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Grognard you didnt mention attacking through windows but other people did. The also I am going with the information provided in this thread, and no one had said "hey there is a map that clearly shows the location and all the openings to the building". Even then, there is such a thing as a roof, which might block line of sight to the swarm depending on how its described, regardless of how its drawn on the map.
Also, just because you have 4 players does not mean that one will succeed. That is not how odds work. Specially when not all players roll do to not having the skill. Also you yourself said it's a DC19 check, now you are saying it's a DC9 check, pick a number it can't be both. Also it doesn't matter what you think it's common enough to drop to the DC to 9, but what the GM thinks is common unless told otherwise by the books. The books did not say that the DC is 9 and so the GM is free to assume it's the same DC as literally all other monsters.
The crab thing is showing how easy it is to just die from swarm enemies at low level. They have a high chance to hit, you have a low chance to resist persistent/poison damage.
Finally we are talking about pathfinder not real life. If it were real life you could smoke out the wasps such that they are effectively harmless. But that is not a thing in pathfinder, so GMs or players won't do it. Specting them to do IRL stuff when it's not mentioned in the book just does not work.
Being able to do things that aren't explicitly scripted into the game is why people play TTRPGs over video games.
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"A DC 19 Knowledge check is not impossible no. But guess what it is perfectly reasonable for a group to fail it. Specially given that not everyone has training in nature,aka perfectly reasonable to fail"
Do you just half read things before responding? Go back and read my statements within context of the two comments... The point isn't that someone can't fail, the point is that across a group of 4 it is quite likely someone would have succeeded EVEN if the GM had ignored that the DC should be 9 for something as commonplace as wasps and decided asking npcs if they didn't know was a no go.
My point is that it isn't a foregone conclusion that they would fail because the creature is of a higher level (again, ignoring that a swarm of wasps should have had a DC adjustment for common beavioural traits and weaknesses, they are wasps).
I certainly agree with your point that a wasp swarm should be an easier DC because they're quite common. But the GM didn't do that apparently. So given the DC 19 that the players had to deal with, what were their odds like?
Let's say 4 PCs, one of which is a druid or cleric with Wis 18 and Trained in Nature, and another one with a Wis 14 Trained in Nature, and the other two at 12 and 10 and both Untrained (since hey, this party needs to cover all the skills, no point in spending your points on skills other people will be better at anyway).
If they all do checks the individual odds are:
W18, T: +8 vs DC 19 gives 5/45/45/5 odds of CS/S/F/CF
W14, T: +6 vs DC 19 gives 5/35/45/15 odds of CS/S/F/CF
W12, U: +1 vs DC 19 gives 5/10/50/35 odds of CS/S/F/CF
W10, U: +0 vs DC 19 gives 5/5/50/40 odds of CS/S/F/CF
Clearly any attempt at this check by the latter two characters is a hail Mary and more likely to result in disinformation. Supposing only the trained characters tried, the odds of no success/crit success are 0.5 * 0.6 = 0.3, so in 30% of cases they don't get anything. If the other two try the hail Mary it becomes 0.5 * 0.6 * 0.85 * 0.9 = 0.225, or 22.5%. So while that's unlucky, it's really not that unusually unlucky.
It worsens a bit if you factor in the possibility of the first characters getting a crit failure with misinformation that is believed, so that the others don't try. And any misinformation could make the encounter more dangerous because people waste time on useless or bad tactics.
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Being able to do things that aren't explicitly scripted into the game is why people play TTRPGs over video games.People usually limit themselves to the actions in the rules. Specially at early levels when it's more risky. Not to mention that it requires players knowing about it, wanting to do it, and the GM allowing it with a reasonable DC.
If any one of those 3 fails (not unlikely) it's not happening. No matter how much the boards want to say its possible.
Besides the game should not be based on players coming up with random abilities. Some times its cool. But if it's the only way to actually do anything might as well play a rules light game.
Opening a window is not a particularly random ability and it is weird that you keep painting it like one.
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Opening a window is not a particularly random ability and it is weird that you keep painting it like one.Being able to do things that aren't explicitly scripted into the game is why people play TTRPGs over video games.People usually limit themselves to the actions in the rules. Specially at early levels when it's more risky. Not to mention that it requires players knowing about it, wanting to do it, and the GM allowing it with a reasonable DC.
If any one of those 3 fails (not unlikely) it's not happening. No matter how much the boards want to say its possible.
Besides the game should not be based on players coming up with random abilities. Some times its cool. But if it's the only way to actually do anything might as well play a rules light game.
Maybe it’s got those two push-ins at the bottom that have to both be pushed all the way before you can move it?
I hate those.
Being able to do things that aren't explicitly scripted into the game is why people play TTRPGs over video games.People usually limit themselves to the actions in the rules. Specially at early levels when it's more risky. Not to mention that it requires players knowing about it, wanting to do it, and the GM allowing it with a reasonable DC.
If any one of those 3 fails (not unlikely) it's not happening. No matter how much the boards want to say its possible.
Besides the game should not be based on players coming up with random abilities. Some times its cool. But if it's the only way to actually do anything might as well play a rules light game.
I tend to disagree with this design philosophy.
When you build a party, you should try to handle as much as possible. I'm pretty sure you'd consider it normal for a party to have healing or a tough frontline. So why a strong Recall Knowledge should be "optional".Because by making it completely optional, you basically make it useless. Why investing in Recall Knowledge if it can never save you? Just bring another Fighter in the party and it'll help more.
