Is it just me, or is it way too easy to get hit in this edition?

[HumbleGamer]

Stomping to death is still a thing in this 2e for either players and monster though.

[egindar]

Arakasius wrote:

And just like the Magus thread even if tripping was the right move people didn’t want to do it because they’d eat an AoO for doing it.

And if the AoO hit, the damage you took would be applied as a penalty to the roll, making the feats even more important.

[HeHateMe]

My experience with PF2 is limited, my old group started an Age of Ashes campaign but everyone ragequit at 6th lvl because of exactly what's being said in this thread: the default game difficulty is just tuned up too high to be enjoyable (at least for that group). I was willing to keep going but I wasn't having fun either. We all went back to 1e.

Issues I saw: 1. Monsters never miss, at least on a first attack. In 6 levels I don't think I ever saw a monster miss it's first attack. They didn't miss too many second attacks either. 2. With the exception of healing, which is invaluable, I found casters to be a total liability. Monsters seem to make the vast majority of their saves, so attack spells are generally worthless. 3. Monsters almost never miss, but PCs sure do! The "whiff factor" is pretty high in 2e and I never did notice much improvement in that. Maybe at higher levels.

2e definitely wasn't for me, though I'm willing to give it another shot. Between getting hit every single time and missing at least half (if not more) of our attacks, combat became a long, boring slog. We depended way too much on our Cleric to keep us alive. I think really challenging combats should be rare and memorable, not the default setting. 1e is definitely more my cup of tea at this point.

[Cyouni]

HeHateMe wrote:

My experience with PF2 is limited, my old group started an Age of Ashes campaign but everyone ragequit at 6th lvl because of exactly what's being said in this thread: the default game difficulty is just tuned up too high to be enjoyable (at least for that group). I was willing to keep going but I wasn't having fun either. We all went back to 1e.

Issues I saw: 1. Monsters never miss, at least on a first attack. In 6 levels I don't think I ever saw a monster miss it's first attack. They didn't miss too many second attacks either. 2. With the exception of healing, which is invaluable, I found casters to be a total liability. Monsters seem to make the vast majority of their saves, so attack spells are generally worthless. 3. Monsters almost never miss, but PCs sure do! The "whiff factor" is pretty high in 2e and I never did notice much improvement in that. Maybe at higher levels.

2e definitely wasn't for me, though I'm willing to give it another shot. Between getting hit every single time and missing at least half (if not more) of our attacks, combat became a long, boring slog. We depended way too much on our Cleric to keep us alive. I think really challenging combats should be rare and memorable, not the default setting. 1e is definitely more my cup of tea at this point.

One really obvious thing to note is that re: spellcasters, on-level enemies will have a ~50% chance to save, scaling up/down by 15% for good/bad saves. So if you're fighting a level+2 enemy, and throw something at their high save, that's approximately an 80% chance of save or better. Conversely, if you throw something at their weak save, that'll be ~50%.

Same token, throwing something at the weak save of an enemy two levels lower will have an ~80% chance of fail, with 30% crit fail.

As I understand it, Age of Ashes makes frequent use of higher-level enemies. And if you just tried to throw things at enemies without thinking, especially in that environment, no wonder you failed.

[Captain Morgan]

HeHateMe wrote:

My experience with PF2 is limited, my old group started an Age of Ashes campaign but everyone ragequit at 6th lvl because of exactly what's being said in this thread: the default game difficulty is just tuned up too high to be enjoyable (at least for that group). I was willing to keep going but I wasn't having fun either. We all went back to 1e.

Issues I saw: 1. Monsters never miss, at least on a first attack. In 6 levels I don't think I ever saw a monster miss it's first attack. They didn't miss too many second attacks either. 2. With the exception of healing, which is invaluable, I found casters to be a total liability. Monsters seem to make the vast majority of their saves, so attack spells are generally worthless. 3. Monsters almost never miss, but PCs sure do! The "whiff factor" is pretty high in 2e and I never did notice much improvement in that. Maybe at higher levels.

2e definitely wasn't for me, though I'm willing to give it another shot. Between getting hit every single time and missing at least half (if not more) of our attacks, combat became a long, boring slog. We depended way too much on our Cleric to keep us alive. I think really challenging combats should be rare and memorable, not the default setting. 1e is definitely more my cup of tea at this point.

While I disagree with your conclusion I respect you being honest about disliking the difficulty.

If you do want to try PF2 again, consider raising the PC level as suggested at length in here. Or try playing a converted PF1 AP. Conversion is really easy and if you leave the CR as is the fights tend to be more manageable, and you won't get that one monster that punches way above it's weight class you'd run into if you ran it as PF1.

[Ubertron_X]

Cyouni wrote:

One really obvious thing to note is that re: spellcasters, on-level enemies will have a ~50% chance to save, scaling up/down by 15% for good/bad saves. So if you're fighting a level+2 enemy, and throw something at their high save, that's approximately an 80% chance of save or better. Conversely, if you throw something at their weak save, that'll be ~50%. Same token, throwing something at the weak save of an enemy two levels lower will have an ~80% chance of fail, with 30% crit fail. As I understand it, Age of Ashes makes frequent use of higher-level enemies. And if you just tried to throw things at enemies without thinking, especially in that environment, no wonder you failed.

