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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.
There is no right or wrong in this discussion. Either you like a more difficult game or you don't. PF2 is a throwback to my group to when D&D was a dangerous game where you had a chance of dying. For most of D&D's history dying and not coming back easily was part of the game. You died, you made a new character, and then rejoined the group.
That element was lost during 3rd edition, PF1, and 5E. PF2 brought it back.
It's frustrating at times. But for a lot of groups that played pre-3E D&D, it is a return to the days of lethality using different mechanics.
Some people don't like that and I'm sure that was anticipated by Paizo. It's when some posters think that Paizo made a mistake or did something wrong making their game more lethal that makes for an argument.
PF2 is a good game all on its own. It has conventions players of the last 10 years haven't been accustomed to. It may be harder for new players to accept or enjoy. Maybe they want an easy game and 5E is available for that.
I still recall all the people that criticized PF1 saying most players wouldn't like it because of the level of system mastery required. PF1 did just fine. I'm pretty sure PF2 will do fine as well. Not every game is made for everyone or there would just be one RPG that everyone played rather than the many that exist.
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And, again, it seems that people's problems with difficulty are with the default. People bouncing off the system and finding another because this one is too hard or too easy is quite a lot like shopping around for TVs based on which one has the volume set where you like it.
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.
Plaguestone was especially brutal. I ran it. Not only is the pacing a bit.. rough.. but it had a number of creatures that were technically within the math but tended to really punch above their weight.
AoA is not quite as bad as Plaguestone but still very rough. I haven't played but I believe Extinction Curse is also rough.
I think it gets better after EC. I know at least Abomination Vaults feels like a really solid experience. There are tough fights, but overall it is a more even experience. The adventure doesn't put you on any time crunch so players should never feel the need to rush ahead unprepared. It's an old-school dungeon crawl, so players I think will intuitively expect to get popped if they make mistakes, just like in Grandpa Gygax's day. (Disclaimer: there's one particular fight in the first level that is basically "bugged" in video game terms, check out the discussions in the AV GM thread on these forums for more info on how to fix it).
One more thing that I think is important as a GM in this edition, especially with novice groups, is that you really need to take the initiative in making fights more dynamic. Avoid having your creatures just spend 3 actions attacking. Use their unique abilities or do things like Trip/Grapple/Disarm, etc. The most prep I tend to do is looking over a creature's stat block and thinking about what it's going to be trying to do in a battle based on its lore, environment, etc.
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Its super-cool that the advice for people who are having trouble is "use tactics, noobs", but none of the tactics proposed could actually work in the situations that people are encountering. That's great, much advice, very community.
I mean, clearly those tactics are working for other people, which is why they keep getting brought up.
I mean, what, do you think there's just some big conspiracy where everyone here is just... lying to you about their experiences and the game?
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I love how the advice for newbies is "move around more", but moving away costs your enemy a third attack, and might give them a bonus AoO for a 0 MAP attack, which is a terrible trade as and when they have AoOs... which bosses tend to. Are players supposed to memorise which monsters have AoOs? Or just get lucky?
Also how you should move around more... but if you're in a module, it's quite likely you'll get dropped before you get to act because of the *delightful* penchant of modules to go "hey, monsters ambush you".
Oh, and the delightful "use debuffs", which is super-cool advice if you're a cha-based character, but otherwise it's just chucking a dice and hoping... which is exactly the thing you're not supposed to do with a third attack. Are we supposed to throw dice for a low chance of achieving something or not?We had a TPK in a PFS 1-4 because the boss hit at +12 with d12+5 damage. Starting characters cannot deal with that, especially if the setup is "boss has drawn a weapon and is one move away, while you all have your weapons and shields sheathed because you were reading books, oh and also there's no option to run away because this is a small room".
Its super-cool that the advice for people who are having trouble is "use tactics, noobs", but none of the tactics proposed could actually work in the situations that people are encountering. That's great, much advice, very community.
