Not even once? Damn. That is some unlucky rolling or fighting some really tough stuff and unlucky rolling. I've seen lots of crit successes from general success rolls.
Evasion in PF2 has been a huge boon. It has saved so much damage.
I can atest to this, The Party i am Gming did all of AoA and when those sweet when it's a sucess it's a critical success appeared, yes, Evasion was awesome, the Rogue had no problem in being in the area of the Sorcerer fireball!
And the other same abilities for Constitution and Will also did the same way.
I am now in Book 3 of Extinction Curse, keep loving Dming PF2!
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If you have a six year old why are you not playing 5e? Then you can be more like a hero and not have the years of complex rules interactions and thousands of feats. I don’t see any six year old spending the time needed to feel like a hero by reading dozens of splat books. I think the decision to DM PF1 says more about you than it does about kids wanting to play as complex a game as PF1. You could have just as easily slapped an elite template on your kids characters in PF2 or just played 5e. That you decided to choose PF1 a game that in no way is attractive to little kids is puzzling.
They love the PF1 Bestiaries and encounters with Goblins, Orcs and the like. They know what they have to add to the D20 and it's a blast for them. I of course narrate the encounters accordingly in a way they find it engaging. PF1 is actually not that difficult if you you limit the content to the main core books. Level advancement is something I of course do for them, based on their character concept. Knowing their characters I also offer them choices what they like to do, so they don't have to juggle with all those feats and options.
To them PF1 it's a blast that way, so it's enough for me. On the other hand I don't enjoy 5e, so that's not an option for me. And Pf2 is to me personally more complex in comparisson than PF1. My two digits level PF2 rogue was so bloated with feats that I constantly overlooked modifiers and the traits everything has now is puzzling and can be easily overlooked as well.As I already mentioned, everything depends on personal tastes.
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The only prep I do for PF2e is read the AP and set up the virtual tabletop. My group has hard times but they make it through as is and they've never played a TTRPG before this one. They've completed Plaguestone and are 3 books into AoA. No TPKs or even PKs so far.
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An equal level enemy/monster in Pf2e is not supposed to be equal to an individual player of the same level it's supposed to be equal to a party of 4 players of that level.
This is wrong. A single creature of equal level to the party, against a party of 4, is a Trivial encounter. 4 creatures of equal level to the party, against the same party of 4 is an Extreme encounter, because theoretically equal forces on both sides should be a 50-50 chance of TPK.
This is wrong. A single creature of equal level to the party, against a party of 4, is a Trivial encounter. 4 creatures of equal level to the party, against the same party of 4 is an Extreme encounter, because theoretically equal forces on both sides should be a 50-50 chance of TPK.
An equal level enemy/monster in Pf2e is not supposed to be equal to an individual player of the same level it's supposed to be equal to a party of 4 players of that level.
You're totally right. Thanks for pointing that out. It's early here, hadn't had my coffee yet.
I think maybe the old edition description of CR seeped in, there.
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Level advancement is something I of course do for them, based on their character concept.
Wow. Speaking as a player, I doubt I could ever permit such a thing. If a GM floated that idea I'd be like "I'm sitting this one out."
I'm glad it works for your group, but it just takes away too much player autonomy for my tastes. Leveling up for me is half the fun!
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Level advancement is something I of course do for them, based on their character concept.Wow. Speaking as a player, I doubt I could ever permit such a thing. If a GM floated that idea I'd be like "I'm sitting this one out."
I'm glad it works for your group, but it just takes away too much player autonomy for my tastes. Leveling up for me is half the fun!
If playing with adults I would completely agree. My 6 yrs old daughters are happy telling me their character concepts with cute vivid descriptions and I choose the feats accordingly. They don't have the ambitions in their age to handcraft their chars themselves. With age, they will surely learn to.
