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Okay, I am sure you heard it all before and I apologize in advance.
But today was another day of a more or less frustrating experience for my (I think quite optimized, free rogue archetype) ranger. Age of Ashes, fighting against a night hag and a rust hag. I rolled three 20s with my attacks (three critial hits), and 17, 18, 16 (MAP attacks, with -2/-4 all hits, but noc crits) or something like that. It's just not really possible to roll much better. I flanked with my monk buddy (he did not hit a lot). But we could not take her down before she took me down. I was even hasted by our wizard. I think we know Pf 2e quite well and a have a lot of experience and understanding of the mechanics. So this was the setup.
It all did not matter. The hag critted me at least with every second attack (she did not miss with a single strike) and her normal damage was around the double of mine.
Allright, this is probably the way it works in Pf 2e, but when you ambush a NPC party (I think around Cl+1) of two opponents with a PC party of five and set it up at least okay, probably not a 100 percent perfect, go down after two rounds (usually the very efficient cleric keeps me alive and working, but this time, there was (only) one round, where he wasn't able to heal me) it feels odd. To be honest, it feels rather frustrating. My AC does not matter (it is the highest possible for a strength focused ranger at this level).
So yes, this was frustrating. I guess it is just not for me then. But hear me out: I want to like it and I want to make it work for me. It just makes me sad, because there's a lot of very nice things in this system and I don't mind failing (well, I probably do). But this time it was not a BBEG encounter, I rolled perfectly, was buffed, had perfect position, used my class feats (e.g. third action to give monk or the gunslinger buddy my Flurry (= Warden's Boon).
Yes we could have improved the setup to a small extent, if we were system masters de luxe, I guess. But we also could have done a lot worse. In the end we survived, but my character never feels like a hero, even if he crits three times. Makes not much sense to me.
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It's worth noting that Age of Ashes is pretty infamously imbalanced, due to it being made before the math was firmed up and the system fully understood. It's my understanding that Extinction Curse and Agents of Edgewatch likewise have some punishing difficulty spikes (as the first 3 APs of PF2), but that everything since has been significantly more even.
I'm sorry you had such a bad experience; your character sounds well-built and your tactics sound solid, so I have to chalk this up to the above.
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I can't think of this encounter in the Age of Ashes module. Did your DM make it up?
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I can't think of this encounter in the Age of Ashes module. Did your DM make it up?
Yeah, wait a minute - Rust Hags just came out in Blood Lords #2, which released a month ago. Your DM is definitely doing something extracurricular here.
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I can't think of this encounter in the Age of Ashes module. Did your DM make it up?Sounds vaguely like the corrupted Desnan way station in Tomorrow Must Burn, but maybe with a changed hag lineup (or maybe the hag was just misidentified by the party).
Ah, one of the hags is named "Rusty Mae," that clears things up.
It's listed as a Severe fight, but there's supposed to be
While it sounds like your group played things pretty well, a Monk missing most of their attacks isn't contributing much, and if a Ranger is the one taking the brunt of the enemy's attacks alone (rather than, say, alongside a Champion or Barbarian) isn't going to last long. How much was your Gunslinger able to contribute? I'm a little surprised a fifth player couldn't tip the scales some more.
But yes, I'm broadly willing to chalk this one up to AoA's weirdness.
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I can't think of this encounter in the Age of Ashes module. Did your DM make it up?Sounds vaguely like the corrupted Desnan way station in Tomorrow Must Burn, but maybe with a changed hag lineup (or maybe the hag was just misidentified by the party).Ah, one of the hags is named "Rusty Mae," that clears things up.
It's listed as a Severe fight, but there's supposed to be ** spoiler omitted **. Both hags' resistances to physical damage can be gotten around with bludgeoning or magic. While it's not the BBEG of the AP or even the volume, it is a chapter-end boss fight.
While it sounds like your group played things pretty well, a Monk missing most of their attacks isn't contributing much, and if a Ranger is the one taking the brunt of the enemy's attacks alone (rather than, say, alongside a Champion or Barbarian) isn't going to last long. How much was your Gunslinger able to contribute? I'm a little surprised a fifth player couldn't tip the scales some more.
Honestly, I remember the tree encounter being a far worse encounter (since it kinda scaled up with your group size). Then again, my rogue had a cold iron weapon as his default, so that probably helped a bit...
We also had a healer Cleric / Blessed One in our party, which we found very important in the big fights.
