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

[N N 959]

considerably wrote:

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.

I don't see you claiming I think my position is universal when nothing in the example is predicated on my having a preference nor do I imply I have any preference.

Go read Malik's posts. It's clear he doesn't like A as design choice, so he's using an asinine forum tactic to claim I think "my preference is universal." Only, I didn't offer a preference because my preference, even had I offered one, is wholly irrelevant to the discussion. None of his reasons for not liking A necessitates him accusing me of thinking everyone agrees with my preference. He doesn't like A, so he's trying to associate me with A and present me as having this offensive believe I think everyone thinks like I do, so A will be less attractive. He does this despite my explicitly stating I don't know how the majority of people think. Then he tries to double down on it.

Does he apologize for it? No. So yeah, I'm gong to call that crap out and the forum mods should remove posts based on false and wholly indefensible attribution.

Quote:

That's.. obvious? I didn't know I needed to explain that point.

Well, you're trying to criticize Sherlock's suggested approach for reasons that apply to your own suggested fix. That seems hypocritical. You're even agreeing that it's obvious lowering the difficulty causes these problems when it's not obvious a change to the encounter which keeps the difficulty at the same average will do these things.

Quote:

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...

Great, but has nothing to do with what Sherlock is talking about. I'm not understanding why that isn't obvious.

Sherlock is pointing out that there are many ways to make things challenging, some of these are more enjoyable than others. He post is predicated on the idea that there is some percentage of people who do not like the feeling of the asymmetrical crit mechanic. That as NOTHING to do with difficulty.

To put it another way, some of us believe an encounter can be more difficult and yet more enjoyable if it didn't include asymmetrical critting. I don't know why that's hard to understand. or why you keep trying to frame this as "easier encounters."

Another way to understand it is like this, I have two choices to increase difficulty:

A: The PCs are fighting in noxious air and have to make Fort saves every round or suffer damage.

B: The PCs are fighting with weapons that get magically greased and every round they have to roll Reflex to avoid having the weapons fly across the room.

Assuming the numbers are tweaked the so difficulty is the same, some people will prefer A and some will prefer B. That's what Sherlock's post is addressing. Why not offer a B to the high crit frequency of A? That suggestion comes from many posts I've seen like OP's which bemoan the swingingy-ness of the game and the fact that the crit mechanic makes it feel like its more about getting lucky/unlucky. Yes, there are tactics that improve survivability, but that's not the complaint. It's not about beating the encounter. It's about how it feels to be in combat.

Quote:

The game recommends you should have some easy encounters, all I'm saying is have more of them if that's what you want!

Again...Sherlock's point is not about difficult vs easy

Quote:

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.

Almost, but you're conflating the argument with specifics about HP/resistance/healing. There are innumerable techniques Paizo can use to shape the experience without affecting the average challenge.

Quote:

However, if you get hit less or hit more often, the game is easier.

No. The difficulty of an encounter is determined by many things. Environment, Magic Items, Numbers of Mobs, Tactics, Pacing, Resistance, Stats, Action taxes, etc. A Boss can be highly accurate and do little damage. Or, they can have low accuracy and do lots of damage and both will have the same expected damage. So getting hit more or less when combined with other variables, is not the sole determinant for difficulty.

[Arakasius]

Except it is. We’ve all played PF1. Everyone of the things you mentioned fell to whom went first when hit chances were that high. Sure if you’re saying spell effects should have middling accuracy but weapons shouldn’t I suppose that’s one way to do things. However a lot of what I’ve read on complaints on Spellcasting in 2e is also that spell hit chances are too low so I don’t think splitting the rules would solve much. But I think one of the cooler things about PF2 is everything on the same scale. You can roll attacks vs saves and skills against defences.

[Squiggit]

I think part of the confusion is that there are actually a handful of different issues all being conflated with each other and treated like they're the same issue when they aren't exactly.

[Deriven Firelion]

I don't see why you can't manipulate the monsters on your own if you feel like getting a certain combat feel. I did it all the time in PF1 as I felt the default was set to too low a difficulty.

If you want a change the game designers did not provide, then you do it yourself if you like most of the other aspects of the game. The designers give you a default system. You decide if you like that system. Then you address any changes you might want to make to make it play closer to your preferences.

If you want a game that has lower accuracy with the same relative damage, make it happen. Manipulating the math to accomplish the desire feel should be easy enough.

You could just eliminate critical hits and only have them occur on a natural 20 as well which would lower critical hits substantially.

You do like the designers. Make a design goal and implement it within the system.

[Deriven Firelion]

Squiggit wrote:

I think part of the confusion is that there are actually a handful of different issues all being conflated with each other and treated like they're the same issue when they aren't exactly.

My feeling is that some people want a given game to accommodate their personal tastes. If it doesn't, they think there is a problem with the overall game when it is more of a personal preference issue.

I've always corrected these issues with house rules myself. I can't expect designers to adjust a game to suit my personal preferences.

[considerably]

Squiggit wrote:

considerably wrote:

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.

No, the other guy was saying give more hit points and/or resistances, but that is wildly insufficient which I clearly explained in my post.

Of course it's possible to have a different balancing point and I cover that in my post as well if you read it and didn't quote out of context. That quote is specific to PF2E's mechanics. Everything is PF2E is balanaced around the core accuracy math.

The fact that you can't hit every attack is why you have such a powerful ability (Trip) that works on basically everything in the game, even the most powerful bosses, and they have to waste an action to stand up like schlubs. 1E basically banned you from Tripping half the creatures in the game to prevent you from doing this, and trip builds were still super powerful in that game because they basically could nullify an enemy. 2E lets you do it to whomever you like, you just can't always succeed. Just one example.

So to reiterate the point I made in my previous post: if you let people hit all the time, and don't also change all these spells, abilities and feats, the game will be easier. Adding some hitpoints or resistances as the person I was replying to is insufficient.

YES, it is possible to make a game with a different balancing point. But you can't change the balancing point, but not adjust everything else that is downstream from that and expect the balance to remain the same. It's completely inane to say otherwise.

[Thomas5251212]

N N 959 wrote:

Malk_Content wrote:

I still think Paizo is in a no win situation. There will always be people upset about the direction...

Really? You honestly think people would have complained because they weren't getting crit more by bosses if Paizo had followed Sherlock's advice at the start?

I have no way to know how common it would have been, but I wouldn't have found it a virtue to make bosses more brittle, whether by critical hits or other means.

[Thomas5251212]

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Squiggit wrote:

considerably wrote:

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.

Generally speaking D&D and similar styles of heightened-hit-points-over-time games have gone out of their way to slow pace-of-resolution so that (at least in theory) players have time to change tactics and/or withdraw before things jell badly. As you note, this is a very different model than most of the games in the hobby (and even those that have some of it have it in different ways, such as ablating hero point type mechanics).

The problem is, unless you mix in things like take-out spells its tedious, and when you do mix those in, it all too easily turns into what's called "rocket tag".