Levelling up and choosing your character of choice is the fun in PF1. I mean it’s cool you’re playing it with your family but you have taken away the funnest part of the game. By restricting content and levelling them yourself that really takes away the fun parts of PF1. I still don’t understand why you don’t go with 5e. You can by default get that OP feel and you can let them dip their toes into making character choices. 5e advancement does have very limited advancement but at least there is some with feats vs abilities and the level 3 choice. Plus the game is far more rules light and easy to run as you won’t have to simplify the many clunky systems 3e/PF1 has. But I suppose it’s a good way to guarantee having a PF1 group to GM.
Even my wife (to a degree) and my eldest one are happy that I do their work and mechanically convert their character concepts into numbers and feats and I am happy to oblige them. After all I want to lure them into the hobby. I am sure with advanced player mastery, they will take over that part themselves in time willingly.
About 5e, it's just that I don't like it and gming a system I don't like would lessen the fun for me considerably. I am a 3.X guy (and therefore AD&D) to the core, the dumbing down 5e went to far, for my taste. But I won't deny that for putting the hobby more into the public's focus over all 5e is praised deservedly. It's just not for me. I tried it and I got bored pretty quickly.| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I think folks are being.a bit harsh here. A person sharing their hobby with their kids is almost always a good thing.
His example doesn't actually show that pf1 game difficulty is severely flawed, as he has taken away all the flawed bits, but nothing wrong with playing this way with his kids. It's still early maths, literacy, cooperation and theatre skills.
Thank you.
My intention was to emphasize that either system has their merits and that it's okay to favor either over the other but all that depends just on the personal taste. PF1 and PF2 advocates have shared very valid points. The only thing we have to keep in mind is, because one system appears to be more accessible to me doesn't mean that has to be the same for everyone else.
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Not even once? Damn. That is some unlucky rolling or fighting some really tough stuff and unlucky rolling. I've seen lots of crit successes from general success rolls.
Evasion in PF2 has been a huge boon. It has saved so much damage.
I can atest to this, The Party i am Gming did all of AoA and when those sweet when it's a sucess it's a critical success appeared, yes, Evasion was awesome, the Rogue had no problem in being in the area of the Sorcerer fireball!
And the other same abilities for Constitution and Will also did the same way.
I think this has been our group's favourite use of those abilities, sitting in those types of effects fearlessly. There's been a lot of times we've encouraged the Wizard's blast spells just because rogue and swashbuckler think they have a good chance with evasion. Previously in another campaign, I recall there was an AoE Fort effect that the fighter decided they had a good enough chance of saving that they could be included.
Less good was when the Druid took Dragon Form for a green dragon.
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Level advancement is something I of course do for them, based on their character concept.Wow. Speaking as a player, I doubt I could ever permit such a thing. If a GM floated that idea I'd be like "I'm sitting this one out."
I'm glad it works for your group, but it just takes away too much player autonomy for my tastes. Leveling up for me is half the fun!
They are literal children, who probably don't have the reading comprehension skills to parse character options yet. I think a 6 year old is in their very first year of actual school?
and there are times where I would do the character creation for adult players - notably if I ran the hero system, I would get my players to send me their concept and I would build the powers, because that system basically asks you to be a game designer to be able to make a basic character.
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and there are times where I would do the character creation for adult players - notably if I ran the hero system, I would get my players to send me their concept and I would build the powers, because that system basically asks you to be a game designer to be able to make a basic character.
Same for Mutants and Masterminds. I still have the occasional friend ask "how do you build this thing in M&M?" Gameplay is easy, chargen not so much.
I'm not that familiar with M&M, but Hero system character generation can be fairly straightforward if the concept is straightforward (a standard "brick," for example; high-STR, above average defenses, and maybe some movement enhancement and/or power). There is a bit more of a learning curve than most systems and it's very easy to get overwhelmed by the available options (analysis paralysis) or create an "inefficient" character by spreading points on too many different things.
The biggest "problem" is that you literally can (over)design a character when you start stacking on all of those advantages, limitations, etc. to tweak the concept and/or numbers. Once I became comfortable with the system, however, the ability to model precisely the effect I wanted to achieve with a character/concept was liberating; the practice/mindset has also made me more flexible as a player/GM.
