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So Paizo: I love your products, and I love playing in some of your games, but there are some issues I have found that crop up in Starfinder, and most recently pathfinder 2e, that are really making the experience difficult for me and my friends. And it mainly comes down to DCs that you set.
You see, back in pathfinder 1e, skills were not very tightly bound. That is to say, a level 13 character with full ranks in a skill could have anywhere from a +11 in that skill to a +53 based on attributes, items, and class abilities. Saves were similar, with a huge variety of range.
Starfinder limited this range a fair amount and Pathfinder 2e limited this range even more. So please take these new ranges into account when coming up with DCs.
I’ll throw you an example. I was playing a pathfinder 2e AP (for spoiler reasons I won’t say which one, nor will I give out too much info), but this boss character we fought at level 8 had a special ability to tie someone up with a DC 41 grapple check. 41. At level 9. The is, as far as I know, impossible for ANY PC to make at that level except on a nat 20. I know, because we had a lvl 9 fighter with max strength and mastered athletics and a magic item giving him a +1 item bonus and he was still at +20. Listen, I’m all for a challenging fight, but if it is impossible for ANY PC build to succeed on a check, then someone’s math might be off.
And this is not the only time I’ve seen this. In a different AP I’m in our bard just died at level 2 to a swarm creature that hit you with two DC 21 saves per action, and it could do that up to three times a round. Our bard died not to an unlucky nat 1, but to several DC 10 saves at level 2. DC 10->crit fail->boatload of poison damage. Next round->The same. Next round-> the same and he’s dead even through all the healing we could give. Our heroic bard died not to some great evil threat or demon but to a swarm of wasps that were way overpowered for a group of level 2 adventurers.
Listen, I don’t want to come here to complain or yell or stamp my feet and hold my breath. PCs sometimes die, I get that. An unlucky nat 1 or a lucky crit from an enemy, I am prepared to accept that. But y’know what, you you don’t even give the PCs a shot? When not even the rogue can crit save against the reflex save or the maxed-out fighter can break out of the grapple on a 19, it doesn’t feel like a fun game anymore. It feels like the authors have just said ‘by the way, you loose. I can set any number I want so you can’t win.” And, not for nothing , I use to see this in Starfinder as well, though thankfully that has gone down recently.
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They're not overhauling the core number progression that the entire game works off of without an edition change, probably ever.
Also, a +41 is an extreme value for a level 20 creature. Are you sure your GM didn't just read something incorrectly?
A wasp swarm is a severe encounter for level 2s. If this bard made no effort to get out of the swarm, which is the only way they could have been hit 3 times, then that's kidn of on them for dying to a boss.
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...are you sure the DC was 41? That's higher than a level 13 creature with extreme Athletics.
Wasp Swarm is level 4. If you crit fail multiple times against a damaging effect of a creature two levels higher, especially at level 2, I kinda expect you to die.
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Wasp Swarm is level 4. If you crit fail multiple times against a damaging effect of a creature two levels higher, especially at level 2, I kinda expect you to die.
I mean, the OP's problem wasn't crit failing but just how easy it was to crit fail.
Which I think is a fair criticism in this case. DC21 at level 4 is a DC that's a fairly reasonable challenge even for someone who specializes in reflex saves. A level 4 rogue with max Dexterity is going to succeed more often than not, but just barely (they pass on a 9 with their +12)... those are decent odds, but that's also as good as it gets.
But PF2 is a game where most characters aren't going to be specialists (at least for saves) and PF2 is a system built to regularly employ higher level enemies against players (which modules do a lot).
In that context, having challenges that are meant to be challenging for the best possible character turns those into almost impossible tasks for lower level characters who aren't specialists, even though that's who more likely than not is going to have to deal with those.
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1st: we asked the GM to check repeatedly the number. Unless he bald-faced lied to us, It’s Athletics bonus was lower, but it had some goofy rule that when it tied you up, the Athletics DC to escape was 41.
2nd: The bard got stung, failed the reflex save (no surprise, even the rogue needed a nat 13 to save) then crit failed the poison save and went down from the poison. We healed him, he got out of the swarm, but STILL HAD POISON IN HIS SYSTEM which his why he eventually died from the poison. The problem is not bad tactics on our part. The problem was a single action causing 2 DC 21 saves at level 2. I understand that a lvl 4 creature is a severe encounter for some level 2 PCs. The thing I am asking is: please check beyond the CR for some issues that might not scale well when placed against lower level PCs. Heck DC 21 seems high even at level 4 when one action triggers two different saves (in this case reflex and fortitude.)