One encounter in one PFS scenario is not enough IMO to insultingly scorn the advice given by posters who only wish to help.
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Either you like a more difficult game or you don't.Why is this such a common response? I even said it's not about ease of play.
For my group, it was about the perception of being taken out of a fight because the odds are stacked so heavily against you that the roll you need to make just to HIT is what the opponent needs to roll to crit.
People keep saying it isn't about the difficulty, then listing a bunch of things that are in fact raising the difficulty.
Do you know what the most common results are if you turn the difficulty sliders up on a video game?
-Enemies hit harder.
-Enemies are harder to put down.
-Enemies become more numerous.
Now, I grant you they are not the only ways to increase difficulty. Hades does a great job of letting you pick and choose how you increase the difficulty, and I tend to prefer the ones that add more enemies or new abilities to enemies rather than simply buff their damage. Adding new wrinkles to the formula rather than just decreasing the margin of error.
The problem is those approaches also make it harder to GM monsters in a way it doesn't for video games.
One thing I don't like in video or table top games: increasing enemy health. Making a fight longer doesn't REALLY make it harder nor does it make the game more fun. So just increasing the HP pool as others have suggested is not my preference.
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We had a TPK in a PFS 1-4 because the boss hit at +12 with d12+5 damage. Starting characters cannot deal with that, especially if the setup is "boss has drawn a weapon and is one move away, while you all have your weapons and shields sheathed because you were reading books, oh and also there's no option to run away because this is a small room".
PFS adventures are made with random players/characters. They have a strong potential in going south.
One thing I don't like in video or table top games: increasing enemy health. Making a fight longer doesn't REALLY make it harder nor does it make the game more fun. So just increasing the HP pool as others have suggested is not my preference.
So true. Something I dislike about Starfinder. High level enemies feel so much like a grind, and the fight is static as everyone is just full attacking round after round with very few chances to see anything unforseen happening.
At least, in PF2, these fights are rare. The critical system pushes toward non repetitive gameplay.
They also have a MUCH harder task than normal in balancing encounters, because of the scaling for varying compositions of character levels. There have been some cases where that scaling, at least in some configurations, has gone badly.
Honestly, looking at PFS as an indication of how PF2 works simply does not work. At all. There are too many campaign houserules and concerns that do not apply at all to a normal game.
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They also have a MUCH harder task than normal in balancing encounters, because of the scaling for varying compositions of character levels. There have been some cases where that scaling, at least in some configurations, has gone badly.
Honestly, looking at PFS as an indication of how PF2 works simply does not work. At all. There are too many campaign houserules and concerns that do not apply at all to a normal game.
Clearly. The worst configuration being the 19 challenge points with 6 players where you play in high level with a single character being of high level. I've had fights against level +4 opponents in that configuration, the game hardly support it.
Its super-cool that the advice for people who are having trouble is "use tactics, noobs", but none of the tactics proposed could actually work in the situations that people are encountering. That's great, much advice, very community.I mean, clearly those tactics are working for other people, which is why they keep getting brought up.
I mean, what, do you think there's just some big conspiracy where everyone here is just... lying to you about their experiences and the game?
I agree.
Don't underestimate the tactics. Many people don't understand how good could be the old "let's back to the door strategies" that exists since we have a battle map.
For example: In some fight with more than 1 opponents my players usually uses the dor to avoid being flat-footed or surrounded and focus their attacks in one opponent at time only advancing when they killed enough to surround their opponents. The fact that AoO are rare helps and to avoid the opponents to dificult these manouvers they delay their initiative to move thogether.
These simples tactics protect the casters, allow them to use area heal safely if need, allows martial to switch places when needed and so on.
PFS adventures are made with random players/characters. They have a strong potential in going south.
I read some PFS books and they have shorter adventures less encounters and apparently more easier. Could may useful for new players and others players that fell the APs too difficult?