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I can't think of this encounter in the Age of Ashes module. Did your DM make it up?Sounds vaguely like the corrupted Desnan way station in Tomorrow Must Burn, but maybe with a changed hag lineup (or maybe the hag was just misidentified by the party).Ah, one of the hags is named "Rusty Mae," that clears things up.
It's listed as a Severe fight, but there's supposed to be ** spoiler omitted **. Both hags' resistances to physical damage can be gotten around with bludgeoning or magic. While it's not the BBEG of the AP or even the volume, it is a chapter-end boss fight.
While it sounds like your group played things pretty well, a Monk missing most of their attacks isn't contributing much, and if a Ranger is the one taking the brunt of the enemy's attacks alone (rather than, say, alongside a Champion or Barbarian) isn't going to last long. How much was your Gunslinger able to contribute? I'm a little surprised a fifth player couldn't tip the scales some more.
Honestly, I remember the tree encounter being a far worse encounter (since it kinda scaled up with your group size). Then again, my rogue had a cold iron weapon as his default, so that probably helped a bit...
We also had a healer Cleric / Blessed One in our party, which we found very important in the big fights.
Neither hag has any particular interaction with cold iron weapons. If it helped you, it was by boosting your morale :p
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Age of Ashes is not great difficulty wise.
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I see now. The name Rusty.
My group didn't have much trouble with that place. Monsters have a lot of hit points in PF2. Even with critical hits you probably not going to take them out unless it is a powerful spell crit or you are a giant instinct barbarian or a spell striking magus.
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Got those fights as a GM (I don't care much of being put down as a player, but I care at how my players feel when I'm GMing). Sometimes, an inconspicuous monster will score an outrageous number of hits/crits. Unless characters are doing really good, there's nothing you can do but see them going down.
I find that GM positioning can change an encounter a lot. I position myself as a tough GM with strict rule application who never fudges rolls and is ok with killing characters. Behind the scene I'm not much like that but I find that it really changes the way players feel about combat difficulty. They feel strong when they crush the opposition and accept when things are getting tough. It gives me leeway when the dice are with me.
But overall, it's just smoke and mirrors. Combat in PF2 is way less deadly than it feels. Sure, you are going down often but before actually dying you'll need a few rounds of bad luck and a lack of Hero Points. So, even if you play the fights as intended, even if you put down characters a lot, there's no real consequence and the difficulty is not really high. I've found that previous editions, while giving you a feeling of real superiority, were also killing you extremely quickly with no way of leveraging it.
Despite what is often brought, I find PF2 to be quite forgiving.
And even the frustration of going down and as such be useless for a round is far less annoying than the classical save or suck abilities you were taking in the previous editions that were putting you out of the fight for "caster level rounds". Spending 2 hours reading comics because of that was an awful feeling.
Anyway, my sole advice would be: Speak with your GM. Depending on how you want to feel I'm pretty sure they have ways of making it happen. Or maybe they want the game to be tough and as such you have to love the dirt.
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My ranger recalled knowledge about the hag even beforehand, because we were able to spy on them. Some difficulty arose because of the positioning of our team and the small entrance to the room.
We did not fight the stone tree (started and soon felt it was pointless), the wizard was able to turn it off somehow (with Thievery and the use of a hero point).
The GM probably changed the encounter, it was a night hag and a rust hag and we had information about their weaknesses and their strengths. The wizard player and my ranger both successfully recalled knowledge about them (Monster Hunter did not help, but it will really come online by the next level (10).
But that is not really my point. My point is: even when I hit with three crits (I don't roll that good usually) and all my other attacks, the night hag wasn't going down. My problem isn't that I feel bad because my character went down (that happened often enough before), my problem is my damage output feels pitiful (especially compared to the hag).
The fight started with some good damage by the wizard, as far as I remember the rust hag crit-failed her save and was already badly injured, the night hag was only injured I think. As I could flank the night hag with the monk and was hasted and able to give my hunt prey to them via Warden's Boon I'd say it was not that bad staying in position, because she already was badly injured. Of course, it was risk, but then it should have paid off, because all attacks hit, damage rolls were a little bit above average.
About the GM: I think he is a good GM; he is neither fudging rolls nor is he someone who has fun punishing his players. In the second book my experiences were not that bad. SuperBidi is of course right, I should talk to him. After the session I already told him that I was not too happy about how it played out.
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Recall knowledge would have paid off ( depends whether your DM gives you good hits or trash ones).