And I may not have accurately remembered exactly how it went down. There may have been a few normal failures in there and it may have take a few more rounds. Point is we did everything, healed him with all our resources, gave him an antidote, medicine checks, and still be needed to roll like a nat 15 to shake the poison and he never did.
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They're not overhauling the core number progression that the entire game works off of without an edition change, probably ever.
Also, a +41 is an extreme value for a level 20 creature. Are you sure your GM didn't just read something incorrectly?
A wasp swarm is a severe encounter for level 2s. If this bard made no effort to get out of the swarm, which is the only way they could have been hit 3 times, then that's kidn of on them for dying to a boss.
I’m not asking for an overhaul of the core numbers system, just a little more care when assigning DCs. A creature with a single hard save? Okay. A creature with multiple hard saves in a single action, and they can do it multiple times per round? Then that is problematic. When assigning off-the-cuff DCs, like calming down a crowd, it should be possible to make it without a nat 20.
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You can just post the adventure/enemy name in spoiler tag so we can check whether your GM didn't screw something up.
If this was Age of Ashes, that one had some wonky numbers here and there due to being written in parallel to the final rules, a classic issue the first AP has in a new system.
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I’m not asking for an overhaul of the core numbers system, just a little more care when assigning DCs. A creature with a single hard save? Okay. A creature with multiple hard saves in a single action, and they can do it multiple times per round? Then that is problematic. When assigning off-the-cuff DCs, like calming down a crowd, it should be possible to make it without a nat 20.They're not overhauling the core number progression that the entire game works off of without an edition change, probably ever.
Also, a +41 is an extreme value for a level 20 creature. Are you sure your GM didn't just read something incorrectly?
A wasp swarm is a severe encounter for level 2s. If this bard made no effort to get out of the swarm, which is the only way they could have been hit 3 times, then that's kidn of on them for dying to a boss.
The rulebook tells you what are DCs for each level, and the way PF2 works is that PCs have a chance to hit that DC unless nobody is trained in the given skill.
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So Paizo: I love your products, and I love playing in some of your games, but there are some issues I have found that crop up in Starfinder, and most recently pathfinder 2e, that are really making the experience difficult for me and my friends. And it mainly comes down to DCs that you set.
You see, back in pathfinder 1e, skills were not very tightly bound. That is to say, a level 13 character with full ranks in a skill could have anywhere from a +11 in that skill to a +53 based on attributes, items, and class abilities. Saves were similar, with a huge variety of range.
Starfinder limited this range a fair amount and Pathfinder 2e limited this range even more. So please take these new ranges into account when coming up with DCs.
I’ll throw you an example. I was playing a pathfinder 2e AP (for spoiler reasons I won’t say which one, nor will I give out too much info), but this boss character we fought at level 8 had a special ability to tie someone up with a DC 41 grapple check. 41. At level 9. The is, as far as I know, impossible for ANY PC to make at that level except on a nat 20. I know, because we had a lvl 9 fighter with max strength and mastered athletics and a magic item giving him a +1 item bonus and he was still at +20. Listen, I’m all for a challenging fight, but if it is impossible for ANY PC build to succeed on a check, then someone’s math might be off.
And this is not the only time I’ve seen this. In a different AP I’m in our bard just died at level 2 to a swarm creature that hit you with two DC 21 saves per action, and it could do that up to three times a round. Our bard died not to an unlucky nat 1, but to several DC 10 saves at level 2. DC 10->crit fail->boatload of poison damage. Next round->The same. Next round-> the same and he’s dead even through all the healing we could give. Our heroic bard died not to some great evil threat or demon but to a swarm of wasps that were way overpowered for a group of level 2 adventurers.
Listen, I don’t want to come here to...
You might want to share the AP. The reason being AoA is known to have some encounters out of whack due to early development, AV has some encounters you can run into early that are meant to be tackled later, etc. I'm not saying you're wrong but people would probably need more context to discuss.
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You can just post the adventure/enemy name in spoiler tag so we can check whether your GM didn't screw something up.
If this was Age of Ashes, that one had some wonky numbers here and there due to being written in parallel to the final rules, a classic issue the first AP has in a new system.