I have two comments to this:

1) The problem is that high difficulty paired with not especially easy or intiutively to understand design principles / meta can scare players away before they even try to understand and master said meta, as apparently happened for HeHateMe's gaming group. This is fully decoupled from the fact that most problems described are fully surmountable given a decent level of system mastery.

2) There can be a huge difficulty spike in between a monster played most efficiently (maybe even using GM meta knowledge and/or knowledge of player abilities like AoO), a monster (role-) played to the best of its objective ability and a monster - especially a higher level one - being played a benevolent way like making frequent "mistakes" or wasting time on ineffective actions, even if it is the same monster of the same level. And this is not even counting additional ease or difficulty levels due to proper forshadowing etc. Keep this in mind when comparing your own experiences with those of others. Just saying.

[Cyouni]

Ubertron_X wrote:

I have two comments to this:

1) The problem is that high difficulty paired with not especially easy or intiutively to understand design principles / meta can scare players away before they even try to understand and master said meta, as apparently happened for HeHateMe's gaming group. This is fully decoupled from the fact that most problems described are fully surmountable given a decent level of system mastery.

I'm not sure I'd call it a problem of unintuitive design principles so much as I'd call it a problem of expecting PF1 tactics to universally work. In PF1, it was pretty trivial to get save DCs to a point where standard enemies would rarely save, even on what should be their good save. This is no longer the case, so if you go in expecting to just plow through everything you meet without caring about the enemy you're throwing things at, then you'll easily run into problems.

I'll also note that as a GM, I tend to play monsters at pretty high efficiency. I've also generally seen my newer players try more creative things, better use of terrain, etc, then I have out of my experienced players.

[Arcaian]

HeHateMe wrote:

My experience with PF2 is limited, my old group started an Age of Ashes campaign but everyone ragequit at 6th lvl because of exactly what's being said in this thread: the default game difficulty is just tuned up too high to be enjoyable (at least for that group). I was willing to keep going but I wasn't having fun either. We all went back to 1e.

Issues I saw: 1. Monsters never miss, at least on a first attack. In 6 levels I don't think I ever saw a monster miss it's first attack. They didn't miss too many second attacks either. 2. With the exception of healing, which is invaluable, I found casters to be a total liability. Monsters seem to make the vast majority of their saves, so attack spells are generally worthless. 3. Monsters almost never miss, but PCs sure do! The "whiff factor" is pretty high in 2e and I never did notice much improvement in that. Maybe at higher levels.

2e definitely wasn't for me, though I'm willing to give it another shot. Between getting hit every single time and missing at least half (if not more) of our attacks, combat became a long, boring slog. We depended way too much on our Cleric to keep us alive. I think really challenging combats should be rare and memorable, not the default setting. 1e is definitely more my cup of tea at this point.

From what I've heard of Age of Ashes, it has a recurring issue with using Severe encounters that aren't properly emphasised as such by the story, and with only the one creature. That certainly does make for difficulty, and I think difficulty that can affect player enjoyment if it's too regular - you don't want to feel like your PCs are constantly out of their depth, which encountering a large amount of enemies above your level will do. I've been primarily running converted PF1 adventures, and what's quite interesting to me is that I've been running a lot more Severe encounters with more enemies present.

For example, a Severe encounter could be one level+3 enemy, or it could be four level-1 enemies. The last big big of conversion I did was for 7th level PCs, so using an example at that level, you could have a boss using the stats for an Adult White Dragon; AC 29 with a +23 to hit for 2d10+13 piercing + 2d6 cold damage, and +22/+19/+17 saves (+1 vs magic). Your standard martial character at 7th level will have +16 to hit, an AC of 25 (or 26 in heavy armour); your standard caster will have a DC of 25. The dragon will only miss your martials on a 2 (3 if in heavy armour), the martials will miss the dragon on a 12 on the dice, and the dragon will save against the caster's spell if they target the weak will save on a 7 on the dice. It'll be a hard fight - and there's lots of ways to change the maths here, in a way that I have found to be enjoyable if used sparsely and with proper thematic weighting (the dragon shouldn't be a generic random white dragon, but should be the scary named dragon they've been hunting for weeks, for example).

You could have a Severe encounter for the same PCs versus a set of dragons strangely collaborating together - a Wyvern, Sea Drake, Jungle Drake, and a L'iko Dragon. They each have different abilities (and you could make a far more varied fight if you wanted to, I just stuck with the dragon theme) for your different PCs to focus on, but they've got ACs from 23 to 24, attack bonuses from +16 to +17, and weak saves from +10 to +12. Your martials will be hitting on a 7 to 8 on the dice, will be hit on a 8 to 10 on the dice, and the dragons will save on a 13 to 15 on the dice if their weak save is targeted . Your PCs will have to do more total damage, but it'll be a very different type of Severe encounter - though not necessarily less difficult. I've found that this second sort of Severe encounter tends to be a lot more enjoyable to players seeking difficulty if you're using harder encounters regularly - the single-target Severe encounter should be saved for narratively weighted moments where the monster is scary enough that you feel like you're outclassed.

[N N 959]

Arcaian wrote:

Your PCs will have to do more total damage, but it'll be a very different type of Severe encounter - though not necessarily less difficult. I've found that this second sort of Severe encounter tends to be a lot more enjoyable to players seeking difficulty if you're using harder encounters regularly

So it sounds like you're saying that you can change the nature of the combat encounter to make it more enjoyable, without changing the difficulty?

I have to say, that sounds familiar.