So PF2e tried to moderate the process and make it faster without going all the way to things like GURPS. But even a moderate move in that direction is going to feel jarring to people who are used to things taking longer, since at least part of it is going to be to potentially make individual strikes more important on both sides.

Quote:

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.

Talk to BRP players. Old time RuneQuest hands would laugh at the complaints of how unexpectedly dangerous PF2e strikes can be (though admittedly ongoing exchanges between two highly skilled opponents could take a while--but it also could end with one exchange, too).

Now, of course, we're talking about two game systems that lean much more into the grittier end of the spectrum than most D&D-kin do, but its still relevant to the matter at hand.

Quote:

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.

Though there it depended on the damage capability of your opponent. An 8th level fighter against his equivalent was mostly going to take a while, as he was going to have around 40 hit points and neither he nor his opponent were going to do more around ten or there abouts per hit. If you got one-shotted at those levels it was likely either a spell or some physically big monsterous opponent who did massive damage.

[Captain Morgan]

N N 959 wrote:

considerably wrote:

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.

I don't see you claiming I think my position is universal when nothing in the example is predicated on my having a preference nor do I imply I have any preference.

Go read Malik's posts. It's clear he doesn't like A as design choice, so he's using an asinine forum tactic to claim I think "my preference is universal." Only, I didn't offer a preference because my preference, even had I offered one, is wholly irrelevant to the discussion. None of his reasons for not liking A necessitates him accusing me of thinking everyone agrees with my preference. He doesn't like A, so he's trying to associate me with A and present me as having this offensive believe I think everyone thinks like I do, so A will be less attractive. He does this despite my explicitly stating I don't know how the majority of people think. Then he tries to double down on it.

Does he apologize for it? No. So yeah, I'm gong to call that crap out and the forum mods should remove posts based on false and wholly indefensible attribution.

Quote:

That's.. obvious? I didn't know I needed to explain that point.

Well, you're trying to criticize Sherlock's suggested approach for reasons that apply to your own suggested fix. That seems hypocritical. You're even agreeing that it's obvious lowering the difficulty causes these problems when it's not obvious a change to the encounter which keeps the difficulty at the same average will do these things.

Quote:

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...

Great, but has nothing to do with what Sherlock is talking about. I'm not understanding why that isn't obvious.

Sherlock is pointing out that...

I don't think people are putting a lot of focus on Sherlock's post because few people really find that perspective relevant. Sherlock says PF1 managed to have difficult battles, but it largely did that through things like rocket tag, or giving enemies immunities out the wazoo, and other things that Pf2 deliberately got rid of. Paizo's designers were never going to listen to sherlock's perspective, and I am personally happy they didn't.

And going by sherlock's general post history, I'm really skeptical of the idea that he doesn't just want a game where it is easier for players to run over the GM or destroy and semblance of challenge with sufficient system mastery.

[Deriven Firelion]

Thomas5251212 wrote:

Though there it depended on the damage capability of your opponent. An 8th level fighter against his equivalent was mostly going to take a while, as he was going to have around 40 hit points and neither he nor his opponent were going to do more around ten or there abouts per hit. If you got one-shotted at those levels it was likely either a spell or some physically big monsterous opponent who did massive damage.

8th level wasn't a power level. An 8th level fireball did what? 8d6 in Advanced D&D? It's been so long since I played that edition. You could get belts of giant strength that boosted your damage a lot. If you had 18 percentile strength. Unless that was 2nd edition. I don't recall Advanced D&D being slow at all. You could do a lot of combats fairly quickly.

PF1 and 3E was where the game slowed down immensely as you gained levels. It was all the spell options that did it. The pre-buffing. The long-term buffs that you prepared for each battle made things nutty long.

In 2E you cast stoneskin at the start of the day and called it good.

In 3E/PF1, you cast resist energy, mirror image, mage armor, some fly, haste, see invis, stat enhancements, and just about any buff you could get. And that was all the spells you cast before you actually started casting spells during the battle.

[Ubertron_X]

Deriven Firelion wrote:

In 3E/PF1, you cast resist energy, mirror image, mage armor, some fly, haste, see invis, stat enhancements, and just about any buff you could get. And that was all the spells you cast before you actually started casting spells during the battle.

To be honest I dislike both extremes. As correctly described PF1 suffered from a win-the-battle-before-the-battle syndrome (character building and buffing) whereas PF2 has its own share of (minor) problems with its everything-relevant-has-to-happen-within-the-battle doctrine.

[Deriven Firelion]

Captain Morgan wrote:

N N 959 wrote:

considerably wrote:

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.

I don't see you claiming I think my position is universal when nothing in the example is predicated on my having a preference nor do I imply I have any preference.

Go read Malik's posts. It's clear he doesn't like A as design choice, so he's using an asinine forum tactic to claim I think "my preference is universal." Only, I didn't offer a preference because my preference, even had I offered one, is wholly irrelevant to the discussion. None of his reasons for not liking A necessitates him accusing me of thinking everyone agrees with my preference. He doesn't like A, so he's trying to associate me with A and present me as having this offensive believe I think everyone thinks like I do, so A will be less attractive. He does this despite my explicitly stating I don't know how the majority of people think. Then he tries to double down on it.

Does he apologize for it? No. So yeah, I'm gong to call that crap out and the forum mods should remove posts based on false and wholly indefensible attribution.

Quote:

That's.. obvious? I didn't know I needed to explain that point.

Well, you're trying to criticize Sherlock's suggested approach for reasons that apply to your own suggested fix. That seems hypocritical. You're even agreeing that it's obvious lowering the difficulty causes these problems when it's not obvious a change to the encounter which keeps the difficulty at the same average will do these things.

Quote:

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...

Great, but has nothing to do with what Sherlock is talking about. I'm not understanding why that isn't obvious.

...

I don't even know who Sherlock is. I don't his posts in this thread.

[Cyouni]

Ubertron_X wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

In 3E/PF1, you cast resist energy, mirror image, mage armor, some fly, haste, see invis, stat enhancements, and just about any buff you could get. And that was all the spells you cast before you actually started casting spells during the battle.

To be honest I dislike both extremes. As correctly described PF1 suffered from a win-the-battle-before-the-battle syndrome (character building and buffing) whereas PF2 has its own share of (minor) problems with its everything-relevant-has-to-happen-within-the-battle doctrine.

PF2 doesn't have to have everything relevant happen within the battle. If that's how you've been doing it, no wonder you have issues.

A large part is keeping your options open, so that specialists have a backup plan when their primary doesn't work, or ways to handle a variety of situations. You can plan ahead and prebuff for a given fight with 10 mins duration spells. You can have scrolls, or talismans (I've been hoarding a set of feather step stones for if it ever comes up) ready to deal with bad situations.

A party that's planned ahead for an upcoming scenario or one that has solutions ready on the fly is much more likely to be successful than one that just assumes that everything has to happen mid-fight.

[Deriven Firelion]

Ubertron_X wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

In 3E/PF1, you cast resist energy, mirror image, mage armor, some fly, haste, see invis, stat enhancements, and just about any buff you could get. And that was all the spells you cast before you actually started casting spells during the battle.

