To come up with plausible bad moves for deadly enemies is one of the GM's hardest tasks because it is not easy riding the line in between keeping tension and a general sense of danger versus making fights feel cheated in favour of the players and the feeling of being invincible no matter what you do.
There is a Foundry module (name I'd have to look up) that auto adds adjectives to tokens as you place them. I've found this is great for role-playing, combat tracking and playing enemies less optimally.
Now my encounter of three goblins is with a Fiesty Goblin, Charming Goblin and a Cowardly Goblin. So now I've got one that I'll let over extend, one that will spend actions trying to intimidate and one that makes sure to not end its turn next to an enemy.
I am finding fewer and fewer reasons not to learn how to GM on Foundry. I can't say how much I love the idea of making it easier to give individual NPC creatures and villains motives to make them interesting and unique without requiring a lot of time or GM planning. This is a really, really cool tool for doing that.
I used to use it a fair bit and lost it in an incompatibility issue. I miss it. I'll have to try it again.To come up with plausible bad moves for deadly enemies is one of the GM's hardest tasks because it is not easy riding the line in between keeping tension and a general sense of danger versus making fights feel cheated in favour of the players and the feeling of being invincible no matter what you do.
There is a Foundry module (name I'd have to look up) that auto adds adjectives to tokens as you place them. I've found this is great for role-playing, combat tracking and playing enemies less optimally.
Now my encounter of three goblins is with a Fiesty Goblin, Charming Goblin and a Cowardly Goblin. So now I've got one that I'll let over extend, one that will spend actions trying to intimidate and one that makes sure to not end its turn next to an enemy.
I am finding fewer and fewer reasons not to learn how to GM on Foundry. I can't say how much I love the idea of making it easier to give individual NPC creatures and villains motives to make them interesting and unique without requiring a lot of time or GM planning. This is a really, really cool tool for doing that.To come up with plausible bad moves for deadly enemies is one of the GM's hardest tasks because it is not easy riding the line in between keeping tension and a general sense of danger versus making fights feel cheated in favour of the players and the feeling of being invincible no matter what you do.
There is a Foundry module (name I'd have to look up) that auto adds adjectives to tokens as you place them. I've found this is great for role-playing, combat tracking and playing enemies less optimally.
Now my encounter of three goblins is with a Fiesty Goblin, Charming Goblin and a Cowardly Goblin. So now I've got one that I'll let over extend, one that will spend actions trying to intimidate and one that makes sure to not end its turn next to an enemy.
It really is a great VTT.
If you are any where near living on GMT +0 I'd be happy to run a demo where you can have GM rights and look around.I am finding fewer and fewer reasons not to learn how to GM on Foundry. I can't say how much I love the idea of making it easier to give individual NPC creatures and villains motives to make them interesting and unique without requiring a lot of time or GM planning. This is a really, really cool tool for doing that.To come up with plausible bad moves for deadly enemies is one of the GM's hardest tasks because it is not easy riding the line in between keeping tension and a general sense of danger versus making fights feel cheated in favour of the players and the feeling of being invincible no matter what you do.
There is a Foundry module (name I'd have to look up) that auto adds adjectives to tokens as you place them. I've found this is great for role-playing, combat tracking and playing enemies less optimally.
Now my encounter of three goblins is with a Fiesty Goblin, Charming Goblin and a Cowardly Goblin. So now I've got one that I'll let over extend, one that will spend actions trying to intimidate and one that makes sure to not end its turn next to an enemy.
That is a a kind offer. I have foundry, I just haven't familiarized myself with it enough to run games confidently on it, yet, but the incentives to do so keeping going up. I am pretty far off GMT though.
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I've read this thread through twice now and part of me is wondering if this isn't a troll post? I've been in a tpk (Abomination Vaults), but only the one in my entire gaming life (2004). So I am not sure.Hey there. Assuring you this isn't a troll post.
I can give you a few examples of PF2 TPKs I've had, as well as encounters that were so difficult the party just gave up. Alas, no full details because some of them were a couple years ago now. Some of these were admittedly due to my learning the system - especially one of the Age of Ashes TPKs.
Putting in spoiler tags...
** spoiler omitted **
Yeah I dunno I have read the other stuff, Pf2 has made me and several others retrain how we play RPG's what works here in others won't here.
Sounds like
1- multiple bad rolls on player side
2- multiple good rolls on GM side
3- a severe encounter
4- some mistakes
I had a player stop showing up when he realized he couldn't just face tank everything with his barbarian. Wasn't much of a loss,I had too many players as it was.
Do you think the Proficiency Without Level variant would help avoid TPKs? For example, would it decrease the likelihood of devastating critical hits by monsters? Would it decrease the monsters' AC to a sufficient level where the players might feel they aren't missing the majority of the time?