[Arcaian]

N N 959 wrote:

Arcaian wrote:

Your PCs will have to do more total damage, but it'll be a very different type of Severe encounter - though not necessarily less difficult. I've found that this second sort of Severe encounter tends to be a lot more enjoyable to players seeking difficulty if you're using harder encounters regularly

So it sounds like you're saying that you can change the nature of the combat encounter to make it more enjoyable, without changing the difficulty?

I have to say, that sounds familiar.

Not quite my intent, though not far off either. I don't think there's a fundamental flaw with level+3 creatures as single-creature Severe encounters - the design works well to create a really tough encounter despite action economy issues (not something easy to do, if you look at other ttRPGs focused on this sort of content). However, that tough encounter is going to feel like you're outclassed on every front and only pulling through thanks to tactics, cooperation, and maybe a little luck. I think that's a very fun experience - in moderation. If I'm hunting a terrible dragon that has been a thorn in the side of the kingdom for centuries, I want to feel utterly terrified by it - and the feeling that I got through because I discovered the dragon's weakness and came prepared, or because we pulled off a risky tactic feels appropriate. However, that isn't a feeling I'd want as my main experience with the game - I'd feel less like the enemy is terrifying, and more like my character is incompetent.

I can't speak for AoA or the other APs/Adventures, as I've not read them, but if that's the experience people are having, I'd also be less likely to continue PF2. That being sad, not missing one first attack in six levels sounds like it must by hyperbole - not only is a nat-1 going to happen at some point, but I'm confident there'll be some mooks at some point along that much gameplay. To continue my example from above, if three Flame Drakes mooks were protecting a Young Green Dragon for a different sort of Severe encounter, those Flame Drakes are missing the martials in heavy armour on a 11 on the dice - the chance of all of them hitting is negligible. As a side note there, three level-2 enemies and a level+1 enemy is also a fun way to make the boss fight still have an obvious boss, but not have the boss make you feel incompetent. That green dragon's attack bonus of +20 vs the white dragon's attack bonus of +23 does make a real difference in how it feels to fight them.

I agree with earlier posts in this thread that changing the enemy design to maintain difficulty while increasing your hit chance is going to lead to elongated fights with larger piles of enemy HP, and that seems less fun to me than the frantic and scary fights we have against high-level enemies now. I'm not advocating for a change to the maths of monsters, or the abolition of level+2 or level+3 boss fights - just that they're used when the narrative supports that, and sparingly.

[HeHateMe]

In all fairness, I've heard that the more recent APs like Abomination Vaults and Ruby Phoenix don't have the plethora of brutally lethal encounters the early APs are known for (especially Age of Ashes and Agents of Edgewatch). That alone makes me more likely to give 2e another try.

[Mathmuse]

Cyouni wrote:

Ubertron_X wrote:

1) The problem is that high difficulty paired with not especially easy or intiutively to understand design principles / meta can scare players away before they even try to understand and master said meta, as apparently happened for HeHateMe's gaming group. This is fully decoupled from the fact that most problems described are fully surmountable given a decent level of system mastery.

I'm not sure I'd call it a problem of unintuitive design principles so much as I'd call it a problem of expecting PF1 tactics to universally work. In PF1, it was pretty trivial to get save DCs to a point where standard enemies would rarely save, even on what should be their good save. This is no longer the case, so if you go in expecting to just plow through everything you meet without caring about the enemy you're throwing things at, then you'll easily run into problems.

I'll also note that as a GM, I tend to play monsters at pretty high efficiency. I've also generally seen my newer players try more creative things, better use of terrain, etc, then I have out of my experienced players.

I agree with Ubertron_X about the non-intuitive design.

I play many boardgames. Some, such as Tsuro, are abstract. However, most boardgames benefit from a story built into the game that adds intuition to the moves. Monopoly is about cutthroat investment in rental properties. The gameplay is about taking advantage of opportunities, buying and improving to drive rents through the roof. It is an intuitive game. Tokaido is about tourism. The player needs to develop a theme about which sites the character visits, passing up some opportunities in order to build complete sets that score well, while watching the funds to not overspend. It is also an intuitive game. In contrast, Thurn and Taxis is named after an early German postal service. The players draw cards in a mechanic similar to Ticket to Ride and build continuous postal routes. They score points by finishing abstract goals, such as finished a six-long postal route or setting up postal stations in all sections of a province. It is about using the random cards with foresight and efficiency. The smartest person in our house--a retired biophysicist--likes the game but tends to lose. The differences between the goals are too subtle for him. Thurn and Taxis is not intuitive to him.

Roleplaying games have a much stronger story than any boardgame. But that does not make every action intuitive.

Suppose a party encounters a boss monster. The obvious response, the one seen in many war movies and superhero movies, is to give the fight your all. Use your strongest attacks, never stopping. Use your most deadly spells. Train (build) your character so that those attacks or those spells are as strong as possible. Those efforts worked in PF1, so Cyouni called them PF1 tactics. However, they really are the intuitive tactics.

PF2 is based on a different set of movies, such as Star Wars, The Princess Bride, and Moana. The best way to start a fight is with witty banter, a Demoralize action. The best spell to throw at an enemy is not a save-or-die that could cut them down, but a distraction to give an ally an opening. If a character fails, then a teammate has their back to save them. PF2 is not about badass champions (the trophy winner, not the class). It rewards caution and observation more than PF1. It is a cooperative system about buddies banding together to become heroes.

