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Idk what to tell you. Yeah, electric arc remains the best damage option... Assuming there are two enemies within 30 feet without high reflex saves, no one is inflicting flat-footed, the enemy doesn't resist electricity, and doesn't have a weakness that another option can trigger. (Almost nothing outside of Numeria is weak to electricity.) Something is always going to be the best option. It is only an outlier if it is outrageously better than everything else. Which is not what I see anymore. I see electric arc as your most reliable workhorse, but one that won't help you at longer ranges, has less room for teamwork to tilt the odds, and less potential for doing big weakness stuff.
2d4 + some other benefits is the new default for cantrips. Electric arc's other benefit is it gets to be multitarget at minimal range. It also gets to target a slightly weaker save on average, except it's not usually weaker at the levels you need to rely on cantrips for damage. Bandits, skeletons, gremlins, goblins, and other low level staple have high reflex.
Daze is weaker than any of us would like, but that's because of one of two things:
A) Paizo missed adding something they meant to, as the flavor text alludes to.
B) Paizo values non-lethal damage higher most of us do. There are very few spells that deal non-lethal damage and they tend to deal very little of it. (Given how steep the -2 penalty for weapons, this seems likely to me.)Either way, Daze is not indicative of other cantrips, is my point. There's definitely still bad options when you look across any given category of choices, but I'm seeing a much higher ratio of good ones than before the remaster.
Until we see the new Beastiary, there is no way we can confirm that other elements are going to be better; it's about as reliable as physical damage, maybe even slightly more (since physical resistance is probably more likely than lightning resistance), in which case we could even use Scatter Scree for comparison, which, while they have their subtle differences, is still identical in terms of damage output and trajectory.
As for Daze being weaker, IMO Paizo attributes too much into the critical failure value, which only pans out usually when enemies roll a 1; it's like saying Gouging Claw is the highest damage cantrip compared to Telekinetic Projectile. Sure, the persistent effect is great when it lands, but it's also honestly not worth very much either (the DPR value is 0.05 times the average damage of 1D4 starting out), and it won't scale very much more over time. Same concept here; yes, the possibility of Daze forcing an enemy to lose actions sounds good, but again, it's mostly a mere 5% chance.
I don't see any reason why Daze couldn't be a 2D4 plus 1D4 per rank cantrip like most every other one. I don't see how the concept of "it deals mental damage, inflicts Off-Guard, and has a slim chance of reducing an enemy's actions" means it should do a fraction of the damage, when you have spells like Frost Bolt (or whatever the Remaster version is now) that deals Cold damage from a significant range and inflicts a weakness to Bludgeoning damage, but for some reason, does twice the damage value by comparison, and only gets worse over time (1D6 plus 1D6 per 2 ranks versus 2D4 plus 1D4 per rank).
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I like that magic is pretty bad at knocking people out. I do think it sounds like daze got misprinted, missing its condition changes. We probably won’t get real errata announcements for most little things until after the books are officially released.
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Really? According to this analysis here ignition is one of the worst damaging cantrip options...I personally rather use ignition over gouging clawI don't like that Gouging Claw is even more a mandatory cantrip for Magi.
If I'm playing a Magus, I want to do magic with my SWORD, not a shapeshifted unarmed strike! And casting it through a weapon just seems SILLY! What, your sword shapeshifts into a claw that you swing like a backscratcher with a bad attitude?!
Ignition seems to be balanced as a melee cantrip with ranged as an extra effect. I think the analysis also under values fire damage because resistance is common but fire weakness is also common making it a pretty good thing to have in your back pocket. I don't think the melee ranged versatility is actually useful because players tend to pick one or the other exclusively.
It's honestly kind of weird that melee cantrips seem to do less damage. Needle darts is an average 7.5 while gouging claw is an average 7. Allot of ranged cantrips do an average of 4-5 but they're all multi target so easily do double.