Also, as mentioned, in play Hero system is not much more difficult (and even less difficult in some areas) than 3.x/PF.
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Getting back to the original topic, PF2 is based on a different paradigm than 3.x/PF1. The math is much tighter and combat in PF2 is focused on the dynamic interaction between multiple party members in shifting circumstances. As opposed to 3.x/PF1 combat, where everybody just did the same thing over and over more or less in isolation from the rest of the party, PF2 combat is about setting up the other PCs on a round-by-round basis while everyone contributes to whittling down the opponents.
Some of this is to address the way 3.x/PF1 fights usually ended up with one or two PCs dominating combat while the rest of the party felt like they weren't contributing effectively most of the time.
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It's extremely easy to get hit in this edition, at least from what I've seen. I don't even think armor serves a purpose beyond maybe avoiding a crit.
I think there are 2 core issues contributing to this: first, monster stats are too high. They're hard to hit, they hit PCs the vast majority of the time, and they make most of their saves. The other issue is encounter balance in the early 2e APs seems to be way out of whack. Too many high difficulty encounters too close together. Just my own observations.
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They are literal children, who probably don't have the reading comprehension skills to parse character options yet. I think a 6 year old is in their very first year of actual school?
I'm sorry but being a small child is no excuse for being a damn casual.
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It's extremely easy to get hit in this edition, at least from what I've seen. I don't even think armor serves a purpose beyond maybe avoiding a crit.
I think there are 2 core issues contributing to this: first, monster stats are too high. They're hard to hit, they hit PCs the vast majority of the time, and they make most of their saves. The other issue is encounter balance in the early 2e APs seems to be way out of whack. Too many high difficulty encounters too close together. Just my own observations.
I disagree with your first point. The implication is that something is wrong with the math. The math is fine. An encounter that is Severe will feel severe, and encounter that is Moderate will feel moderate, and an encounter that is Low will feel low. Granted, difficulty is subjective, but given a party that understands the game, the math checks out. The underlying game systems are working just fine.
What I believe people really have an issue with is the cadence of difficulty. This is what you're correctly talking about in your second point. The Paizo difficulty cadence is heavily weighted to challenging encounters. You can review most APs and see that more encounters than not are Moderate or above with many Severe encounters (though this gets less extreme in the more recent APs).
Even the GMG recommends you put many Severe encounters in your adventure: https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=949
Now: there's nothing wrong with severe encounters. They are hard, but unless you play badly your party won't lose. But they will get smacked around a lot. This is important to understand because the constant refrain in this thread is that people don't want to get smacked around a lot. They want to have a slight challenge but mostly win handily. Perhaps having only set-piece battles against named villains be severe or above.
Is this the right or wrong mentality to feel like adventures should be easier? Neither - that's badwrongfun territory to judge, but I think people should be aware of where the issue really lies. With that knowledge you can very easily homebrew a solution (adding Weak templates if you're playing APs) or simply choosing more low & trivial difficulty encounters if you're running homebrew. Or any number of other solutions such as giving your players extra power boosts, such as increased ability scores or powerful items.
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In my opinion, one issue is that there is only one level of encounter between Moderate and Extreme. Extreme is out of the question as it's a one chance on two of TPK. Moderate puts the party against a group that is half it's power. 2 against one is in general quite an easy win unless you have a streak of bad rolls or a strange configuration.
And then, you have Severe. Severe means that the enemies are at 3/4 of the party power. That's actually quite close. It's not a battle one should win easily. Actually, with a bit of bad luck it can end as a TPK.
In my opinion, there's an issue with that. If there was a "high" encounter level at 100 xp, the xp progression would be quite nice: 40, 60, 80, 100, 120 and 160. But this level of difficulty would be way better than severe, it would mean the enemies are at 62.5% of the party strength, that's challenging without being really dangerous.
Just a thought.
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The 100XP encounter doesn't have a name, but you can absolutely use it. I certainly have used encounters with XP values that aren't 60, 80, 120 or 160.