I might be over-emphasizing the buddy aspect, because that is how my players play. In both PF1 and PF2 they succeeded through designing their characters for good teamwork. The teamwork was not an abstract strategy, but arose naturally from roleplaying the PCs as friends with common goals.

Furthermore, PF2 has a lot of subtle, non-intuitive choices. Carrying a shield has a cost in PF1 of occupying a hand that could otherwise be used for a two-handed weapon. It also requires shield proficiency. In PF2 the cost is increased by requiring a Raise a Shield action, but the proficiency requirement is dropped. Anyone can wield a shield, but is a +2 circumstance bonus to AC worth the effort? Many spellcasters could compromise on the +1 circumstance bonus from the Shield spell instead. The balance is subtle. PF1 is simpler: defensive shield or offensive two-handed weapon. The tight math of PF2 makes many trade-offs hard to judge, rather like the Thurn and Taxis boardgame.

[Cyouni]

Mathmuse wrote:

Suppose a party encounters a boss monster. The obvious response, the one seen in many war movies and superhero movies, is to give the fight your all. Use your strongest attacks, never stopping. Use your most deadly spells. Train (build) your character so that those attacks or those spells are as strong as possible. Those efforts worked in PF1, so Cyouni called them PF1 tactics. However, they really are the intuitive tactics.

I disagree that's really the intuitive set of tactics. A large part of PF1's optimized characters was in them just repeating the same actions over and over again, because anything else reduced their power to such a degree it wasn't worth it. Take the antipaladin sanguine angel in my last game, for example - even though she had a bonus that would let her use Str for bows, she was hesitant to swap to it unless absolutely necessary, because that would turn off something like 10 different bonuses to her preferred longsword/shield.

So combats really just came down to One True Tactic in the vast majority of situations. Switching weapons to deal with, say, a skeleton, wasn't a valuable use of time, since that would smash most of her bonuses - far better to just be efficient enough that the fact that it was a skeleton was irrelevant.

[Malk_Content]

I also disagree that PF1 best represents the super hero genre. The two top super heroes movies if all time had the PCs getting their bottoms thoroughly beat in straight on fights. The whole point of the culmination of the avengers is saga is that heroes have to humble themselves, work together as a team and be willing to die in order to win.

[Temperans]

Malk_Content wrote:

I also disagree that PF1 best represents the super hero genre. The two top super heroes movies if all time had the PCs getting their bottoms thoroughly beat in straight on fights. The whole point of the culmination of the avengers is saga is that heroes have to humble themselves, work together as a team and be willing to die in order to win.

Really should not be comparing anything to those movies. The reason they got so much money is that fans got invested with the previous 10 movies. Brand name and investment into something does a lot to make people do that thing.

In fact those movies are pretty much written in such a way that they make little sense if you didn't watch at least some of the previous ones. But anyway this is a side track.

[Malk_Content]

I'm not sure what that has to do with my point. Yes to understand something that is the end of a series you probably need to have experienced other parts of it.

While they serve as the biggest example of how hero movies work with teams they aren't the only one. Almost all good Hero (heck just all good media) has the protagonist suffer setbacks and need to change or grow before overcoming adversity. When that doesn't happen characters tend to get labelled as being too strong or flat.

[Angel Hunter D]

Cyouni wrote:

Mathmuse wrote:

Suppose a party encounters a boss monster. The obvious response, the one seen in many war movies and superhero movies, is to give the fight your all. Use your strongest attacks, never stopping. Use your most deadly spells. Train (build) your character so that those attacks or those spells are as strong as possible. Those efforts worked in PF1, so Cyouni called them PF1 tactics. However, they really are the intuitive tactics.

I disagree that's really the intuitive set of tactics. A large part of PF1's optimized characters was in them just repeating the same actions over and over again, because anything else reduced their power to such a degree it wasn't worth it. Take the antipaladin sanguine angel in my last game, for example - even though she had a bonus that would let her use Str for bows, she was hesitant to swap to it unless absolutely necessary, because that would turn off something like 10 different bonuses to her preferred longsword/shield.

So combats really just came down to One True Tactic in the vast majority of situations. Switching weapons to deal with, say, a skeleton, wasn't a valuable use of time, since that would smash most of her bonuses - far better to just be efficient enough that the fact that it was a skeleton was irrelevant.

Repeating the same actions they trained/built for. That's about as intuitive as it gets. "I made this character good at this, so I do it"

[Arcaian]

Angel Hunter D wrote:

Cyouni wrote:

Mathmuse wrote:

Suppose a party encounters a boss monster. The obvious response, the one seen in many war movies and superhero movies, is to give the fight your all. Use your strongest attacks, never stopping. Use your most deadly spells. Train (build) your character so that those attacks or those spells are as strong as possible. Those efforts worked in PF1, so Cyouni called them PF1 tactics. However, they really are the intuitive tactics.

I disagree that's really the intuitive set of tactics. A large part of PF1's optimized characters was in them just repeating the same actions over and over again, because anything else reduced their power to such a degree it wasn't worth it. Take the antipaladin sanguine angel in my last game, for example - even though she had a bonus that would let her use Str for bows, she was hesitant to swap to it unless absolutely necessary, because that would turn off something like 10 different bonuses to her preferred longsword/shield.

So combats really just came down to One True Tactic in the vast majority of situations. Switching weapons to deal with, say, a skeleton, wasn't a valuable use of time, since that would smash most of her bonuses - far better to just be efficient enough that the fact that it was a skeleton was irrelevant.