In my experiences, there are a couple of dangerous encounters in AoA, but rusty mae is not among those.
Ps: does your dm somehow describe the attacks you make? For example "the fire ray seems not to be that effective", "when you strike with your holy weapon the creature screams" Or *your dagger hardly scratches the monster skin".
In order to get how different weapon and attacks interact.
A) We recalled knowledge, as described above
B) Yes, he does that.| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
But that is not really my point. My point is: even when I hit with three crits (I don't roll that good usually) and all my other attacks, the night hag wasn't going down. My problem isn't that I feel bad because my character went down (that happened often enough before), my problem is my damage output feels pitiful (especially compared to the hag).
I think one issue also comes from your choice of character. The Flurry Ranger makes a lot of attacks. Obviously, the more attacks you do and the less extreme your damage (rolling 2 criticals in a raw is far easier than rolling 4 of them). Your chances to make an astounding round or a useless one are lower compared to a character who makes less attacks.
On top of it, the Flurry Ranger has high accuracy. Obviously, high accuracy means lower damage.These 2 things mean that even when you are lucky, you don't actually roll that much damage compared to, say, a Barbarian who combines few attacks and no accuracy bonus with a massive damage boost to compensate. Rolling a hit and a crit with a Barbarian is not that rare of an occurrence and the damage in that case it stellar. On the other hand, rolling no hit with a Barbarian is also extremely common (a good third of your rounds) and that can feel disheartening, too.
From my experience, people tend to overvalue spike damage. It's extremely pleasant to see a big damage being rolled and it overcompensates a mediocre average damage.
So maybe the issue comes also from your character that is not a very good fit for you.
It was my 2 cents.
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Night hags have ac 28, 170 hp, +20 attack, and do 2d8+8 or 2d10+8 damage.
I'm assuming you were also level 9 (since you said that next level was 10), so you should have around ac 26, 120-140 hp, +18 attack, and do ~2d8+6. (I don't know your exact build, but those numbers should be close at least)
The hags average damage would be 16/18 per hit (32/36 on a crit), and you said that she took you down in two rounds. She would have had to land all 6 attacks (or just roll EXCEPTIONALLY high damage/get a few crits) in order to do that, which would also mean she wasn't moving anywhere or attacking anyone else.
It sounds to me like you just got really unlucky. A night hags melee is slightly better than yours, but that's offset by the cold-iron weakness (though admittedly that's useless if you don't have any cold-iron). If you were flanking and hasted and still got wrecked that badly, then luck is pretty much the only thing you can realistically put that down to.
On the other hand, you took up 6 entire actions of an on-level enemy, allowing the other 4 party members to use their ~12 actions in relative safety. That seems both acceptably tactical and heroic to me.
All that being said, I'm contractually obliged to point out that there's no reason to end a turn near an enemy when you're hasted. I know you felt like it was an acceptable risk, but it's just not unless you're an AC focused champion/monk or an hp focused barb.
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You can ask the GM for easier fights, since the system is incredibly easy to tailor difficulty in numerous different ways.
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But that is not really my point. My point is: even when I hit with three crits (I don't roll that good usually) and all my other attacks, the night hag wasn't going down. My problem isn't that I feel bad because my character went down (that happened often enough before), my problem is my damage output feels pitiful (especially compared to the hag).
SuperBidi already mentioned it, but you have to keep in mind that the martial classes are very closely balanced for damage output in PF2. Since the Flurry Ranger can do a lot of attacks, every individual attack is correspondingly weaker. A critical hit with a d6 Agile weapon is about as good as a regular hit with a d12 weapon outside of static bonuses. On the other hand, you have more opportunities to make the static damage count, so there is that.
It is generally not possible to one-shot enemies outside the lowest of levels. In return, most enemies will likewise not be able to drop a PC in just one round of attacks.
However, as far as tactics are concerned:
SOLDIER-1st already hinted at it, but if your enemies' actions are worth more then your own individually, it becomes more important to deny the opponent their actions, rather then bringing your own attacks home.
Think of it as trading a pawn for a rook in chess: If you can inflict 20 damage with a hit, and the enemy 30, if you forgo an attack to deny the enemy theirs, you are basically preventing 10 damage to the party. Tripping, grappling and even shoving enemies can force them to either suck up penalties or spend actions countering them.
Sure, if that only costs them their 3rd action, it will not make their first two attacks a round any less deadly, but many monsters have special abilities that require 2 or 3 actions to perform. And if that 3-action attack can, say, inflict 60 damage to the whole party, then your sacrifice of 20 damage just means the party is 40 damage ahead.