Only if you are pitting the party against enemies of significantly higher level than they are.
Proficiency Without Level will flatten and extend the range of levels of enemies that the party can take on. However, it isn't completely flat. There are still the proficiency bump levels. So at some levels there will be practically no difference in stats between a level n enemy and a level n+3 enemy, and at other values of n there will be a +2 or +3 difference in stats between a level n enemy and a level n+3 enemy.
Do you think the Proficiency Without Level variant would help avoid TPKs? For example, would it decrease the likelihood of devastating critical hits by monsters? Would it decrease the monsters' AC to a sufficient level where the players might feel they aren't missing the majority of the time?Depends whether your party has everything in terms of potency weapon/armor runes, between the level up and the next task.
If they already have everything they need, it won't change anything.
Automatic Bonus Progression would take care of that.
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Here is my recommendation:
Tell them that the developers have learned that some players feel the difficult of adventures are overturned, especially at low level against powerful solo monsters. Offer to let them play dual class characters, which is an official variant and run one of the newer APs. Read the message boards about that AP and look out for the troublesome encounters that kill party members and how GMs modified things.
Also consider dropping excessive +1 weapons and armor early. It will feel cool and any unbalancing it does will equal out after just a couple levels.
I bet your players, looking to feel like heroes will enjoy dual class and the newer APs have cool stuff going on.
For my most recent group who had a TPK, the dichotomy between the lethality of the system and the expectation that a party would be able to experience the story of a 20 level Adventure Path was too strong. It killed all the enjoyment of the AP. They got the mentality of "I guess this is just going to be a series of difficult combat encounters, rinse and repeat."
It's really a shame too. The system mostly works for me - better than 5e. But the encounters should probably be 2 levels easier to reinforce that the story is the most important part of the game, and then the "filler" encounters should be minimized in an AP. You don't need to meticulously count XP between chapters when you're doing a story-based game.
The contrast between Harles's campaign and my campaign feels weird. I am converting Ironfang Invasion to PF2, and I am currently rebuilding an encounter with a CR 13 blood hag witch and her two CR 11 Advanced Fen Mauler pets as an encounter with a 13th-level blood hag witch, her two 11th-level Elemental Inferno pets, two 13th-level Shadow Giants, and two 13th-level Jorogumo. That is 3 times harder than intended, because that the party is 3 times stronger than intended (7 members and 15th level instead of 14th).
Nevertheless, combat will be easier than a moderate threat. This PF1 adventure path has been softening encounters since 12th level. My wife jokes that it lulls the party into complacity until the story gives me an excuse to push the threats up to severe, like I did at the end of the previous module, bwahaha. She likes tough encounters.
Yet pushing up the threat is half the reason the party is 15th level instead of 14th level. The other half is that they invent side quests.
You don't need to meticulously count XP between chapters when you're doing a story-based game.You don't have to do that with APs.
At the beginning of each book, look for the sidebar "Advancement Track". It's usually on the first page of the adventure. That will tell you exactly when characters level.
For example, "Zombie Feast" (Part 1 of Blood Lords), has the following suggestions
1. The characters begin this adventure at 1st level
2. The characters should reach 2nd level once they've cleared out their new manor.
3. The characters should reach 3rd level after exploring the Bone Shards hideout and Graydirge Bank.
The characters should reach 4th level by the time they complete the adventure.If you're meticulously counting XP, you're making it much harder than you need to.
Dancing Winds' advice is good. I can't use it myself, due to my players' love for side quests. But keeping the threat low would reduce XP from combat. Earning XP from story milestones instead would keep the PCs at a proper level so that the GM won't have to reduce the threat much.
My current module, Prisoners of the Blight, says, "The PCs begin this adventure at 14th level," and suggests 15th level by page 38 and 16th level after the conclusion on page 51. The final module, Vault of the Onyx Citadel, is supposed to begin at 16th level and end at 18th level, but I am curious whether the party will reach a full 20 levels.
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Here is one way to make game naturally more easy in case you ever run 2e homebrew adventures in future: Mostly focus on enemies from -4 to -1 player range, use equal level enemies as "bosses with allies" and then reserve +1 to +4 enemies for what are supposed to be various degree of harder fights, either minibosses(with +1) or hard bosses(moderate +2 can sometimes be hard enough to feel like boss especially with few mooks or if players are low in resources. Avoid doing solo severe or extreme for levels 1-5 until you are confident in party).
