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No. I meant that literally. The game tells you to change it if something doesn't work. You can look at how the devs have run the game on streams. They go off the cuff and do a lot of what "feels right" for the given moment in the game.
It is weird to not like a game as-written, refuse to change said game to suit your needs despite the game telling you to do so, and then continue to angry-play that game. Just...find a new game at that point.
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No. I meant that literally. The game tells you to change it if something doesn't work. You can look at how the devs have run the game on streams. They go off the cuff and do a lot of what "feels right" for the given moment in the game.
It is weird to not like a game as-written, refuse to change said game to suit your needs despite the game telling you to do so, and then continue to angry-play that game. Just...find a new game at that point.
The argument that you can mod a game to suit your needs is not a strong one. Games need to make good first impressions or they will often find themselves shelved in favor of old standbys and new favorites.
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The argument that you can mod a roleplaying game - where the key selling point is havivg a living arbiter of the rules - isn't a strong one; it's a baseline expectation of the hobby.
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The argument that you can mod a roleplaying game - where the key selling point is havivg a living arbiter of the rules - isn't a strong one; it's a baseline expectation of the hobby.
Sure, but that isn't a unique selling point for PF2. If a group plays it as written, as most groups fresh to a game will do, and it sucks they aren't going to spend hours modding it to make it work. They might steal some ideas and hack them into a game they do like, but that doesn't do much for Paizo's bottom line.
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Here's where it does concern PF2: there's easy, codified ways to scale up or down difficulty without needing to spend hours rewriting anything (like I - and others - often had to do in other games). It's as easy as tossing weak or elite templates on things. If that's too much, a GM can just as easily get by by going up or down by two for numerical values (which is basically what the templates do).
Also, I can't speak for anyone here, but I don't care at all about Paizo's bottom line. If Pathfinder 2e is selling well, great. If not, and it crashes and never makes another book, I still love the system and will continue to run it (just as I run other games that never got another book outside of their core rules).
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Here's where it does concern PF2: there's easy, codified ways to scale up or down difficulty without needing to spend hours rewriting anything (like I - and others - often had to do in other games). It's as easy as tossing weak or elite templates on things. If that's too much, a GM can just as easily get by by going up or down by two for numerical values (which is basically what the templates do).
How does that help a group that quits halfway through session 1 because they played one of the early APs and Paizo hasn't gone back and fixed them? Paizo stumbled out of the gate and you'd think they'd have the wherewithal to fix it.
Also, I can't speak for anyone here, but I don't care at all about Paizo's bottom line. If Pathfinder 2e is selling well, great. If not, and it crashes and never makes another book, I still love the system and will continue to run it (just as I run other games that never got another book outside of their core rules).
If you're just going to blindly praise PF2 and dismiss its flaws because you love the system it makes you take on the game highly suspect.
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]How does that help a group that quits halfway through session 1 because they played one of the early APs and Paizo hasn't gone back and fixed them? Paizo stumbled out of the gate and you'd think they'd have the wherewithal to fix it.
This is a legitimate question: What is your proposal to fix that?
The easy answer is errata. It's likely a bigger job than what I'm saying (the GM adjudicates at the table because that's what a GM does and has always done). There's also the point that people who bounced off PF2 because of a particular AP likely aren't sitting around on forums months after the fact waiting for errata or waiting for the product to be updated. They bounced off.
The next easy answer for a fix is to produce a hardcover, which seems unlikely to me. RotRL and CotCT were fan-favorites (even after jumping through some 3.5 wonkiness for RotRL) and I don't think Age of Ashes (or Extinction Curse, if you're lumping that in) have gotten that level of love yet (and likely won't, if I'm being honest).
The solution it sounds like you want (do you want a complete remake?), would be needlessly resource intensive and not actually appeal to the people the game isn't working for. Meanwhile, the root of your proposed problem seems much smaller in scale.
1) The AP was too challenging.
As someone who ran AoA with no mechanical alterations (until one encounter in book 2), I'll agree. Book 1 of AoA was fairly stable until one massive spike (we all know what that is). My group managed it, but they didn't learn about buffing or debuffing at that point. It was Strikes and Heals all the way down. (The encounter I changed in book 2 was to combat encounter fatigue, as I swapped out a severe battle with a riddle contest.)