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In my opinion, one issue is that there is only one level of encounter between Moderate and Extreme. Extreme is out of the question as it's a one chance on two of TPK. Moderate puts the party against a group that is half it's power. 2 against one is in general quite an easy win unless you have a streak of bad rolls or a strange configuration.
And then, you have Severe. Severe means that the enemies are at 3/4 of the party power. That's actually quite close. It's not a battle one should win easily. Actually, with a bit of bad luck it can end as a TPK.
In my opinion, there's an issue with that. If there was a "high" encounter level at 100 xp, the xp progression would be quite nice: 40, 60, 80, 100, 120 and 160. But this level of difficulty would be way better than severe, it would mean the enemies are at 62.5% of the party strength, that's challenging without being really dangerous.
Just a thought.
Low/Moderate/Severe/etc are just signposts. You can have an encounter be worth any amount of XP if you want something slightly more difficulty than Moderate etc. The writers do this frequently in pre-written adventures.
This one's on the top of my mind since I ran it last night, but check out encounter C3 in AV2. It's pegged as a Moderate encounter but only truly has a budget of 75 XP.
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Low/Moderate/Severe/etc are just signposts. You can have an encounter be worth any amount of XP if you want something slightly more difficulty than Moderate etc. The writers do this frequently in pre-written adventures.
This one's on the top of my mind since I ran it last night, but check out encounter C3 in AV2. It's pegged as a Moderate encounter but only truly has a budget of 75 XP.
I've looked at how Paizo was considering encounters that don't fall precisely at 40/60/80/120 xp and realized that most encounters in AV are hitting exactly one of these values.
As a matter of fact, when designing encounters myself, I was hitting these numbers most of the time. I agree it's silly, but when you have guidelines, you tend to follow them...Actually, this whole discussion exists only because we are following guidelines. Otherwise, the answer would just be: Put lower level enemies, end of discussion.
Low/Moderate/Severe/etc are just signposts. You can have an encounter be worth any amount of XP if you want something slightly more difficulty than Moderate etc. The writers do this frequently in pre-written adventures.
This one's on the top of my mind since I ran it last night, but check out encounter C3 in AV2. It's pegged as a Moderate encounter but only truly has a budget of 75 XP.
I've looked at how Paizo was considering encounters that don't fall precisely at 40/60/80/120 xp and realized that most encounters in AV are hitting exactly one of these values.
As a matter of fact, when designing encounters myself, I was hitting these numbers most of the time. I agree it's silly, but when you have guidelines, you tend to follow them...
Actually, this whole discussion exists only because we are following guidelines. Otherwise, the answer would just be: Put lower level enemies, end of discussion.
Simple explanation there: monsters of your level are 40 XP, so you'll usually only deviate from those benchmarks if you use lower level creatures. Everything else it an increment of 40, 60, 80, of 120 by itself.
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Simple explanation there: monsters of your level are 40 XP, so you'll usually only deviate from those benchmarks if you use lower level creatures. Everything else it an increment of 40, 60, 80, of 120 by itself.
If there was a 100xp budget, I'm pretty sure people would be used to add a level-2 monster to their moderate encounters, or base their encounters on level-1 enemies. If you don't have a reason to design 100xp encounters you don't look for ways of designing them.
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For the sake of discussion, I don't think you're understanding the underlying issue and the point Sherlock1701 was making. It's not a question of math, but of game design and intent.
Let's try an illustrative example.
We have two encounters A and B.
A) Low AC creature with tons of hit points and fast healing.
B) High AC creature with low hit points.
Paizo maths out these encounters so they both take the same average number of rounds to defeat and both average the same resource drain. Translation, they have the same expected difficulty. Now ask yourself, which encounter do you think the vast majority of people will enjoy playing?
You're missing the forest for the trees. Yes, it's about a certain number of rounds to defeat. But the core math of the game is about more than that - it's about providing value to characters who are focused on debuffing the enemies defenses, removing actions, being defensive, and so forth.