Last chance to avoid spoiler
Final boss. Can grapple you at a distance with their chain, and if you are pinned they can tie you up, DC 41 escape. Then they can grab a new chain as an action. Because their Athletics is so high that they crit on the grapple (going straight to pin) on like a 13 against our fighter or champion. We took to breaking the chains as the easiest way to free people)
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It's a level 10 creature, not 9.
It can grab from distance, but it cannot use its "wrap up" ability unless the foe is adjacent.
It has only 2 chains. Now, I can see where the problem is: the Escape DC should have been lower (it's not DC 41 btw, it's the result of Athletics check, and with +22 it can indeed end up at 41). The writer should have just gone with the CRB general rule that Escape DC is Athletics DC of restrainer (making it 32 and thus manageable).
Goof-ups like these happen in APs every now and then, as not every adventure writer is an expert in game design. It's been like this since forever, no need to adjust the entire framework to accommodate that.
My players have always been scared of bees... I think wasp swarms we're scarier in PF1.
I'm pretty sure I know which encounter the OP is referencing with the wasps, and I actually think it is fine. There's a fair bit of opportunity to spot the nest before triggering it. One group I ran threw it used Unseen Servant to just pick toss the nest into a nearby river. Another lit it on fire from afar and waited for the smoke and fire to do it's job.
If you trigger the fight, and decide to end your turn in the middle of the swarm for some reason, you'll have a bad time. But you can also run away and/or spread out. It is specified the thing only pursues so far. And at level 2 you aren't that much tougher than "a guy," and if a guy in real life stood there in a swarm of wasps I'd kind expect them to die too, to be honest. I imagine the bard may have been too enthralled by the old spell+inspire routine.
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Alright, I didn’t say IT was CR 9, I said WE were level 9.
First off, spoilers please, that’s too much info for people trying to avoiding spoilers IMO
Basically our turns went: two people would spend their full turn breaking the fighter out of chains (by sundering them) and saving him. Fighter would attack, healer would heal. If fighter ran away, monster would just step up to the next person, likely crit succeed on the Athletics check to grapple (going straight to pin) and we do the whole rigamaroll over again. We never had a round after we dealt with the chaff where someone was not pinned so we could all run away and get them away from the room.
Thirdly: Check the room they are in. There are chains everywhere that they can detach as an action (at least according to our GM). They have a doubling ring to make any chains they have magical.
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My players have always been scared of bees... I think wasp swarms we're scarier in PF1.
I'm pretty sure I know which encounter the OP is referencing with the wasps, and I actually think it is fine. There's a fair bit of opportunity to spot the nest before triggering it. One group I ran threw it used Unseen Servant to just pick toss the nest into a nearby river. Another lit it on fire from afar and waited for the smoke and fire to do it's job.
If you trigger the fight, and decide to end your turn in the middle of the swarm for some reason, you'll have a bad time. But you can also run away and/or spread out. It is specified the thing only pursues so far. And at level 2 you aren't that much tougher than "a guy," and if a guy in real life stood there in a swarm of wasps I'd kind expect them to die too, to be honest. I imagine the bard may have been too enthralled by the old spell+inspire routine.
We were prepared, (we bought four alchemists fires, as much as we could afford) we did spread out, we never started in the swarm. But it had an absurd move speed and the poison is what killed him after the swarm was already dead. It never three action got us but it hit us twice several times. What eventually killed the bard was that he went down at Wounded 3 from the poison.
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Except for initiative, PF2 does not pit rolls directly against rolls*, so I see this boss's ability as an error. As mentioned above, the DC should be 32 based on its +22 skill, when the PC is the one rolling that is.
I wonder if the encounter says PCs roll against the Athletics DC (32) and the GM mistook that as an Athletics roll (and landed a 19!). Having two d20s go against each other led to some wonky results in PF1, which is why PF2 only uses one roll (which still has an extreme amount of variance, somewhat tampered by Assurance).
*Now I'm curious how one would do arm-wrestling, though I vaguely recall it's less a matter of chance now in PF2 and it simply goes to the stronger person (or highest Athletics?).
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It's a level 10 creature, not 9.
It can grab from distance, but it cannot use its "wrap up" ability unless the foe is adjacent.
It has only 2 chains. Now, I can see where the problem is: the Escape DC should have been lower (it's not DC 41 btw, it's the result of Athletics check, and with +22 it can indeed end up at 41). The writer should have just gone with the CRB general rule that Escape DC is Athletics DC of restrainer (making it 32 and thus manageable).
Goof-ups like these happen in APs every now and then, as not every adventure writer is an expert in game design. It's been like this since forever, no need to adjust the entire framework to accommodate that.
