We are relatively new to PF2e. Our GM added a +2 across the board to a baddie and it was unstoppable. We are a level 4 party, 2 of us have striking runes. The GM must have wanted to increase the difficulty so he added a +2 to all the monster's stats (to hit, saves, etc.) and he was impossible to hit. At an AC 25, we needed a 16 to hit and a 20 to crit. None of our spells worked, intimidation, tripping, grappling, all failed. Not only that, we had to fight the creature in a hellscape where we had to make a CR 24 will save each round or take 2d8 (4d8 in crit failure) dmg and become frightened 2. At frightened 2, we needed an 18 to hit. I have not been this frustrated in an encounter in a long time. Is this normal for a PF2e encounter? The combat took almost 3 hours and in the end we did maybe 40 hit of damage total, one character was killed and the rest ran away. This was supposed to be the end of campaign boss fight.
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This does not sound normal to me.
Adding a +2 to all of a creature's modifiers is effectively making it an advanced creature, which is a level higher than the base creature.
So what was the level of the creature before modifying it and what level was the party?
Plus the hellscape attempting to damage and frighten 2 the whole party each round is a very significant bump in difficulty.
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It looks like your GM created an extremely hard fight, so the end was quite obvious. 25 AC is roughly the maximum you're supposed to face at your level. So you were facing a level 7 monster, a very challenging fight. But then there's the terrain effect: DC24 is a high level 6 DC, once again on its own it's a very challenging effect. And Frightened 2 and 2d8 damage at level 4 is at the top of any spell you can take.
So, the end result was rather expected, the fight was obviously too hard.
If you are new to PF2 and especially if you come from easy games like D&D5 you should absolutely avoid modifying encounters. PF2 encounters are challenging, if you come with D&D expectations of very easy fights you'll end up with impossible challenges.
Agreeing with the above posters. A more detailed response would require more details from you. What level were you? Was this a prewritten adventure? If so, what campaign?
Edit: I will say something seems off if you needed a 16 to hit. At level 4, KAS+trained is +10, +11 with a +1 weapon. So you should have been hitting on a 14 or 15. Flanking alone could take that down to a 12. Level 4 is an award break point in the level progression, though, since you're right before proficiency bumps and ability boosts. And if you don't have enough striking runes, that won't help either.
Time with the GM core and monster encounter guidelines sounds like the what you all need for your group as a whole. Talk to the GM (no accusations) and explain that maybe for a bit that toning down the encounters till you all understand the mechanics is the way to go.
In 5e a boss having cool lair mechanic that adds a bit of danger to an encounter is great, but the math of pf2e is severe (no pun intended) and even little things like this add into the danger. What was needed to challenge people in 5e is not the same as PF2e. People need to really stop and realize the expectations of both games are really different.
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The question is why did the GM make it harder?
It's not really the fault of the game that if the GM makes it harder, that it then gets harder.
Maybe the GM thinks you want to play a really hard and gritty game? Maybe the GM wants to run such a game, but you actually like a bit more middle of the road game? Or even a pretty casual game? Most of us are pretty bad at telepathy so having a discussion about what everyone enjoys is a good idea.
Then when you have an agreement how hard you enjoy the game to be, the GM can use various techniques to achieve that hardness.
For example, solo bosses are infamous for having really high numbers, which makes them frustrating to fight. One solution for having a fight that is just as hard, but not so frustrating, is to reduce the level of the boss a bit and add some minions. But that doesn't feel like a solo fight. Another way is to reduce the level of the boss, and add some traps or lair effects that help the boss. It still feels like a solo fight because there's only one creature, and it's still challenging; but less frustrating.
In your example, I think the GM overdid it in a couple of ways:
- It sounds like he took a L+2 monster and added the Elite template (Bestiary page 6) which is a way of scaling up a monster by one level. It does so by adding +2 to all its stats, instead of adding only about +1 and altering/adding abilities. So it's a shortcut, but it's a rough shortcut and can result in numbers that are just a bit too high to be fun. It works okay on monsters close to your own level but not so well with monsters above it.
- The hellscape effect sounds like it was something that was bad for you but not the boss, so it should also be counted towards the total challenge of the encounter.
All in all you're adding up to about the budget for a "extreme" encounter. Quoting from the GM Core:
Extreme-threat encounters are so dangerous that
they are likely to be an even match for the characters,
particularly if the characters are low on resources. This
makes them too challenging for most uses! Use an extreme
encounter only if you’re willing to take the chance the
entire party will die. An extreme-threat encounter might
be appropriate for a fully rested group of characters that
can go all-out, for the climactic encounter at the end of an
entire campaign, or for a group of veteran players using
advanced tactics and teamwork.
Other games like PF1 and I suppose D&D may have caused a lot of people to feel that "moderate" challenges are too easy and something needs to be really rough to be challenging. PF2 is actually really honest: moderate encounters are moderately challenging, not moderately easy. Severe encounters feel rough. Extreme encounters feel unreasonable and unfairly hard.