Repeating the same actions they trained/built for. That's about as intuitive as it gets. "I made this character good at this, so I do it"

I think the pushback on calling them the intuitive tactics is because there are often intuitive elements you can't use because you've not built for them, rather than that they're not intuitive themselves. Obviously the sword-and-board antipaladin's player finds it intuitive to use their sword and shield, but when they're fighting the flying enemy it's intuitive to pull out their bow. They can't do so because they're so heavily invested elsewhere - despite getting mechanics for their bow - so they'll end up delaying to get a Fly cast on them, or looking through their consumables to find a way to get the enemy into melee range, etc, rather than the intuitive option of shooting the enemy.

[Temperans]

I mean nothing is preventing them from doing so. While half the initial ranged feats are just "take less penalty when shooting into or in melee". Something that is not a problem when shooting a flying creature.

People tend to have a strong "well I didn't build for it so it's useless" mentality. When 80% of the time it was perfectly serviceable, if a bit risky (in the case of maneuvers). It happens in PF2 as well to anyone that hasn't bothered reading the full rules, or have someone to remind them "hey you can do that".

[Temperans]

Malk_Content wrote:

I'm not sure what that has to do with my point. Yes to understand something that is the end of a series you probably need to have experienced other parts of it.

While they serve as the biggest example of how hero movies work with teams they aren't the only one. Almost all good Hero (heck just all good media) has the protagonist suffer setbacks and need to change or grow before overcoming adversity. When that doesn't happen characters tend to get labelled as being too strong or flat.

The point is that Avengers did good because people were already primed to see it. They knew it was coming, they were told it was coming, many knew largely what was going on and just wanted to see it in live action.

People love seeing batman and superman despite the fact that they never lose and when they lose a fight, it's usually just "let's just go fight again after I have healed up or gotten new weapons". Hardly any "combat growth" which is what Pathfinder and DnD in general simulate.

PF1 is like an action film where the hero goes in gun blazing. Occasionally they might do some stealthing or some other tactics. But they always rely on their main form of combat.

PF2 is like a survival film where the hero is trying everything possible to survive. They have a main combat strategy, but the game makes it pretty clear if you are not even trying to be a bit optimal pray that you are set to face easy enemies.

[Ruzza]

Temperans wrote:

PF1 is like an action film where the hero goes in gun blazing. Occasionally they might do some stealthing or some other tactics. But they always rely on their main form of combat.

PF2 is like a survival film where the hero is trying everything possible to survive. They have a main combat strategy, but the game makes it pretty clear if you are not even trying to be a bit optimal pray that you are set to face easy enemies.

This is why I call you out - what basis to you have to make this comparison? If you haven't played the game(s?), then how can you say this straight-faced? I can say that PF2 plays like an action film where the heroes go in with guns blazing and come out fine - perhaps battered and bruised at the end. I can literally point to several games in which that has happened. What has happened to you that makes you feel like your statement has any basis in reality?

[Temperans]

After all the discussion here telling us that you, "don't want to go in gun blazing in PF2" and that "trying to just attack will get you kill". You really will say that? When people have literally said for multiple pages now how PF2 requires some amount of knowing what thing to use when or else face problems.

Also reading the book and thinking things through, thinking about the possible scenarios and results based on good/bad rolls, thinking about the general enemy stats compared to general player stats, or simply having a good/average/bad GM. There are many way to come to a similar conclusion. Its really not that different from any analysis and risk assessment.

Fun fact, you don't have to be in risk to make a good risk assessment, you only need to know the likely hood of the different possible events. Similarly you don't have to go to the center of the sun to calculate the chances of it burning a specific fuel, you can just measure the readings and make good educated conjectures about it and its surroundings.

***

* P.S. You asking me to "show my experience" wont make your point more valid. Or speed up time. Or make it so I am suddenly in a game. Or make Magic Sword starts a new game. Or make my point less valid. Or anything that will give you what you appear to want. So just save the trouble and stop asking for the same thing with me, while ignoring everyone else's comments that basically say the same thing as me.

[Ruzza]

"I can't help it that I don't play the game," isn't a valid excuse for posting opinions like "playing suboptimally isn't supported" as though they were fact.

Players saying that they're getting hit often at going to start a discussion of tactics, without a doubt. Somehow extrapolating that to "the game requires high-level tactics or it doesn't work" is ludicrous. But then again, you read the book so you would know more than me - the guy who has read the book and runs four games for the past two years.

EDIT: I'll give an example since I can pull from examples. In a recent Moderate encounter, my party barbarian fell 20 feet up from a tree and landed on a level + 2 enemy slashing away. At most the warpriest cleric provided flanking while the rest of the party (one person down) plugged away with crossbow shots. A bit battered (one character even left with a disease), but triumphant.

In another game, my group my monk and champion charged a Severe encounter, punching and fighting their way through while the spellcasters plinked away with damaging cantrips. I would love to say they used fancy tactics, but they didn't. The monk dropped into stance and attacked. The champion didn't even stay in flanking, but attacked as often as possible, using her reaction when possible. The encounter even spiraled out of control with the enemy setting the building on fire, escaping into a trapped room to poison his pursuit, and unleashing a second encounter on the group as they chased him. No one even went down (this in a team with no healing outside of the champion's lay on hands). Again, battered and bruised, but certainly nothing insurmountable.