Agents of Edgewatch was actually written at the same time as Age of Ashes (there were actually Age of Ashes authors whose due dates were way after mine), so most of the authors on both APs had playtest rules for the first half of the book and sections of the to-be CRB that were still being actively edited for the latter half.
Amongst other things, what I had intended the Skinner to do was Strike (0 MAP) > Grapple (-5 MAP) > Grapple [tie up] (-10 MAP), so that the best possible situation was that you were breaking out against her Athletics DC, and the more likely event being that you escape against an average DC 5 points below that. Grab instead of Grapple doesn't increase MAP and the generic Athletics check from the final published ability isn't actually called out as a Grapple check, though, so it does end up being much stronger than it was supposed to be.
There's other wonkiness that crept in there as it went through edit and development (like Heaven's Thunder being literally more than twice as strong as the original turnover), but it's a rough gig on editors, developers, and authors when they don't have final rules available and you've had a paradigm shift as drastic as PF1 to PF2.
In addition to the first two APs not having full and final rules available to the authors and developers, adventure design itself really shifted. By the end, optimized PF1 characters were performing so high above the expected baseline that it was pretty common to have encounters that were weighted much more aggressively than you should ever do in PF2 just to keep the adventures engaging. So the first two PF2 APs are a lot more aggressively tuned even without sliding math issues, just because PF1 had taught everyone that people want aggressively tuned adventures (the reality of course being more that people want challenging adventures, which PF2 is much better at providing without needing to scale up to Severe or Extreme equivalents.)
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It's a level 10 creature, not 9.
It can grab from distance, but it cannot use its "wrap up" ability unless the foe is adjacent.
It has only 2 chains. Now, I can see where the problem is: the Escape DC should have been lower (it's not DC 41 btw, it's the result of Athletics check, and with +22 it can indeed end up at 41). The writer should have just gone with the CRB general rule that Escape DC is Athletics DC of restrainer (making it 32 and thus manageable).
Goof-ups like these happen in APs every now and then, as not every adventure writer is an expert in game design. It's been like this since forever, no need to adjust the entire framework to accommodate that.
Agents of Edgewatch was actually written at the same time as Age of Ashes (there were actually Age of Ashes authors whose due dates were way after mine), so most of the authors on both APs had playtest rules for the first half of the book and sections of the to-be CRB that were still being actively edited for the latter half.
Amongst other things, what I had intended the Skinner to do was Strike (0 MAP) > Grapple (-5 MAP) > Grapple [tie up] (-10 MAP), so that the best possible situation was that you were breaking out against her Athletics DC, and the more likely event being that you escape against an average DC 5 points below that. Grab instead of Grapple doesn't increase MAP and the generic Athletics check from the final published ability isn't actually called out as a Grapple check, though, so it does end up being much stronger than it was supposed to be.
There's other wonkiness that crept in there as it went through edit and development (like Heaven's Thunder being literally more than twice as strong as the original turnover), but it's a rough gig on editors, developers, and authors when they don't have final rules available and you've had a paradigm shift as drastic as PF1 to PF2.
In addition to the first two APs not having full and final rules available to the authors and developers,...
Thanks for weighing in Mr. Sayre, and thanks for a bit of a peek behind the curtains. It does lead back to my original point though, that numbers are much more tightly bound in PF2 than in PF1, and I’d like to see that maybe respected a bit more. But I get it, you were dealing with an unfinished system. Just. . . I dunno, treat this as feedback from the fandom. Not just to the writers such as yourself but to the editors as well.
Is there any chance we might get some errata in future for some of the earlier APs so it is no longer “Did you roll a nat 20? No? You fail.”
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Our party of 5 handled that fight on level 8. It was super rough, tho.
Paizo doesn't errata APs, and original RoTR Xanesha remains the undisputed champion-ess of being so far ahead of the curve of CR system that it hurt. A lot.
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OP, did your higher level combat end in a TPK?
No, and I get what you are implying, but it still doesn’t feel good when you have the absolute best your character can be at a thing, and the GM still says ‘No, you fail no matter what you do. The only possible way you can succeed is by exploiting nat 20 rules.’
Feels kinda like someone saying ‘Here is the first place trophy. You will never be able to win it because I’ve rigged the game against you. NOW GO HAVE FUN!”
