Looking at Rage of Elements, the preview document, and other sources for creatures that are getting remastered, it seems as though immunities and resistances might well be more prevalent in the near future.
Do you think so as well, or do you think it's something of a false flag due to the fact that most of the monsters getting changed are outsiders, such as fiends and genies.
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I really hope the monster core leans into it more generally and it isn’t just outsiders. The “puzzle” aspect of PF2 encounters is a particularly refreshing and fun part of the system and getting away from OGL limits and having more interaction generally with damage types feels like an east way to keep up the unique freshness of PF2.
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Are immunities and resistances more common in the Remaster?
*pulls out crystal ball*
Hmm... Hard to tell. Very mysterious, the future is. Perhaps you will just have to wait and see what arrives when the time comes.
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I hope so, if they do that and revamp the recall knowledge system to concretely say "You learn enemies resistances/weaknesses" and possibly saves as well, then it'd make PF 2e really shine as a tactical game. There's not much tactics if the tactic is "flank and spank till the enemy dies."
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I don't know if it's reasonable to use RoE for a benchmark for "immunity/resistance prevalence" since you know what should be immune to fire? Basically anything that lives on the plane of fire.
Strongly elemental themed creatures are the creatures you would most expect to resist or be immune to that specific element, but not everything you fight is going to be strongly elemental themed.
Like if you took Book of the Dead as your data point, most of the thngs you can fight from there are hard to damage with negative energy. But that doesn't mean negative energy immunity is common, it's just common for undead creatures.
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I'm personally hoping for a proliferation of weaknesses coinciding with a revamp of recall knowledge. It would help casters a great deal without touching their chassis
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Agree with PossibleCabbage.
That said, if you compare PF2 and PF1 there was a strong trend:
- less immunities
- less resistances
- more weaknesses (quite rare in PF1 actually)
I've heard it said that the heavy use of resistances and immunities was a 3.x design pattern to create problems for spellcasters that martials had to solve. Didn't work; casters would just figure out which spells got around those defenses.
In PF2 magic is scaled back, martials always feel useful anyway, and monsters don't need so many hard defenses. The addition of weaknesses on the other hand rewards in particular spellcasters who prepare to have multiple energy types on hand.
I kind of expect this trend to continue in the remaster really. It's been working out well.
If anything, I'm hoping for more weaknesses. Now, giving a creature fewer HP and a couple of resistances, or more HP and weaknesses, are theoretically equivalent. But being able to hit the weakness and get BONUS DAMAGE just feels more rewarding for "solving the puzzle". Also because if you can't "solve" it, with weakness, you just have to fight a bit longer. But with resistance you can end up in a slog where you wonder if you could ever win this.
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Yeah more HP with weakness feels way better than less HP but with resistances.
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I do also like more weaknesses for creatures, but I also enjoy some of the incorporeal creatures and the like that feel impossible to fight until you figure out what you need to be doing, or you happen to have a reliable way of doing force damage.
So I hope we keep getting a mix of all of the options.
It is way too late and not going to happen, but I think it would have been interesting/cool for living creatures to have a small weakness to void energy and for undead creatures to have a weakness to vital energy as default, just to further make outsiders feel a little different. But working that in to every character and navigating around constructs would have potentially been another complication.
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I do also like more weaknesses for creatures, but I also enjoy some of the incorporeal creatures and the like that feel impossible to fight until you figure out what you need to be doing, or you happen to have a reliable way of doing force damage.
The problem I have with resistance based enemies is that often times you don't really have the tools to "figure out what you need to be doing"
When our barbarian runs into a ghost with high physical resistance, he keeps hitting it and just does less damage, there really isn't much else in his kit.
When our rogue finds an enemy immune to precision damage, there isn't really a new and innovative way for them to fight it... they just do a lot less damage that combat.
When our kineticist bumps into the wrong kind of golem, they just kind of don't exist that fight.
Treating resistances and immunities as puzzles only works if solving the puzzle is an option, and for many characters it isn't.
Alchemists and arcane/primal spellcasters are the only ones who can really do this freely, and the spellcasters need the opportunity to disengage and reset to pull it off.