Also, even if it is super tough, the current situation is one you can win even without a successfull RK check. And even if you lose, it's a situation you can escape. So, there are many things allowing a party with a lack of Recall Knowledge to survive.
And ultimately, it's a situation where you have a complete mastery of the enemy and the environment. If your party doesn't know how to handle that in any other way than "Let's roll initiative!", then it's on them. I've very often seen parties trivializing such fights with a proper preparation (I'd allow smoking the nest, for example, as it's a proper way to deal with wasps).
In my opinion, the main issue of this encounter is that a nest of wasps doesn't look like a tough encounter. So I can easily see players disregarding it until they start taking d8s of damage. If there was a proper warning beforehand ("These wasps killed PCs") I'm pretty sure everyone would deal with them properly.
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It was also asserted that the Wasp swarm has higher initiative than the party could possibly achieve, which simply isn't true. It only had +10 perception. An 18 dex rogue (the class sneaking in for the example, mind you) would match that a +2 circumstance bonus for cover, which should absolutely have applied here. They could potentially be an expert, and it would be reasonable to give them great cover as well, so they could potentially be +4 higher.
Not only does that mean the rogue should have even or better odds of winning initiative, it means that even of the wasp won the rogue should have had a 55% chance of starting the fight unobserved. At which point you get into Spidey sense scenarios, but bare minimum the wasp would have needed to start spending actions Seeking before it could attack anyone.
That AP has plenty of problematic encounters, but this wasp fight really wasn't one of them.
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Nope. It started directly with the Rogue and unluckily for the close-by Witch took them in their area too. The Witch went down. The Bard healed them. The Witch and Rogue fled, leaving the Bard behind. The Wasps Swarm then attacked the closest creature, who was the Bard.
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Being able to do things that aren't explicitly scripted into the game is why people play TTRPGs over video games.
People usually limit themselves to the actions in the rules.
I laughed at this line. My wife and a housemate, who are players in my campaign, asked why I laughed. I read them the above and they laughed, too. They are creative and will find solutions outside common abilities. My wife went on to describe exploits that she found in the computer game Elder Scrolls Online that probably were not scripted.
... Specially at early levels when it's more risky. Not to mention that it requires players knowing about it, wanting to do it, and the GM allowing it with a reasonable DC.
If any one of those 3 fails (not unlikely) it's not happening. No matter how much the boards want to say its possible.
Besides the game should not be based on players coming up with random abilities. Some times its cool. But if it's the only way to actually do anything might as well play a rules light game.
Currently, my players in Ironfang Invasion are trying to rescue the villagers enslaved by the Ironfang Legion in the starting village Phaendar. They are 12th level between the 3rd and 4th modules, so they are not in scripted territory. Except that the adventure path planned for them to liberate Phaendar in Part 2 of the 6th module, so I have a map and creatures. I dropped some of the creatures to make their task closer to 12th level, but the slavemaster and the commander are full level, 14th and 15th respectively. And the conquered village contains 208 troops, grouped into 13 9th-level troop units.
They planned a caper rather than an assault. I love when the players mix other genres into the game. They scouted the newly-walled Fort Phaendar in Pest Form, with Stealth checks to avoid the keen eye of the slavemaster, and used a Dig-Widget to dig a 130-foot tunnel into the slave enclosure in a mere two days due to good Craft checks. The villagers are entering a house in the enclosure used as a cookhouse for breakfast and being directed to the tunnel in its root cellar, calmly and orderly due to the successful Diplomacy of two party members who used to live in Phaendar. The slavemaster has just noticed that the slaves are not leaving the cookhouse.
I think this is glorious.
I tend to disagree with this [limited-ability] design philosophy.
When you build a party, you should try to handle as much as possible. I'm pretty sure you'd consider it normal for a party to have healing or a tough frontline. So why a strong Recall Knowledge should be "optional".
Because by making it completely optional, you basically make it useless. Why investing in Recall Knowledge if it can never save you? Just bring another Fighter in the party and it'll help more.
Also, even if it is super tough, the current situation is one you can win even without a successfull RK check. And even if you lose, it's a situation you can escape. So, there are many things allowing a party with a lack of Recall Knowledge to survive.
In my example with the Centipede Swarm all the party members were trained in Nature. Identifying the centipede swarm was a DC 18 Nature check. I had held a Session Zero and explained to my players that the first module would be about the Ironfang Legion invading Phaendar and them having to hide and protect refugees in the fey-inhabited Fangwood forest. Thus, all the PCs were trained in Nature, Stealth, and Survival.
And ultimately, it's a situation where you have a complete mastery of the enemy and the environment. If your party doesn't know how to handle that in any other way than "Let's roll initiative!", then it's on them. I've very often seen parties trivializing such fights with a proper preparation (I'd allow smoking the nest, for example, as it's a proper way to deal with wasps).
In my opinion, the main issue of this encounter is that a nest of wasps doesn't look like a tough encounter. So I can easily see players disregarding it until they start taking d8s of damage. If there was a proper warning beforehand ("These wasps killed PCs") I'm pretty sure everyone would deal with them properly.