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OP, did your higher level combat end in a TPK?No, and I get what you are implying, but it still doesn’t feel good when you have the absolute best your character can be at a thing, and the GM still says ‘No, you fail no matter what you do. The only possible way you can succeed is by exploiting nat 20 rules.’
Feels kinda like someone saying ‘Here is the first place trophy. You will never be able to win it because I’ve rigged the game against you. NOW GO HAVE FUN!”
I'm just running off of the information in this thread, but that doesn't feel like it's quite a fair representation of the encounter in general. It is for how your table specifically had it happen, no doubt about that! But from the information here, the boss enemy needed to roll a 19 to set the DC at the point you just barely couldn't succeed without a nat-20. That's pretty standard for how the rest of the system does (and should) work - a higher-level boss rolling a 19 on something they care about should be pretty hard to meet. The issue here is that the mechanics being used are simply not quite appropriate for the system - as Michael Sayre mentioned, it was written without the full rules available, and things got lost along the way. If the original intent had ended up happening at your table, that DC 41 check would be DC 31 - much more manageable. It's clearly a flawed mechanic - there's a reason almost everything except for initiative goes against a flat DC from the opponent - but I don't think much can be taken away from it except that this very particular sort of mechanic shouldn't be used again.
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[...]The issue here is that the mechanics being used are simply not quite appropriate for the system - as Michael Sayre mentioned, it was written without the full rules available, and things got lost along the way. If the original intent had ended up happening at your table, that DC 41 check would be DC 31 - much more manageable. It's clearly a flawed mechanic - there's a reason almost everything except for initiative goes against a flat DC from the opponent - but I don't think much can be taken away from it except that this very particular sort of mechanic shouldn't be used again.
Pretty much, yeah. If we were to do the same monster today, she'd have a static DC 8 - 10 points lower than what VampByDay experienced and the Athletics check to tie the characters up would almost certainly be called out as a Grapple attempt so that it checks against MAP and reacts to any feats or abilities the players might have that care about being grabbed/grappled/restrained. Later adventures have continued to move towards more gentle power curves, fewer severe/extreme encounters, and the severe encounters that are kept in place being much better telegraphed.
(There is a group that really loves those high difficulty encounters and they seem to really like Edgewatch for being pretty brutal, but at the end of the day I intended it to be harder than it turned out it needed to be for this edition, and a sub-boss encounter and the final boss both ended up even more potent than I'd intended. So... It's a fair cop. There are portions of the adventure that I don't think are impossible but which are legitimately too difficult for an adventure that doesn't specifically advertise itself as having a high difficulty curve.)
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[...]The issue here is that the mechanics being used are simply not quite appropriate for the system - as Michael Sayre mentioned, it was written without the full rules available, and things got lost along the way. If the original intent had ended up happening at your table, that DC 41 check would be DC 31 - much more manageable. It's clearly a flawed mechanic - there's a reason almost everything except for initiative goes against a flat DC from the opponent - but I don't think much can be taken away from it except that this very particular sort of mechanic shouldn't be used again.Pretty much, yeah. If we were to do the same monster today, she'd have a static DC 8 - 10 points lower than what VampByDay experienced and the Athletics check to tie the characters up would almost certainly be called out as a Grapple attempt so that it checks against MAP and reacts to any feats or abilities the players might have that care about being grabbed/grappled/restrained. Later adventures have continued to move towards more gentle power curves, fewer severe/extreme encounters, and the severe encounters that are kept in place being much better telegraphed.
(There is a group that really loves those high difficulty encounters and they seem to really like Edgewatch for being pretty brutal, but at the end of the day I intended it to be harder than it turned out it needed to be for this edition, and a sub-boss encounter and the final boss both ended up even more potent than I'd intended. So... It's a fair cop. There are portions of the adventure that I don't think are impossible but which are legitimately too difficult for an adventure that doesn't specifically advertise itself as having a high difficulty curve.)
I definitely think it's been a move in a beneficial direction - it's definitely easier for people interested in high-difficulty encounters to scale the encounters up than it is for new players to recognize a difficult encounter and scale it down. I do just want to add that my original message there could've been taken as being heavily critical - that wasn't the intent! When something is being written and edited without the full rules available, and in what must surely have been a tumultuous time, it seems very easy for these sorts of things to sneak into the final publication. I'm glad that conclusions have been drawn from the mistakes in that time period, but just wanted to make sure that I wasn't coming across as being on the attack about it! :)
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Hey, I didn't know about Edgewatch being written without the full rules when I started this thread, and my other point still stands. Sometimes the DCs are unreasonably high, and I just wanted to point that out to the Paizo Staff.