PF2 characters, especially martials, are just not very versatile by design. So a lot of these 'puzzles' aren't really.
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Some puzzles are solved by running away and returning with the right tools. I have no problem letting my players run into foes that they can’t overcome by trying to be a sledge hammer. There are bombs, oils, potions, spells, scrolls, etc that can all be used to keep players from feeling useless.
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It seems like a book based around creatures that by definition have immunities and resistances (there's even a big diagram in the book about how the Elements counter or reinforce each other) shouldn't be considered the new baseline for anything. There's been a lot of completely random unsubstantiated speculation about the Remaster, and I can't help but think the end result is people getting annoyed that the change they decided will happen didn't happen.
I do also like more weaknesses for creatures, but I also enjoy some of the incorporeal creatures and the like that feel impossible to fight until you figure out what you need to be doing, or you happen to have a reliable way of doing force damage.The problem I have with resistance based enemies is that often times you don't really have the tools to "figure out what you need to be doing"
When our barbarian runs into a ghost with high physical resistance, he keeps hitting it and just does less damage, there really isn't much else in his kit.
When our rogue finds an enemy immune to precision damage, there isn't really a new and innovative way for them to fight it... they just do a lot less damage that combat.
When our kineticist bumps into the wrong kind of golem, they just kind of don't exist that fight.
Treating resistances and immunities as puzzles only works if solving the puzzle is an option, and for many characters it isn't.
Alchemists and arcane/primal spellcasters are the only ones who can really do this freely, and the spellcasters need the opportunity to disengage and reset to pull it off.
PF2 characters, especially martials, are just not very versatile by design. So a lot of these 'puzzles' aren't really.
Exactly, this is the primary reason I don't like framing it as a puzzle to be solved. It pre-supposes that the party (and really every character ) has access to the means to interact with the puzzle. But honestly that's not almost never the case. If you know you're going to be fighting a lot of something with weakness, or incorporeal or something like that you might be able to purchase runes to help you overcome it. But most of the time you don't have options to change what kind of damage you can deal. You have the weapon you have. You might have a backup ranged/melee weapon that might get you around bludgeoning/piercing/slashing issues. But it's not like you can change which energy type your energy damage rune deals. Or just suddenly decide your weapon is ghost touch. And spell casters aren't in a better position either. They can't just decide to change what damage type the spells they prepared deal, or spells they know (in their repertoire). Unprepared characters (which is most of the time) simply don't have the ability to "solve" these puzzles. So it's a nice reward when you happen to have the right tool (employ weakness not resistance), but supremely frustrating and not a real "puzzle" when you don't (employ resistance instead of weakness).
Edit: To elaborate on this further, generally speaking (IMO) it should be observable to the characters that they deal less damage than expected (their attack was resisted) or deals more than expected (attack triggered weakness). And if nothing else at that point it should encourage someone in the party to use recall knowledge to determine weakness/resistance. And the party will either know or it wont. But in most cases in wont matter as chances are high that you wont have anything with the ability to interact with those.
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There are tons of alchemical and consumable items that can add damage types or materials to weapons or even do splash damage of X type on a miss. Maybe a party doesn’t have anything when they first head into an encounter, that doesn’t mean they can’t tactically withdraw and come back, or fight an advanced scout or low severity initial encounter and realize there is going to be more where that came from. And “what do people in town know about the creatures that live in the sewers/dungeon outside of town is the kind of preemptive information that parties can try to learn.
Parties that refuse to try to prepare for anything don’t need to be the base line for the whole game.
My Champion hits things with his mace. A lot. He also started using a holy avenger once he found one. Not a whole lot of versatility there.
That's why he uses bombs approx. 25% of the time. They work great for adding that much needed versatility to hit Weaknesses and such.
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Maybe a party doesn’t have anything when they first head into an encounter, that doesn’t mean they can’t tactically withdraw and come back,
Could you please describe how withdrawing from a fight works in PF2. I haven't been able to figure out how to do it from the player's side of things.
What I have noticed instead is that battles snowball rather quickly. By the time a player notices that a fight is going badly, it is too late to try any withdrawing tactics without leaving at least one party member behind to die.
