We had no deaths in Age of Ashes, but we also had a party of dhampirs with harm font cleric, hag sorcerer (with crossblooded for harm), dual weapon fighter, and flurry ranger. It was obscenely coordinated and plowed through practically every combat. I honestly don't remember people dropping, but in the combat against Mengkare we did keep track of healing and by the end calculated it was over 1,000 points worth.
How'd they die to a vorpal blade at 18? It's incapacitation and is a level 17 item. Or did they actually roll a crit fail?
And yeah my GM plays combat as war. I'm currently GMing for a bunch of new players and thus very much do not, because I'd prefer they didn't, like, quit the system.
Yup Crit fail on the vorpal blade save, bards only get expert fort so he had a 10% chance of crit failure due to not investing in con. He had to take on the lesser manifestation with resurrection sickness, not fair at all for a caster... yet the wand of manifold missiles actually ended up being a mvp.
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My objection to cleric is more rooted around its approach always working. "Edit:undo the boss's last turn" is a heck of a thing to have pretty much on tap. Whereas creatures can critically succeed against most spells and it's actually possible to miss with a flurry ranger's attacks or whatever. There isn't a save or attack roll for healing. It just works.
The issue with this approach is the resource cost: You have to use a lot of spell slots to do that. First, you heal characters who would not have been downed if you hadn't => Strict loss of resources. Second, you don't contribute in ending the fight and thus increase its duration and as such the amount of healing you need => another loss of resources.
The result being that you need a Cleric to handle the extreme resource cost.And that's what people say: They only consider the Cleric a healer due to the extreme cost to be a valid dedicated healer and at the same time they do well without any dedicated healer (still some emergency ones). The game is well balanced, it works as intended!
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It's really a clarification of how it was/supposed to work all along rather than a change.
It certainly is abit more scary. But i'm down to give it a try(with an understanding that, this was always intended)
As someone who likes playing healers, this reinforces the fantasy for me... if your friend took a solid hit and they were still up but struggling, one would imagine you would want to heal them because the idea of them getting even close to death is an in universe terrifying prospect. Oh yeah i'll wait till they are convolusing on the floor with their gear dropped. No thank you, i'll do my best to keep my friends safe before they start seeing their life flash before their eyes.
Mechanically it also seems sound to eant to keep the fighter up with all the gear, trading two actions now to heal them so that they don't have to spend their turn picking up all their gear and standing up(and depending on the creature, risking an Reactice strike) seems like a good trade off
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My main gripe about stacking wounded into dying has nothing to do with game balance, it's that it adds one more complexity to an already complicated dying system.
Between stacks of dying, wounded and doomed, the process of dying is already solidly in the realm of "some of my players will NEVER understand how it works", without also adding that the dying stacks never increase by the same amount.
Like, it might just lead to a better experience to blanket instakill characters who reach 0 HP with any existing stacks of wounded or doomed, even though it makes the game much harsher.
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Breath of Life doesn't get you back up.
You prevent the target from dying ...
It prevents you from going down in the first place. So you don't drop your stuff or drop prone or gain dying or wounded.
I have also used Delay Consequence to similar effect. Though that costs a Heal spell (or similar in-combat healing) too.
I must have missed a loophole as I was already running it this way. This was not how we were supposed to run it?
We usually have strong in combat healing for this exact reason. Pop up healing like 5E didn't work in PF2 because of how the wounded condition worked. I hated 5E pop up healing. I was very glad it was gone in PF2.
I don't want a game where some player is doing 1st level, single action heals just to pop someone up and take some strikes. I want the players to feel like they can die and take all necessary precautions including strong combat healing, not being stupid about how they move, and the like.
Though I did implement a house rule allowing them to pick up their weapon as part of a move action to stand up or crawl. The spending actions to stand up and grab your weapon just feels like unnecessary minutiae I don't want in my games.
I much preferred the rule where you could draw your weapon as part of a move action, so I implemented it in PF2.
This clarification changes nothing for my group. We already ran it this way.
Can someone check the numbers on this? It seems to me that, statistically speaking, no one would survive to level 20 under such a punishing rule.
We had no problem surviving using this rule. Always have a combat healer. The two action heal is your friend.
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What were you all doing prior to this clarification? I don't get it. It was always pretty clear the wounded condition stacked with dying. What was I missing?
It's a little weird, since it does NOT prevent you from going down. It prevents you from "dying", or more accurately, "die":
Trigger A living creature within range would die.
Right. It prevents the creature from gaining the Dying condition. Which is step 2 of the Knocked out and Dying process (the first step being reduced to 0 HP).
And since it is gaining the Dying condition that causes you to also gain the Unconscious condition, and the Unconscious condition is what causes you to drop prone and drop all of your stuff - and gaining and then losing the Dying condition is what gives you the Wounded condition... Then I don't think it is a strange ruling at all to say that if you don't gain the Dying condition, then you don't drop prone, drop your stuff, or gain Wounded.