This takes some adjusting to as GM. You don't have to do stuff like in PF1, where you try to squeeze the maximum amount of power out of your "budget". In PF2 you simply say "I want a hard fight, so I'm gonna build a Severe encounter". You don't have to do anything extra for that to go beyond what the system already gives you.
Nah, sometimes i feel moderate challenges are too easy. Some times we manage to breath through them in the PF-2E games where the DM tries to balance it to be a challenge to use. I am playing a spell caster and in the last dungeon, I wasn't able to cast any support spelsl because by time I could most enemies were critically wounded and there was no point in it.
An Advanced Skeletal Champion would've been fun to fight at level 2. Anyways point is if you increase/advancec creatures above Party Level +1, the fight will generally be deadly and if it is Party Level+2 well your party will either win with about 1 person up or all wipe.
I did send a Creature 3 vs 4 Party 1s before. They had the terrain to protect themselves from the Undead onslaught of a Creature 3 Skeletal Champion so I had no fear in them wiping.
Point is do not expect good tactics and teamwork to overcome hard encounters if the single enemy out-classes the entire party of 4+ Player Characters, in an open arena or where the terrain isn't favorable to the Players.
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This is a common problem for GMs coming from PF1. Even the AP writers made this mistake in the first few APs created for PF2.
The thing is, that in PF2 a hard fight doesn't make a fight more interesting or engaging. It just makes it harder.
And fights are generally hard enough already. Even a party level -1 creature can be a significant problem to deal with if the GM plays them well.
Taking the idea that hard fights equals fun fights and putting the party up against a level +2 enemy with the Elite template is going to do nothing but cause frustration and TPK.
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My suggestions:
1) Read the descriptions of the encounter difficulty options, not just their names. What does 'extreme threat' actually mean? Also - believe what it says there. When it says, "this is not suitable for most encounters" that means you shouldn't use that difficulty level. Especially not for a beginner group.
2) Understand that there are two major balance axis. One is the party vs party balance. This is the major one that determines which side of the battle is going to ultimately win. This is represented on the encounter building with the XP budget table. The other axis is the character vs character balance. This is the one that determines if an individual character feels that they are effective or not. A character won't feel effective if most of their attacks miss and most of their spells are resisted, even if the party does eventually do enough damage to win the battle. This is represented by the second table - the character level to enemy level table. If you have either of these balance axis off kilter, then there is going to be problems.
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Also, as a replacement of the 'hard fight means fun fight' mentality, try something more along the lines of 'well played enemies that can use their abilities and make good tactical decisions will be interesting and fun to defeat.'
Having the enemies at lower stat numbers means that the party can defeat them. Making them make good tactical decisions will make it challenging and interesting for the party to do so.
The GM pitted you against an Extreme encounter at campaign's end and pretty much wiped the party? Sounds to me like the system working as expected. Assuming you were familiar with your characters, had established tactics and fail safes to lean into, and had just a little luck with the dice, even Extreme encounters are readily surmountable.
If the party is lacking in any or all of those things (as is often the case when people start at high level play rather than working up to it) then a party wipe against such odds makes sense.
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I'd missed the part where it said it was supposed to be an end of campaign fight.
Then yeah, strictly going by the numbers, the GM didn't do anything against what the book tells you to. But that doesn't mean it worked well. After all, you describe it as being a long and frustrating slog, not an epic enjoyable end battle.
Some of the early AP books have you fight as the end-of-book boss against L+4 bosses. We always managed to win, but it was never fun. While other fights that in terms of XP budget were similar to it but used more enemies, were much more interesting.
A single level+4 monster is one of the most difficult and frustrating types of fight possible in PF2. Personally I would never make a solo Extreme encounter, if you want to hit that number you should make the boss +2 and add minions.
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We are relatively new to PF2e. Our GM added a +2 across the board to a baddie and it was unstoppable. We are a level 4 party, 2 of us have striking runes. The GM must have wanted to increase the difficulty so he added a +2 to all the monster's stats (to hit, saves, etc.) and he was impossible to hit. At an AC 25, we needed a 16 to hit and a 20 to crit. None of our spells worked, intimidation, tripping, grappling, all failed. Not only that, we had to fight the creature in a hellscape where we had to make a CR 24 will save each round or take 2d8 (4d8 in crit failure) dmg and become frightened 2. At frightened 2, we needed an 18 to hit. I have not been this frustrated in an encounter in a long time. Is this normal for a PF2e encounter? The combat took almost 3 hours and in the end we did maybe 40 hit of damage total, one character was killed and the rest ran away. This was supposed to be the end of campaign boss fight.Offhand, this sounds like a very poorly designed encounter:
- Your foe's high AC and Saves means it would be should be a long drawn-out battle at best,
- The Frightened 2 condition should make the fight last even longer (and increase the damage the PCs take as well due to the reduced saves), and
- Environmental damage each round means low-level PC healing should be overwhelmed pretty quickly, resulting in a 'the longer this fight goes, the more likely the party is to lose' situation.