I don't own the module with the mission to exterminate the Wasp Swarm. Nevertheless, the PCs were sent by a local village on this mission, right? Why did the village choose four 2nd-level adventures who were ignorant about wasps? Surely they had access to a few 2nd-level hunters who knew how to handle nature?
My players and their characters ask questions like these. And will interrogate the villagers for details before accepting the mission. By the way, my wife asked a question: is the building with the wasps valuable? If not, burn it to the ground.
And a bigger issue in design philosophy is that Pathfinder 2nd Edition requires better tactics than kick in the door and roll for initiative. The monsters tend to win in brute-force combat, since many of them are brutes. Thus, the GM ought to encourage the players to try out tactical solutions. They need practice in tactics.
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I think a document with assorted post-publication notes for APs isn't really such a weird idea. PF1 APs tended to get picked up by groups years after publication, this isn't some flavor of the month product where an oversight quickly becomes irrelevant.
It could be a relatively free-form sort of document, it wouldn't need to go through the sort of difficult process that errata has to go through. Errata to core rules is really hard, because it has to be consistent with lots of other published bits and not cause text to flow to different pages (causing page references in other books to be invalidated). A PDF with few pages of author commentary on various bits and bobs that is quite contained for the AP on the other hand would not be bound by such harsh requirements.
A key question of course is how to get this document to the attention of the intended audience, but I don't think that's insurmountable either; it could be appended to the PFS chronicle sheet document.
You know, this is actually probably a fantastic idea for Pathfinder Infinite, and you could get some money off of your own experiences. Something like a GM guide saying here are ways to fix encounters etc
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It was also asserted that the Wasp swarm has higher initiative than the party could possibly achieve, which simply isn't true. It only had +10 perception. An 18 dex rogue (the class sneaking in for the example, mind you) would match that a +2 circumstance bonus for cover, which should absolutely have applied here. They could potentially be an expert, and it would be reasonable to give them great cover as well, so they could potentially be +4
Sorry, what I meant is: the wasp swarm had an initiative of +10. The highest the party can achieve at level 2, assuming a Druid with 18 init (something we DID NOT HAVE) I guess is +10. Our highest initiative was like, +6 from the rogue so it is highly likely that the wasp swarm would beat us, which it did.
Also, to all those saying we should have run away, the swarm has a fly speed of fifty, which we saw it use.. Most PCs had a move speed of 25. There is NO way to know about the sixty foot limitation. Should we have cheated and looked at the scenario before hand? Psychically intuited the limitation? We saw it could outrun us and concluded that running away was impossible.
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Fly speed of 40
Mathmuse, we both agree that you and your players are more creative than mosts. But by that very token most people are not that creative.
We all agree better tactics might have helped. But clearly this group tried some tactics and had bad rolls.
My players are creative, but they aren't all the same players. I used to run games in suburban Maryland and now run games in upstate New York.
Right now, my wife is playing an online computer game with a former player in my Rise of Runelords and Jade Regent campaigns back in Maryland, so I asked him via their Discord chat. He says that most players are more creative than the GM gives them credit for. The GM has to open up to their ideas.
I nurture players. Some blossom into creative roleplayers. GMing for such players is loads of fun.
And nurturing sometimes includes protecting their characters from bad luck, though at other times I favor the unexpectedly difficult challenge. The witch character dropping before her first action against the wasp swarm is the kind of disappointment I try to avoid. I would gone easier on them during the first round, "The wasp swarm's first action was invisible to you, a Seek action to check for hostiles. Then it moved and used Swarming Stings. That's all three actions, so no more Swarming Stings this round." Giving the players a taste of the Wasp Swarm's capabilities after they failed their Recall Knowledge checks would give them an opportunity to invent tactics.
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I think we are getting off track from my main idea here. It’s not about one wasp encounter. It isn’t about one boss. It is about the fact that I’m asking Paizo writers/editors to pay a bit more attention to encounters.
For low level parties going up against a single, higher-level boss, like the wasps, make sure that your encounter scales well. Some monsters that are fine for a level 4 party that have access to 2nd level spells and a fair amount of gold will devastate low-level parties without those resources. (((This is hardly a new thing in Pathfinder. One of my pet peeves in PF1 used to be creatures with blindness/deafness before the party could get access to ways of removing it. Or perma level drain before someone had access to restoration.))) Just. . . Check your numbers is all I’m asking.
The other thing I was saying was along the same lines. When making a dude with unique abilities, make sure their abilities don’t put them outside of the capabilities for PFS of that level. The boss I mentioned in the OP is hardly the only example. I’ve seen monsters that have a save bonus EQUAL to a PC’s spell DC in one save (monster level=PC level +3, and then special buffs on top of that). I’m sure it made sense to the writer at the time with the idea ‘He’s extra good against X kind of magic, I’ll give him a bonus against that’ without realizing it made them unstoppable in that one save. Sure going against someone’s good save is a poor idea, but let’s face it, a 2 should still fail, and a 10 shouldn’t crit succeed. I don’t know anyone who would define that as ‘fair.’
That’s all I was asking, and I don’t think that’s too much of an ask. Just, stop and double check the encounter to see how it works. See if the numbers you are throwing around are in the vicinity of what the PCs can reasonably be expected to pull off. If the PC is going to be poisoned to death unless they roll a 17 or better on the die AND they are taking constant damage from another source, maybe that encounter needs to be rethought. A few lower-level monsters instead of one big boss.