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It's a little weird, since it does NOT prevent you from going down. It prevents you from "dying", or more accurately, "die":
Trigger A living creature within range would die.Right. It prevents the creature from gaining the Dying condition. Which is step 2 of the Knocked out and Dying process (the first step being reduced to 0 HP).
And since it is gaining the Dying condition that causes you to also gain the Unconscious condition, and the Unconscious condition is what causes you to drop prone and drop all of your stuff - and gaining and then losing the Dying condition is what gives you the Wounded condition... Then I don't think it is a strange ruling at all to say that if you don't gain the Dying condition, then you don't drop prone, drop your stuff, or gain Wounded.
You die when you get to Dying 4. That is when Breath of Life can be used.
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What were you all doing prior to this clarification? I don't get it. It was always pretty clear the wounded condition stacked with dying. What was I missing?
This has been a long-standing question/ruling. Ancient thread.
You die when you get to Dying 4. That is when Breath of Life can be used.
At Dying 4 is when you are Dead.
I seriously don't think it is RAI for Breath of Life to not be available as a reaction to 'would gain the Dying condition'. Having to stand around for 4 rounds waiting to use the spell seems very unintuitive.
Have I been playing PF2e wrong? Example:
1.) PC goes down, is at dying 1
2.) PC makes their death save, is no longer dying 1 but instead wounded 1 and unconscious.
3.) PC gets healed for X amount of damage, they're up.
4.) PC goes down again and is at dying 2, because they were wounded 1 before.
What were you all doing prior to this clarification? I don't get it. It was always pretty clear the wounded condition stacked with dying. What was I missing?Well, the wording was, to put it mildly, "vague" when it came to increasing dying levels.
What I was doing prior to this was:
PC drops for the first time, starts out at dying 1
PC gets up, is wounded 1
PC drops for the second time, starts out at dying 2 (dying 1 + wounded 1)
PC fails a recovery check, is now dying 3This instead has the sequence:
PC drops for the first time, starts out at dying 1
PC gets up, is wounded 1
PC drops for the second time, starts out at dying 2 (dying 1 + wounded 1)
PC fails a recovery check, is now dying 4 (2 + 2 = 4) aka dead
How are you interpreting it this way?
You don't add wounded every time their dying value increases.
The first way is the right way. I don't get how you're seeing this?
It says add wounded to dying. Each time you recover from dying, increase the wounded condition.
You sound like you're overcomplicating this.
Do we have an example that really says this? You don't add the wounded condition each time you increase the dying condition such as with a recovery check.
Have I been playing PF2e wrong? Example:
1.) PC goes down, is at dying 1
2.) PC makes their death save, is no longer dying 1 but instead wounded 1 and unconscious.
3.) PC gets healed for X amount of damage, they're up.
4.) PC goes down again and is at dying 2, because they were wounded 1 before.Nope, that's correct.
Where the new change comes in is what happens when you're already wounded 1 and fail a recovery check. Rather than incrementing dying by 1, you increment it by 1 + wounded level.
Which means if you are wounded and dying and fail a recovery check, you are just dead.
Well, If you're just knock down, and are wounded one, and you fail your check, you'd be at dying 3. Not dying 4.
1 + (1 wounded + 1 dying increment).
Owwwwww. That sounds like a yikes. At least the bard's buffing and heals weren't reduced?
And yeah wand of manifold missiles is superb against the silliness of level+4 bosses. Nice job rolling with the punches, there.
Extinction Curse (and a quick statistical analysis of the bestiaries) taught our group early on that cold iron holy frost weapons are generally the correct default. So you can imagine our fighter and ranger's delight when we went up against a balor and wound up dealing +60 damage per hit with doubling ring builds (generally spamming cheap and disposable low grade cold iron weapons in the off-hand). We killed it in two rounds.
Did your group rule that balor explosions damage attended/worn/wielded objects? Since we had a nasty scare in Extinction Curse where only a Recall Knowledge check saved us from having our entire WBL vaporized in the death burst.
I mean he had no heal or healing contribution so there were none to reduce.
Cloud jump with the barbarian leaping off of the watertower (walljump) and striking as he fell (can't remember the feat's name) meant none of the party was within the explosion radius. The balor had been keeping its distance and harrying a bit as it's HP got lower.
I could have been mean and ruled it as hitting the barbarian while he was up there, but it was more thematic to see the fireworks unfold.
The party had a LOT of good alignment damage options though (god alchemists and flurry rangers are amazing for weakness exploitation).