I think either melee ignition and gouging claw need more damage or ranged ignition needs a change like being made a reflex save. Having the versatility of reflex save or ac attack may be worth it's lower damage.
as a d6 vs a d4 they scale much better than needle darts, going from 2-12 vs 3-12 at 1st rank up to 3-18 vs 4-16 at 2nd and then 4-24 vs 5-20 at 3rd and so on
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That is fascinating, as it does not have that wounded rider in the Gamemaster's Guide section on dying (p5).Also: It's NOT in the beginner box - checked that last night.It is. It's in the Hero's Handbook on the page Getting Knocked Out.
Any time you gain or increase the dying condition while wounded, increase the dying condition’s value by your wounded value.I will admit, having two sections on dying/wounded that don't agree is a tad odd. But hey, at least they didn't bring in the part where if you critically fail a recovery check with any amount of wounded you immediately die.
It practically is, though.
Wounded 1 goes straight to dying 2.Even if you succeed at a recovery check, you only reduce the dying by 1 so you’re now dying 1.
Then a crit fail would add 2 + wounded to that 1 and whoops, dying 4, bye-bye.
And that’s best case scenario.
Spoiler:That is fascinating, as it does not have that wounded rider in the Gamemaster's Guide section on dying (p5).Also: It's NOT in the beginner box - checked that last night.It is. It's in the Hero's Handbook on the page Getting Knocked Out.
Any time you gain or increase the dying condition while wounded, increase the dying condition’s value by your wounded value.I will admit, having two sections on dying/wounded that don't agree is a tad odd. But hey, at least they didn't bring in the part where if you critically fail a recovery check with any amount of wounded you immediately die.It practically is, though.
Wounded 1 goes straight to dying 2.
Even if you succeed at a recovery check, you only reduce the dying by 1 so you’re now dying 1.
Then a crit fail would add 2 + wounded to that 1 and whoops, dying 4, bye-bye.And that’s best case scenario.
A crit fail is never a best case scenario. But yeah, if that is true and there is no additional info or detail we're missing (I haven't read the whole thread, but has anyone actually quoted the remaster books? I've only seen paraphrase), that is scary and makes fully healing and staying safe after going down extra important.
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Yes. Wounded 1 is now a death sentence hanging by a thread over a PC's head should they stay in harm's way.
I do not mind it that much honestly. I was recently surprised in PFS to see some yoyo healing/dying going on when I thought it was totally a design goal of PF2 from the beginning to eradicate this.
Once players get past the first surprise PC deaths, we shall see how the playing style adapts. The value of staple choices and never-ever options is being completely changed by this. It's good for the renewal of old habits we got used to during the last 4 years
Lets say an encounter lasts 3 or 4 rounds. A caster will use a spell slot, use a focus spell, use a lower level spell, use cantrips.
You might just be using cantrips to help close a fight already going your way so maybe it doesn't matter if its electric arc or needle darts or anything else.
Maybe cantrips should have been balanced for 1 action casts with the flourish tag?
There's room for both. I do think the idea of spells defaulting to 2-action is a good idea for a lot of reasons, especially the (usual) lack of need to move for a melee Strike.
Relatedly, I think the best candidates for 1-action cantrips are things that are Touch range, especially self-modifications.
Something like
Unnatural Focus:
With magical redirection of your own mind, your awareness focuses on your present target.
For 1-Action, enter a stance that enhances your offense at the cost of defense. Become off-guard to all, but gain a, or add a, +1 status bonus to any of your Spell Attack rolls.
You cannot end this stance the same turn you activate it.
Heightened (+__) When entering stance, you may sacrifice the ability to use Stride or subordinate actions to increase the bonus to +2
Heightened (+__) When entering stance, you may sacrifice the ability to willingly move to increase the bonus to +3
I think the way stances work right now means I need to add that extra clause, but it does help clarify the trade offs behind the idea.
The ability to trade 1 leading action to get a risky +_ to the 2-Action spell strike would be a neat, caster specific tool worthy of a cantrip slot for some, which is the goal.