Do you have any martial controllers in the party? Can the Monk do trips, grabs and shoves to force enemies to waste actions? Slow spells? Heck even things like Demoralise and Intimidating Strike at least lessen then chances for enemies to hit and crit. How is your party set up for that sort of thing?
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Part of why the Nighthag probably felt like a such a damage sponge was their HP is inflated to compensate for their cold iron weakness. If you're a dual wield build, I highly recommend you pick up some different material weapons and then use doubling rings to pivot as appropriate. If your monk had rolled as hot as you had, the fight would probably be over much quicker with the metal strikes. Flexibility of damage types and materials is maybe the biggest advantage dual weapon warrior have.
Also, I'm not entirely sure what your GM did on that encounter, but it sounds like they changed up the hag combination for a more difficult one? It should have been 10 and 7 and it sounds like they moved another level 10 hag into that chamber. Those fights are tough. Extra players might offset it... But not on the one on one level I'm afraid.
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I TPK'd my group in this encounter. We moved on to Agents of Edgewatch.
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But that is not really my point. My point is: even when I hit with three crits (I don't roll that good usually) and all my other attacks, the night hag wasn't going down. My problem isn't that I feel bad because my character went down (that happened often enough before), my problem is my damage output feels pitiful (especially compared to the hag).I think one issue also comes from your choice of character. The Flurry Ranger makes a lot of attacks. Obviously, the more attacks you do and the less extreme your damage (rolling 2 criticals in a raw is far easier than rolling 4 of them). Your chances to make an astounding round or a useless one are lower compared to a character who makes less attacks.
On top of it, the Flurry Ranger has high accuracy. Obviously, high accuracy means lower damage.
These 2 things mean that even when you are lucky, you don't actually roll that much damage compared to, say, a Barbarian who combines few attacks and no accuracy bonus with a massive damage boost to compensate. Rolling a hit and a crit with a Barbarian is not that rare of an occurrence and the damage in that case it stellar. On the other hand, rolling no hit with a Barbarian is also extremely common (a good third of your rounds) and that can feel disheartening, too.From my experience, people tend to overvalue spike damage. It's extremely pleasant to see a big damage being rolled and it overcompensates a mediocre average damage.
So maybe the issue comes also from your character that is not a very good fit for you.
It was my 2 cents.
I thought about this and you are right to some extent. I'd say, until now I hit more often than the other martials. But I think I don't overvalue spike damage. I accept that my damage is lower. Problem: My damage against the night hag with three crits and all other attacks hitting (super lucky) was still underwhelming when totalled. Compare it to a Barbarian - some of his attacks would not have hit, because his third attack is at minus 10, mine at -4. The overall damage would have been about the same. Maybe well that I am wrong in this calculation because his crits are so much better on average, I lack experience, we never had a barbarian in our group. But you gave me something to think about.
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Night hags have ac 28, 170 hp, +20 attack, and do 2d8+8 or 2d10+8 damage.
I'm assuming you were also level 9 (since you said that next level was 10), so you should have around ac 26, 120-140 hp, +18 attack, and do ~2d8+6. (I don't know your exact build, but those numbers should be close at least)
The hags average damage would be 16/18 per hit (32/36 on a crit), and you said that she took you down in two rounds. She would have had to land all 6 attacks (or just roll EXCEPTIONALLY high damage/get a few crits) in order to do that, which would also mean she wasn't moving anywhere or attacking anyone else.
It sounds to me like you just got really unlucky. A night hags melee is slightly better than yours, but that's offset by the cold-iron weakness (though admittedly that's useless if you don't have any cold-iron). If you were flanking and hasted and still got wrecked that badly, then luck is pretty much the only thing you can realistically put that down to.
On the other hand, you took up 6 entire actions of an on-level enemy, allowing the other 4 party members to use their ~12 actions in relative safety. That seems both acceptably tactical and heroic to me.
All that being said, I'm contractually obliged to point out that there's no reason to end a turn near an enemy when you're hasted. I know you felt like it was an acceptable risk, but it's just not unless you're an AC focused champion/monk or an hp focused barb.
Okay now I think something is off there and I have to ask my GM. We played on Foundry, and he rolled openly one time and we saw her stats. Her to hit was +23, her damage 2d10+12. I guess he had his reasons, but another thing I did not mention is that he played the monk, because the player was not there, and he did it well, but maybe in this regard not completely to his abilities (the player did not fill out the Foundry character sheet, the GM knew most of his numbers but not all).