I hadn't really thought about damage to worn objects in this case (although PCs had lost a bunch of gear to corrosive runes and rusty mae earlier in the adventure). I would probably have ruled in the PCs favour in this case though as I have doubts a balor is meant to utterly destroy all of a party's gear if they get unlucky with a lucky persistent damage roll or crit ;) (it hasn't been a part of what a balor does in the past either)
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Right. It prevents the creature from gaining the Dying condition.
Under most circumstances you'd already have the dying condition by the time Breath of Life triggers. Like I guess you could be doomed 4 and take a hit but that's not typical.
Well, If you're just knock down, and are wounded one, and you fail your check, you'd be at dying 3. Not dying 4.
1 + (1 wounded + 1 dying increment).
You only gain wounded when you get back up, not when you go down.
So if you go down for the first time you're dying 1, failing a check or taking damage puts you at dying 2, then 3, then death.
But if you get brought back up you go to Wounded 1, which means if you go down again it's dying 2 and thanks to this change, the next time you take damage or fail a recovery check it advances to dying 4 and you die.
Have I been playing PF2e wrong? Example:
1.) PC goes down, is at dying 1
2.) PC makes their death save, is no longer dying 1 but instead wounded 1 and unconscious.
3.) PC gets healed for X amount of damage, they're up.
4.) PC goes down again and is at dying 2, because they were wounded 1 before.Nope, that's correct.
Where the new change comes in is what happens when you're already wounded 1 and fail a recovery check. Rather than incrementing dying by 1, you increment it by 1 + wounded level.
Which means if you are wounded and dying and fail a recovery check, you are just dead.
Well assuming you don't succeed a check first. It is more accurate to say "if you are at dying 2 or higher and have any wounded value a failed death save will have you die (assuming a character doesn't have diehard or heropoints)
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What were you all doing prior to this clarification? I don't get it. It was always pretty clear the wounded condition stacked with dying. What was I missing?Well, the wording was, to put it mildly, "vague" when it came to increasing dying levels.
What I was doing prior to this was:
PC drops for the first time, starts out at dying 1
PC gets up, is wounded 1
PC drops for the second time, starts out at dying 2 (dying 1 + wounded 1)
PC fails a recovery check, is now dying 3This instead has the sequence:
PC drops for the first time, starts out at dying 1
PC gets up, is wounded 1
PC drops for the second time, starts out at dying 2 (dying 1 + wounded 1)
PC fails a recovery check, is now dying 4 (2 + 2 = 4) aka deadHow are you interpreting it this way?
You don't add wounded every time their dying value increases.
The first way is the right way. I don't get how you're seeing this?
It says add wounded to dying. Each time you recover from dying, increase the wounded condition.
You sound like you're overcomplicating this.
Do we have an example that really says this? You don't add the wounded condition each time you increase the dying condition such as with a recovery check.
This is, according to the fine people of the Internet, what the new dying rules are:
...
While you're dying, attempt a recovery check at the start of each of your turns. this is a flat check with a dc equal to 10 + your current dying value to see if you get better or worseCritical Success : your dying value is reduced by 2
Success your dying value is reduced by 1
Failure your dying value increases by 1 (plus your wounded value if any)
Critical Failure: your dying value increases by 2 (plus your wounded value if any)
I see. They over-clarified. I don't think that was the intent at all. I won't be running it this way.
I don't think they intended for your wounded value to add to the dying value each time your dying value increased.
I understood the prior method fine. It was deadly enough that way to prevent pop up healing.
This new clarification if run the way people are planning to run it would lead to near instantaneous death if dropped and healed even one time.
I think the increase in lethality will be a good thing - i wouldn't even mind if you're just flat out dead at 0 hit points.
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Well, the old way was "you get to go down 3 times if you aren't crit, twice if you're crit" the new way is "you get to go down once as a guarantee, but after that you very well could die" and this feels more correct. I like how this feels thematically even if it might be too harsh. It really would put the fear of "God" into the players, prioritizing proactive action and preventative measures even more
Pre-Remaster
You have been seriously injured. If you lose the dying condition and do not already have the wounded condition, you become wounded 1. If you already have the wounded condition when you lose the dying condition, your wounded condition value increases by 1. If you gain the dying condition while wounded, increase your dying condition value by your wounded value.
The wounded condition ends if someone successfully restores Hit Points to you with Treat Wounds, or if you are restored to full Hit Points and rest for 10 minutes.
(only states adding wounded when you GAIN the dying condition, not increase it)
You are bleeding out or otherwise at death’s door. While you have this condition, you are unconscious . Dying always includes a value, and if it ever reaches dying 4, you die. If you’re dying, you must attempt a recovery check at the start of your turn each round to determine whether you get better or worse. Your dying condition increases by 1 if you take damage while dying, or by 2 if you take damage from an enemy’s critical hit or a critical failure on your save.