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I will admit, having two sections on dying/wounded that don't agree is a tad odd. But hey, at least they didn't bring in the part where if you critically fail a recovery check with any amount of wounded you immediately die.
It shows that the history of this new change is more complex.
All the more reason we need a statement on the change, and why it was made, and why it was not tested.
Note also how the first section specifically distinguishes between gain and increase. That's relevant to the people who keep thinking 'gain' means increase. Gain is not itself a synonym for increase. Gain with a modifier can be:
You gain an apple. <--- This is your first apple.
You gain another apple. <--- This is an increase in your supply of apples.
The relevant text:
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page 74 of the Hero's handbook:
Wounded
When you have the dying condition and lose it, gain the wounded 1 condition or increase the value of your wounded condition by 1 if you already have it. Any time you gain or increase the dying condition while wounded, increase the dying condition’s value by your wounded value.
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As contrasted to the other section:
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Game Master's Guide on page 5 has:
On the dying hero’s turn, the player must roll a d20 without adding anything to see if they get better or worse. The DC is 10 + the value of their dying condition. If they succeed, the dying condition value goes down by 1 (or down by 2 on a critical success). If they fail, the dying condition value goes up by 1 (up by 2 on a critical failure). If a hero ever gets to dying 4, they die. If they get to dying 0, they lose the dying condition but remain unconscious. Healing a hero who is at 0 HP also removes the dying condition, and the hero returns to consciousness (although they have the prone condition).
In either case, they gain the wounded 1 condition.
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Whether by intent or by accident, given the complicated history of contradictions - I stand by my feeling that the new change is one of the worst game design choices I have seen since GURPS Supers.
It radically alters the meta.
It turns healing downed allies into a form of PvP - making teamwork actually anti-teamwork.
It makes an already lethal part of the game much more lethal.
And for what gain to story or game challenge? This is all in random rolls - it isn't even part of a game skill challenge, and with the crit system it can often the final result of pure randomness.
There was no community outcry that the existing rules were broken. There wasn't even much discussion of this topic. Only a very recent poll where it was found the vast majority of players had no idea the few contraditions that existed in sources that were NOT rulebooks even existed.
So... it remains the only thing about the remaster I dislike - but it's a severe issue because this has such a massive impact on the game.
(I don't think I've ever played a session of PF2E that had combat where there wasn't at least 1 PC to go down. And most of those went down twice after being focused after getting a heal. Across 5 different 'game tables'. Several of those leading to PCs deaths, this change would cause most of them to. These rules come up a lot.)
- Some might say that's proof the rule needed a change because we were getting of too easy. We had too much 'bouncing'. But we didn't. We had a lot of downs, leading to second downings before the PC could even take an action, and then others falling back or pushing the fight away from the victim. Even one surrender, and once where 3 of the PCs died. We were never 'ping-ponging' with the existing rules. We were barely surviving or even failing.
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- Some might say that's proof the rule needed a change because we were getting of too easy. We had too much 'bouncing'. But we didn't. We had a lot of downs, leading to second downings before the PC could even take an action, and then others falling back or pushing the fight away from the victim. Even one surrender, and once where 3 of the PCs died. We were never 'ping-ponging' with the existing rules. We were barely surviving or even failing.
Actually it happened.
I was recently surprised in PFS to see some yoyo healing/dying going on when I thought it was totally a design goal of PF2 from the beginning to eradicate this.
It is a definite change of paradigm but not that widely encountered IME. And we will change builds and tactics to adapt.
It is way too early to say if it is breaking the fun of the game or not.
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Well, if they didn't want, as you call it, "yoyo healing/dying", why didn't they make it when your character hits 0 hp, they die?
Honestly, this rule change has so disheartened me, that I seriously wonder if I want to continue playing this game.
Just play with the old rule if it matters to you that much
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Well, if they didn't want, as you call it, "yoyo healing/dying", why didn't they make it when your character hits 0 hp, they die?
Honestly, this rule change has so disheartened me, that I seriously wonder if I want to continue playing this game.
