty unobtainable when every enemy can casually eviscerate you.
Again, I'm not complaining about getting hit, I just don't like how much effort you have to put into being halfway good at avoiding hits.
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What are you supposed to use for fighting with STR 14 DEX 14, harsh words and soft pornography?
You can play a mobile skirmisher with DEX 16+, you're just relying on your mobility, not on high AC and CON for defense (which was untenable in PF1 for most part as the only true way to deal damage was to stand still and full attack except for few corner case kooky builds).
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The optimum for starting stats is 18 in your attack stat, max DEX to you heaviest armor cap, then max saves stats with WIS being the prime target because of Perception/Initiative.
Can you provide us with examples of the encounters?
Veteran PF1 players are prone to using tactics that were excellent in PF1 and will end up in TPK in PF2 (example : putting all your actions into attacks).
And veteran PF1 GMs might not realize that tactics that made encounters challenging in PF1 (play the monsters as smart and ruthless as possible, merge encounters because it makes sense) will turn them into TPK in PF2.
We are currently playing Extinction Curse, and we encountered a couple of weird bug demons. Our monk-- who is dex based and uses crane stance-- was fighting one of them. He was using hit and run tactics-- move in, flurry, move away. But it didn't matter because every time the worm guys attacked, they still managed to hit him. And 4 of those attacks were crits; our DM rolls in full view of us, so we could see the rolls and the modifiers.
Poor monk went down twice, while our ranger only stayed up because his animal companion went down.
Stuff like this has happened a couple of times thus far.
My fighter fantasy of playing the dashing lightly armored fencer who dances between his foes seems pretty unobtainable when every enemy can casually eviscerate you.Again, I'm not complaining about getting hit, I just don't like how much effort you have to put into being halfway good at avoiding hits.
Hmm, our Half-Elven swashbuckler rogue does exactly what you said - he dances in, hits a foe with a good hit, and then dances back behind the tank character. He has great defence and uses his Shield Block to great effect.
One thing that we have noticed is that there is no Taunt-like feat where the Tank could cause enemies to target him instead of the other characters. But even if he had that, he's not standing still. The fights are way less static than before as we move, hit, and then move again.
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What are you supposed to use for fighting with STR 14 DEX 14, harsh words and soft pornography?
Lol
The point being, it sucks to have to optimize just to be average. It sucks that having a 14 dex-- which is what my character, the party bard, has-- is considered bad.
I'm not saying my bard is in melee a lot, but just as an example. If you don't have an 18 in a stat, that stat is garbage.
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I think it is the case that the game sort of expects you to have at least a 16 in your primary stat, and I think 18 is recommended.
You may also just try Swashbuckler, which can do a bit more hit-and-run than a Fighter by putting more damage into finishers and debuffing enemies more frequently. Their speed boosts also help them dodge away from combat. Rogues can get there too, and can do decent damage with high Dex and the thief racket. Put an 18 into Dex, get a caster to put blur on you, and use weapons with parry (or feats like Nimble Dodge).
[Edit: Oh, and it looks like you're the party Bard. Demoralize everything. Use defensive buffs, or debuff enemies with things like fear. Trip stuff with grease. Blast mooks with a color spray. Again, illusions are good, and illusory creature is a very good way to soak up enemy actions; enemy actions = enemy damage, and anything that reduces their actions is basically mitigation. If you're thinking you want to be more of a fighter and less of a caster (because Bard is a caster, really), then you might consider taking a Bard dedication on a more martial character. If you're worried about AC, it's not really an optimization issue; every character can get a net +5 to AC between their Dex and armor, just pick the armor that has +3 item and +2 max Dex. You might need to spend a general feat on armor proficiency, but that's what general feats are for. Only heavy armor goes to +6. Then you add on things like parry or shields or buffs. There's not much to optimize that way, so you have to move on to debuffing enemies.]
Ultimately HP is a resource. It's just the clock that's on every encounter. If the game seems hardcore, then you're hardcore for overcoming the challenges. Talk to your party about what the entire group can do to mitigate damage. Maybe sit down and have a real talk about tactics. Buy lots of healing potions/elixirs, and if you don't have a Cleric, maybe see about training up or retraining into Medicine.