So, listen, if you beat the wasp swarm, and you think I am ‘the suxorz newb’ and am ‘bad at the game’ and a complaining little so-and-so, maybe this isn’t the conversation for you. My basic idea is to convey to Paizo: hey, please double-check your encounters. I’ve noticed some are problematic, and not fun, encounters. Maybe keep a closer eye out for that stuff.
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I think that "authors should be more mindful with encounter design" is an easier ask than "monster math should be recalculated." That said, I believe that many modules and APs are handled by freelancers who may have different ideas of encounter difficulty and monster knowledge (it might not always be to the fore of everyone's mind that a will-o'-the-wisp could potentially be thrown up against a group who have very few ways to detect it, for example). On top of that, the newer modules seem to be handling this much better than the earlier ones. Strength of Thousands, for instance, seems to have hit that sweet spot for many of my players.
I also think that it's always going to be a bit difficult to fully catch every problematic encounter versus match-up. As always, a good GM skill to have is to be able to adjust and accomodate your games so that everyone has a good time, even if that means slapping a weak trait on a tough fight or even redesigning one that doesn't feel fair versus your group.
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I think they have been getting better with encounter design. But as far as swarms go, I think players should be willing to run if they don't have the AoE to deal with it. Swarms can be nasty to the unprepared. You have to take off if you're not ready.
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I think they have been getting better with encounter design. But as far as swarms go, I think players should be willing to run if they don't have the AoE to deal with it. Swarms can be nasty to the unprepared. You have to take off if you're not ready.
I agree that regroup and reassess should be in everyone's toolkit regardless of play experience. I know that not many people play with that in mind, but in a game with prepared casters and the ability to swap out relevant talismans, it should be more commonplace.
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I think they have been getting better with encounter design. But as far as swarms go, I think players should be willing to run if they don't have the AoE to deal with it. Swarms can be nasty to the unprepared. You have to take off if you're not ready.I agree that regroup and reassess should be in everyone's toolkit regardless of play experience. I know that not many people play with that in mind, but in a game with prepared casters and the ability to swap out relevant talismans, it should be more commonplace.
I know we encountered a swarm unprepared at low level. We ran, came back the next day with AoE, then we beat the swarm fairly easy. My party had no problem doing so.
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I think that "authors should be more mindful with encounter design" is an easier ask than "monster math should be recalculated." That said, I believe that many modules and APs are handled by freelancers who may have different ideas of encounter difficulty and monster knowledge (it might not always be to the fore of everyone's mind that a will-o'-the-wisp could potentially be thrown up against a group who have very few ways to detect it, for example). On top of that, the newer modules seem to be handling this much better than the earlier ones. Strength of Thousands, for instance, seems to have hit that sweet spot for many of my players.
I also think that it's always going to be a bit difficult to fully catch every problematic encounter versus match-up. As always, a good GM skill to have is to be able to adjust and accomodate your games so that everyone has a good time, even if that means slapping a weak trait on a tough fight or even redesigning one that doesn't feel fair versus your group.
The GM here was making things unduly hard compared to how the encounter was written.
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It was also asserted that the Wasp swarm has higher initiative than the party could possibly achieve, which simply isn't true. It only had +10 perception. An 18 dex rogue (the class sneaking in for the example, mind you) would match that a +2 circumstance bonus for cover, which should absolutely have applied here. They could potentially be an expert, and it would be reasonable to give them great cover as well, so they could potentially be +4Sorry, what I meant is: the wasp swarm had an initiative of +10. The highest the party can achieve at level 2, assuming a Druid with 18 init (something we DID NOT HAVE) I guess is +10. Our highest initiative was like, +6 from the rogue so it is highly likely that the wasp swarm would beat us, which it did.
Also, to all those saying we should have run away, the swarm has a fly speed of fifty, which we saw it use.. Most PCs had a move speed of 25. There is NO way to know about the sixty foot limitation. Should we have cheated and looked at the scenario before hand? Psychically intuited the limitation? We saw it could outrun us and concluded that running away was impossible.
That is PF1 thinking. In PF2 it will get you killed.
Retreat is always the best option when outgunned. That doing so in PF1 was suicidal was a big flaw of the PF1 system.
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I think we are getting off track from my main idea here. It’s not about one wasp encounter. It isn’t about one boss. It is about the fact that I’m asking Paizo writers/editors to pay a bit more attention to encounters.
For low level parties going up against a single, higher-level boss, like the wasps, make sure that your encounter scales well. Some monsters that are fine for a level 4 party that have access to 2nd level spells and a fair amount of gold will devastate low-level parties without those resources. (((This is hardly a new thing in Pathfinder. One of my pet peeves in PF1 used to be creatures with blindness/deafness before the party could get access to ways of removing it. Or perma level drain before someone had access to restoration.))) Just. . . Check your numbers is all I’m asking.
The other thing I was saying was along the same lines. When making a dude with unique abilities, make sure their abilities don’t put them outside of the capabilities for PFS of that level. The boss I mentioned in the OP is hardly the only example. I’ve seen monsters that have a save bonus EQUAL to a PC’s spell DC in one save (monster level=PC level +3, and then special buffs on top of that). I’m sure it made sense to the writer at the time with the idea ‘He’s extra good against X kind of magic, I’ll give him a bonus against that’ without realizing it made them unstoppable in that one save. Sure going against someone’s good save is a poor idea, but let’s face it, a 2 should still fail, and a 10 shouldn’t crit succeed. I don’t know anyone who would define that as ‘fair.’