To be honest I dislike both extremes. As correctly described PF1 suffered from a win-the-battle-before-the-battle syndrome (character building and buffing) whereas PF2 has its own share of (minor) problems with its everything-relevant-has-to-happen-within-the-battle doctrine.

Neither one is perfectly to my tastes.

I made some modifications to PF2 to ramp it up a little. I feel like people who have issues with the game should just do the same. Paizo did one of the most thorough playtests I can recall any gaming company doing in history. And this is what the final version looks like taking in all the player feedback. I'm sure Paizo looked at the criticisms, analyzed them, and decided what direction they wanted to take the game knowing they would not make their entire PF1 player base happy or even all the new players.

I house ruled some of what I didn't like. I imported 5E casting which is now just everything is a signature spell. I re-established drawing weapons as part of movement actions. I incorporated the ability to cast using Battle Forms. I'm working on a summoning template for making summons more to my liking. I have my players start with all 12s rather than all 10s. I started using Free Archetype on occasion to let my players explore using some of the archetypes while not losing their core class abilities.

Even adding all of this which would usually break a game, PF2 still has been challenging. I love that I can up the power to where I want it rather than have to work so hard to challenge excessively powerful options (PF1) or break the game if any options are added at all (5E).

PF2 is one of the most tightly designed games mathematically. You will have an easier time modifying it and not breaking it than probably any game system I've played. It's very predictable and built with a tight challenge range.

Heck, I even have to admit at this point that though I don't like the summoner shared hit point pool, it was the right design decision. I've tried to decouple the shared hit point pool from the eidolon. It just creates all types of action economy issues with healing and keeping both targets up. I now see that the shared hit point pool was less about a balance of power and more about managing the mechanics of the class. A dual hit point pool creates this situation requiring double the spell power to maintain heals, hit point tracking, and anything associated on two targets requiring twice the spell power for doing so. The shared hit point pool creates a simplified mechanic for managing it all and not requiring extra healing power or actions to maintain the summoner and his eidolon given the already limited spell slots.

I figure the decision to set the accuracy high for bosses was also a design decision based on something equally important to the way the game works that if removed might cause unforeseen issues that would throw the system off. I tend to think it would throw off the combat speed myself, but maybe it is mainly the ability of a powerful creature to challenge a group of PCs.

[Ravingdork]

In my opinion, Paizo has accomplished something no other PnP game developer has done before: design a truly functional encounter system that works exactly as intended, is actually practically balanced, and easy and fun to work with for (what I hope to be) the majority of players and GMs.

[Ubertron_X]

Cyouni wrote:

PF2 doesn't have to have everything relevant happen within the battle. If that's how you've been doing it, no wonder you have issues.

A large part is keeping your options open, so that specialists have a backup plan when their primary doesn't work, or ways to handle a variety of situations. You can plan ahead and prebuff for a given fight with 10 mins duration spells. You can have scrolls, or talismans (I've been hoarding a set of feather step stones for if it ever comes up) ready to deal with bad situations.

A party that's planned ahead for an upcoming scenario or one that has solutions ready on the fly is much more likely to be successful than one that just assumes that everything has to happen mid-fight.

The problem was less that we assumed it but that when we started playing we (including the GM) legitimately thought that the rules even demanded it. With the formalisation of exploration and encounter mode and the removal of surprise rounds everything looked like travel, scene, travel, scene etc. with no space for pre-scene/transit activities apart from long term buffs that could already be applied in exploration mode (e.g. Longstrider). We play a lot more liberal now, however pre-buffing is still not a big thing, mostly because most things simply find us before we find them, roll for initiative.

[Tender Tendrils]

Ravingdork wrote:

In my opinion, Paizo has accomplished something no other PnP game developer has done before: design a truly functional encounter system that works exactly as intended, is actually practically balanced, and easy and fun to work with for (what I hope to be) the majority of players and GMs.

The PF2 encounter system is one of the most elegant things I have seen in game design, and I don't think people give the designers enough credit for that, and it was only possible because Paizo was willing to risk the backlash from the vocal minority in the gaming community who are really resistant to change of any kind.

[Temperans]

You know, I find it weird that people say PF1 requires a lot of prep work when my albeit limited experience is literally just run the creatures in the book. Maybe add a few more creatures if the party is doing good. I never fudged, I never altered creatures, and the very few house rules is basically "you get 1 extra skill based feat every few levels." In my entire year of running rise of rune lord, a PC has died twice. Once because the player literally walked up to a giant. The other because a player let a bear get up to the wizard.

The whole "oh it takes a lot of prep" seems to be coming from people not playing the AP as designed but wanting creatures to be extremely difficult.

********************
Having said that creatures criting more than players seems like an arbitrary form of more difficulty.

* You could have creatures deals less damage and crit more often.

* You could have creatures deal more damage but rarely hit.

* You could have creatures that tanks, but whose attack are weak.

But no even though PF2 could do any of these and more, they have all creatures hit about the same. Tank about the same. While damaging about the same.

This is not even about rocker tag, it's about having some actual variety without having to always deal with all the damage and critical hits.

[Temperans]

Tender Tendrils wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

In my opinion, Paizo has accomplished something no other PnP game developer has done before: design a truly functional encounter system that works exactly as intended, is actually practically balanced, and easy and fun to work with for (what I hope to be) the majority of players and GMs.

The PF2 encounter system is one of the most elegant things I have seen in game design, and I don't think people give the designers enough credit for that, and it was only possible because Paizo was willing to risk the backlash from the vocal minority in the gaming community who are really resistant to change of any kind.

It's important to note that the encounter system itself isn't really the problem. It's how often creatures crit that is a problem.

And that number of crits is entirely based on the +/- 10 crit system benefiting monster almost unilaterally. Almost because PCs do get some use vs lv-2 creatures; But those creatures are hardly "fun" when the system is built around fighting creatures of your level.

[Cyouni]

Temperans wrote:

Tender Tendrils wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

In my opinion, Paizo has accomplished something no other PnP game developer has done before: design a truly functional encounter system that works exactly as intended, is actually practically balanced, and easy and fun to work with for (what I hope to be) the majority of players and GMs.

The PF2 encounter system is one of the most elegant things I have seen in game design, and I don't think people give the designers enough credit for that, and it was only possible because Paizo was willing to risk the backlash from the vocal minority in the gaming community who are really resistant to change of any kind.

It's important to note that the encounter system itself isn't really the problem. It's how often creatures crit that is a problem.

And that number of crits is entirely based on the +/- 10 crit system benefiting monster almost unilaterally. Almost because PCs do get some use vs lv-2 creatures; But those creatures are hardly "fun" when the system is built around fighting creatures of your level.

No it's not.

Stop making things up based on PF1, where creatures of your level were rarely a threat.

Four creatures of your level should be approximately a 50/50 win shot vs a party of four.