I like that the game continues to be a challenge to my players, and my players enjoy winning against seemingly overwhelming odds. I think that's fun, but if it isn't for you then yeah. No problem understanding what you enjoy and going off and enjoying it.
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What are you supposed to use for fighting with STR 14 DEX 14, harsh words and soft pornography?Lol
The point being, it sucks to have to optimize just to be average. It sucks that having a 14 dex-- which is what my character, the party bard, has-- is considered bad.
I'm not saying my bard is in melee a lot, but just as an example. If you don't have an 18 in a stat, that stat is garbage.
What does "bad" mean? It's fine, and I've played a light-armor wearing Ranger with 14 DEX. But you're less evasive than someone with 18 DEX. That should be pretty.. obvious..? And for what it's worth, at 5th level you can increase your DEX to 16 with the ability score boost and you will be on par for the rest of the campaign assuming you use a chain shirt.
Despite what you're saying, PF2E is not really about stat stacking. As other people keep saying and you keep ignoring, just standing there and imagining your character avoiding blows because he has high stats is not how the game works. You actually need to move your character around the battle field, dancing out of range of enemies. There are Reactions that let you add bonuses to your AC for a single attack as a "dodge". If your caster lands slowed 1 or stunned 1, forcing the enemy to chase after you means they can use at most one attack. Your Barbarian is Demoralizing, I hope, and reducing their DCs and attack rolls by 1 or 2.
Optimization in this game does not happen before the session on your character sheet. You don't select certain feats and then say, "welp, now I have my Monk dip, Crane Style, Dodge, blah blah blah, I can't be hit!" like PF1E.
Optimization happens during the session in the battle. If you want to be a flighty, dodgy character, select options that empower you to do that in battles, and then do that in the battle.
And yes, you are going to get hit and downed sometimes. Especially if your GM runs difficult encounters. If you want more of a power-fantasy adventure where you never get hit and critically succeed all the time, talk to your GM about running more low-level encounters. Ask to play on easy mode. It's okay, no one will judge you.
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That's... disappointing.
Heh, I guess I won't be playing a melee focused character in this edition. Constantly getting pounded into paste with no ways of avoiding sound unfun and definitely not how I would want to play a swordsman.
Keep in mind, that melee classes tend to have more HP than non-melee martial classes. So if no one plays a martial on the front line, you now have an entire party with lower HP and lower AC (compared to what a tank could have).
PF2 did away with optimizing your character to a point where you always succeed at anything.
Your to hit will never be so good that you are guaranteed to hit on "everything buy your last attack" like in PF1. In PF2 you still need not insignificant luck to hit on your first attack.
You will never have such a high AC that you're only threatened by a stray 20 rolled by the enemy. In all likelihood the enemy will often need somewhere between an 11 to 14 to hit you.
Your saves are never going to be all out protection. That why classes actually get special abilities tied to their saves to turn normal success into crit success or down grade crit failure to failure.
On paper your character isn't as good as an enemy of equal level.
Your group has to play intelligently and use smart tactics and good character options to even the playing field and overcome the challenge.
As to whether or not you like this kind of game....it's a personal question.
I personally am against it, but keep track of PF2 just to see if there are any developments to sway my mind.
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I personally am against it, but keep track of PF2 just to see if there are any developments to sway my mind.
If you're counting on Paizo putting out a "hey so um we're totally rewriting the underlying math of the game of PF2 to make it more like PF1, sowwi aboot not getting it like that from the get go" book midway through an edition's life cycle I think there is some chance that you might end up disappointed.
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The biggest difference between PF1 and PF2 is that in PF1 the game was one at character creation.
You either built a character that was really good, or built a crappy one that was supported by the rest of the party.
In PF2, it's hard to make a crappy build provided you get at least a 16 (but really go for 18) in the stat that your build depends on. And then you want to max dex, wis, & con for AC and saves.
Outside of that, most class selection options have no right or wrong or most optimized answer. I tend to theorize by selecting what could be sued in the most situations or what I envision the character doing.
PF2 is all about tactics and intelligent play at the table, not winning the game at character creation.
I used to think I wanted a game like this, but realized that this very balanced game wasn't fun for me, because I liked being the overpowered super hero.
Perhaps you might realize the same.