An unlucky die roll can get you to 0 hp because the roll matters in PF2, which was one of the design goals.
Not dying immediately makes it possible for your friends to save your PC. Who had much better quickly get out of the fight with the change. But it's still far better than being dead.
Also it puts PCs on a more balanced state with NPCs who do stop contributing to the fight when they reach 0 hp.
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I just want to underline that it's very easy to change the dying rules to be whatever the table you're playing at prefers, since this system intersects very little with other systems (basically just at the entering and leaving stages.)
Like if you want to make the Dying level you die at a different number, that's a ridiculously easy fix. Make it 10 or 100 if you want.
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Just play with the old rule if it matters to you that muchWell, if they didn't want, as you call it, "yoyo healing/dying", why didn't they make it when your character hits 0 hp, they die?
Honestly, this rule change has so disheartened me, that I seriously wonder if I want to continue playing this game.
Are the old rules an option for organized play?
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I just want to underline that it's very easy to change the dying rules to be whatever the table you're playing at prefers, since this system intersects very little with other systems (basically just at the entering and leaving stages.)
Like if you want to make the Dying level you die at a different number, that's a ridiculously easy fix. Make it 10 or 100 if you want.
Easy to do in a home game not so easy for organized play.
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What is pretty easy for organized play GMs to do is to remind players about the dangers of trying to stand up and keep fighting after being knocked out, and then not have enemies aggressively go after fallen foes with AoE damage. Alternatively, if you as the GM feel like it was particularly heroic of a choice to stand up and keep fighting at wounded 1, you could award that player a hero point. If a player has a hero point when they fall unconscious again, the odds of them dying drop to 0.
If player’s characters are dropping, then getting back up, then dropping again, then getting healed and getting back up again, and the whole party isn’t trying to retreat or push the enemy away from a fallen ally, but they are spending actions, over and over again, healing fallen Allie’s, there are very questionable tactical decisions being made in the encounter.
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It just doesn't make any sense from a game design perspective, considering that PF2 is not a lethal horror simulation akin to Call of Cthulhu, where the lethality of the game is a key mechanic to show how worthless the life of your character is in the grand scheme of things. In PF2 you play a party of adventurers that become heroes over the course of adventuring, dying like flies just doesn't fit here.
Good thing PF2e isn't remotely as lethal as call of cthulhu and a lot of the bluster isn't really founded in actual lethality.
What is actually dangerous, persistent damage, aoe's hitting players when downed, effects that trigger on the death of an enemy or hit and death traited actions.
PF2e doesn't have PCs dropping like flies inherently and having a more dangerous wounded/dying loop encourages and rewards people for playing in a safer way.
Heck I will say PF2e characters are very hardy and durable all things considered. Not 5e levels of durable, but far less vulnerable than a 3.x character and certainly more vulnerable than anything before 3e.
How about just going "damn I like a bigger safetynet and less stakes" rather than trying to strawman this into it being about 'nonsensical' game design and suggesting that because of this characters will be 'dying like flies' or that your concern is about new players.
A good difficulty system gives safetynets while encouraging players to take better actions / approaches in the future. While I have said that in my first pf2e campaign AoA wounded being run as intended didn't contribute to character death once, it was why they put a lot of effort and importance on diversifying healing options, giving value to movement and escape/control options (including the humble difficult terrain) and worked as a team.
Resurrection options exist as well. I will repeat, this is not a Call of Cthulhu esq game in the slightest.
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I just don't like these new dying rules cause everytime I check reddit I can find a post written by a new player talking about their characters dying after 1 or 2 sessions without needing to scroll much.
It is most likely not a big deal for people that have good experience with the system, but I think the game was already deadly enough for new players. Any more could make the initial learning experience plain worse.
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One, are we trying to get this thread closed too? For the same reason?
Two, it still doesn't feel like the Dying/Wounded rules overly affect 'new gamers'. It affects people who want to avoid healing themselves or allies before they drop. Which is a tactics choice, not a 'new gamer' type of thing to do.