There are tons of alchemical and consumable items that can add damage types or materials to weapons or even do splash damage of X type on a miss. Maybe a party doesn’t have anything when they first head into an encounter, that doesn’t mean they can’t tactically withdraw and come back, or fight an advanced scout or low severity initial encounter and realize there is going to be more where that came from. And “what do people in town know about the creatures that live in the sewers/dungeon outside of town is the kind of preemptive information that parties can try to learn.
Parties that refuse to try to prepare for anything don’t need to be the base line for the whole game.
I think this the same problem with rules comprehension - the developers are working at a higher baseline than the average player, so even when writing things as simply as possible there’s going to be a sizeable fraction of players who just can’t comprehend how something works even when it’s explained to them. It’s no one’s fault, really.
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Maybe a party doesn’t have anything when they first head into an encounter, that doesn’t mean they can’t tactically withdraw and come back,Could you please describe how withdrawing from a fight works in PF2. I haven't been able to figure out how to do it from the player's side of things.
What I have noticed instead is that battles snowball rather quickly. By the time a player notices that a fight is going badly, it is too late to try any withdrawing tactics without leaving at least one party member behind to die.
A lot of APs specify how far enemies pursue players. Also, if you've got someone with Heal in the party, even if someone is down you can usually get them back up. Obviously, there are exceptions, like enemies with AoO or who restrain you with web attacks. But I think more than anything retreat needs to be highlighted to players as an option they should keep in mind. It's explicitly part of the sandbox nature of Abomination Vaults so I make sure I remind players of this throughout the game.
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Withdrawal as a tactic is something a GM has to make very clear, IMO.
As a player I've never thought withdrawl was a very valid tactic. What if there are other enemies in the path? What if the path we've "cleared" isn't clear any more. What if the enemy is faster than us? Or at least one of us? Does that mean I'm leaving my team mate for dead?
Retreat just doesn't feel like a valid strategic option in most cases. For me to consider it, the GM would need to outright state someth8ing like "these creatures are defending their territory and wont pursue you past the entrance if you attempt to flee".
And while bombs aren't a bad thing to have as a supplemental item.
However, as an example a level 3 bomb (alchemist fire) costs 10 gp. At level 3 you should have about 500 gp in value. So each alchemist bomb represents about 2% of total wealth by level. So how many of those do you need to remain relevant in a fight? And now you need them for every energy type? So how much of my wealth am I expected to spend on these?
Again, it's one thing if a common energy type is showing up as a weakness for me to trigger. But I can't rely on bombs (unless I'm an alchemist) to carry me through an entire or multiple combats. I think it's a completely unreasonable idea.
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As a GM, I have 0 problems TPKing a party that decides that one over committed character means that everyone has to rush in and fight to the death.
Most predator monsters have no reason to fight past having secured dinner for the night. Trying to rescue an unconscious ally being dragged away is a very fun way to completely flip an encounter script and change goals away from "let's all fight as hard as we can" and towards, "How can we move this creature away from our ally and prevent it from following us?" It is very important as a GM to present encounters that can have flexible goals and a changing tactical situation. Immunities, resistances, and short duration spells and items are very good for creating these moments where the whole encounter is now a different encounter than it was when it started.
If I am going to run a dungeon full of devils or demons, the whole party is going to know it long before they arrive at the door. I am probably even going to have enough downtime before it and after it for players to retrain options and craft items specifically for the upcoming dungeon, as well as research what potential demons/devils might be there and why they are there. There are probably going to be some surprises through out it, but that is where you have things like "the devils have trapped a powerful elemental that is angry at everyone. They also have some tools on hand for resisting and trying to control that elemental that aren't working right. These are loot drops in dungeon that make sense and can be used immediately to over come the surprising tactical shift.
As far as using consumables to overcome challenges, the game itself gives you enough treasure and consumables that you should have 0 set backs spending 25%to 50% of your current wealth at any point in the game cycle on consumables that will be gone by the time you level up and you will not have fallen behind or be in a bind.
Oozes are a funny example because the most helpful thing to beat them isn't necessarily equipment but your tactics. Trying to hang in melee against a mindless enemy with 10 foot speed is just a bad plan if your character is trying to prioritize their own safety. You can kite the hell out of them instead and solo most oozes without getting hit. It is so reliable I have seen GMs just handwave victory instead of bothering to go through the protracted combat.