If you're counting on Paizo putting out a "hey so um we're totally rewriting the underlying math of the game of PF2 to make it more like PF1, sowwi aboot not getting it like that from the get go" book midway through an edition's life cycle I think there is some chance that you might end up disappointed.I personally am against it, but keep track of PF2 just to see if there are any developments to sway my mind.
You can't disappoint me when my expectations are "waiting till PF3". I'm more just curious to keep up with the various classes and options and see if anything is compelling enough to ignore the math and play anyways.
In the meantime I have many other games I can play.
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If you're counting on Paizo putting out a "hey so um we're totally rewriting the underlying math of the game of PF2 to make it more like PF1, sowwi aboot not getting it like that from the get go" book midway through an edition's life cycle I think there is some chance that you might end up disappointed.I personally am against it, but keep track of PF2 just to see if there are any developments to sway my mind.
I mean it's already supported. It's called asking your GM to run encounters with at most a Moderate encounter budget, and most being trivial/low. It's literally what these people want - they want the difficulty to be low like PF1E with an optimized party or 5E out of the box, and that is in the game already. Probably use the fast XP track otherwise it will take forever to level up.
If you're running an AP you can apply Weak templates (Foundry does this with 1 button click) to every enemy and it pretty closely simulates this.
A more complex implementation would be homebrewing in more ways to buff ability scores, such as bringing back Belts of Giant Strength etc. It would make the game much easier to have everyone with +2 or +4 higher ability scores than intended on level and would add to the power fantasy. I hope most GMs are handing out unique powers, relics, and items that are story appropriate and increase player power regardless - I feel like most tabletop campaign would be kind of boring if you didn't.
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What are you supposed to use for fighting with STR 14 DEX 14, harsh words and soft pornography?Lol
The point being, it sucks to have to optimize just to be average. It sucks that having a 14 dex-- which is what my character, the party bard, has-- is considered bad.
I'm not saying my bard is in melee a lot, but just as an example. If you don't have an 18 in a stat, that stat is garbage.
What does "bad" mean? It's fine, and I've played a light-armor wearing Ranger with 14 DEX. But you're less evasive than someone with 18 DEX. That should be pretty.. obvious..? And for what it's worth, at 5th level you can increase your DEX to 16 with the ability score boost and you will be on par for the rest of the campaign assuming you use a chain shirt.
Despite what you're saying, PF2E is not really about stat stacking. As other people keep saying and you keep ignoring, just standing there and imagining your character avoiding blows because he has high stats is not how the game works.
Yeah, not ignoring the importance of tactics. In a previous post, I outlined how the monk was doing things like moving, flurry, attempting trips, and still was consistently knocked on his but because enemies can easily surpass pc armor class.
Again, my issue isn't with *getting* hit, it is with the ratio at which high ac character seem to get hit-- and crit-- by every mob in the game.
And by "bad," I mean, not maximum. Yes, obviously 14 Dex isn't going to be as agile as 18 Dex. But, as people keep pointing out to me, ever number is important, since all the enemies are crit happy. A 14 Dex is "bad" in that it means you are two points behind on dodging attacks or reflex saves, which can get you killed.
Since the game seems to be designed around a player having *at best* a 50% chance of not getting hit or avoiding an effect, being two points behind is not just suboptimal, but suicidal. Or at least, that's how I assume it is, since I keep seeing praise for providing a measly +1 to attacks.
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Mmmm. 50% is kind of an "at worst," which is a PL+3, that hits around 8-10, unless you're fighting a PL+4 or something, in which case you're just trying to reduce actions and accepting that you'll be getting cracked in the head every round.
Most enemies are hitting between 11-14 if the CR is appropriate. True mooks are more like 13-16. Then you add in buffs/debuffs to the basic assumptions here and things can change pretty dramatically.
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Yeah, not ignoring the importance of tactics. In a previous post, I outlined how the monk was doing things like moving, flurry, attempting trips, and still was consistently knocked on his but because enemies can easily surpass pc armor class.Again, my issue isn't with *getting* hit, it is with the ratio at which high ac character seem to get hit-- and crit-- by every mob in the game.
And by "bad," I mean, not maximum. Yes, obviously 14 Dex isn't going to be as agile as 18 Dex. But, as people keep pointing out to me, ever number is important, since all the enemies are crit happy. A 14 Dex is "bad" in that it means you are two points behind on dodging attacks or reflex saves, which can get you killed.