Three, it is easy to houserule. So, very similar to people saying that Witch Archetype familiars don't get the Undying ability - I don't need to shout down the entire internet trying to prove my point. I also don't need to be overly aggressive towards people who want to argue the opposing viewpoint.
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Two, it still doesn't feel like the Dying/Wounded rules overly affect 'new gamers'. It affects people who want to avoid healing themselves or allies before they drop. Which is a tactics choice, not a 'new gamer' type of thing to do.
And isn't this something new, players, specially those that come from 5E, will usually do?
Say what you want, but there is an obvious direct correlation between making dying rules harsher and people dying more. If it happened before, it will happen even more now, it is hard to argue against that.
And also, if this gets closed, it is not cause this topic should not be discussed, but because people are not keeping online etiquette. Discussing what we don't like about these changes is important.
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One, are we trying to get this thread closed too? For the same reason?
Two, it still doesn't feel like the Dying/Wounded rules overly affect 'new gamers'. It affects people who want to avoid healing themselves or allies before they drop. Which is a tactics choice, not a 'new gamer' type of thing to do.
Three, it is easy to houserule. So, very similar to people saying that Witch Archetype familiars don't get the Undying ability - I don't need to shout down the entire internet trying to prove my point. I also don't need to be overly aggressive towards people who want to argue the opposing viewpoint.
New groups aren't going to be pulling out the 'correct' houserules and tactics: switching up tactics and instituting houserules are fine suggestions for groups that have veteran players/DM's in them but you can't expect people new to the game to know what to do right off the bat. And that's even before we get into the subset of people that aren't into houseruling a game before they are even familiar with it.
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I think part of the problem is that our sample population of people who come onto this forum or Reddit is a biased sample. We are really only hearing from system masters, mechanics optimizers, and people who have played various different systems.
I don't believe that the general new player who picks up Pathfinder2e is going to be playing their tactics with the expectation that their characters are going to be fighting until they drop, getting healed barely enough to stand back up, and then keep fighting. That type of tactics is something that is taught by systems that reward such behavior. Not something that new people are going to get into role-playing games expecting the story to be.
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There seems to be a miscommunication. People aren't saying the dying rules kill people completely new to TTRPGS in general, they're saying the rules kill people new to PF2 in particular.
It's a very common scenario for someone to come over from 5e and think 5e's assumptions still apply.
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How about just going "damn I like a bigger safetynet and less stakes" rather than trying to strawman this into it being about 'nonsensical' game design and suggesting that because of this characters will be 'dying like flies' or that your concern is about new players.I think there is legitimate criticism to be leveled against the new Dying rules from both a game design perspective and an accessibility one. I don't think the first step should be to assume someone doesn't actually believe what they say or has ulterior motives.
If they have the death rules like they are being interpreted now and don't provide a clear example of how they work, they are really going to turn off new players to PF2 just looking to have some fun with friends. Those folks will not have fun dying a bunch and having to focus heavily on healing while getting beat on by some powerful monster.
Experienced players will adapt. New players won't be so understanding and it will be a big turnoff. Should be high on the list for making sure that is clarified.
If they want to reach that level of lethality, I hope the Paizo designers understand it will make their game less attractive to a wider base. One of the biggest changes over the years from early D&D to PF is the drop in lethality because of how unhappy players become when they spend a ton of time building up a character only to have them killed.
Getting Resurrected doesn't improve that too much. Not many people like having their character die and brought back a bunch.
Even a DM like myself who likes to push the brink of death and played D&D when it was a save or die game watching myself and buddies lose characters from one bad roll they had built up for months or years doesn't want to go back to that. It was fun back then, but it grew old.
"Gee, you're dead again. How much coin we have the rez? Damn." That whole schtick grew old decades ago.
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One, are we trying to get this thread closed too? For the same reason?
Two, it still doesn't feel like the Dying/Wounded rules overly affect 'new gamers'. It affects people who want to avoid healing themselves or allies before they drop. Which is a tactics choice, not a 'new gamer' type of thing to do.