I see this as an issue of expectations, which I understand. If leaving a combat beaten up isn't something that you want in a game, then you either develop tactics to avoid it or - more likely - play a different game. What I don't understand is saying "this is how this game is played," without, uh, playing it.

[Temperans]

Hmm, wait wait wait wait wait.

I didn't start the tactics discussion, never did I say what any player would do as I can only speak for myself, nor did I ever say that it "required high level tactics or it doesn't work". So don't come here accusing me of something I didn't do. There is a big difference between "needing to play optimally" to "needing high level tactics." and there is a big difference between "pray for easy character" and "its impossible".

You seem to be jumping to a lot of conclusions I never stated. Specially when I am not the only ones making the same points. Specially when even Deriven (who has played to high level PF2) agrees with some of my points. Also again trying to dismiss my opinions by attacking me directly instead of my points.

* P.S. I never mentioned level. I specifically said "easy" because each group has different monsters that they are strong against. A single lv+2 vs 7 PC will be much easier than a single lv+2 vs 2 PCs. Just as a quick example. That is not even counting "oh this is a tree that is weak to fire", or "This enemy spent a lot of actions moving around without actually attacking."

[Ruzza]

DF has played the game and I disagree with him constantly. He's entitled to his opinion, but at least he can back it up. He also claims things as fact when it's anything but and we've clashed on that before.

You can be hyperbolic about the game ("the game makes it pretty clear if you are not even trying to be a bit optimal pray that you are set to face easy enemies,") but I can demonstrate that it's false. Of my many groups, there aren't any I'd point to and say, "There we go, flawless," but I don't really think that there is an optimal (the strength of the system as compared to PF1 where there certainly is an optimal set of actions/feats/choices.

I've TPK'd two groups since PF2 launched. One fled a combat further into a dungeon. The other split an ooze several times over just before their caster could take their turn. If you want a game where you cannot lose, that's absolutely fine and is something a GM can arrange, but you really have to work to die in PF2 despite how "easily you can get hit."

[Mathmuse]

Arcaian wrote:

Angel Hunter D wrote:

Cyouni wrote:

Mathmuse wrote:

Suppose a party encounters a boss monster. The obvious response, the one seen in many war movies and superhero movies, is to give the fight your all. Use your strongest attacks, never stopping. Use your most deadly spells. Train (build) your character so that those attacks or those spells are as strong as possible. Those efforts worked in PF1, so Cyouni called them PF1 tactics. However, they really are the intuitive tactics.

I disagree that's really the intuitive set of tactics. A large part of PF1's optimized characters was in them just repeating the same actions over and over again, because anything else reduced their power to such a degree it wasn't worth it. Take the antipaladin sanguine angel in my last game, for example - even though she had a bonus that would let her use Str for bows, she was hesitant to swap to it unless absolutely necessary, because that would turn off something like 10 different bonuses to her preferred longsword/shield.

So combats really just came down to One True Tactic in the vast majority of situations. Switching weapons to deal with, say, a skeleton, wasn't a valuable use of time, since that would smash most of her bonuses - far better to just be efficient enough that the fact that it was a skeleton was irrelevant.

Repeating the same actions they trained/built for. That's about as intuitive as it gets. "I made this character good at this, so I do it"

I think the pushback on calling them the intuitive tactics is because there are often intuitive elements you can't use because you've not built for them, rather than that they're not intuitive themselves. Obviously the sword-and-board antipaladin's player finds it intuitive to use their sword and shield, but when they're fighting the flying enemy it's intuitive to pull out their bow. They can't do so because they're so heavily invested elsewhere - despite getting mechanics for their bow - so they'll end up delaying to get a Fly cast on them, or looking through their consumables to find a way to get the enemy into melee range, etc, rather than the intuitive option of shooting the enemy.

I call certain tactics intuitive become the game teaches them, even if the lesson does not teach the best tactics. If a PF1 paladin deals effective damage in melee, then it teaches her that melee works. She invests feats in better melee damage, and that works, too. The more she invests in melee damage, the more melee seems the One True Tactic.

A non-intuitive tactic is one the character has not tried before or has neglected as ineffective, yet it would be more effective in the current situation, such as a melee paladin switching to her bow against a flying creature. Or the paladin with longsword in hand standing next to the vulnerable wizard and saying, "I ready an action to hit the creature if it flies into reach," and relying on the wizard's spells to take it down if it never does fly into reach.

My wife says that intuitive versus non-intuitive is the wrong distinction. She says that one set of tactics is the obvious tactics, frontloaded in the character design as the default. The other set is the think-about-it tactics, where the players have time to look over their character sheets and ask, "Do I have anything here that would work better than the obvious?"

Temperans wrote:

I didn't start the tactics discussion, never did I say what any player would do as I can only speak for myself, nor did I ever say that it "required high level tactics or it doesn't work". So don't come here accusing me of something I didn't do. There is a big difference between "needing to play optimally" to "needing high level tactics." and there is a big difference between "pray for easy character" and "its impossible". ...

I started the discussion of tactics, branching off from some statements by Ubertron_X and Cyouni. PF2 does not require high-level tactics, but it does require more tactics than hitting the enemy with one's strongest shot. My players repeatedly invent new tactics that surprise me. The surprises are fun, but I could use more insights into how to design challenges that fit my players' style.