This is mostly from my experience of converting Jade Regent to 2e. Some of 2e AP dungeons follow design of "dungeon mostly mostly moderate encounters with couple low and severe sprinkled in, maybe one trivial joke encounter. Every room has a +1 or +2 miniboss, with occasional severe soloboss that can be avoided but comes as surprise" with occasional "mooks encounters of -2 to 0 level foes" sprinkled in. 1e on otherhand sometimes had dungeons were majority of enemies were ridiculously weaker than PCs with few stronger encounters sprinkled in.
So converting that to mooks being -4 or -3 trivial mooks and either having multiple sets of "trivial" encounters capable of being combined into larger encounters(still containing trivial mooks) has been good way to translate 1e dungeon style to 2e and keep it as dynamic(as in reinforcements arriving to support encounter group pcs are fighting), where in 2e aps combining encounters is extremely dangerous unless you know exactly what is going to happen. And doing this still means that players level up in same pace as in 1e book even with 2e exp.
(yeah, so 2e miniboss design you see in some dungeons(like specific AV levels) isn't really about exp. Its because 1e also had miniboss design sometimes, but it didn't work there because single enemies got decimated easily, so in 2e where that design means minibosses are challenging having too many of them in dungeon feels exhausting ^^; Though at least by high levels +1 and +2 enemies aren't that bad anymore, but during levels 1-4 I feel like +1 and +2 foes are really dangerous)
In general, I feel that trivial encounters are somewhat rare in 2e APs, where areas I think larger dungeons should actually have multiple trivial encounters with some low and moderate mixed in and severe being either boss of dungeon or particularly challenging encounter mixed. Such as by having several trivial encounters composed of 4 enemies in adjacent rooms, so if players don't prevent alarm being raised or block the doors, they can combine into moderate or severe encounter.
By time party are feeling encounters are easy or feeling confident in system, its possible to ramp up things gradually. Like doing things like having two equal level meat shields and four trivial back up shooters in severe encounter. Still not punishingly hard but its challenging.
One thing to also recognize is that this also works flavor wise. Heavily defended fortress where enemies are in good defensive positions? Makes sense for majority of soldiers being -4 or -3 enemies, with "elite soldiers" being level -2 to +0 and commanders being in level +1 to +2" range. +3 or +4 could be monster they captured in cage and players could either release it or avoid fighting it at all.
(not sure this is helpful to OP since not sure they are able to return to 2e in long time, but I do hope this helps someone else with similar problem as well ^^; )
I know this sounds like an IT tech asking you to check if a PC is plugged in, but are they calculating their proficiency bonus to the roll accurately? I’ve done a fair few society games where a character keeps getting dropped in combat and upon checking their character sheet they have forgotten to add their level to the proficiency bonus. In particular they have forgotten to add their level to AC, saves, spell DCs and attack rolls.
I probably isn’t that but I have found it is something worth checking before you start looking elsewhere.
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Paizo includes enough encounters to account for XP between levels for GMs that use XP. If you don't desire all those encounters for your milestone game, simply remove encounters you think are unnecessary. It is easier for GMs to remove unwanted content than for a GM to create needed content.
If the encounters are too hard, simply advance your party one level above recommended and the experience will be much easier on them. If the players bristle at this (and why would they, if it's what everyone at the table thinks would make for a better game?), don't tell them it's what you're doing.
I promise I'm not being condescending.. this actually came up in another thread from formerly 5e players. Are they adding their level to their proficiency? There was a guy on the boards here a while back who had come from 5e and didn't know that the +2, +4, and so on was plus your level.
They mentioned flanking, so the ranger is probably up there with the fighter.
The fighter should be in the range of 20 HP, and should be able to endure even a crit from most enemies there - and crits shouldn't happen that often, unless the character has got an AC problem.
AC Problem was also something that went through my head
A frontliner AC at lvl 2 should be around
10+4 proficiency + 4 to 5 from Attribute and Armor
So 18-19 Baseline
If it's lower then 18 they should probably consider optimizing their defense a little
Abomination vaults has a lot of creatures that do not need to be fought the first time you encounter them, that are higher level than the party. Most of them have exploitable weaknesses, but players aren’t likely to figure them all out the first time seeing the creature, especially since the creatures are often higher level. If the players are not running away from things they don’t have to fight in that AP, it is going to get ugly pretty quickly.
I would not say that situation is the norm in PF2 as a whole, but it is true in some early APs and in AV since AV is a mega dungeon with a lot of moving pieces. It is a good idea for GMs to talk about the tone and flow of the campaign with the PCs, not just in session 0 but probably every 4 or 5 sessions. Is everyone having fun? Is anything feeling frustrating? If the players are not having fun recognizing that this encounter location is not just “basement with some rats” but a thriving ecosystem of some cosmically terrifying past that won’t stay there, then talking to them about what they are expecting out of the game vs the encounters they had thus far can go a long way to helping a GM decide what changes they can make to balance their own expectations for the campaign with those of the players.