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I see that an amount of the issue is centered around groups that are familiar with systems wherein the NPCs are built using the same rules as PCs. Starfinder and PF2 are not like that. NPCs are built differently. Part of this build is to have their numbers placed at values based on their 'level' or 'CR'. Paizo decided to take this route so that NPCs fulfill their purpose (which is not to be a PC but an NPC).
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PFS adventures are made with random players/characters. They have a strong potential in going south.I read some PFS books and they have shorter adventures less encounters and apparently more easier. Could may useful for new players and others players that fell the APs too difficult?
PFS adventures are, overall, easier. But... What makes them sometimes hard is that they are far more random. The characters don't know each other, the players don't necessarily know each other, etc...
I've played once with a single martial in a 6-player party. It went fine, but these are the games that can spiral out of control very easily.And even outside that extreme case, you may end up with a configuration that just doesn't match, or players that don't click together, or just flat out beginners/bad players that are crippling everyone.
One important thing to take into account in PF2 is that everything is super balanced. If one character doesn't meet the expectations, the game becomes far harder. When I was playing the first 2 levels of my Alchemist (level 1-2 Alchemist is a chore) I was really feeling it as most adventures where quite hard compared to those I was playing with more efficient characters.
In PF1, overpowered characters were sometimes making the whole adventure alone, so a weak character or even a straight useless character was not causing much issues.
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I see that an amount of the issue is centered around groups that are familiar with systems wherein the NPCs are built using the same rules as PCs. Starfinder and PF2 are not like that. NPCs are built differently. Part of this build is to have their numbers placed at values based on their 'level' or 'CR'. Paizo decided to take this route so that NPCs fulfill their purpose (which is not to be a PC but an NPC).
That's a common stumbling block, but I don't think that's what is happening here. The complaint is that monsters are too tough, but people don't seem to be looking under the chassis. A monster/NPC typically has the same accuracy bonus as a fighter of their level. People aren't looking at NPCs and complaining how they don't have the equipment, they are just saying those monsters shouldn't hit that much.
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Do you know what the most common results are if you turn the difficulty sliders up on a video game?
I mean, I haven't played many video games where your attacks are just expected to fail with significant regularity and getting downed by enemies is completely a matter of RNG.
That sounds like kind of a terrible video game to play, tbh.
I mean I guess Darkest Dungeon or XCOM or Fire Emblem can feel like that sometimes but that at least has the benefit of you directing multiple characters at once (and expendability kind of being a game theme, as opposed to a tabletop where the opposite is generally true). And in both games like that and traditional turn based RPGs, frankly I don't remember anyone ever telling me their favorite enemies were the one with really high dodge rates. Those types are usually considered pretty obnoxious.
That's not to say PF2 is a bad game but the tabletop-video game analogy doesn't work very well because many modern games tend to put control more in the player's hands. If I die in, I dunno, Dark Souls it's because I failed to properly avoid an attack, not because the bad guy hit his 30% chance to instantly down me with a crit.
The stakes are a lot higher in a tabletop too. Failing a mechanic in FFXIV at most means I have to redo the fight I was just on. The game's not going to delete my character if I do, but that's a real possibility in PF2.
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I’ve definitely TPK’d in one adventure before (A bounty where the enemy was a level+3 with Pounce and the GM rolled 4 crits in a row…), and 1-4 we won only because I filled every slot with magic missile expecting a level+3 boss. Otherwise we probably would have TPK’d there too.
Level+ enemies are much harder than the XP budget says they are at low levels. That’s because the XP budget assumes most of the difficulty difference is from AC, Hit bonus and saves not from damage or hp. However, at low levels, a level+ enemy will easily be doing twice or more the damage of a level+0 or level- enemy, and have many times more hp.
By contrast, at high levels, the opposite is true. Level- enemies have HP and damage that is very close to level+ enemies… so the deadliest encounters are a bunch of level-s (they take forever to die and quantity of rolls means they will beat you up), with level+s becoming a joke with a support character (by that level, number shifting is insane and even a 52AC enemy can easily be hit or crit if your support is doing their thing).