Or, to address Leo's concerns above:
I play role playing games to be challenged and have fun. But if something is impossible except on a nat 20 it isn't fun, and I'm not being challenged. I'm okay with character deaths if the character is acting stupid or it is an epic fight with a boss battle or there were a couple lucky crits in there. But survival =/= fun. I've had fun character deaths where my character went out in a blaze of glory saving people and I've played PFS scenarios where I almost quit pathfinder even though my dude survived because the scenario sucked the fun out of everything. Survival is not the point. The point is having fun, and when the system doesn't let you hit the DC ever, or give you at least a moderately reasonable chance for survival, THEN is when it isn't fun for me.
So this particular instance didn't end up as it was supposed to because it was designed before the system came out. I didn't know that, and that's a fair defense. But I've seen other parts of the system where things are either impossible or almost impossible, and I just want to ask writers/editors to, every so often, take a break from what they are doing and ask "is this a reasonable, fun challenge?"
"Is it reasonable to repeatedly sting level 2 players with some really high DCs targeting different saves against a swarm that can hit them multiple times a round?"
"Is it reasonable that at level 7, the players will have master in this one skill to disarm this challenge?"
"Is it reasonable that players can hit this DC?"
If you want to make a challenge hard, I get that. But there is engaging hard, and there is "there is no way to win this unless we throw nothing but nat 20s." I'm just asking for a little bit of double checking your work to make sure it is the former and not the latter.
Thank you, everyone but especially Mr. Sayre for your time and giving me your consideration.
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So...you're taking a single wonky encounter written based on not-final rules and one fight where you didn't like the encounter difficulty as evidences of a systemic issue that's supposed to have Paizo alter their adventure writing modalities? I'm sorry, unless you can come up with multiple, prevalent and persistent examples of "I've seen other parts of the system where things are either impossible or almost impossible", it doesn't hold up.
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This is getting pretty contentious, not sure it's necessary. I empathize with the OPs having a bad time, and wanting to have fewer bad times in future.
VampByDay unfortunately, you are the victim of difficult design in early APs.
That's never not going to happen, but my understanding is that it's getting better as the editors and AP team get a better grasp on pacing PF2 as it's own game, rather than using instincts from PF1.
What you're asking for is already happening, but it's not going to retro-actively fix AoE. GMs often have to be aware of this stuff, so it's always worthwhile to say WTF and set a number to the DC by level if it seems wrong, it's quick to do in the moment and should yield decent results most of the time.
And you won't necessarily always be happy, because Pf2 is a slightly harder slightly more dangerous game than many in the d20 space.
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.Alright, I didn’t say IT was CR 9, I said WE were level 9.
First off, spoilers please, that’s too much info for people trying to avoiding spoilers IMO
** spoiler omitted **
Something I don't get. You mentioned a DC41 and we know it came from the opponent rolling a really high check (which is not how these things happen in the PF2 final rules).
So, those it happened to later on would face a different DC, one that could be 12 or more points lower than the first. Did the DC not change ?
Something I don't get. You mentioned a DC41 and we know it came from the opponent rolling a really high check (which is not how these things happen in the PF2 final rules).
It would only need to roll an 9 to get a DC of 41 (9 + 22 + 10), but as established before this particular monster is a bit broken due to rules mishaps (similar to Chauruka Butchers) so not very indicative of the AP design as a whole.
Early APs have been a bit hard IME and I'm glad that the new APs did tone down the difficulty a bit which makes the experience much smoother for tables like mine where the players are quite inexperienced.
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You see, back in pathfinder 1e, skills were not very tightly bound. That is to say, a level 13 character with full ranks in a skill could have anywhere from a +11 in that skill to a +53 based on attributes, items, and class abilities. Saves were similar, with a huge variety of range.
I hear people say stuff like this all the time.
A +53 in a skill at level 13?I know glibness gave a +20 to Bluff. But that was very specific, and it was a 3rd level spell.
But when I hear people say stuff like (and this is something I've actually heard), "My level 13 character has a 57 AC. PF1 is so broken." 99 times out of 10, they're stacking something that doesn't stack. Or using an ability they can't use (like someone casting a spell on them that's self-only).
Not to derail your PF2 discussion. But +53 is not in a "range" a character can get at 13th level.