Since the game seems to be designed around a player having *at best* a 50% chance of not getting hit or avoiding an effect, being two points behind is not just suboptimal, but suicidal. Or at least, that's...
14 DEX is only 1 point behind 18 DEX in terms of AC. Assuming you're wearing light armor (chain shirt or studded leather). You are 2 points behind on Reflex saves, though. But again, you're intended to be taking *some* kind of action to supplement that further. Are you staying far away from enemies at the end of your turn (using Move actions dynamically), Raising a Shield, debuffing the enemy, etc.
It highly varies based on the creature type, but yes, some even level creature have roughly a 50% chance of hitting you if you have par AC (and the reverse is true). But what are you doing to swing those odds? Nothing? You're just standing there taking 3 hits (or worse, you're letting the enemy creature use its special ability/tactic and you're not countering it)? Regardless, you have a party of 4 against a single creature that hits you 50% of the time. That's Moderately difficult. Even without tactics, unless you get super unlucky, you're probably not even going to have someone get downed.
If you want to hit monsters 65% of the time and for them to hit you 35% of the time, that's Low difficulty per the rules (per common sense, too, I suppose). There's nothing wrong with that, just have the GM use less XP budgets in his encounters, so he's in that Low difficulty range.
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When it comes to your primary attack stat at creation in PF2e:What are you supposed to use for fighting with STR 14 DEX 14, harsh words and soft pornography?Lol
The point being, it sucks to have to optimize just to be average. It sucks that having a 14 dex-- which is what my character, the party bard, has-- is considered bad.
I'm not saying my bard is in melee a lot, but just as an example. If you don't have an 18 in a stat, that stat is garbage.
- 18 is really where you want to be.
- 16 will work, but you will be noticeably behind the 18's for half the game,
- 14 is not good at all: An entire party of characters with low stats like this are probably going to suffer badly...
Personally, I ran through the back-half* of Age of Ashes with three melee (my halfling thief, a tripping polearm fighter, and a dragon instinct barbarian) and a cleric/Blessed One without too much trouble while basically just full attacking: I'm not saying there wasn't any pain involved, but we didn't have an actual Character Death until the very end (and even that was due to a pair of bad rolls and a 'soul is consumed by the monster and you can't rez until it is dead' effect that prevented the cleric's Breath of Life from working) but we never really felt that we were in over our heads...
*We started as a party of 6, but our archer and sorcerer had to leave the group about halfway through.
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It's true that 18 is recommended for primary stat but OP is talking about AC and specifically a Bard. A Bard, I hope, has 18 CHA primary stat but that won't help them not get hit.
A bard, however, has light armor proficiency so they can get by with 16 DEX and still have "max" AC. If they want to have even less DEX, they could elect to take feats or dedications to get access to Medium armor. Or be content being slightly less defensive out of the gate. You can't have everything.
All said, you do not need 18 DEX to be competent in melee range.
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Second edition does stress the importance of having high stats in your key abilities. Their new character generation system gives you enormous control over your stats allowing you to guarantee yourself an 18 in your primary stat, and enough extra boosts you can spread on to other attributes that you don't have to be a one trick pony.
However, I would say the game is not particularly geared towards expecting what otherwise might be considered a well rounded individual stat wise, whose stats are for instance not highly aligned with their duties. As someone who would sometimes enjoy playing a character whom you would have assumed would have been a different class, based on just looking at their stats, in the past. Those sorts of character concepts are a lot harder to pull off in second edition where difficulty of your foes is a lot more aligned to 'expected' party abilities, and so there is less room to fudge an intentionally poorly optimized build.
After all, they made the game so that there was some meaningful way of Being Good as things. Making there be a distinct advantage to being deemed particularly Strong, Intelligent, Wise, Dexterous, Tough or Charismatic.
In certain ways by dropping from an almost expected 18 or at least 16 down to a 14 for a primary stat, you are in certain ways (basic d20 rolls) almost intentionally dropping yourself down a level or even two in effectiveness. That isn't completely accurate, as levels also contribute to rank bonus that jump by 2 scattered amongst the various levels for certain things, but the general +1 per level gives you at least a bit of an understanding that dropping down from a +4 to a +2 can set you almost 2 levels back from fully optimized.