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PFS adventures are made with random players/characters. They have a strong potential in going south.Yes, but also no.
Because yes, you might be in a party with no synergy. But also, a starting PC has an AC of 18, 20 with shield. So the boss monster hits on a 6, crits on a 16, and has a pretty decent chance of insta-killing an L1 PC. It may be a PFS thing that those numbers are so stupid high, but the problem isn't a lack of PFS player co-ordination.
If it's hitting on a 6 vs 20 AC (+14 attack bonus), then it almost certainly is a level 4 creature (especially considering the damage you described). That's a Severe challenge for 1st level characters.
Severe encounters are going to be nail-biters, that's the whole point. I still don't think you should be straight up dying to it, though. The biggest risk would be if it downed a character with a critical hit, no one Stabilized them, and then they rolled a 1 or 2 on the DC 12 dying check.
If you don't want to have Severe difficulty encounters, then ask your GM to scale back stuff. I guess that's not an option with PFS, though.
PFS adventures are made with random players/characters. They have a strong potential in going south.Yes, but also no.
Because yes, you might be in a party with no synergy. But also, a starting PC has an AC of 18, 20 with shield. So the boss monster hits on a 6, crits on a 16, and has a pretty decent chance of insta-killing an L1 PC. It may be a PFS thing that those numbers are so stupid high, but the problem isn't a lack of PFS player co-ordination.If it's hitting on a 6 vs 20 AC (+14 attack bonus), then it almost certainly is a level 4 creature (especially considering the damage you described). That's a Severe challenge for 1st level characters.
Severe encounters are going to be nail-biters, that's the whole point. I still don't think you should be straight up dying to it, though. The biggest risk would be if it downed a character with a critical hit, no one Stabilized them, and then they rolled a 1 or 2 on the DC 12 dying check.
If you don't want to have Severe difficulty encounters, then ask your GM to scale back stuff. I guess that's not an option with PFS, though.
Glancing at the stat description, that's an exact description of a martial-based enemy, level 3. Which could definitely be rough if it comes up badly, but overall shouldn't be too bad for a level 1 party to handle.
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Do you remember which scenario that was?
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Do you know what the most common results are if you turn the difficulty sliders up on a video game?I mean, I haven't played many video games where your attacks are just expected to fail with significant regularity and getting downed by enemies is completely a matter of RNG.
That sounds like kind of a terrible video game to play, tbh.
I mean I guess Darkest Dungeon or XCOM or Fire Emblem can feel like that sometimes but that at least has the benefit of you directing multiple characters at once (and expendability kind of being a game theme, as opposed to a tabletop where the opposite is generally true). And in both games like that and traditional turn based RPGs, frankly I don't remember anyone ever telling me their favorite enemies were the one with really high dodge rates. Those types are usually considered pretty obnoxious.
That's not to say PF2 is a bad game but the tabletop-video game analogy doesn't work very well because many modern games tend to put control more in the player's hands.
The post you quoted isn't actually arguing whether the low hit chance is fun. It was about whether or not it (and more importantly, how hard the enemies hit) is a measure of difficulty.
If I die in, I dunno, Dark Souls it's because I failed to properly avoid an attack, not because the bad guy hit his 30% chance to instantly down me with a crit.
No, but there are plenty of games where leaving your character in a vulnerable position gets them dropped. The tactical element of PF2 is trying to avoid those positions while doing what you can to tilt the math in your favor. And as you yourself pointed out, clearly some people have figured that out and it is working for them.
The stakes are a lot higher in a tabletop too. Failing a mechanic in FFXIV at most means I have to redo the fight I was just on. The game's not going to delete my character if I do, but that's a real possibility in PF2.
True, but I don't think PC death is actually that common compared to video games. PCs actually dying is very rare in this edition, at least compared to PF1 which had to liberally sprinkle scrolls of resurrection if it wanted to keep a consistent cast. Most complaints don't seem to be out actually losing characters or TPKs, it is about getting knocked to dying or just otherwise badly roughed up. The problem is people feel demoralized by how hard it is to avoid getting your teeth kicked in, which really feels like difficulty complaints to me.