You see, back in pathfinder 1e, skills were not very tightly bound. That is to say, a level 13 character with full ranks in a skill could have anywhere from a +11 in that skill to a +53 based on attributes, items, and class abilities. Saves were similar, with a huge variety of range.
I hear people say stuff like this all the time.
A +53 in a skill at level 13?I know glibness gave a +20 to Bluff. But that was very specific, and it was a 3rd level spell.
But when I hear people say stuff like (and this is something I've actually heard), "My level 13 character has a 57 AC. PF1 is so broken." 99 times out of 10, they're stacking something that doesn't stack. Or using an ability they can't use (like someone casting a spell on them that's self-only).Not to derail your PF2 discussion. But +53 is not in a "range" a character can get at 13th level.
My Bard was having +35 in a lot of skills at level 11 and I easily see how to get to +38 at level 13 with just the CRB. So, +53 is not out of range of what you can get at that level. You can go far above that.
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You see, back in pathfinder 1e, skills were not very tightly bound. That is to say, a level 13 character with full ranks in a skill could have anywhere from a +11 in that skill to a +53 based on attributes, items, and class abilities. Saves were similar, with a huge variety of range.
I hear people say stuff like this all the time.
A +53 in a skill at level 13?I know glibness gave a +20 to Bluff. But that was very specific, and it was a 3rd level spell.
But when I hear people say stuff like (and this is something I've actually heard), "My level 13 character has a 57 AC. PF1 is so broken." 99 times out of 10, they're stacking something that doesn't stack. Or using an ability they can't use (like someone casting a spell on them that's self-only).Not to derail your PF2 discussion. But +53 is not in a "range" a character can get at 13th level.
Say, Sorcerer minmaxing Bluff at level 13:
ranks +13
stat +8
class skill +3
skill focus +6
racial +2 (racial)
trait +1 (trait)
deceitful +4 (untyped)
pennon +4 (enhancement)
ioun stone +5 (competence)
+3 deceptive weapon +3 (untyped)
All stack. Damn, just +49, but I'm sure I'd find something alchemical with +4 somewhere if I cba.
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You see, back in pathfinder 1e, skills were not very tightly bound. That is to say, a level 13 character with full ranks in a skill could have anywhere from a +11 in that skill to a +53 based on attributes, items, and class abilities. Saves were similar, with a huge variety of range.
I hear people say stuff like this all the time.
A +53 in a skill at level 13?I know glibness gave a +20 to Bluff. But that was very specific, and it was a 3rd level spell.
But when I hear people say stuff like (and this is something I've actually heard), "My level 13 character has a 57 AC. PF1 is so broken." 99 times out of 10, they're stacking something that doesn't stack. Or using an ability they can't use (like someone casting a spell on them that's self-only).Not to derail your PF2 discussion. But +53 is not in a "range" a character can get at 13th level.
Lore Oracle with headband of mental +4 Int/Charisma. 24 Int (+7) (from the revelation that ups your Int), 13 ranks, class skill (+3) Skill focus: Knowledge-Arcana (+6 for more than 10 tanks). Gnome obsession +2 racial. Think on it (+10 competence after failing the check), focused trance (+20 circumstance), +61. Is it specific? Yes. Is it doable? also yes. Does it take 2 minutes to perform, also also yes, but it is still something PF1 players could do. As opposed to PF2 where no amount of finagling will get you a bonus anywhere near that.
So not doable in combat? So not comparable to the combat situations you presented?
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So not doable in combat? So not comparable to the combat situations you presented?
Mine's easily, just one 10 mins/level buff there, nothing special. And you don't use Bluff in combat, the point was that Ched thought such bonuses are impossible to achieve in PF1, whereas they are easily obtainable ... as long as you have the necessary system mastery and encyclopedic knowledge of 20k various items, spells, feats, traits etc.
Which was, tangentially, PF1s biggest issue, setting system masters so far ahead of casuals while driving GMs nuts as they tried to present the party with a meaningful challenge where some people had +20 to a skill and thought that's a solid number but then comes a minmaxer with +45 and there goes the whole math.
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In a PF1 game right now that has that problem. Player A is decently invested in perception and Player B has huge modifiers to detecting traps. Any trap designed to challenge the first player is autodetected by the second and any trap designed to challenge the second can't be detected by anyone else in the party.
Though while the scale is a lot less absurd, I feel like that's part of what's going on in the OP's second example too. The wasp's reflex DC is a manageable-but-risky challenge for a same level character fully optimized for reflex saves.