Yeah, oozes are uninteresting if you meta game it. Move in, single attack, move away. Ooze spends all actions moving to get to someone. Repeat ad infinitum until ooze dies.
I think you might confused interesting with annoying. The best response to that kind of situation is to use healing magic to make them not unconscious. If for some reason that's not an option, hopefully picking them up and carrying them away is. But effectively it's not combat at that point but just a question of "what method is the GM going to allow that will get the NPC away from the ooze before the NPC (or PCs) dies".
Perhaps it's just a hold over from video games for me, but every time I have a protection mission where the NPCs do the stupidest things and the whole situation is just stacked against you I just get very annoyed rather than finding it to be an interesting change in the dynamic.
I support goals other than kill them all. I just really hate protection goals because a large portion of the situation (the NPCs) aren't within player control.
Intel is king. For example, in Abomination Vaults, gather all the information you can about the Gauntlight and the ruins surrounding it before you go near the place. Gather more information from what you find in the ruins before going down that staircase you found. Repeat ad infinitum. As GM, make sure the party gets plenty of downtime. As a PC, make sure to *use* that downtime wisely.
As a GM, I have 0 problems TPKing a party that decides that one over committed character means that everyone has to rush in and fight to the death.
The thing is, these types of encounters don't usually result in TPK or even individual player death. They just tend to be slower or leave one character feeling impotent.
When our party ran into a wood golem, it wasn't an impossible fight, or even particularly difficult, it just felt kind of s$#!ty for the psychic who didn't pick the like one occult spell that does fire damage and ended up basically just hanging out outside the room for half an hour real time.
Intel is king. For example, in Abomination Vaults, gather all the information you can about the Gauntlight and the ruins surrounding it before you go near the place. Gather more information from what you find in the ruins before going down that staircase you found. Repeat ad infinitum. As GM, make sure the party gets plenty of downtime. As a PC, make sure to *use* that downtime wisely.
Abomination Vaults is kind of an interesting exception here because it's really close to town and you have almost as much time as you want to solve the problem, but I'm not sure that's a reasonable expectation for most encounters.
Though even AV doesn't actually do a great job telegraphing what's up ahead. I've even seen several players hurt themselves in the long run because they tried to plan ahead and ended up having the perfect equipment to deal with enemies that abruptly stopped being relevant.
As a GM, I have 0 problems TPKing a party that decides that one over committed character means that everyone has to rush in and fight to the death.The thing is, these types of encounters don't usually result in TPK or even individual player death. They just tend to be slower or leave one character feeling impotent.
When our party ran into a wood golem, it wasn't an impossible fight, or even particularly difficult, it just felt kind of s++&ty for the psychic who didn't pick the like one occult spell that does fire damage and ended up basically just hanging out outside the room for half an hour real time.
Intel is king. For example, in Abomination Vaults, gather all the information you can about the Gauntlight and the ruins surrounding it before you go near the place. Gather more information from what you find in the ruins before going down that staircase you found. Repeat ad infinitum. As GM, make sure the party gets plenty of downtime. As a PC, make sure to *use* that downtime wisely.Abomination Vaults is kind of an interesting exception here because it's really close to town and you have almost as much time as you want to solve the problem, but I'm not sure that's a reasonable expectation for most encounters.
Though even AV doesn't actually do a great job telegraphing what's up ahead. I've even seen several players hurt themselves in the long run because they tried to plan ahead and ended up having the perfect equipment to deal with enemies that abruptly stopped being relevant.
I don't know the specifics of the situation you are describing Squiggit, but it sounds like a situation where a GM is setting their players up for failure by misrepresenting the current and future threats that the party needs to be dealing with.
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I played the first 3 and a half books of Extinction curse. You have faced a non-trivial number of Golems generally by that point in the campaign and it is pretty clear that they tend to be guardians of places the campaign is sending you.
I don't know the specifics of the situation you are describing Squiggit, but it sounds like a situation where a GM is setting their players up for failure by misrepresenting the current and future threats that the party needs to be dealing with.