You're acting like it's so simple we should just make stuff easier to hit, but if we somehow did like you imply and figured out some calculation to make it "take some similar amount of rounds", you're still devaluing other mechanics which exist in the game.
If the creature has a ton of hit points and fast healing, what's the point of playing a support character who's focused on disrupting the enemy action economy? What about the feats that apply effects on a miss, or spells with powerful riders even if the creature saves? Who cares, you just need to beat down the beanbag's hitpoints and overcome that fast healing.
What about the implied suggestion in the title of this very thread, which is inverse of what you're saying. They're saying that actually the problem is that monsters hit players too much, not that players don't hit monsters enough. So which is it? Only one, or both?
At the end of the day, what you're proposing would require a complete overhaul of the rules to the point of being almost a different game. I believe it would be a shallower game and I'm glad Paizo didn't go the bag-of-hitpoints route that 4E did. We already tried that and it wasn't great. This is also what GMs did in 1E just to give their creatures a chance to survive the first round of combat and it sucked. At the end of the day, even if your suggestions were better, these kinds of changes are not coming to 2E. Maybe 3E in 10 years. I think it's better to color in the margins, so to speak.
The cadence of difficulty is a reflection of how Paizo thinks the players should experience the game. That cadence is what Paizo wants the game to be. IME, that nominal game experience involves a lot of crits on party members. It doesn't matter what happens in other games, if people playing this game find it unenjoyable, then its unenjoyable. I doubt Paizo knows how that experience is affecting its player base and bottom line. If Paizo used other methods of making encounters difficult that didn't involved what feels like incessant and asymmetrical critting, would more people enjoy the game? I don't know, I can only point out that I empathize with the sentiments being expressed.
I certainly don't have access to any statistics which shed light on how big or small a problem this is. But the only avenue players have is to talk about it on the forums in the hopes their concerns are acknowledged. Alternatively, they simply quit playing and quit supporting the product. That latter is certainly more likely when other posters refuse to acknowledge the issue and engage in victim blaming.
Getting hit and getting crit is part of the experience Piazo is expecting players to have. Posters on here, accusing players who don't enjoy it of badwrongfun, or "trying to save face' isn't helping Paizo in this regard.
If you review my posts, I have not blamed anyone, and I wish other people would not act like the solution is "just play better" all the time, it could be true sometimes, but it's also condescending. I have not taken a stance on whether the difficulty is "too easy", "just right", "too hard", and in my home games which I run APs, I tend to tweak difficulty in both directions. There is no correct stance (in my opinion) because difficulty is subjective. Every modern video game has a difficulty slider for this exact reason. PNP games can't easily do this - it's, unfortunately, the job of the GM.
All that to say, I don't think you're wrong for wanting adventures to be easier. I think that's actually VERY useful feedback for Paizo. My point from the beginning has been to establish what the actual root cause is, and what the solution is. I firmly do not believe there is any core problem with the system, but rather the difficulty presented vs. the difficulty expected. So either the GM makes difficulty adjustments, or Paizo decides to make difficulty adjustments.
Paizo should absolutely do whatever will sell more books.
And to that end, Paizo has already been trending towards easier difficulty in adventures. I really would be surprised if people familiar with the game struggled with Abomination Vaults, for example. It's pretty well balanced aside from a handful of encounters which are either intentionally difficult because they're "secret bosses" or the one or two I've noticed that are poorly designed. On the whole, though it's pretty darn good IMO. The little bit of Ruby Phoenix I've played seemed to be similar. I think they'd be well served by reprinting a rebalanced version of Age of Ashes since it seems to be a popular introductory adventure simply because it's the first one, but it's notoriously difficult, and novice GMs might not be experienced enough to figure out how to fix problems for their groups.
And finally, for everyone in this thread complaining and suggesting wild solutions to "fix" the game. Just try what I'm suggesting for one session. Continue your existing AP or whatever you were already doing, just apply the Weak template to every single enemy. All of them. This is super easy with AONPRD or Foundry and can literally be done on the fly, no extra prep needed. Don't tell your players you're doing it, just try it and see if your players like the easier game or not. You might just find all the complaints about how "bad" the game is disappear. Maybe not, but at least you tried.