As someone mentioned, however, if you and your players enjoy that sort of hero. (unoptimized, not properly optimized) A very legitimate way of dealing with the difficulty is to boost the characters up a level as was mentioned earlier. Or you can consider using the Dual Class rules (which would probably be more helpful for the more well rounded attribute character), or even some of the other popular options such as Free-archetypes, racial paragon rules, or even just extra class feats, options that give your characters a controlled, yet sometimes meaningful boost to their abilities. Also, keep in mind that attribute boosts are far more widely available in advancement in this edition, so you don't have to (in fact really can't) just use them in your primary attributes, so you will have a chance to advance some of your other stats as you progress.
Remember, the goal is to have fun, so if the game is feeling too lethal, or requiring too optimized of builds to be fun for your group. Use one or more of the easy to include methods of adjusting the scale of the problem for you. (lethality/optimization requirement) Since, I think one of the thing frequently touted about 2nd edition is it is far more modular, and easier to adjust in various ways without throwing it completely off-balance or without knowing what sort of effect it would have.
Now you know a Level 1 monster is expected to be a very similar level threat to a Level 1 pc. In the old versions a CR 1 monster wasn't an equal threat to a Level 1 PC, and although there was supposed to be a relative relationship between them regarding to power, in reality the scale was often very wonky, especially when you got to the higher levels.
However, yes, while you might have been able to successfully play a commoner PC with 10, 12, and a 14 stat in prior versions by going against the weaker appropriate creatures of your CR vs Level with the right items at your disposal. Trying to do that would become even harder to do in second edition since the creatures are better balanced against similar leveled characters assuming a +3 or +4 on their most important stats. To get the same feel you'd have to lower the expected level of the creatures you oppose to something more reasonable for a weaker attribute set, and/or boost them with greater treasure than would normally be granted.(and/or use ABP variant)
I'd definitely look at the variant rules that show as coming out as part of the GameMastery Guide for some options, if you feel the difficulty is tuned wrong.
However, also as people mentioned. Keep in mind that second edition tried to reduce the 'winning the game in character creation' and increase the amount of thinking an variety of tactics that can work and help you fight a variety of different creatures, so doing the same thing doesn't always give you the same win against different creatures. Forcing you to change things up a bit, and sometimes have to push through some less effective situations where you struggle at times, but get to excel at certain others.
By switching things up, by having creatures have lots of HP but with weaknesses, or various resistances you have to avoid, and various special abilities that can make various tactics more or less effective against them. It makes making the right choices about where to move around most effectively, when to hit and run, and when to surround and slug it out and when to snipe all different situations. So make sure before you assume it it Just harder, that you are varying, and trying to use good individual tactics against various foes, and not just using a one-fits-all strategy to your fights.
Keeping in mind the idea of theoretically equal foes being far more comparable, the mentioning that creatures have a 50% chance of hitting you, if you reduced that, then in theory, there would be a similar effect of making you less likely to hit an opponents. If they had made the standard a 25% chance of hitting, for instance, it would make you a lot less squishy, but would have likely really frustrated the players trying to hit their opponents with an sort of regularity. I think it is easy to understand that frustration being at least as troubling, as the frustration you are feeling, where you feel like you are regularly being hit.
Keep in mind, your average monster is fulfilling the role of a combatant at its level, so it is scaled to seem roughly to be equivalent to a fighter in the party, and they tend to hit more often than the average adventurer. Note, this means that the average monster gives the flavor/feeling that they tend to hit more often than your average PC, but there is variation within monsters, so this isn't always the case, but it is easy enough to probably get that feel from this edition of the game. But keep in mind, that their purpose is to hit you until you take them down, so they are just doing their job, and are designed to do it in a meaningful manner. (not generally, just miss until you take them down, although that role could be fulfilled by a mass of poor tactically savvy low level creatures)
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We are currently playing Extinction Curse, and we encountered a couple of weird bug demons. Our monk-- who is dex based and uses crane stance-- was fighting one of them. He was using hit and run tactics-- move in, flurry, move away. But it didn't matter because every time the worm guys attacked, they still managed to hit him. And 4 of those attacks were crits; our DM rolls in full view of us, so we could see the rolls and the modifiers.Poor monk went down twice, while our ranger only stayed up because his animal companion went down.
Stuff like this has happened a couple of times thus far.
