I'm guessing the Champion was a Paladin of Iomedae? That "refuse a challenge from an equal" anathema is harsh.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.
She was the homebrew equivalent of a champion of Iomedae, but it wasn't even the anathema what caused that. She decided to interact with an artifact knowing it would put her life at risk. It was a super ballsy move.
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I still do not believe the designers intended the wounding effect to act as a multiplier every time dying increases. I guess we'll see if they answer that question clearly at some point.
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Hmm... after looking at it, I think the ideal solution might be to provide both sets of rules, and state upfront that each group should choose which ruleset to use depending on how lethal they want the game to be. There's no real reason they can't coexist.
The old version is very much the de facto primary ruling at this point, so it would make sense to keep it as an officially supported variant rule; if a significant portion of your community is going to house rule it right back in, then it'd be polite to save them the trouble. Would also help ease new players into the game, if they're not used to tactical play and keep getting steamrolled; they likely wouldn't have enough experience to know how to house rule it, after all.
This would also make it easier to ease PFS into the new rule if desired, and add another lever for adventure/campaign difficulty tuning. If an AP is intended to be deadly right from the start, it can instruct the GM to use the "Severe" dying rules, or if it's meant to be more of a romp, it can instruct them to use the "Relaxed" rules instead. It could also bring up the possibility of different encounters using different rules to help them stand out from the rest of the module, or make it easier for the GM to dynamically adjust the difficulty to match their group, too. I really think just keeping both would be the best solution here.
I still do not believe the designers intended the wounding effect to act as a multiplier every time dying increases. I guess we'll see if they answer that question clearly at some point.
Going to have to agree with you on that one. The CRB is on its fourth printing, that's three reprints and a ton of errata that very noticeably did not "clarify" the wording. If adding Wounded was intended whenever you increase Dying, after all, then it likely would've been prudent to at least mention it in the recovery check rules, right? Add onto this indications that Jason Bulmahn (a big Paizo name a lot of people here are probably familiar with) expected it to work the "old way", and it seems a lot like we might be looking at some sort of internal disagreement.
IMO, it's telling that prior to the remaster, the "intended" Dying/Wounded rules could only be found on optional secondary content, that is neither required to play nor expected to grace every table, while the "unintended" rules were front and centre in all core material. There was a push to change the rules, but the change couldn't amass enough support to oust the official content; perhaps it was the old problem of different groups not communicating with each other (and thus working under different expectations and with different rulesets), or possibly someone attempting to sneakily get people to think it was the original rule. Or perhaps something else altogether. But whatever was behind it, we can tell that the push couldn't gather enough support until now.
It's fine if they want to change it, but just be honest about it. The evidence suggests that it's a new change and not the original intent, so just be open and say it's a change. Be open to receiving criticism, and to modifying it if needed. Just don't use the remaster as an excuse to force it without testing under the justification that you only just realised things weren't working as intended; that sort of statement frames the change in a more negative light from the start, because it implicitly accuses the entire community of "doing it wrong", so to speak.
Hmm... maybe the person/people who came up with the Dying/Wounded system intended for Wounded to apply whenever you gain/increase Dying, but the head honchos thought that was too potent and toned it down? Just a random guess.
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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.
It's hard to heal yourself or others before they drop when the GM drops half the party's first round of combat before the PCs even get to act. Our local Venture Captains dice are so lucky this happened at least once a month. The number of times our GM has rolled 3 or 4 crits first round is crazy, sometimes we have had half the party down before our turn.
This happened so often to one of our new players, playing a barbarian started hiding behind our spell casters every combat and just threw javelins, then gave up playing the game after four weeks of this happening. The GM and experienced players at the table all tried to help the new player but the dice would not cooperate.
A table that plays together every week is always going to have better tactics than a group of random people that can happen in organized play.
I'd be up for a new rule giving new players extra hero points or something.
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I don't like how outside proficiencies are gained, I'm sad it wasn't addressed.
Getting Advanced Weapons or other armor is clunky.
Has any developer/designer weighed in on the Dreadful Dilemma of the Dying Debacle here/elsewhere?
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I don’t think anyone had “the dying rules” on their, “what is going to cause the biggest stir in the remastery?” Bingo card when the remastery rules were announced.