Still you are probably right about the fourth action; instead of striking it makes more sense to get a good position. At least this is what I seemed to have learnt from this thread. To my defence: In Foundry/Forge you can see the state of health your opponent is in (at least when you allow that feature). The night hag was "Near death" after my Twin Takedown and the second attack. So I assumed it was super risky to go on hitting, but I thought if I can take her out, it is worth the risk (of course: wrong). But then I hit with the third attack, did average damage but did not bring her down. As I still had a fourth action in the second round (remember: already having scored three crits), I tried again. We had her flanked so her AC was at -2, and I had a to hit of +15 (my main weapon already has a +2 potency rune).And I hit her again (rolling a 17 if I remember correctly) again with average damage.
Your calculation about the ranger is almost accurate: It's +19/17/15 with first weapon and +18/16/14 with the other one, 125 Hit Points, AC 27, +29 with Dodge (rogue dedication feat). Damage in this case was 3d6+6 (flanked/rogue dedication with sneak attack). I don't know if there is a one handed weapon that can be thrown, which is agile (very important for a flurry ranger I believe) that has a d8 damage die.
Another thing: Our wizard even gave me Stone Skin after the night hag's first round which ultimately saved me from dying for real.
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But that is not really my point. My point is: even when I hit with three crits (I don't roll that good usually) and all my other attacks, the night hag wasn't going down. My problem isn't that I feel bad because my character went down (that happened often enough before), my problem is my damage output feels pitiful (especially compared to the hag).SuperBidi already mentioned it, but you have to keep in mind that the martial classes are very closely balanced for damage output in PF2. Since the Flurry Ranger can do a lot of attacks, every individual attack is correspondingly weaker. A critical hit with a d6 Agile weapon is about as good as a regular hit with a d12 weapon outside of static bonuses. On the other hand, you have more opportunities to make the static damage count, so there is that.
It is generally not possible to one-shot enemies outside the lowest of levels. In return, most enemies will likewise not be able to drop a PC in just one round of attacks.
However, as far as tactics are concerned:
SOLDIER-1st already hinted at it, but if your enemies' actions are worth more then your own individually, it becomes more important to deny the opponent their actions, rather then bringing your own attacks home.Think of it as trading a pawn for a rook in chess: If you can inflict 20 damage with a hit, and the enemy 30, if you forgo an attack to deny the enemy theirs, you are basically preventing 10 damage to the party. Tripping, grappling and even shoving enemies can force them to either suck up penalties or spend actions countering them.
Sure, if that only costs them their 3rd action, it will not make their first two attacks a round any less deadly, but many monsters have special abilities that require 2 or 3 actions to perform. And if that 3-action attack can, say, inflict 60 damage to the whole party, then your sacrifice of 20 damage just means the party is 40 damage ahead.
Do you have any martial controllers in the party? Can the Monk do trips, grabs and...
All good points. I guess this our weakness, we don't have an efficient martial debuffer.
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Was there any debuffing of the enemy - Trips and Shoves, Demoralize, spells and the like? In PF2, using all three actions to attack on your turn is generally considered sub-optimal, and the game expects that negating your opponent's advantages is just as important as hitting them.
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Thanks everyone for your insight. I learned a lot, but don't get me wrong, I also already knew a lot at that point. I tend to inform myself and play Pathfinder since its inception and I also read a lot in the messageboards. Then again my 2e play experience is rather limited so I really appreciate the insight, especially in this case, where it also comes from experience and not that much from theory-crafting, which I feel was more prevalent in the 1e boards. I appreciate your help.
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Attacking 3-5 times is perfectly optimal if you're playing a flurry ranger. The creature was already flatfooted, too, so maneuevers weren't as important. Trading one of your several -4 attacks to rob the enemy of it's -10 attack isn't a particularly good use of actions, though it can mess up their ability to do a two action spell or effect and strike too.
If the GM ran the book as written, +23 to hit corresponds to Rusty Mae, who is not actually a rust hag but an ANNIS hag, which does also have rust powers. I can totally see why that got confusing.
The biggest red flag for me, Turgan, is your weapons have different to hit bonuses, which indicates you're enchanting the two separately instead of using the cheap doubling rings. Not only is that less cost effective, but it limits your ability to leverage other types of weapons and material.