Three, it is easy to houserule. So, very similar to people saying that Witch Archetype familiars don't get the Undying ability - I don't need to shout down the entire internet trying to prove my point. I also don't need to be overly aggressive towards people who want to argue the opposing viewpoint.
I don't believe the concept of people avoiding healing, since I've had 3 TPKs in my experience (nearly 5), and there is one thing they all had in common: Attacks of Opportunity.
This is the #1 TPK causer in the game because it is forcing the same tactics you claim people are doing, which is "avoid healing themselves or allies," and it's a genuine concern: Why spend actions trying to heal yourself when, odds are, you are going to be either hit (and consequently dropped anyway), or crit (and thereby wasting the actions you were going to use to heal yourself), and lose the opportunity to actually do something meaningful that will keep yourself and allies in the fight?
The idea that players purposefully do so because they find it useless in a general sense doesn't really track; it's far more believable when it's a circumstance where doing so is more harmful than it is helpful, and as such their tactics are forced away from healing themselves and more to standing and fighting to the death. It literally forces things like Strike at -10 to be a better tactic, because doing anything else is a death sentence with no chance to fight back. Oh, and monster math means you are far more likely to be hit and crit than you are to avoid the attack, so trying to play the numbers that aren't in your favor is probably an even worse tactic.
That isn't to say there aren't instances where players won't heal despite AoOs, but that is more self-inflicted by the system (such as trying to drink a potion with a two-handed weapon or while dual-wielding) than it is because of personal ignorance, and there are definitely mechanics (besides AoOs) where healing or other means of self-preservation aren't really feasible as a tactic.
As for houseruling, again, this doesn't work for PFS players, so acting like it's a universal solution that can be done regardless of tables isn't a helpful or even meaningful response.
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What is pretty easy for organized play GMs to do is to remind players about the dangers of trying to stand up and keep fighting after being knocked out
I'm sure when I'm selling new players on PF2 telling them that getting up is really dangerous so they should just hang out for the next hour while the fight resolves is really going to make them fall in love with the game.
PF2e doesn't have PCs dropping like flies inherently and having a more dangerous wounded/dying loop encourages and rewards people for playing in a safer way.
Is rewarding people min-maxing survivability something the game needed? It was already clearly optimal. 'Rewards people for playing safer' just kind of feels like a polite way to say 'punishes people for playing the wrong build' which... idk doesn't feel like it really helps anyone.
Heck I will say PF2e characters are very hardy and durable all things considered. Not 5e levels of durable, but far less vulnerable than a 3.x character and certainly more vulnerable than anything before 3e.
Outside low levels people used to compete in 3.5 to make increasingly immortal characters as just a hobby (often with increasingly layers of restriction to encourage new forms of unkillability after someone's already solved it). A PF2 character can get downed by one or two lucky rolls even relatively deep into the game.
So I don't think that claim really makes sense.
rather than trying to strawman this into it being about 'nonsensical' game design and suggesting that because of this characters will be 'dying like flies' or that your concern is about new players.
This kind of stuff is always pretty telling about the quality of an argument. Why do you assume people who don't agree with your particular position must not only be wrong, but lying about everything they say?
What does that say about you?
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We've seen multiple threads concerning the lethality of PF2 prior to this change by new players becoming discouraged due to TPKs. So ramping up an already more lethal game is going to make that problem worse.
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People, both players and GMs, will just need to understand that Wounded 1 means just one step from Dying. And adapt their respective playstyle accordingly.OK, you're fighting a monster whose level is one or two higher than yours. They just dropped the party fighter in the first round. What tactics do you suggest? Other than "run away and let Bob roll up a new character"?
Check with the GM to make sure the boss is actually only 1-2 levels higher than us or if lethality is the intended signpost, send Alice in to test for AoO because she's got the next highest AC/hp. She runs in and back out. Cast 2 action Heal on Bob if applicable. Because Bob was just dropped, he's guaranteed the move before the boss attacks again. He grabs sword, gets up, and moves away. Cindy throws maybe a back up heal or a terrain effect, maybe something that might slow the boss' chase. We all run.