[Arakasius]

Like has been said a bunch before PF is just fine with a bunch of casual players who take feats and such. It’s not challenging at all and can be run as is. Problem is with groups of unequal investment. The difference between players is so big when optimization is brought in that it marginalizes players and makes them quit in frustration or at best they just sit as passengers surfing their phone. Expert players dictate to the party what choices they should make in character building and dominate the table. And when that first optimizer steps in the DMs work skyrockets as they now need to both challenge that player and still allow casual players to shine. It’s a balance that needs to be respected for the game to work and no game i’ve ever been involved has pulled it off. And that’s magnified by the huge difference between classes and the fact the game doesn’t scale well into the teens.

I do agree that the +/- 10 does have some issues. Mainly it makes the range an enemy can be used as narrower and it does narrow the range of stats of any kind at a specific level. I still find there is a good range of damage and hit but when it’s like +/- 3 to hit or +/- 10 to damage at a level it doesn’t feel like as much a difference. Of all the things in PF2 that’s new this probably has one of the bigger effects in feel compared to PF1. The gameplay is a lot better but the feel feels weird at times.

[Temperans]

Cyouni wrote:

Temperans wrote:

Tender Tendrils wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

In my opinion, Paizo has accomplished something no other PnP game developer has done before: design a truly functional encounter system that works exactly as intended, is actually practically balanced, and easy and fun to work with for (what I hope to be) the majority of players and GMs.

The PF2 encounter system is one of the most elegant things I have seen in game design, and I don't think people give the designers enough credit for that, and it was only possible because Paizo was willing to risk the backlash from the vocal minority in the gaming community who are really resistant to change of any kind.

It's important to note that the encounter system itself isn't really the problem. It's how often creatures crit that is a problem.

And that number of crits is entirely based on the +/- 10 crit system benefiting monster almost unilaterally. Almost because PCs do get some use vs lv-2 creatures; But those creatures are hardly "fun" when the system is built around fighting creatures of your level.

No it's not.

Stop making things up based on PF1, where creatures of your level were rarely a threat.

Four creatures of your level should be approximately a 50/50 win shot vs a party of four.

Its hilarious that you respond to that comment as if I am talking about PF1. When that comment:

* Has nothing about PF1.
* Acknowledges general PF2 encounter design being good.
* But criticizes the crit system.

You know the thing this thread is about.

You are not even responding to my comment, but something entirely different.

[Arachnofiend]

The crit system doesn't favor monsters, it favors whoever has the higher level. If your Extreme Encounter is a swarm of eight level-2 creatures then then yeah that goes in favor of the players, to the point where arguably the one encounter trivializing tool left in PF2 is the blaster caster against multiple weak enemies. The perception problem is that what people remember isn't blowing up eight enemies with a fireball, it's getting slapped around by a singular powerful boss enemy because those tend to be the centerpiece fights with the dude with the name you're trying to take down.

[Cyouni]

Temperans wrote:

Cyouni wrote:

Temperans wrote:

But those creatures are hardly "fun" when the system is built around fighting creatures of your level.

No it's not.

Stop making things up based on PF1, where creatures of your level were rarely a threat.

Four creatures of your level should be approximately a 50/50 win shot vs a party of four.

Its hilarious that you respond to that comment as if I am talking about PF1. When that comment:

* Has nothing about PF1.
* Acknowledges general PF2 encounter design being good.
* But criticizes the crit system.

You know the thing this thread is about.

You are not even responding to my comment, but something entirely different.

The system is not built on fighting things of your level. It is built on fighting things that range from your level-4 to your level+4.

If you look at book 1 of Extinction Curse, for instance, a little over half the encounters are against things of strictly lower level than you, and the rest are against equal level or higher.

By the fact that you need more lower level things in an encounter to threaten a player, you're almost always going to be fighting more lower-level things than you are on-level or higher. (Again, using EC book 1 for example, though only a little more than half the encounters are with lower-level enemies, the amount of them is almost 3:1 at 91:37, and most of the ones in the "equal-level or higher" bracket are equal-level - 22 of the 37.)

[Deriven Firelion]

Temperans wrote:

You know, I find it weird that people say PF1 requires a lot of prep work when my albeit limited experience is literally just run the creatures in the book. Maybe add a few more creatures if the party is doing good. I never fudged, I never altered creatures, and the very few house rules is basically "you get 1 extra skill based feat every few levels." In my entire year of running rise of rune lord, a PC has died twice. Once because the player literally walked up to a giant. The other because a player let a bear get up to the wizard.

The whole "oh it takes a lot of prep" seems to be coming from people not playing the AP as designed but wanting creatures to be extremely difficult.

********************
Having said that creatures criting more than players seems like an arbitrary form of more difficulty.

* You could have creatures deals less damage and crit more often.

* You could have creatures deal more damage but rarely hit.

* You could have creatures that tanks, but whose attack are weak.

But no even though PF2 could do any of these and more, they have all creatures hit about the same. Tank about the same. While damaging about the same.

This is not even about rocker tag, it's about having some actual variety without having to always deal with all the damage and critical hits.

Unless you can list at least three highly optimized builds from PF1 including feats, magic items, and the like that they were optimized around, then you haven't experienced PF1. Over the course of 10 years. Enough material was put into the game to turn it trivial.

If you weren't having to prep heavily, you played with people that did not know how to optimize and/or did not explore the multitude of options to optimize. Or you as a DM didn't care that the players weren't challenged, which can occur too. Some DMs don't care if the party steamrolls the encounters. So a game like PF2 is fine by them as is. Maybe you fall into that category of player and DM.

I've already stated that if the PCs aren't on the verge of death fighting the main BBEG to save the world, I have failed at my job as DM.

[Deriven Firelion]

Arachnofiend wrote:

The crit system doesn't favor monsters, it favors whoever has the higher level. If your Extreme Encounter is a swarm of eight level-2 creatures then then yeah that goes in favor of the players, to the point where arguably the one encounter trivializing tool left in PF2 is the blaster caster against multiple weak enemies. The perception problem is that what people remember isn't blowing up eight enemies with a fireball, it's getting slapped around by a singular powerful boss enemy because those tend to be the centerpiece fights with the dude with the name you're trying to take down.

You are one of the few to bring this up. It is true. Against mook or even level enemies, the PCs crit a lot against them, especially fighters. Players feel great critting against them. It's why I wonder about the criticism as it seems some want a return to the days of only the PCs critting a lot.

[Deriven Firelion]

Temperans wrote:

Tender Tendrils wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

In my opinion, Paizo has accomplished something no other PnP game developer has done before: design a truly functional encounter system that works exactly as intended, is actually practically balanced, and easy and fun to work with for (what I hope to be) the majority of players and GMs.

The PF2 encounter system is one of the most elegant things I have seen in game design, and I don't think people give the designers enough credit for that, and it was only possible because Paizo was willing to risk the backlash from the vocal minority in the gaming community who are really resistant to change of any kind.

It's important to note that the encounter system itself isn't really the problem. It's how often creatures crit that is a problem.