Limiting yourself to only using non-trivial encounters perfectly summing to one of the 4 guideline numbers (Low, Moderate, Severe, Extreme) seems unusual, sometimes the math just doesn't work out that cleanly for the desired number of creatures/levels. Encounters of 5 enemies with the same stats is a decently common example in official APs, but there are many cases where the actual xp totals to different numbers like 75, 85, 100, etc.
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Now ask yourself, which encounter do you think the vast majority of people will enjoy playing?
The problem is NN you are talking as if your preference is universal.There is no legitimate or even good faith reading of my post that justifies your blatant attempt to misrepresent my position on this matter. As such I'm flagging your post. But misrepresentation of posters who take contrary positions is a tried and true method of tryin to "win" forum debates, at least here.the vast majority of people
I think you should probably take a step back, unflag that post, and realize that nobody is "misrepresenting" your position -- which, based on your most recent post, you seem to realize the difficulty you are having in conveying.
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I like bosses being scary. This is coming from somebody who dms and plays. If you want combat to be easier use lower cr creatures. The Cr system works. If you don't like the lvl of challenge just use a less severe tier of cr. Everything is linear so you just drop CR until the desired ratios are achieved. Easy Peasy.
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Sorry, asking the poster to theorize on how how the majority of the player base feels about an illustrative does not allow one to assert I think my "preference is universal." Not even remotely. You're entitled to your opinion, of course.
Frankly I think we're really having trouble understanding your point, so cut us some slack here. I'm going to do my best, but maybe consider if you aren't explaining it very well or that perhaps you might be mistaken before attacking folks.
Your logical argument is perplexing. If anything is going to devalue other mechanics, it would be changing the difficulty, a path you're advocating. Yet you are asserting that if we keep the difficulty the same and the rounds it takes to defeaet said creature, we would be devaluing the other mechanics. That doesn't follow.
Nothing I am saying is perplexing. Yes, lowering the difficulty does devalue mechanics & tactics. That's.. obvious? I didn't know I needed to explain that point. The entire reason many people may choose to have an easier encounters is to to be able to beat those encounters without needing complex tactics, or if they do use tactics, they will absolutely crush these encounters. It's a power fantasy, and a cool one. Nothing wrong with it. The game recommends you should have some easy encounters, all I'm saying is have more of them if that's what you want!
So I want to make sure we're on the same page, so to restate: the core of your argument is that is that you can make some changes to hit ratios, and yet somehow the difficulty would be the same, as long as you give more HP/resistances/healing.
However, if you get hit less or hit more often, the game is easier. I'm not sure how more plainly this can be explained. You're saying that I'm not getting it, but you're not explaining how to account for everything else that changes when you adjust the core math.
If I can hit very often, I'm just going to Slow the enemy and Trip them every round and they can do nothing. And then it's just a matter of chewing through those extra hitpoints or whatver else you decided to add. In this scenario, the extra hitpoints change nearly nothing about the difficulty, just makes the battle take longer.
How critical/fundamental is PCs getting crit with frequency to the roots of PF2? I do not know. I doubt Paizo truly knows. It's a facet of the game that results from how the monsters are stated for accuracy. Can you lower their accuracy and do other things to keep the difficulty the same? I am of the opinion the answer is yes, but it would take playing and player feedback to get deeper insight. Would it take resources on Paizo's part? Yes. Is it worth the effort? It would be for me, but I can't speak for anyone else.
I mean, yes, anything is possible. You could write a game where it's still challenging if you succeed a lot and monsters fail a lot. But it doesn't work with PF2E unless you also somehow change the effects of successes and failures, which would require revising most spells, feats, monsters, and so forth, and I expect most people would then say things like "my sword is a wet noodle!" which would then be its own problem to solve.
This would be an inherent requirement if you wanted the difficulty to be the same, since the effects of all these existing abilities are balanced around the current hit/miss percentages.
It's.. possible? But not realistic.