(I also think real risk of PC death is good for the game. The story changing when you lose a character or two rather than simply fading to a GAME OVER screen is a big part of what makes TTRPGs special, but that's really drifting off topic.)
Wouldn't that mean the design goal of making the difference between a well built character and a poorly built one being very small wasn't really hit
Setting aside that PFS actually has different level PCs fighting alongside each other, PF2 works well if everyone hits a certain baseline. But that baseline is really, really easy to hit. You basically just need to do 4 things:
--Get an 18 (maaaaybe a 16) in your key/offensive stat.
--Get armor whose max dex bonus plays to your own.
--Get the best weapons your proficient with and that matches your offensive stat. (If you're a dex based ranger, pick finesse martial weapons.)
--Pick a class and feats that play to what you actually want to do in combat.
If you do those 4 things you're gonna be fine whether you found the crazy build on the internet or not. Unfortunately not everyone does this.
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Do you remember which scenario that was?
In addition to the one mentioned there’s also 1-04, Tarnbreaker’s Trail. The area is a bit more open, but it can be difficult to move around on the ice. It’s also much faster than you with 45 speed and has a Sudden Charge which gives it +10 to that speed. It’s reflex is kinda low at only +7 so you can trip it, but with +12 to hit, 11ish damage on average, 20ac, 60hp, reach and attack of opportunity it’s something that can easily turn into a TPK. In particular, the reach + attack op is something you won’t know about so a melee martial approaching it might find themselves on the receiving end of 20+ damage.
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Either you like a more difficult game or you don't.Why is this such a common response? I even said it's not about ease of play.
For my group, it was about the perception of being taken out of a fight because the odds are stacked so heavily against you that the roll you need to make just to HIT is what the opponent needs to roll to crit.
There was not a single fight that the group didn't win, and I don't really remember if any of them were super close. But there were a lot of fights where the perception of imbalance between Them and Us was amplified by good and bad dice rolls that lead to massive frustration even while winning.
So when someone asks the question 'Is it just me, or is it way too easy to get hit in this edition? ' No. It's not just you. It can be explained. It can be justified. It can be appreciated. But even with all the justification in the world, in my experience it's really freaking easy to be hit in this system.
It is why I said the game is more difficult using different mechanics.
In old D&D you could die with bad die rolls, main difference being it was just as often to a bad spell saving throw as getting hit really hard. Whereas in PF2 the accuracy of enemies is the way they made the game more difficult and faster to play.
When you played 1st and 2nd edition D&D, then dying to some bad or good die roll is just an expected part of the game.
Why else would you complain about getting hit a lot when it was the default for D&D for a few decades if it wasn't because it makes the game feel more difficult?
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I love how the advice for newbies is "move around more", but moving away costs your enemy a third attack, and might give them a bonus AoO for a 0 MAP attack, which is a terrible trade as and when they have AoOs... which bosses tend to. Are players supposed to memorise which monsters have AoOs? Or just get lucky?
Also how you should move around more... but if you're in a module, it's quite likely you'll get dropped before you get to act because of the *delightful* penchant of modules to go "hey, monsters ambush you".
Oh, and the delightful "use debuffs", which is super-cool advice if you're a cha-based character, but otherwise it's just chucking a dice and hoping... which is exactly the thing you're not supposed to do with a third attack. Are we supposed to throw dice for a low chance of achieving something or not?We had a TPK in a PFS 1-4 because the boss hit at +12 with d12+5 damage. Starting characters cannot deal with that, especially if the setup is "boss has drawn a weapon and is one move away, while you all have your weapons and shields sheathed because you were reading books, oh and also there's no option to run away because this is a small room".
Its super-cool that the advice for people who are having trouble is "use tactics, noobs", but none of the tactics proposed could actually work in the situations that people are encountering. That's great, much advice, very community.