And that number of crits is entirely based on the +/- 10 crit system benefiting monster almost unilaterally. Almost because PCs do get some use vs lv-2 creatures; But those creatures are hardly "fun" when the system is built around fighting creatures of your level.

The system is not built on fighting creatures of your level. That is not true.

[Leomund "Leo" Velinznrarikovich]

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Ubertron_X wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

In 3E/PF1, you cast resist energy, mirror image, mage armor, some fly, haste, see invis, stat enhancements, and just about any buff you could get. And that was all the spells you cast before you actually started casting spells during the battle.

To be honest I dislike both extremes. As correctly described PF1 suffered from a win-the-battle-before-the-battle syndrome (character building and buffing) whereas PF2 has its own share of (minor) problems with its everything-relevant-has-to-happen-within-the-battle doctrine.

Neither one is perfectly to my tastes.

I made some modifications to PF2 to ramp it up a little. I feel like people who have issues with the game should just do the same. Paizo did one of the most thorough playtests I can recall any gaming company doing in history. And this is what the final version looks like taking in all the player feedback. I'm sure Paizo looked at the criticisms, analyzed them, and decided what direction they wanted to take the game knowing they would not make their entire PF1 player base happy or even all the new players.

I house ruled some of what I didn't like. I imported 5E casting which is now just everything is a signature spell. I re-established drawing weapons as part of movement actions. I incorporated the ability to cast using Battle Forms. I'm working on a summoning template for making summons more to my liking. I have my players start with all 12s rather than all 10s. I started using Free Archetype on occasion to let my players explore using some of the archetypes while not losing their core class abilities.

Even adding all of this which would usually break a game, PF2 still has been challenging. I love that I can up the power to where I want it rather than have to work so hard to challenge excessively powerful options (PF1) or break the game if any options are added at all (5E).

PF2 is one of the most tightly designed games mathematically. You will have an easier time modifying it...

This through and through.

I have played a lot of Pathfinder 1e, D&D 3.5, 3.0, and AD&D before that. The first thing that I thought to myself about Pathfinder 2e was, "Huh, it feels like the designers were tired of PCs being able to trivialize encounters that were supposed to be challenging."

As DF stated, this game design is so tight that if the default difficulty is not to your liking, changing it is a breeze. The game is so fantastically modular for players and GMs. This is why the system is so great. Is it perfect? Hardly. But, as an optimizer, I can say that I am able to build a fun, flavorful, and powerful character and, despite my best efforts, am easily able to be challenged with little to no effort from the GM. I truly think this system is a win for everyone at the table.

Are you and/or your players new to PF2? Ease into it by starting at 2nd level with an AP. Level up when it suggests it. And then, when everyone is comfortable, try out playing at base difficulty by not leveling when it says (bringing you back to the expected PC level of the AP). The GM has to change nothing, just run it as written. If the default level of difficulty is disliked, level up and continue at a level higher than standard.

[Temperans]

Arakasius wrote:

Like has been said a bunch before PF is just fine with a bunch of casual players who take feats and such. It’s not challenging at all and can be run as is. Problem is with groups of unequal investment. The difference between players is so big when optimization is brought in that it marginalizes players and makes them quit in frustration or at best they just sit as passengers surfing their phone. Expert players dictate to the party what choices they should make in character building and dominate the table. And when that first optimizer steps in the DMs work skyrockets as they now need to both challenge that player and still allow casual players to shine. It’s a balance that needs to be respected for the game to work and no game i’ve ever been involved has pulled it off. And that’s magnified by the huge difference between classes and the fact the game doesn’t scale well into the teens.

I do agree that the +/- 10 does have some issues. Mainly it makes the range an enemy can be used as narrower and it does narrow the range of stats of any kind at a specific level. I still find there is a good range of damage and hit but when it’s like +/- 3 to hit or +/- 10 to damage at a level it doesn’t feel like as much a difference. Of all the things in PF2 that’s new this probably has one of the bigger effects in feel compared to PF1. The gameplay is a lot better but the feel feels weird at times.

You see my experience is that if you stand your ground about not letting in stuff you don't want bad players will leave and good players will work with you.

Heck I have two players who loves to make weird stuff. Those two players actively work with me to make sure what they plan to do works. Meanwhile, another player wanted to hyper optimize, and I showed some concerns; I explicitly said I wanted to work together to meet halfway, and they just left. Others have left without saying anything.

Also agreed that the +/-3 to hit and +/-10 to crit are the biggest factors. If it were just +/-3 to hit it's fine, although you could do the same with another dice size. But the +/- 10 crit, really constrict the math.

[Malk_Content]

I don't think players who want to be able to use the content available and eek everything they can out of it are bad players. They just want different things out of the game.

In PF2 I've not had to restrict anything a player has wanted to bring to the table. My most crunchy player gets to fiddle and perfect using all the released content and not break anything for anyone else.

[Temperans]

When I say built around creatures of your level I mean that encounters lvs are very close to the party level. As opposed to other games where the encounter lv can be vastly different.

Also maybe you are right, that I don't care if the players trivialize some encounters. I tend to focus more on having fun and letting players do fun things than on making them fear everything. I certainly wouldn't think I failed as a GM if the party is dying fighting the boss. I would instead curse my bad rolls, as that often my biggest fault (I am the type to roll really bad at the worst possible times).

[Temperans]

Malk_Content wrote:

I don't think players who want to be able to use the content available and eek everything they can out of it are bad players. They just want different things out of the game.

I wasn't speaking specifically about power. More along the line of player trying to play a rare race with a rare archetype without trying to work it out with me first. No problem with them playing that, but I ain't letting anyone try something rare without having a really good reason for it.

[The Raven Black]

I think Paizo designed the feeling of difficulty based on the results of the playtest's surveys. After all, pleasing as many of your customers as possible is just good business sense.

Of course, this means that those who wanted another style of difficulty will not be happy and will complain about it on the boards, as we see here.

But imagine how much worse it would be if Paizo had not designed for the bigger part of their customers.

Now, for those left unhappy with the default difficulty, the devs even created a game design including easy toggles to get the difficulty that want.

After that, the minority who doesn't like the default difficulty and refuses to use the toggles can still complain on the boards.

[Arakasius]

That’s the issue, what one player finds as fun and another find fun don’t stomp on each others fun in PF2. Last PF1 game we had a guy who took monk and random monk feats. Then we had optimized wizard and inquisitor (me). Our definitions of fun stepped on each other. It’s not that anyone was even taking any odd feats. Our GM restricted us to core and APG. We weren’t taking any weird splat books. But the wizard could invalidate most fights and the inquisitor did more damage than the monk and had more skills and had spells. Both ended up dominating the table time a lot more than the monk. (Or our cleric who didn’t quit but is also more casual and just tries to RP and ignores the PF1 mechanics)

Eventually the monk went from playing to coming and reading the phone til their turn came around to skipping sessions to quitting. This is not the only time this has happened. Some people want to just play casual and it doesn’t work with people who want to delve all the options that exist. All casual or all optimizer groups can work but I’ve not been able to find such a group. It’s good that you as a DM are trying to make your group has fun but at a lot of points the gulf between characters in PF1 just makes for a bad experience. Generally you just want to play with friends and good luck finding 4-5 friends who play in similar styles.