That’s all I was asking, and I don’t think that’s too much of an ask. Just, stop and double check the encounter to see how it works. See if the numbers you are throwing around are in the vicinity of what the PCs can reasonably be expected to pull off. If the PC is going to be poisoned to death unless they roll a 17 or better on the die AND they are taking constant damage from another source, maybe that encounter needs to be...
Who says they don't ?
They are aware of past problems and have adapted writing guidelines to avoid them, as Michael explained.
I do not want them to make encounters so easy that even an unprepared party with no shared tactics just hacks them to pieces.
I want such a party to realize it's in over its head and flee the encounter post haste.
Or have a real risk of dying if they decided to stay and fight the obviously superior foe.
Of course, all of this relies on the GM not trying their best to kill the party. GMs too need to learn that we're not in PF1 anymore. TPKs are a very real threat in PF2.
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Also, to all those saying we should have run away, the swarm has a fly speed of fifty, which we saw it use.. Most PCs had a move speed of 25. There is NO way to know about the sixty foot limitation.
I think it's a common misconception: Thinking that the monsters will follow you to the other side of the earth. Most monsters are doing their things when a bunch of PCs come to them. Once the PCs start to flee, monsters don't have much incentive to follow them. First, unless you have attacks of opportunity, you need a pretty high speed to be able to reach a fleeing PC and strike once per round. Then, at second round of fleeing, your PCs should be at 150 feet from the start of the fight, which is pretty far away. I hardly see wasps getting that far from their nest. I actually hardly see anything going that far away outside of high speed intelligent monsters with a strong desire to kill (dragons and fiends mostly).
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The GM here was making things unduly hard compared to how the encounter was written.I think that "authors should be more mindful with encounter design" is an easier ask than "monster math should be recalculated." That said, I believe that many modules and APs are handled by freelancers who may have different ideas of encounter difficulty and monster knowledge (it might not always be to the fore of everyone's mind that a will-o'-the-wisp could potentially be thrown up against a group who have very few ways to detect it, for example). On top of that, the newer modules seem to be handling this much better than the earlier ones. Strength of Thousands, for instance, seems to have hit that sweet spot for many of my players.
I also think that it's always going to be a bit difficult to fully catch every problematic encounter versus match-up. As always, a good GM skill to have is to be able to adjust and accomodate your games so that everyone has a good time, even if that means slapping a weak trait on a tough fight or even redesigning one that doesn't feel fair versus your group.
I just want to note that I don't disagree. A GM ruling against the players when the odds are already stacked against them can turn Severe encounters into Extreme ones, especially if players go in expecting the rules to function normally (like windows being able to be looked through). I disagree with the OP's general premise that this would require monster numbers to be rebalanced.
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Also, to all those saying we should have run away, the swarm has a fly speed of fifty, which we saw it use.. Most PCs had a move speed of 25. There is NO way to know about the sixty foot limitation.I think it's a common misconception: Thinking that the monsters will follow you to the other side of the earth. Most monsters are doing their things when a bunch of PCs come to them. Once the PCs start to flee, monsters don't have much incentive to follow them. First, unless you have attacks of opportunity, you need a pretty high speed to be able to reach a fleeing PC and strike once per round. Then, at second round of fleeing, your PCs should be at 150 feet from the start of the fight, which is pretty far away. I hardly see wasps getting that far from their nest. I actually hardly see anything going that far away outside of high speed intelligent monsters with a strong desire to kill (dragons and fiends mostly).
The problem IMO comes from many GMs, and sometimes writers, who do play monsters and NPCs this way, with To the death strategies that just make no sense unless all encounters are supposed to only be attempts to kill the PCs, common sense and roleplaying be damned.
The problem IMO comes from many GMs, and sometimes writers, who do play monsters and NPCs this way, with To the death strategies that just make no sense unless all encounters are supposed to only be attempts to kill the PCs, common sense and roleplaying be damned.Also, to all those saying we should have run away, the swarm has a fly speed of fifty, which we saw it use.. Most PCs had a move speed of 25. There is NO way to know about the sixty foot limitation.I think it's a common misconception: Thinking that the monsters will follow you to the other side of the earth. Most monsters are doing their things when a bunch of PCs come to them. Once the PCs start to flee, monsters don't have much incentive to follow them. First, unless you have attacks of opportunity, you need a pretty high speed to be able to reach a fleeing PC and strike once per round. Then, at second round of fleeing, your PCs should be at 150 feet from the start of the fight, which is pretty far away. I hardly see wasps getting that far from their nest. I actually hardly see anything going that far away outside of high speed intelligent monsters with a strong desire to kill (dragons and fiends mostly).
I highly disagree. If the party is running away, most GMs will find any valid reason to avoid killing a PC. At that stage, continuing with the fight is funny to noone. And if the GM starts pursuing PCs with a bunch of wasps, you can be pretty sure that the table will be vocal about it. Sure, you can always end up with an adversarial GM, but I don't think it's the common case.
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I remember many many encounters in APs with NPCs/ Monsters tactics being : cannot be reasoned with, fights to the death.
I can see how many (I too hope not most) GMs will read it as to the death of PCs too.
The common sense in PF1 of do not try fleeing, you will die that many players still follow comes from real experiences.