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Given the numbers provided, it sounds like the rest of your party failed to do any damage to your target (three crits and three hits should be about one hit short of downing the Night Hag): Either your party failed to 'focus fire' on a single target, or your good rolls were offset by truly atrocious rolling by the rest of the group (you'd think a flanking monk would be good for the 17 or so extra damage you needed to drop the Hag).
Honestly, the fact that you nearly downed your not-underleveled foe in what was basically a '1 on 1' fight is kinda impressive...
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Was there any debuffing of the enemy - Trips and Shoves, Demoralize, spells and the like? In PF2, using all three actions to attack on your turn is generally considered sub-optimal, and the game expects that negating your opponent's advantages is just as important as hitting them.
I am not sure, there was more buffing going on than debuffing, but I thought I already wrote that. The wizard's opening was a lot of damage, which took the rust hag to "badly hurt" and the night hag to "hurt". Maybe that's not optimal but it felt okay at that moment. Debuffs are not a catch-all-solution, at least in my play experience.
You wrote: "It is generally considered". I hope I was able to describe the scene somewhat, so this is a very concrete case. I think 2e edition is not about general but about individual solutions at least that's the way I always read it.
Hope this does not come off as rude, if it does, I apologize (As you will have noticed, I am not a native speaker/thinker).
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If the GM ran the book as written, +23 to hit corresponds to Rusty Mae, who is not actually a rust hag but an ANNIS hag, which does also have rust powers. I can totally see why that got confusing.
The biggest red flag for me, Turgan, is your weapons have different to hit bonuses, which indicates you're enchanting the two separately instead of using the cheap doubling rings. Not only is that less cost effective, but it limits your ability to leverage other types of weapons and material.
Didn't know about the doubling rings yet. Thanks for the tip.
And then I was wrong again about the hag, one time the GM said "Annis Hag" and one time "Rust Hag" and I got confused. And yes it was her who took me down, not the night hag. It begins to make sense...We will improve our tactics the next time.
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Dang, I'm pretty sure there were Doubling Rings way back in book 1 to find, though you might have skipped them. To put it in perspective... You'd either be attacking something with weakness 10 to cold iron or resistance 10 to non-blugeoning physical damage. With doubling rings, you would only need one +2 striking weapon as your mainhand and then flex your offhand to whatever back up weapon best suits the moment. In this case, it you were attacking Rusty Mae you'd want a light hammer and if attacking the night hag then you'd want anything cold iron. Either way, using the "wrong" weapon cost you 10 damage a hit. I bet if you'd had the right weapon that extra 40 damage would have taken the hag down. (You'd also wind up with more accuracy on your offhand attacks.) The flurry ranger's lots of little hits is especially affected by weakness and resistance.
The only other thing is your GM seems to have moved the hags around if you fought the (elite) night hag with Rusty Mae. That is two level 10 creatures, when one is supposed to be a level 7 elite annis hag. From what you've told me I'm guessing that was a simple mistake by the GM. Also looks like they overlooked the surprise potential ally you could have gained for the fight.
So I would chalk this up to a learning experience for both you and the GM. Hopefully it doesn't spoil the rest of the system for you!
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I wasn't attacking rusty Mae, but the night hag; it was Rusty Mae who downed me though. My Recall Knowledge about the night hag was successful. I knew about her weaknesses, but I don't recall them now.
I had a cold iron weapon at my disposal and used it. It is shifting +1 striking cold iron dagger, of which we got three from the elves in the jungle.
I assumed the other party members would take care of the badly injured Annis hag, while the monk and me took care of the night hag (which was my hunted prey).
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I wasn't attacking rusty Mae, but the night hag; it was Rusty Mae who downed me though. My Recall Knowledge about the night hag was successful. I knew about her weaknesses, but I don't recall them now.
I had a cold iron weapon at my disposal and used it. It is shifting +1 striking cold iron dagger, of which we got three from the elves in the jungle.
I assumed the other party members would take care of the badly injured Annis hag, while the monk and me took care of the night hag (which was my hunted prey).
Huh. And did the GM apply weakness damage? Did you shift the dagger into a d6 form?
Assuming you got weakness on three of those hits, 3 crits and a hit should average 145 damage, an elite night hag has 190 hit points. So you would need some help to get it over the finish line. Still, keep in mind it was a higher level than you and you very nearly one rounded it.
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In my experience with a dual wielding flurry ranger:
- doubling rings
- use different weapons. Light hammer (thrown, good crit effect), Kukri (trip), dogslicers (extra damage).