I guess that’s because it wasn’t seen as a change so there was no need to announce it.
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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.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"?
LOL. That's a joke. Half the play groups I've played in aren't nearly that coordinated. None of the groups I've encountered in PFS are either.
LOL. That's a joke. Half the play groups I've played in aren't nearly that coordinated. None of the groups I've encountered in PFS are either.BEHOLD!
Combating anecdotal evidence with anecdotal evidence? Touché.
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To those suggesting new players house rule away the new dying/wounded rules, the absolute #1 piece of advice given to those new to 2e, sometimes delivered politely but othertimes with more than a little aggression, is to play the game RAW for many months before even thinking about house rules.
House Rules are for veterans, not newbies.
Which is why it needs to be fixed.
The generic advice to new players should be: PF2 is quite different to D&D5 so give it a couple of sessions to get the feel of this game before you think about adjusting it to your tastes.
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To those suggesting new players house rule away the new dying/wounded rules, the absolute #1 piece of advice given to those new to 2e, sometimes delivered politely but othertimes with more than a little aggression, is to play the game RAW for many months before even thinking about house rules.
House Rules are for veterans, not newbies.
I think the reason to say "you can house rule the dying rules" over and over again is to make new players understand that the only thing that fiddling with this part of the game would actually affect is "game feel" which is a dial you're going to want to turn one way or the other at times.
Like if new players want to play "if you hit dying 4, you're out of this fight, but not dead, you'll wake up later" that won't cause any problems at all.
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To those suggesting new players house rule away the new dying/wounded rules, the absolute #1 piece of advice given to those new to 2e, sometimes delivered politely but othertimes with more than a little aggression, is to play the game RAW for many months before even thinking about house rules.
House Rules are for veterans, not newbies.
Normally I'd agree with this sentiment, but a lot of new players are going to rage quit the system before they get past the first couple of games on account of this not-a-rules-change, much less a few months of games.
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The thing is, I think that both "super deadly" and "super safe" games are valid and something you're going to want from time to time depending on what sort of story you're trying to tell.
So the problem is not "that the rule is bad" so much as "there's a specific rule, not a range of rules all framed as acceptable." Like there should be a range of official variants here.
For example, the remastered Beginner's Box should have completely different dying rules, because nobody's character should die during that adventure.
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Where the game was lethal before though, in my observations, wasn’t individual character deaths, which the game has always assumed will happen occasionally, it was whole parties getting themselves killed over committing to to difficult fights, and it didn’t really matter if every player fully died or not because the problem was everyone was out of the fight.
Until I can get a copy of the GM core and read the discussion there about prepping new GMs to run session 0s and whether “lethality” is something suggested as a topic to bring up and discuss, the exact dying rules are pretty irrelevant to how much fun new players will have at my games. “How often do you expect characters to die? Occasionally to bad tactics? Occasionally to bad luck? Rarely to either? This is an important thing to talk through and not make assumptions about if you are trying not to chase players away.
I still contend the new old rule will lead to more character deaths, but significantly less TPKs because parties will spend less time and energy throwing actions at trying to save a dying character instead of ending a fight or fleeing it.
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For organized play often the best tactic is to play a pregen character. If I show up to an organized play game with a 1st-level character and the rest of the party is all 4th level making it a high-tier game, I'll just play a 3rd level pregen instead of risking my 1st level character and putting the party at risk of a TPK. That's not a fun thing to do for a new player who just made their first character and wants to play it. The tight math of PF2e is not favorable to new players in a mixed-level party. Making a new character every week is a great way to learn the game but not a great way to keep new players interested in the game. Some kind of begginers luck rule could go a long way to help with that, maybe more hero points for new players and or for being off-level in a high-tier game. It's not just a mater of the character dying or not it's not fun to be a new player and not succeed at a single attack or skill check.
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Hmm... after looking at it, I think the ideal solution might be to provide both sets of rules, and state upfront that each group should choose which ruleset to use depending on how lethal they want the game to be. There's no real reason they can't coexist.
Pretty much what I plan to do when the time comes around to GM 2E. I'll leave it up to the group, but explain in detail what each variant entails.