If you lose the dying condition by succeeding at a recovery check and are still at 0 Hit Points, you remain unconscious, but you can wake up as described in that condition. You lose the dying condition automatically and wake up if you ever have 1 Hit Point or more. Any time you lose the dying condition, you gain the wounded 1 condition, or increase your wounded condition value by 1 if you already have that condition.
(nothing about adding your wounded when you increase your dying)
However:
Pre-Remaster
If you take damage while you already have the dying condition, increase your dying condition value by 1, or by 2 if the damage came from an attacker’s critical hit or your own critical failure. If you have the wounded condition, remember to add the value of your wounded condition to your dying value.
Remaster
If you take damage while you already have the dying condition, increase your dying condition value by 1, or by 2 if the damage came from an attacker’s critical hit or your own critical failure. If you have the wounded condition, remember to add the value of your wounded condition to your dying value.
Sadly looks to be the same to me
You die when you get to Dying 4. That is when Breath of Life can be used.At Dying 4 is when you are Dead.
I seriously don't think it is RAI for Breath of Life to not be available as a reaction to 'would gain the Dying condition'. Having to stand around for 4 rounds waiting to use the spell seems very unintuitive.
Don't worry, that persistent damage is going to speed things up for you.
Two handed fighters take heart, bucklers are apparently good now for the empty handed bastard sword builds.
... what does recovery checks say ...
Pre-Remaster
When you’re dying, at the start of each of your turns, you must attempt a flat check with a DC equal to 10 + your current dying value to see if you get better or worse. This is called a recovery check. The effects of this check are as follows.
Critical Success Your dying value is reduced by 2.
Success Your dying value is reduced by 1.
Failure Your dying value increases by 1.
Critical Failure Your dying value increases by 2.
Remaster
While you’re dying, attempt a recovery check at the start of each of your turns. This is a flat check with a DC equal to 10 + your current dying value to see if you get better or worse.
Critical Success Your dying value is reduced by 2.
Success Your dying value is reduced by 1.
Failure Your dying value increases by 1 (plus your wounded value, if any).
Critical Failure Your dying value increases by 2 (plus your wounded value, if any).
yup, missed that so I revise to YIKES!
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Cleric is most definitely not the only source of in-combat healing.ClericIn-combat healing gets EVEN MORE necessary.No... but the ludicrous number of fonts is highly important, especially given some APs DO NOT obey the 3 moderate encounters per long rest rule. Most other classes (druid, say) run out of slots. And also aren't rolling d10s for heal.
I've done without a cleric, but I'd hate to bring a party to Age of Ashes without one using the new rules.
Yes. And the AP writers have apologized for not fully understanding the new game system well enough when they wrote those first APs and recommend that GMs adjust the difficulty of the AP encounters to follow the guidelines in the GM guide.
So I don't see how it is the game developers who are insisting that you run the game in a way that demands maximal amounts of healing.
Paizo still sells those APs as written to new players who won't have read every forum discussion and developer blog. If they actually cared they would have remastered those APs by now. Or, at the very least, appended them with a warning about their unexpectedly high difficulty.
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Well, the old way was "you get to go down 3 times if you aren't crit, twice if you're crit" the new way is "you get to go down once as a guarantee, but after that you very well could die" and this feels more correct. I like how this feels thematically even if it might be too harsh. It really would put the fear of "God" into the players, prioritizing proactive action and preventative measures even more
The problem is, imo, how those preventative measures manifest.
There aren't a lot of materially obvious ways to increase your defenses outside build choices.
So we get "preventative measures" like 'don't bother playing that frontline spellcaster you were interested in' or 'centralize your build around dex/wis/con even more'
Which basically means marginal and 'for fun' playstyles take a further back seat to optimization.
In game it also translates to undesirable play patterns like... being disincentivized from getting characters back up in the middle of combat (because it dramatically increases the chance they die outright) so more time spent with players not participating in the game.
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Paizo still sells those APs as written to new players who won't have read every forum discussion and developer blog. If they actually cared they would have remastered those APs by now. Or, at the very least, appended them with a warning about their unexpectedly high difficulty.
... Instead of writing Dark Archive or Rage of Elements? Or creating PF2 Kingmaker?
Or are you just expecting them to magically have time to do anything and everything?
Paizo still sells those APs as written to new players who won't have read every forum discussion and developer blog. If they actually cared they would have remastered those APs by now. Or, at the very least, appended them with a warning about their unexpectedly high difficulty.... Instead of writing Dark Archive or Rage of Elements? Or creating PF2 Kingmaker?
Or are you just expecting them to magically have time to do anything and everything?
Or they stop selling the old APs which would also work.
EDIT: As for the actual changes it seems like this was always RAI but they never clarified RAW. This is just updating things to how PF2 was always supposed to be run. I don't agree with it but maybe this opens people's eyes to other flaws in the game that everybody seems to gloss over.