If the GM wants to emphasize how dangerous this beastie was, we enter chase mode to give us something to remember it by, but perhaps doesn't try too hard to force another encounter now that we already know that this thing requires better tactics or luck than to let it 1-round solo the Fighter.
I don't like the way Wounded works but even I have to acknowledge that it doesn't make a difference until somebody goes down in a fight, which in my experience has been possible but not likely in a typical fight, except that one time our Fighter insisted dueling that samurai skeleton that turned out to be a level match for him while we watched.
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Me, a few weeks ago: I wish people would move on from the caster debate. Everyone is talking past one another, assuming the worst intent at times, and persuading no one.
Somewhere at Paizo: *Monkey’s Paw closes*
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I know I’m shouting into the wind, but I’d love for this thread not to become a repeat of the locked one on the clarified Dying rules. It’s many of the same names, making the same arguments, with the same growing aggression in tone.
except that one time our Fighter insisted dueling that samurai skeleton that turned out to be a level match for him while we watched.
Completely out of topic, but we also had this situation upon us like a year ago. Our Champion ended up in a forced duel with no possible back up against an undead evil champion of our level. We could only talk to her and give her advice from the outside, it was one of the weirdest encounters I've seen. With the champion reaction invalidated and the enemy champion having theirs it was a miracle that she ended up surviving that one.
People, both players and GMs, will just need to understand that Wounded 1 means just one step from Dying. And adapt their respective playstyle accordingly.OK, you're fighting a monster whose level is one or two higher than yours. They just dropped the party fighter in the first round. What tactics do you suggest? Other than "run away and let Bob roll up a new character"?Check with the GM to make sure the boss is actually only 1-2 levels higher than us or if lethality is the intended signpost, send Alice in to test for AoO because she's got the next highest AC/hp. She runs in and back out. Cast 2 action Heal on Bob if applicable. Because Bob was just dropped, he's guaranteed the move before the boss attacks again. He grabs sword, gets up, and moves away. Cindy throws maybe a back up heal or a terrain effect, maybe something that might slow the boss' chase. We all run.
If the GM wants to emphasize how dangerous this beastie was, we enter chase mode to give us something to remember it by, but perhaps doesn't try too hard to force another encounter now that we already know that this thing requires better tactics or luck than to let it 1-round solo the Fighter.
I don't like the way Wounded works but even I have to acknowledge that it doesn't make a difference until somebody goes down in a fight, which in my experience has been possible but not likely in a typical fight, except that one time our Fighter insisted dueling that samurai skeleton that turned out to be a level match for him while we watched.
Unfortunately, CR isn't entirely indicative of proper attributes, since intentionally solo monsters have higher attributes than those who aren't solo monsters of the same level. Really, one of our deadliest encounters involved 3 "unique" creatures of the same CR as us simply because their attributes are statted more for a creature that is 2-3 levels higher than what the CR recommendations are, with effects and abilities that simply aren't indicative of most creatures at that level. (And before you say it's the GM overestimating PCs, it's one of the final fights of an AP ran as-is put up against a party of 5; a party of 4 would have/could have easily TPK'd there.)
Otherwise, this is expecting everything to work out just fine, and it doesn't necessarily always do so. Bob might be able to go again, but he is spending only a single action to move away (because 1 action to stand up, and 1 action to grab a weapon), in which case the creature can just give chase and kill Bob again (in which case you're back to Square 1, except now it's worse), or if somebody else attempted to take the fall, is going to face the full brunt of the creature, and be in the same position Bob was earlier. All we're doing is going in circles and hoping that either the creature misses (which is unlikely given the expected math), or that the heroes pull some crazy shenanigans and manage to escape.
Although, I will say that honestly, a PC going down within the first round of combat is indicative of not being fully healed between combats, or facing an extremely powerful opponent, neither of which is really commonplace.