Juuuust making sure the numbers are right here. The monk has 10 + 7 proficiency + 4 Dex + 1 circumstance = 22 AC? Your ranger has 10 + 5 proficiency + armour/Dex 5 = 20 AC?
A lot of people miss the level component to proficiency, and that'd have ACs 3 lower than they should be, which would be pretty big.
Just checked, and the worm demons should only be critting the monk on a 20 on the first attack, or 18 with flanking.
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I mean it's already supported. It's called asking your GM to run encounters with at most a Moderate encounter budget, and most being trivial/low. It's literally what these people want - they want the difficulty to be low like PF1E with an optimized party or 5E out of the box, and that is in the game already. Probably use the fast XP track otherwise it will take forever to level up.If you're running an AP you can apply Weak templates (Foundry does this with 1 button click) to every enemy and it pretty closely simulates this.
This is 100% true. Being able to hit more reliably, avoid damage with ease, land devastating spells (with or without Incapacitate), and just generally making enemies less of a threat is a great deal of what people are asking for when they want PF2 to be more like PF1.
The only reason people arguing for these things don't just run games with the difficulty lowered is because of their egos. They want their preferred style to be the default.
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they want the difficulty to be low like PF1E with an optimized party or 5E out of the box, and that is in the game already.
For somebody who said upstream that you don't want to judge you're coming off as incredibly judgemental.
Some players just aren't as good at tactics, building their character, etc. Sometimes that is raw player talent, sometimes it is experience. There is nothing at all wrong with tuning the game for the capabilities and desires of the players.
With inexperienced players or not particularly tactical players making things a bit easier can STILL result in a quite challenging game. I personally like the tactic of just giving them an extra level. Its easy and quite effective. I did that in Agents of Edgewatch and the result was a game that was STILL quite challenging for that group. For a different group, I ran it more or less as written and that game was ALSO quite challenging.
Its NOT easy mode vs hard mode. Its "Make the game the appropriate challenge level for your players". Different groups have different abilities AND desires. Some actually DO want easy mode, some want hard mode. But even the latter want Hard mode FOR THEM.
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If PF1 was Rocket Tag then PF2 is Sock'em Boppers. You're expected to get hit and even downed fairly often but are supposed to have the resources to top back up between fights. Your characters are meant to chip away at enemies, play the game of using recall knowledge to find weaknesses, and generally play the game like it was a tactical battle game rather than an RPG where you can play out what your character would do in each fight rather than play optimally.
I personally don't like the system either.
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they want the difficulty to be low like PF1E with an optimized party or 5E out of the box, and that is in the game already.For somebody who said upstream that you don't want to judge you're coming off as incredibly judgemental.
You quoted me out of context. I'm specifically referring to "these people" which in this context is the people who often complain that the game is too difficult because they miss a lot or get hit a lot or whatever. They're not new or inexperienced players and often claim to be RPG veterans. The discussions always go like this:
> Stuff is too hard, we get hit a lot and miss a lot
> Have you tried using tactics?
> We use tactics and still the math says we're going to always take some damage and have close calls, but I don't want to get hit very often, and I want to succeed more often (boiled down, this is pretty much exactly what OP was saying in this thread)
That's fine. That's that's a lower level of difficulty they're looking for, and that is already in the game - which is what I said. I personally use a slightly lower difficulty than what APs tend to use in my games, even. It's fine.
For newer or less experienced players, well, that's not really what this topic was about at all, but I agree with you. They may not explicitly be looking for an easier experience but as a GM you should ramp them into the more standard PF2E difficulty by starting easier.
Saying things like "it's hard difficulty for them" is well.. I get what you're saying but it's mincing words. It's not condescending to call it low or easy difficulty, that's just standard game terminology for decades. Maybe calling an easier difficulty "Low difficulty" is not the best practice, since it truly could be difficult for some, but I feel like the debate over terminology here is outside the scope of the topic or even the PF2E game - everyone understood what I meant. And it would be confusing to use different terms since Paizo printed the words Low/Trivial difficulty in their encounter building rules, and that's what I was referring to.
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In this edition, success based on math is as follows: character level is king. The die roll takes second place. And character build optimization comes in at a distant third - maybe even fourth after party tactics.
The party shouldn't be regularly fighting enemies at APL+3. Especially not multiple of them at a time. This is a difference from previous editions and takes some getting used to by both players and GM.