You seem to want genuine help improving tactics and are just getting used to paradigm shift. PF2 is a big shift in paradigm that will take some getting used to. The accuracy is set very high across the board.
The monsters are set high so they do lots of damage very quickly.
The characters get increased accuracy and crits through volume of attacks when used in conjunction with AC lowering tactics.
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Yes, but also no.
Because yes, you might be in a party with no synergy. But also, a starting PC has an AC of 18, 20 with shield. So the boss monster hits on a 6, crits on a 16, and has a pretty decent chance of insta-killing an L1 PC. It may be a PFS thing that those numbers are so stupid high, but the problem isn't a lack of PFS player co-ordination.
Low level characters have always been able to die quick, even in 3E and PF1. One non-crit hit could often bring you down.
That seems like reasonable advice, and actually seems like a good paradigm for a game. Just one small problem: how do you know? How do you know that your third attack is better than theirs? How do you know which defence you might target with some chance of success? Do you have some wacky thing where you get to see the monster stats? Because honestly, that might actually be a good way to do this. If you could actually see the odds of success, then yes that could make for a good tactical game. It works for a whole bunch of interesting computer games. But AFAICS PF2 goes "lol no, spend an action to recall knowledge and MAYBE we'll tell you something useful, or maybe we'll tell you that the monster with a special attack has a special attack, which might happen after it has already used its special attack". Is everyone else just looking up monster stats on the internet? Or memorising them?
Usually Recall Knowledge is recommended. Not going to be easy at low level. But a few classes have recall knowledge as part of another action which can often give information on a creature's abilities.
Unless the creature has reach, a 5 foot steps avoid AOOs and still requires the creature to move to attack. If they have reach, then you're out of luck.
My group usually stays in and swings to provide flanks for each other. Someone usually intimidates or tries to apply a status penalty or bonus.
But really, up to around lvl 6 it is pretty easy to die in PF2. Lvl 7 seems to be a little bit of a power up that makes it more difficult to die. Then lvl 11, then lvl 15 you become really strong, and by lvl 19 and 20 you are doing to the monsters what they were doing to you.
The game scales up in power at more even rate than PF1. But low levels are rough, rougher for some classes than others. No amount of tactics or teamwork will change this, but you still want to use tactics to improve your chance of success.
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The question is how to make a d20 ttrpg difficult with high accuracy for the players and low accuracy for the enemies. The turn based rpgs out there that have been mentioned all have issues or forced gameplay paradigms that just don’t work in a game that needs to be as flexible as PF. Theoretically I’m sure it’s possible but I’ve seen no practical suggestions that will actually do it.
Sure it's possible to have high accuracy for the players and low accuracy for the enemies, you just need to tune HP numbers accordingly to keep the challenge (that is, if you want the game to be challenging). Is anyone going to have fun in a game where the enemies are blobs of meat and the players are made of paper though? I don't think so.
You could have certain classes that are difficult to hit, but highly defensible characters are problematic from a GM perspective. Attacking them is obviously a waste of time if you can only hit on a 20, but if you walk around them and hit anyone else you're just invalidating all their build choices. They need a punisher mechanic to stop enemies doing that, like marking in 4e does, but even defenders in 4e aren't "unhittable" by any stretch, usually you'd be looking at needing a 17+ to hit their AC, but their NADs (Non AC defenses, which 4e monsters target quite frequently) are much easier to hit.
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Wouldn't that mean the design goal of making the difference between a well built character and a poorly built one being very small wasn't really hitPFS adventures are made with random players/characters. They have a strong potential in going south.I read some PFS books and they have shorter adventures less encounters and apparently more easier. Could may useful for new players and others players that fell the APs too difficult?PFS adventures are, overall, easier. But... What makes them sometimes hard is that they are far more random. The characters don't know each other, the players don't necessarily know each other, etc...
I've played once with a single martial in a 6-player party. It went fine, but these are the games that can spiral out of control very easily.