- check the soulforger archetype, very useful for a dual weapon ranger. Allows you to "draw" weapons and wear armor in one action or as a free action during initiative. Allows you to change weapon type in downtime. The extra powers you get are also quite nice.
- get as many extra dice as you can. Elemental runes, sneak. Many attacks -> many times the extra dice.
- Static damage bonuses. Works even better when you have second sting (L12).
Dual wielding flurry ranger do a s@~~load of damage. Stand up there and swing. Sentinel helps for the +1 ac of plate. Soulforger helps for damage resistance if you choose that as a power.
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In my experience with a dual wielding flurry ranger:
- doubling rings
- use different weapons. Light hammer (thrown, good crit effect), Kukri (trip), dogslicers (extra damage).
- check the soulforger archetype, very useful for a dual weapon ranger. Allows you to "draw" weapons and wear armor in one action or as a free action during initiative. Allows you to change weapon type in downtime. The extra powers you get are also quite nice.
- get as many extra dice as you can. Elemental runes, sneak. Many attacks -> many times the extra dice.
- Static damage bonuses. Works even better when you have second sting (L12).Dual wielding flurry ranger do a s+~$load of damage. Stand up there and swing. Sentinel helps for the +1 ac of plate. Soulforger helps for damage resistance if you choose that as a power.
Just keep in mind the base version of the Doubling Rings does not duplicate your property runes: You need the greater version for that.
From my experience in AoA, it's kinda important that your group has all four 'classic' elements (fire, cold, acid, and electricity) available in some form: In our case, my thief (eventually) had a holy frost weapon, the Barbarian had fire covered (both with a weapon rune and having the Gold Dragon instinct), the fighter has a corrosive speed weapon, and our cleric had that Electric Arc cantrip.
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When I ran this encounter the party didn't do the thing in the spoiler, but
Otherwise it seems like your GM customized this encounter, and may have overturned an already severe fight.
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Was there any debuffing of the enemy - Trips and Shoves, Demoralize, spells and the like? In PF2, using all three actions to attack on your turn is generally considered sub-optimal, and the game expects that negating your opponent's advantages is just as important as hitting them.I don't understand this at all. Trips, shoves, etc. are all attacks, correct? They all contribute to (and suffer from) the MAP, right?
How is it going to help you at all to do this? Every time I've tried it, it's a completely wasted effort.
I'll break this down from my experience.
Trip is not a particularly attractive option if it affects your MAP. You are right, it can fail if it is a skill based roll. I've seen it fail again and again and again in the most difficult fights where you would most need it. If you're fighting mooks, you don't even need trip. If you're fighting a boss monster that is super tripping using a skill roll that affects MAP is usually about 50/50 if you build for it. I haven't found tripping with a skill a good investment.
But for certain classes and abilities where Trip is a guaranteed action that is part of your normal attack routine, it can be quite amazing triggering AoOs from a class built for it. Some of the classes with abilities that use trip well:
1. Hammer or flail fighter. Trip is automatic on a crit. Then you have an AoO and often an extra AoO to hammer them again when they stand up. It works in boss fights or mook fights. It's part of your normal attack routine and requires no investment other than using a maul or hammer.
2. Monk Wolf Wolf Drag feat. Monk wolf drag is two actions that combines an attack and a guaranteed knockdown as part of the same attack. Then you can flurry as your last action on a prone target. It works fairly well.
3. Wolf animal companion once in position for attack. It can attack and if it hits, spend its second action to knock the opponent prone with no skill roll.
4. Barbarian with a hammer or flail while raging. Really, any melee with a hammer or flail that gets critical specialization with an AoO. Not as good as a fighter because you don't crit as often, but hammer critical specialization is just good.
Any ability you can find to trip as part of a regular attack routine is effective. If you have to use a skill roll, don't bother. Just attack.
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Any class without legendary weapon proficiency can get their athletics modifier +2 higher than their strike bonus for most of the game, and that's without using using anything to get a circumstance bonus. If the boss monster has reflex as a weak save, that DC can be 4 lower than the monster's AC pretty easy. With those odds, you should probably consider tripping instead of striking, assuming you have a reaction for standing to trigger.
If you land the trip, you're still getting a no MAP strike when they stand. You're also doing the same for any adjacent allies, and of course either penalizing the enemy's attacks or wasting one of their actions. Your reaction strikes could also potentially disrupt the stand if you've got a ranger, monk, or Thaumaturge in the mix.