My wife says that they experiment with tactics because I give them room to think. In an easy encounter, they have an opportunity to try something different from their character sheet. Sometimes the experiment works well and they have a new tactic in their toolbox. In a very difficult encounter, they desperately search for new tactics to gain more advantage and they know that I won't shoot down their tactic with a "That will never work" attitude.

For example, in a battle with Captain Dargg's hobgoblin army where the party was spread across a ravine in ambush, the druid threw a lighting bolt that hit Dargg and two troop units in the same line. Dargg's last command, before the party archers finished him off, was pointing at the druid and ordering, "Kill the wizard!" Hobgoblins hate wizards. The entire army started to move toward the druid, which would have been a boring battle where all the focus was on the druid. Then the rogue/sorcerer cast Produce Flame at a troop and bluffed, "Wrong target! I am the wizard!" This split the army, half toward the druid and half toward the rogue/sorcerer. Not only was the bluff a good roll, but I wanted the more interesting battle where the army was split.

[Captain Morgan]

Temp, it does feel like if you spent half as much time looking for a game as you did posting about one you haven't played yet, it would be better for all parties involved. It isn't that hard. I was able to find a roll20 game in about an hour with randos, and then I spent maybe another hour writing my application with my character concept.

[Totally Not Gorbacz]

4500 posts about a game you've never played is a good score. Not as good as that guy who spent 7 years posting about PF1 and never played it once, but still impressive.

[nick1wasd]

I uhhh....... Seemed to have missed a lot of the party here, but I will do my best to add something new, I hope.

On the topic OP opened up all those days ago, getting hit is a thing that happens, and what's important to point out that I haven't seen ANYONE state is that PF2 PCs have absolutely massive HP pools compared to PF1/3.5e/5e PCs. Between starting racial health, always having the "maximum potential" of the hit dice convention of old, and oodles of means of getting temp HP and resistances, your % of HP lost when you get hit is leagues below what it was in 3.5-land, so much that by the time you hit level 5, eating a failed save enemy fireball barely brings you to 1/4th health without any mitigation brought into consideration, whereas in 1E if you failed a fireball save at that level you might be brought to half health unless you were a barbarian.

On tactics, I will say the repeated that you gotta be creative! I both GM and play, since the playtest, with 2 different groups. The second you get out of the "wail on it" mentality, combat because way more fluid and competitive if against high level monsties, and an ABSOLUTE STOMP against lower level ones. Weapon traits are also something to keep in mind, a lot didn't separate the scimitar, rapier, and shortsword in 1e. In 2e, those are VASTLY different items with pros, cons, and circumstances for use, and you'd be hard pressed to find someone mistaking one for the other. That's something I love the devs for, and wish they'd go even crazier with some of the weapon traits they've developed/will develop.

[Tonya Woldridge]

Friendly local moderation team here - removed some posts venturing off-topic that were also vitriolic. Please disagree without the anger so the conversation remains open.

[Leomund "Leo" Velinznrarikovich]

I think it would be constructive to echo the point that the origin of this thread is about perspective. This system is, by a large margin, the most balanced rules-heavy system I have ever played. Is it perfect? No, but unlike other systems, augmentation is soooo easy. So easy in fact that its deviation from perfection is hardly significant.

The sheer balance does give it a different play experience than other systems. If you can build a character that couldn't be hit or one wherein enemies couldn't save against your spells, why bother even rolling for combats? To me, that is a waste of time. That said, some people enjoy that. Sounds great! PF2 is probably not for you. Or, you need to adjust the numbers slightly so that is your experience.

Is PF2 to your liking? That is for you to decide. But please don't bash a very well made system just because you can't manage to take the time to understand how it works. It plays differently than PF1, and 3.5, and D&D 5e. Yes...we know. This newish system allows you to customize your experience easily. If its mechanics don't fit your play style, then don't play. Just like every other system, it has given you the tools to play and have fun. If you don't like the tools, you don't have to use them.

I do not intend this with malice. This system just is at this point. The core mechanics are not going to be changing.

[considerably]

HeHateMe wrote:

In all fairness, I've heard that the more recent APs like Abomination Vaults and Ruby Phoenix don't have the plethora of brutally lethal encounters the early APs are known for (especially Age of Ashes and Agents of Edgewatch). That alone makes me more likely to give 2e another try.

This is completely true. I hope it's a conscious design decision, but from playing through Abomination Vaults and FotRP (and this is also true from scanning SoT), the core "problem" people most people have has been fixed. That is - an overabundance of single-entity Severe encounters that make it feel like PCs are always heavily outmatched. Beatable, but not fun for most players if it's the norm.

AV in particular has a handful of these types of encounters but they are intended as optional side encounters and don't stand in the way of the plot. I think the adventure could do with foreshadowing them a little better, but as long as the GM is aware and leans into it, it should work out fine for your parties and allow them the agency of whether to face these extra challenges.

For older adventures like AoA, it's unfortunate, but there's only two solutions. Either Paizo decides to rebalance and reprint them (my hope; though since they are not sold out yet it's unlikely), or folks can implement the advice that has been shared multiple times in this thread to offer a less challenging experience to your players. I believe "rebalance" should be the defacto answer for groups that come complaining about AoA struggles - it tends to already be on Reddit, anyway.

While an experienced 2E party can handle AoA and other early adventures as written, it sucks that these adventures are probably too difficult for most new groups and they're literally the first adventures you're likely to play, but it's also not at all difficult to rebalance with the 2E system. So I hope folks don't get caught up on a couple of poorly balanced adventures written in the dawn of a new system before even the authors of these adventures had probably played their first game.