I'm always shocked when I hear that people have issues with tpks and character death in 2e; since I've been playing it close to weekly since the system was in playtest and I've only had one pc death over the span, and that was in the APG playtest, and was purely bad luck (the swashbuckler got two nat ones in a row vs a Phantasmal Killer spell and died to the automatic kill part). And this is with severe and even extreme encounters being the norm.
I run homebrew games, and while I have house rules, almost all of them are really minor, and almost all flavor (my hero points letting you take the better result it the only thing that really changed mechanics in a significant way), or gmg stuff. I do use free archetype, but tbh you'd never know since my players only rarely used the stuff they got from it; like, to the point I've considered just removing it. Playtests are always ran with basic rules though.
Now, I know the reasons my players usually stay alive; for the the most part, they know how to work as a team, and they do a lot of research and prep into the dangers they'll be facing. The encounters that give them the most trouble are the unexpected ones. Half of my players also have a background in wargaming, and as such like to make use of terrain and tactics to persevere in battle, and make a point ot trying to get the upper hand in terms of positioning to get the most of their actions while forcing the enemies to burn extra actions. I've only had one player have issues in 2e, and it's because he's convinced he needs to be toe-to-toe constantly with his magus because online guides say you need to Spellstrike every turn or else you'll suck, and as a result, he's either got to burn more actions to make himself more sturdy with buffs, or he just gets wholloped
We have been replying to Ouatcheur, who posted about his own game yesterday.
Or they all died. That would also explain the silence. If only there was some manner of necromancy to breathe life into a cold husk.
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Ouatcheur didn't ask for advice though.
Ouatcheur is instead giving advice based on what they do in their games.
Which isn't really a problem. But it is a bit confusing because it came so late. So it feels like the rest of the replies to Ouatcheur are still trying to fit the original topic of the thread of giving advice on how to avoid TPK ... to someone who is already handling that quite well.
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This thread started in 2022. Since the OP hasn't posted back in 2023, I'm wondering if that is because the GM and party solved the TPK problem with better tactics and / or mechanical oversight on Proficiency adding level. It's possible that they are now happily playing without TPKs.Uhm. Yes. But now we are replying to Ouatcheur and their case.
Though this thread necromancy is by Quatcheur, I became curious about whether Harles had solved the TPK problem, so I looked up his more recent posts in this forum.
Last month Harles began a thread Getting Overwhelmed asking for GM advice on managing the complexity the 2nd module, Lost Mammoth Valley, in the Quest of the Frozen Flame adventure path. That suggests that he got a party through the 1st module Broken Tusk Moon alive. Thus, I think he has learned how to avoid TPKs.
...
I manage to average out to a TPK every three sessions ...We're running Abomination vault. Party: 1 cleric, 1 oracle, 1 sorcerer, 1 ranger, 1 fighter. The spellcasters are the iconics PCs. Level 1.
Just reached level 2, cleared the ground level after about 6-7 game sessions of 5-6 hours each. We waste a lot of time on useless stuff I know.
My fighter gets downed *every* non-trivial fight i.e. every fight except vs the Mitflits. Often downed in a single blow. I even reached Dying 3 "rol for 12/20 chances of permadeath" a couple times. The other PCs each got downed at least once, average twice. One fight would have been 100% TPK if we had better understood the rules or if the DM didn't try to "help" us (say for example by not making the enemies attacks the best way they could, with the most powerful attacks they have).
And apart from 1 obtuse player always "doing his own stuff, we all know playing independently instead of as a team is a surefire way to lose, so we always try to maximize our team synergy and combo bonuses, too. Flanking, Dazing, Dazzling, Demoralizing, etc. Even then it's super duper hard fights all the time. For a module calibrated for only 4 PCs!
It is always interesting reading such diverging experiences like this, I am currently running AV for a second time with a new group.
Champion (redeemer), rogue (mastermind, ranged), wizard (universalist) and druid (storm).
They did the first floor without the wizard and managed to fight the scorpion without adjustment to party size (a forgetful mistake on my part).
They then went down stairs and fought the blood siphon with the wizard, still at level 1... and won (hard fight but the casters carried the party)
They cleared a couple more rooms on the second floor... before fighting the ghouls in the library on floor 3 and aller rosk... who I played slightly insane and more interested in capture than kill (well for now, I knew how strong he was and worked it into the blue blister farm)... but they still won.
The first group I ran through AV did the same thing too, delved into deeper floors with the alure of getting more exp and progressing the story faster.