2) The onus should not be on the GM to adjust the AP
I don't think you're alone in this sentiment. Clearly! But I would also argue that it's something that good GMs do constantly even if they aren't aware of it. Knowing your audience plays a big part in this. I didn't alter encounters in AoA but I did introduce new NPCs, allow my players to use different skills to solve puzzles, and even had them skip encounters entirely through clever roleplaying. I don't think any of that sounds out of the ordinary for a GM, but it does affect the difficulty.
So, if someone bounced off an early AP, either they...
1) Didn't communicate what level of difficulty they were comfortable with (a hard game, but don't let character deaths happen; a story game with less focus on combat; a meat grinder with peppering of difficult encounters).
2) Had a less experienced GM who either didn't know how to run a game that is enjoyable for everyone or didn't intend to run a game that is enjoyable for everyone ("This is my game, we play it my way.")
Someone on the pulse enough to know about AoA's difficulties and look for errata or a new release would know enough to either address the problem in game or at least refer to the AoA forums to talk with other GMs.
Also, I'm not giving blind praise to PF2. I like it. That's an opinion. I enjoy the game and post of the PF2 forums about it. This isn't a debate. Paizo's bottom line has literally nothing to do with this.
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The next easy answer for a fix is to produce a hardcover, which seems unlikely to me. RotRL and CotCT were fan-favorites (even after jumping through some 3.5 wonkiness for RotRL) and I don't think Age of Ashes (or Extinction Curse, if you're lumping that in) have gotten that level of love yet (and likely won't, if I'm being honest).
The first Paizo adventure path that my wife ran was the D&D 3.5 version of Rise of the Runelords. She had converted it to Pathfinder 1st Edition rules, using fan creations from www.d20pfsrd.com. And at the end of The Skinsaw Murders we ran into the final boss, a notorious party killer. And we ran into her at 5th level, due to some detective work by my gnome ranger. The boss could have killed us all, so my wife altered the encounter and had her Charm half the party as replacement minions instead.
That version of RotRL had a reputation as a meat grinder. Yet, as Ruzza said, it was a fan favorite.
I never said I was that person, but they certainly do exist. Both on the player and GM side. For them not modding the game beyond rulings on confusing parts is playing as intended. Just like for you its not.People who refuse to adapt games at their home table to suit the needs of their players' enjoyment of the game at hand as a matter of like...personal philosophy aren't playing the game as intended. Modding the game is the intent.
If you enjoy that, fine. Go nuts. It just needs to be understood that isn't the way the game is meant to be played, broadly speaking.
Of course, after my wife had the boss depart undefeated, she had to write a new encounter with the boss so that the un-Charmed half of the party and some new recruits (two new players) could defeat the boss. Then we moved on to the 3rd module, Hook Mountain Massacre. On the journey toward Hook Mountain, she added a random encounter--three owlbears attacking the camp at night--and a mystery in a small spider-silk-harvesting village, The Warren of the Death Spider by Rogue Genius Games.
Weeks later I was asking on these forums how I could make my gnome ranger/monk more powerful, because the death of the dwarven fighter put him into the front line. Fighting the Hook Mountain ogres was tough. One ogre critted on the battle oracle, the only party member with more than 80 hp, for 80 damage. She retreated, healed herself, returned to the front line, and took another crit from an ogre hook.
I never implemented the suggestions, because in March 2011 my wife stepped down as GM due to health problems and I replaced her to continue RotRL. And started changing the module. The party had smart, information-oriented characters: loremaster wizard, enchanter sorcerer, two bards, rogue/duelist, and battle oracle. I gave them opportunities where Gather Information or scouting or scrying could give them information to avoid unnecessary battles or win necessary ones. Rise of the Runelords became a campaign where lore and intrigue were the key to victory rather than damage dealing, because that suited the party.
I was a green GM 10 years ago in 2011, having run only one-session games before. But I had begun playing D&D in 1979 and knew what a good game needed.
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To add a little something to Ruzza and Verdyn's back n' forth: Most people are generally more okay with an "official" mod vs. a "3rd party" mod, I.E. something dug out of the Paizo official GMG is generally more acceptable to those "hardcores" than something you found on Reddit 2 days ago by chance. And the LITERAL rule #1 is "if a rule isn't fun, **** it" (I paraphrase of course), so if you ignore the ACTUAL first rule in the book... I don't know what to tell you at that point, other than accept that rules are made to be broken. Like buildings... OR PEOPLE!