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Going for under moderate to above moderate is not exactly a massive shift in difficulty. Nothing preventing the fight to go on fine. I've done (much much) worse things to my players.
As soon as the skeletons joined the fight, it was time to weaken all the opponents. Because the difficulty was not the one you had planned anymore.In a way, the whole party suffered because the swashbuckler successfully acted heroically.
I know. I was there.
PF2e is built on Dark Soul level of difficulty. Yeah some people like it, but most people just want to play an action RPG and face roll.
I have not played Dark Souls, but I heard of its reputation as a killer (Viva La Dirt League video on Dark Souls).
In my 7-player Pathfinder 2nd Edition game session yesterday, I mentioned this thread. We experienced players reminisced about the distant past when we played characters that were designed to fulfill a self-centered vision rather than act as a fun and colorful member of a team. I had texted with the player of the champion before the session, and had given her the link to this thread, so she had read it.
Seems to me that what most players and GMs who struggle with PF2e combat miss is that small level differences matter a lot more than in other TTRPGS and that +1 to the dice roll actually matters a lot. I love positioning and build synergies, so I thrive in the system, but the kids just trying to do the cool high risk high reward moves get punished hard.
The "high risk" side is actually a real risk, not just a lost opportunity like in most games.
Yeah, real risk sounds like Dark Souls difficulty.
The battle that game session was Trivial Threat against 68 hobgoblin soldiers and two gargoyles--they earned only 53 xp off of it. But they had the fun of pushing an opponent (a four-monk troop with lots of hit points) out of a 3rd-floor window.
Most of the session was about making sure that their first battle was trivial by flying into that 3rd floor window while invisible or disguised or applying Legendary sneak rather than fighting their way in from the ground-floor front gate. They were accustomed to coordinating and finding ways to compensate for each others' lack of abilities. The leshy sorcerer was only trained in Stealth, but she used Pest Form to look like an unremarkable bird. The monk also was not Stealthy enough, so he rode on the flying broom with the rogue/sorcerer, both hidden in an Invisibility Sphere.
My wife (rogue/sorcerer's player) pointed out that such puzzle-solving is fun for them, but it requires cooperation from the GM. Some GMs find one little complication and shoot down the whole plan with, "You can't do that." The sorcerer's player mentioned that I had deliberately kept the scenario simple so that they could introduce the intricacies themselves.
They view keeping all party members alive and conscious during combat to be a similar puzzle challenge. The champion sees her job as "standing near the squishies" to keep them alive with her Liberating Step reactions. PF2 characters are not particularly squishy (old term for low AC and low HP), but due to her high-Dexterity sturdy-shield champion build, the others are squishier than her.