Also, yes - the first attack of an enemy is more likely to hit than miss.
However, that first attack from an enemy shouldn't be more likely to crit than hit. If your skirmishing monk character is taking crits 4 out of 6 rounds, that means that either the GM is just on an incredibly lucky high rolling streak, or that this particular enemy hits on a 4 and crits on a 14. That indicates that the enemy that the monk is fighting is at CL+5 or so - way above the threat limit of the party.
So that is my suggestion. Talk to the GM and see if the party level is appropriate for the enemy level that you are going up against. Also make sure that you are correctly calculating your AC for all of your characters. If that doesn't come out at approximately (character level) + 17 at the low end, then there is probably something incorrectly calculated.
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Hmmm, I want to offer another view to OP. I think that a lot of people are trying to give sound advice, but something in specific did jump out to me from all your posts, OP: That you're playing Extinction Curse.
Having both played and GMed it a few times, I can understand where you're coming from! Its first book can be pretty tough, and for newcomers that aren't used or aware of this edition's paradigm, it can naturally be pretty disheartening. Honestly, someone else even pointed it out, adventure paths tend to be harder than not. Things do get, hmmm, ampler let's say, as you level up and get more tools for the job.
Still... That's not necessarily everything that this edition has to offer, really. Simply enough, in APs most encounters are just severe or extreme encounters. I do recall, though, and I think that's a mistake a lot of GMs make... Uhm, well, I don't know. It's about the fight that you mentioned...
As I was saying: I'm running a homebrew campaign right now, and most of the encounters are trivial to moderate, and this does change the feel of the campaign. The "issue" might just be that APs go for harder encounters than not, maybe. Unless your problem is that you can't trivialize an encounter that is supposed to be hard(which, personally, is pretty immersion-breaking for me), then do consider this perspective. I see it as... Well, it might not make a lot of sense, but bear with me: Instead of being, I dunno, Achilles facing a bunch of greek soldiers, you're usually just facing other Achilles's, and plenty of time some Heracles's too.
And FYI, difficulty does vary from book to book, and from AP to AP. Usually, the first books from the first APs are the the most " " " aggravating " " " cases for this. It's really a matter of taste though, in my experience.
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In this edition, success based on math is as follows: character level is king. The die roll takes second place. And character build optimization comes in at a distant third - maybe even fourth after party tactics.
I would also note that this mirrors what Claxon is saying. Claxon doesn't like or play PF2 because of this (and I don't fault Claxon for it). I prefer PF2 because of this same thing though.
For me, what this causes is that the GM gets to decide if the players succeed by setting the levels appropriately. The players get to decide how they succeed through their character build choices, and they decide how well they succeed based on their tactics of the particular battle.
This allows for different types of stories. For example, I am starting a new campaign at 1st level soon. One of the themes of the setting is that Humans are territorial and expansionist, and the Elves decided to curtail that at the rivers that border their current area. So the first time that the party (three 1st level characters - all non-Human obviously) need to cross the bridge into Elven territory I am going to have them temporarily step into the shoes of a group of six Human 4th level characters trying to run a raid across the bridge. When they come to the end of the bridge they will be met by two 9th level Elf characters. And I fully expect that these two Elves will roflstomp the six temp PCs. Because that is just how the math of the game works. An APL+5 encounter is not a balanced encounter - even at 6v2.
It should do quite well to show (instead of tell) why the Elves can simply decree that no Humans will cross the rivers and expect that their decrees will be followed.
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I'm new to the system, and my group has only been playing for a few months, but I've noticed that our characters are getting hit-- and crit-- waaaay more often than in other editions.
Yes, you're not wrong.
It has gotten to the point where we have had players opt out of playing melee characters because no matter what they do, the enemies seem to be able to knock our teeth in with casual ease.
I understand the reaction, but I think it's the wrong one. The "right" answer isn't for everyone to try to be at the back of the line. You need multiple people to step up and each take a share of the hits. The way the game is set up, nobody is supposed to be able to do it all alone.
Imagine everyone is trying to be backliner. Which means any time an enemy closes into melee, everyone is running away. One enemy can eat up the actions of all the characters. You've given away your "more of us than there are of you" advantage right there.
Am I imagining things? Or is this system designed in such a way that the odds of getting missed are lower than average?