All of the scenarios I've described have simply involved GMs running published Paizo adventures as written. Telegraphing information, free access to merchants, and the ability to retreat and re-engage with impunity are just all not things that are always normal assumptions about the game.
I don't think it's really setting players up for failure if a GM doesn't decide to add all those things in themselves.
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One thing I'll note is that Paizo will indeed throw encounters at you where weapon damage won't work-- mostly in the form of hazards. Haunts tend to rely more on skill checks than spells but are often flat out immune to weaoons. And a lot of hazards that technically can be battered apart add much more suspectable to spells. A dispel magic can one shot many magical traps with a good roll, and a hazard that relies on projectiles is completely shut down by wall of wind. Plus, there's the whole using summoned creatures to soak proximity triggered traps.
As a GM, I have 0 problems TPKing a party that decides that one over committed character means that everyone has to rush in and fight to the death.
There have been two times that my party has tried to flee from combat.
The first time was when we encountered what initially appeared to be a goblin that turned out to be a greater barghest. After its first turn where we all failed to hit the creature at all, and it had dropped one of our Barbarian characters to critically low HP levels, we decided to retreat. It then finished dropping that Barbarian using its AoO. It also confused one of our party members, so they weren't going to be fleeing with us. Also, the path back out involved climbing a 10 foot high wall. We only escaped that encounter because one of the NPCs with the party insulted the barghest and ran farther into the caverns.
So that felt very much like GM fiat simply letting us escape rather than a tactic that can be normally employed.
The second time was when we were fighting a Vrock. We had nearly taken it down when a group of butchers arrived. The Vrock had already put several of our characters into critical levels of HP, but everyone was still standing - as was the Vrock. The butchers then arrived and the four of them one-round-KO'd the Barbarian (yes, same barbarian). The Vrock then takes out two of our party. I manage to finish it off with a Holy Water and heal myself up to nearly full HP. The butchers then come after me and drop me in one round too. Of the seven characters that came into the battle, three escaped - the others were either dead or captured.
So... As a player, how would you have done either of those retreat scenarios differently?
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I also have played that campaign.
The Barghest encounter was a mistake in design for sure. It comes out of nowhere. It is disguised (although really creepy). And it is down inside essentially a pit the party has to get across. Our party had a character death there, and probably only 'won' the fight because the GM brought in a nearby NPC character when things were dicey. It wouldn't have been a TPK, because only one character went down into the pit, but we would have had a second death more than likely. The hilarious thing for our party is that our wizard used a 1st level scroll of sleep on the "goblin" and the creature nat 1'd the save. That made us way too cocky, and instead of just sneaking by, our barbarian hellknight went down to try and put manacles on the goblin. Its perception was way too high for our champion to sneak up on, so the fight started with the Hellknight right next to him.
We also ended up fleeing the Vrock encounter after it became clear things had gone bad for us. We knew things went bad because it raised the alarm and we could see, still in the distance, that reinforcements were coming. Our new Champion (same player) ended up getting captured, I believe, helping the rest of us escape. We later rescued the Champion. I really liked the adventure location of the Vrock. I think that was one of the most fun dungeons in the whole 3 books of the AP I got to play. It was a tough one, but it was open air, so you could really recon for a while, and put a good plan in place...that was certain to go sideways with some of the scary stuff tucked away around there. But it was also a great dungeon to raid and run away from a couple of times, right as you got powerful enough to have some big range, big area of effect AoEs.
I guess, my personal experience is, sometimes the big retreat scene is the opportunity for one character to have a heroic death, but keep the momentum of the campaign going, instead of having a TPK that leaves all the players feeling like they have no connection to the campaign anymore.
Both sets of encounters were a little too over the top for how low level the parties are that encounter them, but the problem is not the resistances or immunities, it is the AoOs with massive, near auto-critting bonuses to attack.
Dispel magic in a highest level slot is one of the best spells in PF2 and should never be slept on as a way that casters can really bring something uniquely powerful to tough encounters.
Not sure how the party can run from a Vrock that has a 35 foot fly speed and can cast 4th rank Dimension Door at will.
Other than by GM Fiat.