[Malk_Content]

A cost effective measure to help with potential new player on-boarding experience is to produce a difficulty guide pdf that comes free with any AP. It needs only be 1-2 pages long of advice on how best to alter difficulty to better suit your groups needs.

[Kasoh]

Malk_Content wrote:

A cost effective measure to help with potential new player on-boarding experience is to produce a difficulty guide pdf that comes free with any AP. It needs only be 1-2 pages long of advice on how best to alter difficulty to better suit your groups needs.

Cost effective is a term with variable meaning. Even one to two pages of content needs to be written, edited, page designed, and prepared to the company's usual print standards.

[Garretmander]

Kasoh wrote:

Malk_Content wrote:

A cost effective measure to help with potential new player on-boarding experience is to produce a difficulty guide pdf that comes free with any AP. It needs only be 1-2 pages long of advice on how best to alter difficulty to better suit your groups needs.

Cost effective is a term with variable meaning. Even one to two pages of content needs to be written, edited, page designed, and prepared to the company's usual print standards.

Sure, it will still cost money on the second printing... but compared to re-writing the entire thing? Way cheaper.

[Malk_Content]

Kasoh wrote:

Malk_Content wrote:

A cost effective measure to help with potential new player on-boarding experience is to produce a difficulty guide pdf that comes free with any AP. It needs only be 1-2 pages long of advice on how best to alter difficulty to better suit your groups needs.

Cost effective is a term with variable meaning. Even one to two pages of content needs to be written, edited, page designed, and prepared to the company's usual print standards.

Oh absolutely it's relative. I just consider one small universally applicable document that could prevent future lost sales more feasible than every AP or module having difficulty adjustments within them.

[The Raven Black]

Doesn't GMG already provides this ?

TBH if it is on AoN, it is already available for free.

[Malk_Content]

The Raven Black wrote:

Doesn't GMG already provides this ?

TBH if it is on AoN, it is already available for free.

Yes but apparently people aren't finding that advice, or unwilling to change APs for some reason. Attaching this advice directly to the AP store page might help some people find it (the GMG is after all a big book, especially if someone is just wanting to pick up an AP and jump in.

I don't think itbis needed, but I'm not the.right demographic of player to need it.

[The Raven Black]

Then they only need to put a sentence with the page reference and the AoN url (and a direct link in the PDF would be great) at the beginning of each module/adventure/AP part and we're set.

[Club]

By the gods! A whole herd has perished somehow! Oh fibrous day! Calooh callay!

[Temperans]

I think I mentioned this earlier in the thread. But I'll say it now just in case.

A lot, and I do mean a lot, of people love playing games on the "intended" difficulty. An equal or larger portion love playing games on a harder difficulty. A small segment even like making a set game considerably harder. Ex: There is a whole genre of really Mario custom games made explicitly to be incredibly difficult. Even among the people who like to play easy games, few actively try to make a game easier than the default settings allow.

Then there are all the people who refuse to play modded games. With plenty of people seeing alternate rule options as a form of "mod".

Having a small guide or link to such a guide would definetly help a lot of GMs to make the game easier for their players. Specially the ones who don't know the GMG tells you about those options.

[Saedar]

Temperans wrote:

I think I mentioned this earlier in the thread. But I'll say it now just in case.

A lot, and I do mean a lot, of people love playing games on the "intended" difficulty. An equal or larger portion love playing games on a harder difficulty. A small segment even like making a set game considerably harder. Ex: There is a whole genre of really Mario custom games made explicitly to be incredibly difficult. Even among the people who like to play easy games, few actively try to make a game easier than the default settings allow.

Then there are all the people who refuse to play modded games. With plenty of people seeing alternate rule options as a form of "mod".

Having a small guide or link to such a guide would definetly help a lot of GMs to make the game easier for their players. Specially the ones who don't know the GMG tells you about those options.

People who refuse to adapt games at their home table to suit the needs of their players' enjoyment of the game at hand as a matter of like...personal philosophy aren't playing the game as intended. Modding the game is the intent.

If you enjoy that, fine. Go nuts. It just needs to be understood that isn't the way the game is meant to be played, broadly speaking.

[Temperans]

Saedar wrote:

Temperans wrote:

I think I mentioned this earlier in the thread. But I'll say it now just in case.

A lot, and I do mean a lot, of people love playing games on the "intended" difficulty. An equal or larger portion love playing games on a harder difficulty. A small segment even like making a set game considerably harder. Ex: There is a whole genre of really Mario custom games made explicitly to be incredibly difficult. Even among the people who like to play easy games, few actively try to make a game easier than the default settings allow.

Then there are all the people who refuse to play modded games. With plenty of people seeing alternate rule options as a form of "mod".

Having a small guide or link to such a guide would definetly help a lot of GMs to make the game easier for their players. Specially the ones who don't know the GMG tells you about those options.

People who refuse to adapt games at their home table to suit the needs of their players' enjoyment of the game at hand as a matter of like...personal philosophy aren't playing the game as intended. Modding the game is the intent.

If you enjoy that, fine. Go nuts. It just needs to be understood that isn't the way the game is meant to be played, broadly speaking.

I never said I was that person, but they certainly do exist. Both on the player and GM side. For them not modding the game beyond rulings on confusing parts is playing as intended. Just like for you its not.