Tripping isn't always the best strategy, but there is no always best strategy in PF2. There's plenty of situations where even a regular old Trip is better than a Strike though.
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Fighters are, of course, well equipped to trip with the Knockdown and Improved Knockdown feats. While the latter is a lv. 10 feat, the Trip is automatic on a melee hit.
Knockdown itself offers a MAP-free trip attempt after an initial melee hit. Since Fighters gravitate towards having a good Athletics score, this is worth a consideration.
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Any class without legendary weapon proficiency can get their athletics modifier +2 higher than their strike bonus for most of the game, and that's without using using anything to get a circumstance bonus. If the boss monster has reflex as a weak save, that DC can be 4 lower than the monster's AC pretty easy. With those odds, you should probably consider tripping instead of striking, assuming you have a reaction for standing to trigger.
If you land the trip, you're still getting a no MAP strike when they stand. You're also doing the same for any adjacent allies, and of course either penalizing the enemy's attacks or wasting one of their actions. Your reaction strikes could also potentially disrupt the stand if you've got a ranger, monk, or Thaumaturge in the mix.
Tripping isn't always the best strategy, but there is no always best strategy in PF2. There's plenty of situations where even a regular old Trip is better than a Strike though.
I was recently looking over Fire Giants for some prep work, so using that as an example, they're level 10, AC 31, and a ref save of +16. If you're level 7 and fighting one as a boss, as a martial your attack bonus will be +16 (7 level + 4 expert + 1 item + 4 ability score), or your athletics bonus will be +18 (the same, but master). You need a 15 on the dice to hit the giant, or an 8 on the dice to trip the giant. Tripping either imposes that -2 penalty on their attack rolls, gives anyone with an AoO a free attack if they stand up (and wastes one of their actions), and makes them flat-footed for everyone else. This is obviously an extreme example, but does go to show that as Captain Morgan said, there is no always-best strategy in PF2 and there are situations where it's worthwhile changing your plans to throw in a trip.
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Not my experience.
We don't bother with trip unless part of a guaranteed attack seqeuence. Gave up on tripping as a skill check a long time ago
You can build a party to take full advantage of tripping if you so feel like it and it will be an effective tactic when it sets up right.
But it isn't necessary and only benefits certain classes that have an AoO and are in melee range at the right time. Since that is not how we tend to build parties, we usually like the hammer martial to just hit the monster initially, draw the aggro, and we heal through it.
Another thing not noted in the above post is a trip usually does no damage and doesn't add any of your special attacks like striking runes, energy runes, barbarian rage damage, specialization damage, sneak attack, or any of the damage boosters that make your class hit harder. So you're basically giving up your best attack for a trip with no guarantee of an AoO unless you're built for it or have a party built for it.
We have found over time that tripping as your class abilities grow more powerful and useful is not a particularly great use of actions unless a natural part of your attack sequence that will benefit from all your built up damage boosters and class enhancers.
Healing is so powerful in PF2 with the two action heal, if for some reason you can't withstand its attacks you can just heal through the damage with one two action spell from some party caster. At higher level you don't usually need healing until after the fight.
We tend to build parties with two melee martials, an archer, and two casters. Only the melee martials may benefit from trip, but we have lot of rogues who prefer to get Opportunistic Backstab or Champions who sit on their reaction for defense. Tripping isn't particularly interesting when you have other things you can do that don't align well with the tactic.
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Fighters are, of course, well equipped to trip with the Knockdown and Improved Knockdown feats. While the latter is a lv. 10 feat, the Trip is automatic on a melee hit.
Knockdown itself offers a MAP-free trip attempt after an initial melee hit. Since Fighters gravitate towards having a good Athletics score, this is worth a consideration.
Knockdown is pretty good at low level. I made a goblin fighter with knockdown and improved knockdown. Very good strategy with a fighter. Fighter and barbarian are the two classes I've seen take the best advantage of tripping or knocking down because it is so easy to build as part of your attack sequence where you get to use your highest attack hit with all your bonuses while tripping as part of the same action. That is a very useful feat combination.
If you're a fighter, barbarian, or monk, I would definitely looking into building a trip specialist as it is an optimal build for those classes.
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It is not necessary. If your party subscribes to the theory that the weapons that prone on a critical are the best, or if you are mostly melee based martials and the GM lets you flank easily, then it is of less value.
I certainly prefer to have the athletics options