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We all had movement speeds of 35 or better and the Vrock was really mad at the paladin so went after him. Everyone else went different directions and it had already used its Dimension Door Spell to close a big gap in the trap we had set for it (we found its nest and attacked it first).
Edit: I think one of us didn't have a movement speed of 35, but had the stealth skill feat where you can hid automatically in a specific terrain and was far enough away to use it reliably.
I wouldn't mind if resistances became somewhat more common, but I'd be disappointed if immunities started showing up more frequently. Making the game more tactical is fun, but not everyone is looking for that in PF2, and it's never fun to find out the thing you are wanting to do gets shot down. We already have folks grumbling over not being able to sneak attack oozes, and that's been going on for multiple editions.
At least with a resistance the party can bull their way through it if they really, really don't feel like being tactical, and that's a choice they're making. Immunities don't offer that choice and can really hamper some concepts based on what the immunity is; see all the fear over pyrokineticists for another example.To answer the original question though, no. I don't think we'll be seeing a sudden glut of resistances and immunities cropping up. It's probable that you've seen a bunch because a lot of creatures in Rage of Elements are elementals, and they traditionally have a bunch of resistances and immunities, but the game isn't really built around giving creatures loads of both those things as a matter of course, and I don't see why that'd need to change.
I think the main problem there is that rogues, and martials in general, have limited capacity to change their damage type, and so if a monster resists or is immune to their weapon - and often their one weapon, as Bulk and runes make keeping a backup weapon impractical - there's little recourse, you're expected to just power through it. Slashing/piercing (currently) doesn't count because practically nothing takes more piercing than slashing damage.
But for casters, they can often have multiple damage types at their disposal, and being able to exploit weaknesses is kind of a hallmark of magic users in video games. If the weaknesses, resistances, and immunities are more about magical damage types, then it can help make spells like the new Ignition cantrip have a role as being both a melee damage dealer and a backup ranged option for dealing a damage type your main ranged option doesn't.
Still an issue for themed casters, if you've got a fire sorcerer you don't necessarily want to be resisted constantly, but at least if the class mechanically supports that theming there's often something to help you work around that to deal your damage anyways.
I do also like more weaknesses for creatures, but I also enjoy some of the incorporeal creatures and the like that feel impossible to fight until you figure out what you need to be doing, or you happen to have a reliable way of doing force damage.The problem I have with resistance based enemies is that often times you don't really have the tools to "figure out what you need to be doing"
When our barbarian runs into a ghost with high physical resistance, he keeps hitting it and just does less damage, there really isn't much else in his kit.
When our rogue finds an enemy immune to precision damage, there isn't really a new and innovative way for them to fight it... they just do a lot less damage that combat.
When our kineticist bumps into the wrong kind of golem, they just kind of don't exist that fight.
Treating resistances and immunities as puzzles only works if solving the puzzle is an option, and for many characters it isn't.
Alchemists and arcane/primal spellcasters are the only ones who can really do this freely, and the spellcasters need the opportunity to disengage and reset to pull it off.
PF2 characters, especially martials, are just not very versatile by design. So a lot of these 'puzzles' aren't really.
Hmm, yeah I'm starting to see the issue. Cantrips sorta work but unless a class has an option to (quickly) flex to the correct damage type it would be more of a "you have to sit this one out" ordeal, or a forced retreat - and I'm not seeing anything from the "retreating's good actually" arguments that make me think that's really what the role of resistances and immunities should primarily be.
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I think from the perspective of adventure design, when you have a puzzle enemy, you should also try to build in ways for the party to pull back, reconsider, and come back better equipped.
- The ooze is really slow. You can run away and figure out a plan.
- The golem is really dumb. If it can't see you anymore it forgets you were there and goes back to the spot it was guarding.
- The devil is bound to that room.
- The vrock is too big to flie around effectively in the dense jungle canopy. Since you're smaller, you can flee the clearing.
And if the party solves the puzzle, there's no need to grind it out. If you lure the ooze away to a different room that's big enough to kite it in; if everyone can see that you can run around and whittle it down without it getting another chance to counterattack; then you're done. The GM can congratulate you on solving the puzzle, rather than complaining about metagaming. And you don't have to spend half an hour actually finishing it.