And even outside that extreme case, you may end up with a configuration that just doesn't match, or players that don't click together, or just flat out beginners/bad players that are crippling everyone.One important thing to take into account in PF2 is that everything is super balanced. If one character doesn't meet the expectations, the game becomes far harder. When I was playing the first 2 levels of my Alchemist (level 1-2 Alchemist is a chore) I was really feeling it as most adventures where quite hard compared to those I was playing with more efficient characters.
In PF1, overpowered characters were sometimes making the whole adventure alone, so a weak character or even a straight useless character was not causing much issues.
Quite the opposite actually. PF2 puts you against 3 PC-built enemies every 3 fights (as monsters are very close to PCs in terms of efficiency, actually, they are sometimes even stronger). And despite that, you don't have TPKs every 3 fights.
If you were doing the same thing in PF1, noone would ever reach level 3. In fact, a single PC-built enemy in PF1 is enough to score a kill if it rolls high in initiative.It also tends to disprove Squiggit points of view: If the game was so random, how could it be possible to match the PCs against a group with 3/4 of their power so often and not score a TPK every 2 levels?
In my opinion, PF2 is extremely well balanced. Still, it's not perfect, and the Alchemist needs improvement. Also, at low level, you have less resources and some characters may not be fully operational until they get access to a feat, equipment or class ability. Unfortunately, that's something that is forgotten in encounter guidelines: Not everyone is fully operational at level 1, many builds are quite weak (Alchemist, Wizard, Witch, Bard, archers, full plate users, Swashbuckler...).
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The question is how to make a d20 ttrpg difficult with high accuracy for the players and low accuracy for the enemies. The turn based rpgs out there that have been mentioned all have issues or forced gameplay paradigms that just don’t work in a game that needs to be as flexible as PF. Theoretically I’m sure it’s possible but I’ve seen no practical suggestions that will actually do it.
You have 2 extremes on a scale:
Either you give lots of accuracy to players and nearly no effect. So, as Exocist says, monsters with an atrocious bunch of hps. The fights end up being super boring.Or, you give lots of accuracy to players and real effects. In that case, combat is super fast and if you give low accuracy to monsters then they have to one-hit kill you for the game to be challenging. It still super random but instead of being random on the player side it's random on the monster side.
Anyway, the core of the issue can be simply put: How to make the game quite difficult without the game to ever feel difficult?
I honestly don't think there's a solution to that. At some point, there will be a mechanic that will feel punishing (either because there's a bad roll streak, a bad positionning, a Leroy Jenkins or whatever).
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I may not like the mechanic or system that much, but I slightly object to wordings along the lines of "forced to invent" in regards to 5E's Legendary Resistance and Lair Actions. It's just a mechanic. If it does the thing it needs to do well, it's a good mechanic. It may be unsatisfying in other ways, but sometimes you just need a mechanic that looks and sounds and smells like a mechanic rather than a verisimilitude boost or play option. (See also: Incapacitation.)
I am sympathetic to frustrations about difficulty and the advice given for that, though. PF2E is simply too hard by default, for a number of reasons themselves somewhat understandable, and I genuinely believe people who offer that advice do so because they want others to enjoy what they do. But those who struggle are often facing things no one can help, or are unable to identify/articulate what the exact issues are, or are dealing with any number of things which make giving less generic advice difficult or impossible. 5E may be kinda dull mechanically, at least to me after a few years of playing it, but you generally don't really need any of the clarifying notes PF2E veterans have to regularly trot out just to go smash things with friends and not die.
PF2E does a lot of things right and has other strengths, but it would be nice if the pitfalls described in Captain Morgan's earlier post simply weren't a thing to contend with, and the adventures and scenarios were quicker to adapt to the system and provide more moderate difficulty.
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Do you remember which scenario that was?** spoiler omitted **
Just checked. The fight should happen in the bigger room not in the small one. Also Research never states that you do not keep your weapons and shields at the ready.
The GM made the encounter far more difficult than it was supposed to be.