I don't know. I feel your pain. I love PF2E and want it to be a game for everyone. Maybe Paizo can think of a really clever alternate rule to make it work, but I don't think your plan would work at least as stated.
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However, if you get hit less or hit more often, the game is easier.
I mean, if that's the only change you make, yeah, but that's not really what they're proposing.
It feels like kind of a strange assertion because there are a lot of games, tabletop or otherwise, that are very hard without being predicated on the idea that certain characters have a high chance of failing with their core abilities.
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How critical/fundamental is PCs getting crit with frequency to the roots of PF2? I do not know. I doubt Paizo truly knows. It's a facet of the game that results from how the monsters are stated for accuracy. Can you lower their accuracy and do other things to keep the difficulty the same? I am of the opinion the answer is yes, but it would take playing and player feedback to get deeper insight. Would it take resources on Paizo's part? Yes. Is it worth the effort? It would be for me, but I can't speak for anyone else.
The crit chances both ways are what make combat so fast. Any alteration would result in the same end result of a combat lasting the same amount of rounds. The players crit the monsters a lot too, even the bosses in my experience due to the sheer volume of attacks against the creature.
Boss monsters would not be much of a threat if their damage did not boost up due to critical hits. It would end up a one way critical hit scenario as it was in PF1 where the players built up their critical hit chances to high levels while mitigating critical hits from enemies to 10% at best and often 5% based on needing a natural 20.
This new critical hit paradigm allows for faster combats with spikier damage that looks like a fast and furious battle with lots of big hits and small hits and misses. I would not prefer an alteration in the game myself. I think it would either make the game slower or require a reduction in hit points and defenses which would in the end result in the same problems with combat you feel exist now. That being that the game is built for combats to last a shorter amount of time and defenses and hit points being lowered to accommodate the same combat speed would end up feeling the same because hit points would be lower so hits would take an equal percentage of hit points as they did with critical hits.
Battle speed is extremely important as one of the major problems with PF1/3E was the length of combats. This was due to all the defensive measures in place magical and nonmagical, healing, and the sheer volume of magical options available to casters. In every way PF2 and 5E have limited these options to speed up combat. I doubt that is changing any time soon as the designers want combat to be fast and furious. That is what you get with the current paradigm.
I much prefer faster combats. I don't want combats to slog the game down. I think fast and furious is a better standard than fast and defensive which would lead to a low damage, low hit point game to maintain combat speed.
To conclude, the designers made the smart decision to speed up combat and make it fun at the same time. Fast, hard hitting, and brutal is a much better default.
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I feel the need to point out that if you change hit ratios upwards like that, anything that has a certain amount of lethality instantly becomes significantly more crippling.
Say for example...incapacitation spells immediately can make an utter joke of any encounters with monsters of your level or lower. Or a favourite one that people like to mention, Synesthesia.
And then we're back to the good old days of 1e where players just go grab their supplies for rocket tag.
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However, if you get hit less or hit more often, the game is easier.I mean, if that's the only change you make, yeah, but that's not really what they're proposing.
It feels like kind of a strange assertion because there are a lot of games, tabletop or otherwise, that are very hard without being predicated on the idea that certain characters have a high chance of failing with their core abilities.
There were multiple design goals. Difficulty was but one of those goals. Combat speed was another.
I don't know what those game systems are. I've played a lot of game systems. You're either killing real fast or getting killed real fast. PF1/3E was one of the slowest games I ever played due to the sheer volume of countermeasures in place.
GURPS was one of the fastest kill games. You really had to be careful with that game. The called shot rules were brutal. You took a head or brain hit, you were usually done.
The original Boot Hill was really deadly and random.
Advanced and 2nd edition D&D you died on a single roll sometimes. Combat was pretty fast because everyone had mostly low hit points and low AC with casting being fairly slow. Maybe that paradigm is what someone like N N 959 would prefer.
I don't know. After years of playing 3E/PF1, I much prefer the faster combats. I get through a ton in a session now whereas one major combat in PF1 could take multiple hours long sessions.