Granted, we are only 3rd level, but even characters optimized for high AC are routinely getting crit by random mooks, let alone boss level enemies. Are we supposed to be that fragile?
So, calibrating your expectations. "Moderate" difficulty encounter in this system isn't green, everything is okay, this is just a speedbump. Moderate isn't easy, moderate is kinda dangerous. Severe is very dangerous. Extreme stands a good chance of being deadly. Imagine the word Severe being written in scary red letters. Even Moderate is written in yellow danger letters.
You might ask, is really every encounter or most of them supposed to be dangerous and hard-hitting? Well, not necessarily. As a GM you can tone things up or down. One of the easy mistakes to make is to leave out the "filler" easy encounters. The ones that looking at the numbers don't stand a real chance of challenging the players. Hey, if you only got a few hours on a weekday night to play, sounds like a good idea to leave out? But then what you get is that every encounter is just hard or very hard because you left out the easy ones.
Another question really is whether you actually want a hard game. The APs do slant a bit towards hard mode. Which is not ideal because a lot of people buy them because they want to use them to learn the ropes. So making them a bit easier is not a weird idea. There's some ways you can do that:
- Scale down enemies. Any enemy of L+3 should definitely be given a Weak template. Enemies of L+2 are a seriously dangerous threat and you should present them as such.
- Remove a few minions or make them arrive more slowly onto the battlefield. Give the party a bit of breathing room.
- Make sure the party can heal fully up between encounters.
If that's not enough you can go further:
- Scale down more enemies. You can use the weak template, but if you think that's too much, you can also give the weak template EXCEPT you boost their HP. So lower to-hit and AC and save numbers, but staying power through HP.
- Scale up the party. Just let them play the AP at 1 level higher.
- Scale up the party by using the free archetype rules.
- Scale up the party by using the dual class rules (only recommended for small parties, otherwise people start bumping into each others' niches).
The point is, the game is played for fun. If the difficulty is higher than you're enjoying, dial it down a bit or dial up the characters.
My group just hit 5th level, most of their fights are either 80-90exp in value or ~120. Typically, they never fight anything greater than Level +2. So, an encounter might consist of quite a few "mooks", like 6-7 or one "leader" type that is L+1 or L+2 and some "mooks"/"adds".
The fights are tough, but my PCs often come out pretty unscathed. I very much like a system where the PCs are not, and never become, super heroes.
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This is intended. PF2 was designed such that enemies still have a good chance of hitting you, even if you play the tankiest character with the highest AC you can.
It's also intended that you have someone using the medicine skill (and associated feats) to be able to heal your team up to full in between combats, with guidance to GMs to make sure you're adjusting the difficulty down if you have players going from one fight to the next without healing.
This is true. To shorten combats and make them challenging, PF2 went in the direction of making fights fast and furious where both sides are getting hit a lot. Hit points have always been ambiguous as has AC, so PF2 chose a path where the hits would fly both ways and combats would not last long.
Medicine creates the conceit that some rest and treatment will get your energy back to fight again.
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PF2 is all about tactics and intelligent play at the table, not winning the game at character creation.
I used to think I wanted a game like this, but realized that this very balanced game wasn't fun for me, because I liked being the overpowered super hero.
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my expectations are "waiting till PF3"
I'm not entirely sure that PF3 would give you what you want, either.
Yes, PF1 as a system allowed near-invincible characters. But aside from game design, another major contributing factor is simply an older system in which people had tons and tons of material from which they could cherry-pick game-breaking option combinations.
At some point, it's possible that PF2 will end up in the same boat - a latent bug in a 2023 book ends up pairing with a devastating zero-day exploit in 2025, and as soon as it makes it into the wider consciousness, there's a massive jump in character power.
It's already kind of happened, I believe there was some alchemist exploit with energy mutagen and extending the duration somehow, only to dismiss it for a 60d6 breath weapon or something. So I'm pretty sure there will be plenty of unintentionally game-breaking options in a few years.
As others have said, if you just want to smack things around, it's pretty straightforward in PF2 - just move down the encounter difficulty by one notch (moderate -> low, low -> trivial, etc), the math is tight enough that the PCs will just wreck everything. All the "APL+2 monsters never miss" tables are suddenly turned when the PCs are the CR+2 crit machines.