Which means even characters with good reflex saves (but not min-maxed) are more likely to fail the check than not. Doubly so when we start dealing with lower level characters.
That's not a great balance point, imo.
TNG, which has nothing to do with the OP's combat situations.
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TNG, which has nothing to do with the OP's combat situations.
I could get easily to +50ish in Escape Artist if you want me to. The OP's point was that PF1 math is all over the place, in general, not just in relation to skills you use in combat. I can minmax any PF1 skill to that point.
And I'm not arguing against the OP, I'm actually arguing for them - what I'm arguing against is Ched's claim that you can't hit +50ish with a skill in PF1 without making any errors. You can, and I've shown how.
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So not doable in combat? So not comparable to the combat situations you presented?
Only if you are being extremely limited. My initial thing was ‘please don’t set the DCs so high that we can’t possibly make them, or it is very difficult to beat them.” Then I proceeded to give two examples that happened to be combat related. Spoiler alert, if I had been hit with an impossible DC outside of combat, I would be a similar level of upset.
DC 21 for a level 4 enemy isn't really that high. A level 4 PC blaster caster would have DC 20 on everything.
The problem is that it's an enemy two levels higher, which is going to pose a solid threat from the fact that it's two levels higher.
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DC 21 for a level 4 enemy isn't really that high. A level 4 PC blaster caster would have DC 20 on everything.
The problem is that it's an enemy two levels higher, which is going to pose a solid threat from the fact that it's two levels higher.
This has been covered before. The problem is one action causes 2 fairly difficult saves, two different types, both of which do double damage on a crit failure, and they can do that multiple times a round. When you figure out how hard a monster is, don’t just look at the saving throw number. It is the number of saves, how often they are called for, and how often the monster can do it.
Multiples of 2 if you move to make them move to come to you. And double damage on a crit is the nature of the game. The wonky nature of the other fight is wonky. But the swarm is kinda spot on for a severe level 2 fight.
I think I've lost the thread here. What's the actual complaint about for the wasps? It it supposed to be overtuned for a level 4 monster or is it that you shouldn't fight monsters that high above you?
I'm also not sure what this whole PF1 skill bonus thing has to do with it either way.
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I think I've lost the thread here. What's the actual complaint about for the wasps? It it supposed to be overtuned for a level 4 monster or is it that you shouldn't fight monsters that high above you?
I'm also not sure what this whole PF1 skill bonus thing has to do with it either way.
My original complaint is that some monsters don’t scale well. Something that is fine for a level 4 party to fight might be way overtooled for a party of level 2s, where as a different CR 4 monster might be much more reasonable as a tough fight against level 2s. What I asked was to just look beyond the CR and go: “Oh, that might be unreasonable for a Party of level 2s despite the CR system.”
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DC 21 for a level 4 enemy isn't really that high.
It's a little bit high. Even min-maxing for reflex saves a level 4 character can only pass it on a 9. Which means everyone who's not a reflex save specialist is probably going to fail more often than not.
And that gets even worse when you start putting them up against lower level parties, which again is really common in PF2.
The end result is that characters who are ostensiby 'pretty good' at something end up feeling a bit incompetent because the baseline is set so high.
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This has been covered before. The problem is one action causes 2 fairly difficult saves, two different types, both of which do double damage on a crit failure, and they can do that multiple times a round. When you figure out how hard a monster is, don’t just look at the saving throw number. It is the number of saves, how often they are called for, and how often the monster can do it.DC 21 for a level 4 enemy isn't really that high. A level 4 PC blaster caster would have DC 20 on everything.
The problem is that it's an enemy two levels higher, which is going to pose a solid threat from the fact that it's two levels higher.
As a side note, you don't double damage on critical failure against poison.
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As a side note, you don't double damage on critical failure against poison.This has been covered before. The problem is one action causes 2 fairly difficult saves, two different types, both of which do double damage on a crit failure, and they can do that multiple times a round. When you figure out how hard a monster is, don’t just look at the saving throw number. It is the number of saves, how often they are called for, and how often the monster can do it.DC 21 for a level 4 enemy isn't really that high. A level 4 PC blaster caster would have DC 20 on everything.
The problem is that it's an enemy two levels higher, which is going to pose a solid threat from the fact that it's two levels higher.
Crit fail of poison is to go to stage 2 directly. Stage 1->1d6 poison damage.
Stage 2-> 2d6 poison damage.Effectively it does. I guess it doesn’t if you crit fail at stage 2