Heck, I can even remember threads on the Advice boards with GMs looking for ways to avoid killing the PCs in this or that situation because the encounter as written would wipe the party and the GM was afraid of going outside the script.
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I think we are getting off track from my main idea here. It’s not about one wasp encounter. It isn’t about one boss. It is about the fact that I’m asking Paizo writers/editors to pay a bit more attention to encounters.
So are you asking for additional editorial/development passes and are thus ready for books to be more expensive and take longer to put together?
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It was also asserted that the Wasp swarm has higher initiative than the party could possibly achieve, which simply isn't true. It only had +10 perception. An 18 dex rogue (the class sneaking in for the example, mind you) would match that a +2 circumstance bonus for cover, which should absolutely have applied here. They could potentially be an expert, and it would be reasonable to give them great cover as well, so they could potentially be +4Sorry, what I meant is: the wasp swarm had an initiative of +10. The highest the party can achieve at level 2, assuming a Druid with 18 init (something we DID NOT HAVE) I guess is +10. Our highest initiative was like, +6 from the rogue so it is highly likely that the wasp swarm would beat us, which it did.
Also, to all those saying we should have run away, the swarm has a fly speed of fifty, which we saw it use.. Most PCs had a move speed of 25. There is NO way to know about the sixty foot limitation. Should we have cheated and looked at the scenario before hand? Psychically intuited the limitation? We saw it could outrun us and concluded that running away was impossible.
No, the highest you can achieve at level 2 is +14, using a rogue Avoiding Notice, which is what your post described. You said the rogue was sneaking up on it, right? Then the calculations in my post apply. Assuming 18 dex (which you didn't specify but is a pretty fair assumption for a rogue who is trying to scout) they basically have a minimum +10 whenever they use stealth for initiative, and could go as high as +14 without using temporary bonuses.
You need cover or concealment to use stealth in the first place. Usually this will be cover, and it definitely would have been in this situation. And the circumstance bonus from cover applies to initiative.
The circumstance bonus from cover applies to initiative. And you need cover or concealment to use s
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I think we are getting off track from my main idea here. It’s not about one wasp encounter. It isn’t about one boss. It is about the fact that I’m asking Paizo writers/editors to pay a bit more attention to encounters.So are you asking for additional editorial/development passes and are thus ready for books to be more expensive and take longer to put together?
No, I’m asking for a short double check.
Writer:
“Hmmm, I want another encounter. How about some local bees are stirred up, that’ll work. Lessie, single CR 4 monster vs a lvl 2 party, sounds like a moderate encounter.”
Amount of extra time I’m asking for:
“Let me just double check the stats here. Oh, DR against stuff, immune to precision damage and a bunch of other stuff, oh it can cause multiple DC 21 saves in a single round, and is faster than the PCs. Sure it is vulnerable to AoE damage but that’s not enough to mitigate all the other stuff. That’s nastier than I intended. Maybe they can go up against a bunch of giant flies instead. . .”
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Writer:
"Gee, I guess I better playtest that."
1st attempt
"Yep a moderate encounter"
2nd attempt
"Little more Severe than Moderate"
3rd attempt
"Wow they turned that into a cakewalk, maybe the wasp swarm is too weak"
4th attempt
"Yeesh, sorry about the TPK guys"
5th attempt
"Moderate again"
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Writer:
"Gee, I guess I better playtest that."1st attempt
"Yep a moderate encounter"2nd attempt
"Little more Severe than Moderate"3rd attempt
"Wow they turned that into a cakewalk, maybe the wasp swarm is too weak"4th attempt
"Yeesh, sorry about the TPK guys"5th attempt
"Moderate again"
Paizo adventure writers don't playtest adventures. If they were to do so, more time, more money. You ready to pay/wait?
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I think we are getting off track from my main idea here. It’s not about one wasp encounter. It isn’t about one boss. It is about the fact that I’m asking Paizo writers/editors to pay a bit more attention to encounters.So are you asking for additional editorial/development passes and are thus ready for books to be more expensive and take longer to put together?No, I’m asking for a short double check.
Writer:
“Hmmm, I want another encounter. How about some local bees are stirred up, that’ll work. Lessie, single CR 4 monster vs a lvl 2 party, sounds like a moderate encounter.”Amount of extra time I’m asking for:
“Let me just double check the stats here. Oh, DR against stuff, immune to precision damage and a bunch of other stuff, oh it can cause multiple DC 21 saves in a single round, and is faster than the PCs. Sure it is vulnerable to AoE damage but that’s not enough to mitigate all the other stuff. That’s nastier than I intended. Maybe they can go up against a bunch of giant flies instead. . .”
That's taking time and every book has dozens of encounters. You didn't answer my question, are you ready to pay/wait more?
Because the whole idea of monsters having levels is that you won't have to do exactly the thing you're requesting. This means extra work for the writer and for the developer who is getting the author's manuscript into shape.
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No, I’m asking for a short double check.
Writer:
“Hmmm, I want another encounter. How about some local bees are stirred up, that’ll work. Lessie, single CR 4 monster vs a lvl 2 party, sounds like a moderate encounter.”Amount of extra time I’m asking for:
“Let me just double check the stats here. Oh, DR against stuff, immune to precision damage and a bunch of other stuff, oh it can cause multiple DC 21 saves in a single round, and is faster than the PCs. Sure it is vulnerable to AoE damage but that’s not enough to mitigate all the other stuff. That’s nastier than I intended. Maybe they can go up against a bunch of giant flies instead. . .”