My point on the narrow hit/crit ranges is I agree raw hit/dmg can look samey. What differentiates monsters in PF2 is their abilities more than raw stats. If you or your dm play monsters as just blobs who swing away then I agree they’re going to look similar. If you lean into their special abilities then they’re not. I also agree that the 10 hit/crit rule tends to make combats more missey and that also feels weird to people coming from PF1 even if the battles are roughly over in the same amount of time.

But despite those flaws it works for me because you can roll any attack vs any defence. That to me is cool and is a nice part of the system. Would I mind something that makes hit better for martials? Sure but I wouldn’t want to change hit/crits for spells/skills. I wonder has anyone tried tweaking the rules on things like agile weapons? For example making all weapons have improved MAP? (Aka default to -4, -8) and have agile be -3/-6 and so on. That could be a quick fix that improves martial accuracy for people who want to swing a lot but likely wouldn’t unbalance anything.

[Deriven Firelion]

Temperans wrote:

When I say built around creatures of your level I mean that encounters lvs are very close to the party level. As opposed to other games where the encounter lv can be vastly different.

Also maybe you are right, that I don't care if the players trivialize some encounters. I tend to focus more on having fun and letting players do fun things than on making them fear everything. I certainly wouldn't think I failed as a GM if the party is dying fighting the boss. I would instead curse my bad rolls, as that often my biggest fault (I am the type to roll really bad at the worst possible times).

Now it's fear everything? Those are the only places we can go.

That is not what I said. I said fear boss monsters as in The Dark Lord or the main BBEG.

I wouldn't have the same group playing with me for 30 years if I didn't make the game fun. My feeling is the players feel like they've accomplished something great if they almost die doing it.

[Arcaian]

Temperans wrote:

You know, I find it weird that people say PF1 requires a lot of prep work when my albeit limited experience is literally just run the creatures in the book. Maybe add a few more creatures if the party is doing good. I never fudged, I never altered creatures, and the very few house rules is basically "you get 1 extra skill based feat every few levels." In my entire year of running rise of rune lord, a PC has died twice. Once because the player literally walked up to a giant. The other because a player let a bear get up to the wizard.

The whole "oh it takes a lot of prep" seems to be coming from people not playing the AP as designed but wanting creatures to be extremely difficult.

Unless you have a table where everyone is playing characters with a similar power level, and that power level is suited to the AP's power level, it's exceptionally difficult to run the book as written and have content that isn't either a walkover or very challenging. It's not even worth going into huge detail here I think, because anyone who has played PF1 with different power levels would realise this, I think. But to make a quick demonstration, I'll look at the BBEG of Book 2 of an AP I've run - a wizard. The party is 6th level at this point, and the wizard has: AC 18, 83 HP, scary spells with a DC 21 and damaging spells with a DC of 19. He also has DR 10/adamantine (using Stoneskin, so stopping after it's blocked 80 damage).

Comparing a stock-standard greatsword fighter with 20 STR and 10 WIS, a +1 weapon. a +1 cloak of resistance, and weapon training +1, you've got +13/+8 to hit for 2d6+8 damage. They spent their fighter feats on picking up some AC boosts to make up for their lack of a shield, and their hit-dice feats picking up some fun racial and skill-focused feats. Their Will save against the wizard's will-save spell is +3 (+2 base, +1 cloak). They're going to deal 5 damage/hit on average, for an average of 6.75 damage in a full attack, taking 13 full rounds to beat this wizard (at some point Stoneskin would run out). They've got a 15% chance of succeeding at their save versus the wizard's spell. To put it bluntly, they're essentially useless in this fight.

Now compare a well-made inquisitor against that wizard, for example. Not optimized to hell and back, but well-made. They're also 20 STR, but 16 WIS, with their money invested heavily in a +2 greatsword and a +2 cloak. They've activated Bane, Power Attack, and a Judgement of Destruction, and are benefitting from Outflank with their Solo Tactics. They cast Divine Favor just before the fight starts (and have the Fate's Favoured trait), and their well-made party makes sure they're Hasted as well. They're at a +19/+19 to hit for 4d6+21, dealing 25 damage/hit on average, for an average of 47.5 damage/full attack (ignoring crits, the point is demonstrated without them) - on their own, they'll take out the boss in two rounds. Their Will save is +10, giving them a 50% chance at succeeding versus the wizard's spell (and honestly I've not optimized for this at all).

You can't reasonably send the same enemies out against parties built like the first vs the second PC (keeping in mind that they're fighting a boss and the rest of the party is meant to contribute too). And it's not like I've picked a particularly excellent build for that inquisitor. You can choose to send out the as-written enemy versus a party of the second sort of PCs, but you're going to have a thoroughly boring fight. And there is content that is harder - but if you try and run a party build like the first PC through that harder content, you'll very quickly TPK.

[HumbleGamer]

Deriven Firelion wrote:

In 3E/PF1, you cast resist energy, mirror image, mage armor, some fly, haste, see invis, stat enhancements, and just about any buff you could get. And that was all the spells you cast before you actually started casting spells during the battle.

You can guess how much I am happy for this ( if it were for me, I'd ban stuff like longstrider spells too ).

[SuperBidi]

In prior editions, I've played the useless Fighter who was only hitting bosses on nat 20. And I've played a level 10 Bard succeeding at level 20 checks. Every single check and monster had to be rebalanced in real time if you wanted the difficulty to be average. Saying that there was no need to balance anything in PF1 means that you have never played after level 5.

[considerably]

N N 959 wrote:

Great, but has nothing to do with what Sherlock is talking about. I'm not understanding why that isn't obvious.

Sherlock is pointing out that there are many ways to make things challenging, some of these are more enjoyable than others. He post is predicated on the idea that there is some percentage of people who do not like the feeling of the asymmetrical crit mechanic. That as NOTHING to do with difficulty.

To be honest I wasn't ever really responding to his post as a whole because it wasn't a very compelling post, and frankly I thought your posts were better written, even though I disagree which is why I have been responding to you.

But.. here we go: Sherlock's points as I read them were:
1.) PF1 was actually a hard game, PF2E difficulty should be more like PF1E.

But it wasn't, unless you used encounters way over the "recommended" difficulty level. I feel like this doesn't need explanation since anyone casually familiar with 1E knew that game was pretty easy for an experienced player, but lots of other posters in this thread have given great explanations.

2.) He said that in his own home games for Starfinder what he does is just make things easier by lowering AC and saves.

..Which is exactly what I'm saying to do; use those Weak templates!

3.) Finally, he said another way to fix the balance is to increase resistances/HP.

This last point is primarily what I have been responding to the entire time and I have thoroughly explained why this is not sufficient to keep the difficulty the same. It wasn't a suggestion "I came up with", that is literally what Sherlock said. I'm pretty sure you said the same thing in one of your previous posts, too, but I could be wrong and don't feel like going through the post history.