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I’ve introduced about 10 new players to PF2 who never played PF1 or 5e. 5 of them were all at one time. Otherwise it has been a couple of new players with some PF1 or 5e vets. The new layers have overwhelming figured out that standing around in melee combat is super dangerous much faster than the PF1 or 5e vets. I have even seen new players figure out that they could shove an AoO having enemy away from a downed ally, and back through a door that could be closed and spiked shut while the party fell back, because the players were thinking like people who wanted their characters to live and not like pawns in a tactical combat game.
Yes, I tailor my encounters to style of play of my players and tend to have enemies do fun stuff more than the most lethal thing, especially with the young players I have played with. But I still tend to see a character death every other month or so with the other groups. For home games, all it takes is some basic session 0 questions about campaign continuity and character development taking the center stage of the game? Or do you want a grittier story where characters might die and you could end up playing 3 or 4 different characters by the end of the campaign, so it is better not to over complicate your back stories and let relationships develop in play? Combined with questions to get at how much combat players expect and how much the players want really challenging combat encounters that push their resources to the limit and might call for frequent retreats, vs a bit lighter combat difficulty with more opportunities for talking with your enemies and negotiating/bargaining with them in ways that will change the encounters? And it is a lot easier to dial in a game that can be fun for anyone.
I don’t expect every GM to be as experienced as I am, which is why I want to wait until I see the GM core before weighing in on wether this will really be that big of a problem or not, but the actual rule itself feels like it could speed up encounters and give players a quicker push towards “well, I can spend this time making a new character” instead of taking a 4 round encounter and turning it into an 8 round encounter where the party spends 15 to 25% of their actions bouncing me up and down and I still mostly spend 4 or 5 total rounds just making death saves, which I have seen multiple times with the old, apparently incorrect way of running wounded.
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IMO, it's telling that prior to the remaster, the "intended" Dying/Wounded rules could only be found on optional secondary content, that is neither required to play nor expected to grace every table, while the "unintended" rules were front and centre in all core material.
Not quite. We had this in the CRB according to AoN :
"Taking Damage while Dying
Source Core Rulebook pg. 459 4.0
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."
When it was debated on the Rules forum prior to Remaster, the boards' consensus was that it did not apply : either a typo or a reminder of what happens when you first go to Dying.
Looks like we were wrong.
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It's still not really clear. That text has been added to the section you quoted, but it looks like a reminder to a rule that doesn't exist where it should belong (it did in the playtest, but it was removed in the CRB, and not added back with the remaster).
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I wonder if this is one of those gaming groups that has drilled on how to extract when a fight goes sour. Probably not.
Drills work if you have a home game with the same people each week or your PFS group is big enough to have and extra tables, GMs, and time to help new players learn. Our local PFS group (which no longer exists) was almost always rushed for time, I don't know when there would have been time for drills. Considering we only met 2 weeks per month, taking a week to drill only leaves one game per month, and their no guarantee that anyone at the drill shows up for the game.
If drills are required to play the game, then an official training drill scenario needs to be published.
Armor is super easy with general armor training feat and Sentinel cheese, which lets you get scaling armor, not gonna lie. Honestly when you are scared of death before this makes my support Kineticist idea more powerful as it kinda in hindsight forces him to pick up Water, for the fact he can now double heal...Er triple hea, 2 water, 1 wood impulse.
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My issue with the new dying rules is less the lethality they have in of themselves and more the disasterous way they interact with persistent damage. If you have wounded 1, and a source of persistent damage and get knocked to zero, the party has exactly 1 turn to bring you into the positive before your dead.
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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.
It's hard to heal yourself or others before they drop when the GM drops half the party's first round of combat before the PCs even get to act. Our local Venture Captains dice are so lucky this happened at least once a month. The number of times our GM has rolled 3 or 4 crits first round is crazy, sometimes we have had half the party down before our turn.
This happened so often to one of our new players, playing a barbarian started hiding behind our spell casters every combat and just threw javelins, then gave up playing the game after four weeks of this happening. The GM and experienced players at the table all tried to help the new player but the dice would not cooperate.
A table that plays together every week is always going to have better tactics than a group of random people that can happen in organized play.