I see several potential problems with sending a 2nd-level party against a Wasp Swarm.
1) The name "Wasp Swarm" does not suggest a creature 4. It sounds weaker, like a Rat Swarm creature 1. I have removed paper wasp nests from my house with nothing more than a garden hose for defense and not gotten stung. Against monsters known to be tough, the players take more precautions. The failure of Recall Knowledge--and NPCs apparently not volunteering useful information--left the party ignorant of their risk.2) Swarms require different tactics than singleton creatures. Stocking up on alchemical bombs is only an offensive tactic. What about defense? The Speed 40 and multiple stings of the Wasp Swarm offer no time to improvise new tactics.
3) Some creatures have an advantage against lower-level creatures. The Wasp Swarm's best damage is from its target failing both a Reflex save and a Fortitude save. That is more likely on lower-level PC. And a 2nd-level witch is only trained in Reflex and Fortitude, neither are her good save.
4) Weakening the Wasp Swarm with behavior, such as saying it won't chase beyond 60 feet, fails at weakening if the party has no way of realizing that.
The need for new tactics bumps the effective encounter threat from Moderate to Severe. A Moderate encounter can handle a several bad rolls. A Severe encounter has much less margin for bad luck. The wrong rolls will send a PC unconscious and then the remaining PCs face the challenge underhanded.
The Ironfang Invasion encounter that pitted the 2nd-level party against a Wasp Swarm used the PF1 bestiary where a wasp swarm was only CR 3. The main difference between the PF1 and PF2 wasps were that PF1 swarms are immune to weapon damage and the PF1 swarm's venom dealt Dexterity damage (Clumsy condition in PF2 terminology) rather than hit-point damage. The PF2 Wasp Swarm dealing hit-point damage with both its stings and its vemon could be a design flaw, because the damage stacks way too quickly on characters with low saves.
That’s all I was asking, and I don’t think that’s too much of an ask. Just, stop and double check the encounter to see how it works. See if the numbers you are throwing around are in the vicinity of what the PCs can reasonably be expected to pull off. If the PC is going to be poisoned to death unless they roll a 17 or better on the die AND they are taking constant damage from another source, maybe that encounter needs to be rethought. A few lower-level monsters instead of one big boss.
So, listen, if you beat the wasp swarm, and you think I am ‘the suxorz newb’ and am ‘bad at the game’ and a complaining little so-and-so, maybe this isn’t the conversation for you. My basic idea is to convey to Paizo: hey, please double-check your encounters. I’ve noticed some are problematic, and not fun, encounters. Maybe keep a closer eye out for that stuff.
Double-checking an encouter was standard practice for me as a GM in Pathfinder 1st Edition. The player characters varied drastically and usually specialized in defeating their old enemies, not their new enemies. The module writers could not perform that double-checking because every campaign had different player characters.
Pathfinder 2nd Edition is different. Each player character is forced to be more rounded, the jack of many trades and barely mastering one. They can handle any level-appropriate encounter provided that they can figure out the appropriate tactics. And since the Wasp Swarm was labeled "Creature 4" it looks like a level-appropriate encounter.
VampByDay's party was not careless newbs. I see only one mistake: the witch was standing too close to the door while not using Avoid Notice. Standing close to the door in order to hit the swarm with Area-of-Effect damage on her first turn was sensible, but she needed the defense of Stealth in case the swarm was faster than her--which it was. If she was Avoiding Notice and the GM ignored that, then that is another GM mistake. Or if she was Avoiding Notice and rolled below the swarm's Perception DC 20, then the dice were out to kill the party that day. And if she rolled well but failed because she had poor Dexterity and was untrained in Stealth, then I wonder how she expected to defend herself.
Paizo adventure writers don't playtest adventures. If they were to do so, more time, more money. You ready to pay/wait?Writer:
"Gee, I guess I better playtest that."1st attempt
"Yep a moderate encounter"2nd attempt
"Little more Severe than Moderate"3rd attempt
"Wow they turned that into a cakewalk, maybe the wasp swarm is too weak"4th attempt
"Yeesh, sorry about the TPK guys"5th attempt
"Moderate again"
Totally missed my point.
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Paizo adventure writers don't playtest adventures. If they were to do so, more time, more money. You ready to pay/wait?Writer:
"Gee, I guess I better playtest that."1st attempt
"Yep a moderate encounter"2nd attempt
"Little more Severe than Moderate"3rd attempt
"Wow they turned that into a cakewalk, maybe the wasp swarm is too weak"4th attempt
"Yeesh, sorry about the TPK guys"5th attempt
"Moderate again"
Yes. I've done enough playtesting (for my own and others) and seen the before/after to know that bad bad things would have gotten printed otherwise.
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Yes. I've done enough playtesting (for my own and others) and seen the before/after to know that bad bad things would have gotten printed otherwise.Paizo adventure writers don't playtest adventures. If they were to do so, more time, more money. You ready to pay/wait?Writer:
"Gee, I guess I better playtest that."1st attempt
"Yep a moderate encounter"2nd attempt
"Little more Severe than Moderate"3rd attempt
"Wow they turned that into a cakewalk, maybe the wasp swarm is too weak"4th attempt
"Yeesh, sorry about the TPK guys"5th attempt
"Moderate again"
I believe that it's very much on record that APs don't get playtested, which makes sense given the monthly nature of their release and the time investment it takes to play them. I also believe that devs are on the side of "please modify these to suit your games," often pointing to the very robust rules for doing so.