N N 959 wrote:

Again...Sherlock's point is not about difficult vs easy

As above, 2 out of the 3 things Sherlock suggested inherently make the game easier. He may say he doesn't want it easier, but what he's asking for makes it easier. Which is fine. But I'm not going to act like it doesn't to assuage egos.

N N 959 wrote:

To put it another way, some of us believe an encounter can be more difficult and yet more enjoyable if it didn't include asymmetrical critting. I don't know why that's hard to understand. or why you keep trying to frame this as "easier encounters."

Another way to understand it is like this, I have two choices to increase difficulty:

A: The PCs are fighting in noxious air and have to make Fort saves every round or suffer damage.

B: The PCs are fighting with weapons that get magically greased and every round they have to roll Reflex to avoid having the weapons fly across the room.

This is already in the game. Plenty of creatures have disabling abilities instead of damage dealing ones. Abilities that completely disable a character 100% like what you're saying (remove their weapon and throw it across the room) are pretty rare because that's actually kind of unfun for the player. Players don't show up to stand around making paralyze checks or chase their weapon around the room. It's cool once in a while, and accordingly some creatures have abilities like this, but no one wants every encounter to do that.

Even for "brute" creatures that mostly rely on high attack and damage, they typically have a high Athletics too, and as a GM you should be using that Athletics to Grapple, Trip, Shove, or Disarm (though to be fair, Disarm kind of sucks) your PCs. Not only is it often tactically favorable, it makes the encounters more dynamic as opposed to just walloping a player for some amount of damage that will be healed up after the battle with a Medicine check.

N N 959 wrote:

Almost, but you're conflating the argument with specifics about HP/resistance/healing. There are innumerable techniques Paizo can use to shape the experience without affecting the average challenge.

Paizo does do this! My party just faced a Greater Shadow last night, it did crit often, but that was primarily because it was abusing its ability to hide in PC shadows to flat-foot them. Even when it crit, though, its damage was not particularly high - I remember players actually laughed at its crit damage on one particularly low roll.

But when they found out it spawned another Shadow and Enfeebled the crit player, the dynamics of the encounter shifted fast!

Not only did the players need to figure out what to do with the Shadow hiding repeatedly, now they had another foe, and a risk of more spawning..

It was only a Moderate encounter and my players were never at risk of dying as long as they respected the abilities the Shadow had, but I feel like this is exactly the kind of thing you're asking for? Neither side in the battle had the convenience of just sitting there and trading blows. The Shadow had to abuse its full toolkit to have a chance to deal with the PCs or it would have been surrounded and beaten to death in one round, and the PCs similarly had to find a way stay mobile and avoid casting shadows that were giving the creature a place to hide.

N N 959 wrote:

considerably wrote:

However, if you get hit less or hit more often, the game is easier.

No. The difficulty of an encounter is determined by many things. Environment, Magic Items, Numbers of Mobs, Tactics, Pacing, Resistance, Stats, Action taxes, etc. A Boss can be highly accurate and do little damage. Or, they can have low accuracy and do lots of damage and both will have the same expected damage. So getting hit more or less when combined with other variables, is not the sole determinant for difficulty.

Come on man. I didn't say that accuracy is the only factor that influences difficulty anywhere. What I said and you quoted isn't even really pulled out of context there, so I'm not sure how you could read it as if I said "the ONLY thing that matters is accuracy".

Obviously all those other things matter and most of them are accounted for in the core math of the game (such as magic items, number of creatures, resistances, stats, etc). Everyone here is saying use tactics. Pacing is a big one, you're right, and I think everyone agrees some APs screw up their pacing in a few places (especially the early ones). Environment is not directly covered in the core math but is called out several times in the CRB and GMG as something to consider, and I think generally it is. Creatures can and do have slightly higher or lower accuracies (and ACs, saves, etc.) - look at the tables in GMG.

I'm not sure you're treading any new grounds with these suggestions. All of these are levers that are already being used to adjust encounter difficulty, variance, balance, and feel. I think PF2E is probably the best game on the market right now in terms of the depth and variance in its official bestiaries. The creatures are pretty darn well written. But it does require some creativity on the GMs part to do something beyond attack with every action (which isn't even really optimal).

[Thomas5251212]

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Thomas5251212 wrote:

Though there it depended on the damage capability of your opponent. An 8th level fighter against his equivalent was mostly going to take a while, as he was going to have around 40 hit points and neither he nor his opponent were going to do more around ten or there abouts per hit. If you got one-shotted at those levels it was likely either a spell or some physically big monsterous opponent who did massive damage.

8th level wasn't a power level. An 8th level fireball did what? 8d6 in Advanced D&D? It's been so long since I played that edition. You could get belts of giant strength that boosted your damage a lot. If you had 18 percentile strength. Unless that was 2nd edition. I don't recall Advanced D&D being slow at all. You could do a lot of combats fairly quickly.

You could, but given until 3e there was a strong allergy in the D&D world to buying magic items, there was no assurance of it.

And the reason why pre-3e D&D was relatively fast was that as soon as you got away from spellcasters, there was not much in the way of meaningful decision making; as a fighting specialist, you picked a target and just kept rolling hits until it fell down. When you've got a comparatively simple resolution system and no decisions, even ablative damage won't be slow.

But it still could take a number of rounds. It was just that the rounds didn't individually take long because as soon as you got away from the spellcasters there was nothing much to take up time.

Quote:

PF1 and 3E was where the game slowed down immensely as you gained levels. It was all the spell options that did it. The pre-buffing. The long-term buffs that you prepared for each battle made things nutty long.

Not just spell options. Deciding whether to apply feats and which way, dealing with avoiding AoOs, figuring out whether it was worth losing multiple attacks to get to a particular target--a lot of decisions in 3e era weren't particularly _good_, but there were still a fair number of them to think about even for a lot of non-casters.

Quote:

In 2E you cast stoneskin at the start of the day and called it good.

Eh, I saw a lot of dithering by spellcasters all the way back in OD&D.

Quote:

In 3E/PF1, you cast resist energy, mirror image, mage armor, some fly, haste, see invis, stat enhancements, and just about any buff you could get. And that was all the spells you cast before you actually started casting spells during the battle.

Not to the same degree, but in any serious fight I saw a pretty fair amount of that even in OD&D; only reason you didn't see more was because the value of what buffs there were compared to attack spells was different.

[PossibleCabbage]

I mean, the way you dial this in for your players is that if you want the players to get hit less and to succeed more you give them more challenges that are lower level than they are. If you want them to get hit more and succeed less you give them higher level challenges than they are.

It's really not difficult to do in practice.

[Ascalaphus]

Sporkedup wrote:

I'm referring to this: adventure design rules. Just as an example of their expectation of how many encounters should be in the Severe range. Importance to the story really only comes in in one sentence in the CRB.

This is interesting, I hadn't looked at this in detail before. When we complain about too many Severe encounters, here is the culprit:

GMG > Dungeoncrawl wrote:

Combat Encounters 2 trivial, 4 low, 6 moderate, 6 severe. Many encounters can be bypassed through secret routes.