I'd be up for a new rule giving new players extra hero points or something.
So now explain why the standard rules of the game should be balanced around having an extreme probability event occurring regularly?
The probabilities of the d20 rolls are very easy to calculate. Yes, outlier events will happen. What happens more often is memory bias where people remember outlier events more strongly than typical results - especially if those outlier events are negative outcomes.
But whether the particular GM in question actually does have loaded dice or not is beside the point. In general, critting 3 to 4 times before the first party member's initiative comes up is not the typical experience. The d20 probability math doesn't support that. That isn't the data point that should be used to balance the game with.
Instead, the rules should be promoting fun story telling. Remember - that is the purpose of a TTRPG... telling stories. Bouncing player characters off the floor repeatedly doesn't make for a good heroic story. Having a good incentive to heal characters before they drop is good for the story telling. Even if it does mean that players have to change their expectations and tactics to account for that.
Also, I think it would be good if the formal rules had some rules - or at least guidelines - for disengaging from battle too. What to do when the rare event does happen and half the party ends up dropped before the first round is even over. Combat in PF2 generally snowballs in one side's favor after 2 to 3 rounds. When the battle isn't going in the party's favor, there needs to be something that the players can choose to do about that - because 'better tactics' and 'roll higher' are both things that won't work at that point.
Having an encounter start with the enemies running in and hitting hard and dropping a PC or two can be the start of a very interesting story. Not a story that then continues with the party bouncing back and winning the day - that doesn't seem plausible. Instead the story should shift to: the heroes retreating to a better location and coming back, or the heroes start a retreating battle until they can gain some advantage, or plenty of other things. Most of these alternatives aren't specified as options in the rules, though and that seems to be the bigger oversight.
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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"?
Fight and kill the monster. What tactics were you suggesting before the Fighter dropped?
Now, if your whole party is relying on a single character for damage, the fault is on you. All classes are able to deal significant damage, overspecialization is not a good thing and can lead to this ridiculous situation.
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Ran the probabilities:
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Without adding wounded every time:
After 1 check: Fine: 20%, Dying: 58%, Dead: 22%
After 2 checks: Fine: 32%, Dying: 34%, Dead: 34%
After 3 checks: Fine: 38%, Dying: 20%, Dead: 42%
After 4 checks: Fine: 42%, Dying: 12%, Dead: 46%
Adding wounded every time
After 1 check: Fine: 20%, Dying: 45%, Dead: 35%
After 2 checks: Fine: 29%, Dying: 20%, Dead: 50%
After 3 checks: Fine: 36%, Dying: 7%, Dead: 57%
After 4 checks: Fine: 38%, Dying: 3%. , Dead: 59%
Most of this added lethality is in Wounded 1. Wounded 2 is already recover or die on turn 1, while this means wounded 1is the same
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I wish the devs would weigh in on the whole dying/wounded thing. I get that the PDFs started getting sent out on Wednesday, and of course it took some time for people to absorb them which meant that the whole thing exploded mostly on the weekend, so they probably haven't had much time to react yet. But it would be nice if someone official could pop in – ideally saying "Oops, we made a mistake here" but even a "We hear you and we're having internal talks and will get back to you" or a Seifter-esque "That's what they were supposed to be all along" would at least be something instead of all this flailing about and guessing at intentions.
I honestly think that the hypothesis that this could be a mistake / typo is people grasping at straws to get rid of a rule they do not want and for which they see no benefits.
The stronger case IMO is that this is the actual Remaster RAW.
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I don’t see a benefit to the dev team commenting. All it will do is fuel further arguments, not solve anything.
Yup.
IMO, it's telling that prior to the remaster, the "intended" Dying/Wounded rules could only be found on optional secondary content, that is neither required to play nor expected to grace every table, while the "unintended" rules were front and centre in all core material.Not quite. We had this in the CRB according to AoN :
"Taking Damage while Dying
Source Core Rulebook pg. 459 4.0If 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."
When it was debated on the Rules forum prior to Remaster, the boards' consensus was that it did not apply : either a typo or a reminder of what happens when you first go to Dying.
Looks like we were wrong.
Lol It seems like when your Pharasma collecting souls the too good to be true rule doesn't apply to you.