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And thus it has been spoken - There are no problems with AP design or the CR system, there is only astronomically bad die rolls or horrendous tactics. Of course while there has been ample discussion that many monsters have cliff scalability (relatively normal challenge at level but become virtual tpk machines at lvl+2 due to abilities), it is expected that all GMs will know this and immediately compensate for it (it is part of the game assumptions after all)
Unironically, yes? Early APs had rough edges (which has been discussed to death), and encounter building is very spot on. Level + 2 monsters tend to be quite powerful because a single one represents a "moderate or severe threat boss" with early levels edging towards severe just because of the lack of options available to those characters. Something the Core Rulebook outright states is...
These (Severe) encounters are most appropriate for important moments in your story, such as confronting a final boss. Bad luck, poor tactics, or a lack of resources due to prior encounters can easily turn a severe-threat encounter against the characters, and a wise group keeps the option to disengage open.
And I think it is very much a part of the game assumption for GMs to be the arbiter of the game, yes. So, yes, thank you for the good post that summed up the thread quite well!
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Correct, this game assumes you have a well-versed GM at all times. APs should not be viewed as an "out of the box" adventure that beginning GMs run. They are story ideas and nothing more. That is the problem with Society play since it assumes that all scenarios and APs are out of the box ready
I mean, if APs aren't meant to be out of the box things new GMs can run, then what should fill that role? Homebrew adventures? It's hard to come up with one when you barely know what you're doing. Mind, I don't disagree that this is the current situation. It is. But I don't think it should be. It's like if BMX bikes had training wheels but kids bikes didn't.
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Correct, this game assumes you have a well-versed GM at all times. APs should not be viewed as an "out of the box" adventure that beginning GMs run. They are story ideas and nothing more. That is the problem with Society play since it assumes that all scenarios and APs are out of the box readyI mean, if APs aren't meant to be out of the box things new GMs can run, then what should fill that role? Homebrew adventures? It's hard to come up with one when you barely know what you're doing. Mind, I don't disagree that this is the current situation. It is. But I don't think it should be. It's like if BMX bikes had training wheels but kids bikes didn't.
I don't think that there really is any TTRPG where I'd recommend running it straight from the page with no deviation. That's sort of rule zero in every game. That said, for new GMs, the Beginner Box and the Trouble in Otari module are fantastic introductions to GMing as well as being very hand-holding for learners.
Edit: The things that many posters are noting here aren't "secret advanced GM tricks" that are discussed in back alleys. You can find this sort of advice in the Core Rulebook. While I don't advocate for everyone to read every page of the rules, I would hope that GMs would at least read the Gamemastery chapter.
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Correct, this game assumes you have a well-versed GM at all times. APs should not be viewed as an "out of the box" adventure that beginning GMs run. They are story ideas and nothing more. That is the problem with Society play since it assumes that all scenarios and APs are out of the box readyI mean, if APs aren't meant to be out of the box things new GMs can run, then what should fill that role? Homebrew adventures? It's hard to come up with one when you barely know what you're doing. Mind, I don't disagree that this is the current situation. It is. But I don't think it should be. It's like if BMX bikes had training wheels but kids bikes didn't.I don't think that there really is any TTRPG where I'd recommend running it straight from the page with no deviation. That's sort of rule zero in every game. That said, for new GMs, the Beginner Box and the Trouble in Otari module are fantastic introductions to GMing as well as being very hand-holding for learners.
Edit: The things that many posters are noting here aren't "secret advanced GM tricks" that are discussed in back alleys. You can find this sort of advice in the Core Rulebook. While I don't advocate for everyone to read every page of the rules, I would hope that GMs would at least read the Gamemastery chapter.
Because as we know, there are no new GMs, no GM variation. All GMs spring forty from the earth with a good grasp of when to go easy on the party and when not to and only grow from there. They all have an implicit grasp of the proper way to keep the party having fun, none have even a bit of us vs the players mentality, even subconsciously, and they always have the game mastery chapter in the back of the mind even when having to juggle a boatload of story things, a really complicated monster fight, all the player abilities, and real life drama.
(End sarcasm)
Also, not for nothing, but no, we DID NOT decide that it was not the fault of the CR system and it was all dice and the tactics. YOU did. Several people have agreed that many monsters don’t scale well, especially at low level where PCs have very limited resources. At level 4 a caster PC is expected to have 6 spells (8 for a sorcerer) plus their cantrips, and martials should have a +1 striking weapon. At level 2? 3 spells and no striking weapon, that is literally half the resources, damage potential, and, ALMOST half the hit points (racial hit points being the reason for almost, so I guess roughly around 3/5ths the HP depending on race/class?). Heck, for casters that is MORE than half the resources because a level 2 spell is more powerful than a level 1 spell.
If, IF we had been level 4, bard could have cast Inner radiance torrent from outside the barn for 8d4 x1.5 damage against the swarm and it would have been all over. But we didn’t have that option because we didn’t have access to those resources because we were broke and level 2. Some monsters don’t scale well at low levels, and I don’t see why that is so hard to accept.