A third of the encounters is Severe!

On the other hand, "many encounters can be bypassed" - I don't recall this happening all that often really. If you go by the treasure table concept of "there's about four permanent items scattered through a level's worth of adventuring" then yeah, a lot of encounters aren't needed for treasure, and bypassing them might still earn XP because you technically solved it.

But I don't see that in practice a lot. Alternate routes aren't super common, but mainly, monsters are staged so close together that you already have to suspend disbelief that combats don't cascade into each other.

I'm blaming the constraints of AP design. There is budget for X pages and Y custom maps with Z footage. And that has to fit four levels of XP. So you end up with monsters of a bit higher level (more XP per word of text) and more encounters per map (save on Y) and closer together (save on Z).

As a result you end up with a dungeon with a lot of powerful encounters which nobody realistically could go through in one day, let alone go through without awkwardly long rest periods to heal up.

I would personally like it a lot better if the encounters themselves were easier, but the artificial "the monsters next room wait their turn" was toned down. More of a SWAT raid and less of a slow burn siege.

[Exocist]

1e/2e D&D was also insanely fast combat wise because no one had any hit points. It would be equivalent to taking everything’s hitpoints in PF2e and quartering them or sixthing them. I got through Temple of Elemental Evil for 1e D&D with a Fighter 7/Thief 5/Bard 10, having about 101 total hitpoints by using cheese and it was a god stat array.

For comparison, the next highest HP in the party was a paladin 8 with 38 hitpoints, the monk 8 had like 25 and the wizard 7//cleric 7 had about 30.

My damage, as a dart specialist fighter, was 5x 1d3+8 per round, but we were (by the end of the module) routinely fighting giants and other nasties that had a single attack for 6d6 or so. These giants would have about 50 hitpoints.

[Zilvar2k11]

Right or wrong, justified by the math or not, it's obvious it's not just the OP. My own group noped out of the system after encountering yet another severe encounter where the mob(s) in question hit on a 5 of the time, crit all of the time, and were so hard to hit that entire turns would go by with bad dice meaning nothing good happened.

The perception they took away was that the game was a punishing slog, and as players new to the system, with a GM new to the system, the end result was yet another book sitting on the shelf gathering dust.

[WWHsmackdown]

Zilvar2k11 wrote:

Right or wrong, justified by the math or not, it's obvious it's not just the OP. My own group noped out of the system after encountering yet another severe encounter where the mob(s) in question hit on a 5 of the time, crit all of the time, and were so hard to hit that entire turns would go by with bad dice meaning nothing good happened.

The perception they took away was that the game was a punishing slog, and as players new to the system, with a GM new to the system, the end result was yet another book sitting on the shelf gathering dust.

If that experience was the majority or even a minority large enough to affect sales then we would've seen a major shift in encounter design in APs.

I've seen minor adjustments but nothing major has rocked the boat. If we're sharing anecdotes then at least on the martial side, combat seems like a fairly even slobber knocker.

[HumbleGamer]

Zilvar2k11 wrote:

The perception they took away was that the game was a punishing slog, and as players new to the system, with a GM new to the system, the end result was yet another book sitting on the shelf gathering dust.

Rather than new to the system, I'd talk about players "used" to a different system.

To make a comparison, I think it's like in videogames when you are used to play one where you can farm and stack consumables ( or get powercreep in some other way ) to beat the game, and then swap to a new one you don't have a chance to increase your winning odds, because the only thing you can do is redo that specific challenge over and over, skilling yourself the more you deal with it.

Obviously, there may be a group of players able to clear the content easily on the first run, while other would require more time, and among those there will be a group who'll prefer to quit rather than trying to learn it.

[Zilvar2k11]

WWHsmackdown wrote:

The perception they took away was that the game was a punishing slog, and as players new to the system, with a GM new to the system, the end result was yet another book sitting on the shelf gathering dust.

If that experience was the majority or even a minority large enough to affect sales then we would've seen a major shift in encounter design in APs.

I've seen minor adjustments but nothing major has rocked the boat. If we're sharing anecdotes then at least on the martial side, combat seems like a fairly even slobber knocker.

Is that so? Honest question, because I haven't spent money on PF2 content since Plaguestone bombed for us. There've been a few comments in this thread about how Plaguestone and AoA were both poor starting experiences, with someone commenting on an AoA update to clean things up. I don't have a yardstick to know how major or minor the differences are.

[YuriP]

My group played Plaguestone without any problems. Just the extreme encounters was really dangerous for them. The only complain was by myself from that blood slime was insanely strong for that area. But I weakened it on the fly and the game progress well until the end of aventure.

My players made a good team and tactical work thats make all the diference in majority of encounters.

The only complain I receive about PF2 is it's mechanical strangeness like "why I know the damage before chose to block?" or "This is ugly that my animal companion cannot even move by itself from danger if I don't use an action to control it" or "why I have to use an action tu put my second hand in my weapon?" or "That's right? Can I really spam Lay on Hands that way?" besides that no complains about difficult or unfunny. But as I said before me and my players are used to face very hard adventures like face 20 flor dungeon full of strong enemies since 3.5 or unwinnable encounters in World of Darkness games.

[WWHsmackdown]

Zilvar2k11 wrote:

WWHsmackdown wrote:

The perception they took away was that the game was a punishing slog, and as players new to the system, with a GM new to the system, the end result was yet another book sitting on the shelf gathering dust.

If that experience was the majority or even a minority large enough to affect sales then we would've seen a major shift in encounter design in APs.

I've seen minor adjustments but nothing major has rocked the boat. If we're sharing anecdotes then at least on the martial side, combat seems like a fairly even slobber knocker.

Is that so? Honest question, because I haven't spent money on PF2 content since Plaguestone bombed for us. There've been a few comments in this thread about how Plaguestone and AoA were both poor starting experiences, with someone commenting on an AoA update to clean things up. I don't have a yardstick to know how major or minor the differences are.

Drawing a through line from Age of Ashes to Abomination vaults shows a slight readjusting of encounter structure (for non boss stuff) that's a tad more forgiving but nothing too eye catching. Again, even if Age of Ashes is some supposedly high bar, my players did fine. Casters had enemies save on spells a majority of the time but martials weren't really struggling at all, at least I don't remember any complaints from the martials.

[Zilvar2k11]

HumbleGamer wrote:

Rather than new to the system, I'd talk about players "used" to a different system.

There is something to that, because what you are used to encompasses what you're conditioned to expect or enjoy. My players do not enjoy being easily crit. They were unwilling, after multiple combats where someone just evaporated, to accept that conditioning as positive or enjoyable.

It's not about ease of play. They won. They always won. It's about perception and expectation. Being a floor inspector is BORING, and when it's because a creature pulled a couple of good rolls it's frustrating.

Today, after having read some of these comments and threads, I could probably adopt a few changes and change the feel of the game to something they wouldn't get frustrated over. Back then, I was too ignorant to try.