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Hello everyone.
I've been quite a fan of Pathfinder since the first edition, I tried DD5, but I honestly don't like it, I much prefer Pathfinder 2e.
But I also like games with horizontal progression, so understand that I find that the HP goes up way too quickly.
I would like to know if there are rules solving this problem to stay at a "human" level of power.
Thank you all.
Rules, no.
Houserules, maybe. Though I think it would be tricky.
I'm also not sure that keeping HP limited is going to solve the problem that you are describing. The term 'gritty realism' is rather vague and needs to be better defined if we are all going to understand the concept in the same way. Reducing HP progression without also adjusting the expected amount of damage that characters and enemies are dealing is going to mean that both PCs and enemies can easily get 1-shot.
Is that what you are wanting? A game where a single roll going in favor of the enemies team means that you are rolling up a new character for the next session?
Similarly with the term 'human levels of power'. What, precisely, does that mean?
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For comparison, what I think PF2 delivers is 'cinematic realism': the main characters face challenges that are daunting. They even sometimes fail at them and have to fall back and regroup. Eventually, the heroes will win the day though.
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I don't think Pathfinder is the game for you, at least not in this regard. Characters being extremely vulnerable at any stage of play is an element of many RPGs--Warhammer Fantasy, Eclipse Phase, Cyberpunk--but Pathfinder is a game of epic high fantasy in which characters go from nobodies to demigods, and that's just how the system is built. Different RPGs exist for different purposes, and I would encourage you to go experiment and explore!
For what it's worth, I think of RPGs the same way I think of books and movies and video games. Sometimes I want to play a big sweeping epic narrative, and that's when I play PF2. Sometimes, I want to play something grittier and more intense, and that's when I turn to one of these other games. If I want to see a romcom, I watch But I'm a Cheerleader, not The Menu, even though I love both movies. PF2 is one of my favorite systems overall, but loving what it's good at also means recognizing its limits.
I agree. Try to adapt PF2e to become non vertical progression will be very hard to worth.
I recommend you to try another system like G.U.R.P.S or True20 (Blue Rose) that doesn't have a big vertical progression overtime.
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You can check out Proficiency By Level, it gets you closer to what you are looking for. The alternative would be to just homebrew and keep everything low level - like 3-5 max.
I've been really wanting to try Blue Rose! It's one of the games on my list.
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This might be the kind of situation to bring back P6 for. If you're not familiar, it was a moderately prevalent house rule for PF1 to play lower power games. Basically, the game only runs from 1-6 instead of 1-20. "Leveling" after 6th just means getting extra feats, still capped at 6th level.
6th level is really good for keeping things at a loosely human baseline - only two damage dice on weapons, expert skills are roughly "the best real-world people can manage", and spells go up to third rank. (It might be worth bumping it to 7th, so casters get expert proficiency to stay ahead of multiclass, everyone has a master skill but the skilled classes have an extra master skill feat.)
When I ran something like a "gritty realism" adventure I threw together a slap-dash homebrew mess. It ended up working with no adjustments throughout the adventure and it looked a little like this (this game was a few years back so this might not be 100% accurate):
Proficiency Without Level (Untrained +0, Trained +3, Expert +5, Master +7, Legend +9)
Stamina rules
Your class only increases your hit points and stamina at level 1.
Heightening spells doesn't increase their damage/healing.
The game didn't go above fifth level and we didn't have a primary caster in the group, nor did the party get any striking runes. Enemies I ran were levels -1 to 2 and I didn't run any proper "boss" encounters, but I did run some encounters with tons of enemies that the party had to play smart around.
If we had a primary caster I probably would have limited the damage/healing/temp HP that spells could dish out.
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You can check out Proficiency By Level, it gets you closer to what you are looking for. The alternative would be to just homebrew and keep everything low level - like 3-5 max.This is what I thought of too. Proficiency without level will flatten out a lot of the math so your characters get a lot less of a boost from leveling up, and your stats all increasing from level ups is where a lot of vertical progression lies. Lower level challenges will remain challenging for a lot longer, and the party can be defeated by them, which is generally what folks mean when they talk about grittiness.
Funnily enough HP is one of the things I'd recommend against messing with. Like Finoan said, damage tends to increase as you continue to level along with the hit points of everyone involved. It's not a perfect mirror, but on average the same number of hits will drop a character regardless of what level they are, assuming the enemy is the same level. Characters tend to get tankier because they have access to more options to help them recover or mitigate damage.
This strikes me as the simplest method, and I would avoid tampering with other numbers since they can trigger unseen ramifications. While this also has major ramifications, they're predictable: all the levels get smushed close to each other, armies matter more, bosses & PCs matter less, everybody can hurt most everybody, and so forth.
That still might be gritty-light (i.e. Black Clover), but as mentioned, going full gritty kinda goes against PF2's grain. Paizo upgraded Medicine/Treat Wounds for full refills between battles because players kinda demanded it (and would focus great amounts of their resources/rest periods to replicating that if denied, hampering heroic development).
PF2 doesn't do attrition well, with timed goals being about the only way to drive PCs (as in players) to where they'll play on injured. On the flip side, this lets one ramp up each individual fight so there might actually be more danger, just less grit. Finessing the danger line with enemy pressure, time pressure, attrition, and other grit can be difficult what with how tightly tuned combat threats can be.
That said, one could adapt another game's system/setting for specific body damage, stickier damage overall; Horror, Terror, & Insanity mechanics and so forth. One 3.X variant had only your 1st level hit points as real "that's your body" points, and they were difficult to heal while your other hit points later were what typical healing could address. So if you were wounded down into your real h.p., it mattered a lot (much like Wounded in PF2, except harder to relieve). I believe crits would subtract directly from those real h.p. (rather than double), so you high level characters could die to one lucky blow (see Fallout's TTRPG for similar effects!). You could couple that with Deadlands' hit location chart if you want limbs on the line.
Note that that's too gritty for many players who want to develop their heroes' stories, so check in whether your players want grit or only think they want grit. I've run some gritty campaigns that mechanically were cushy, just don't tell my players!
Yeah, if the HP thing isn't a prereq for you, Proficiency Without Level is 100% the way to go! Of course, if anything, you'll arguably see fewer one-hit kills from it, since critical hits become rarer. That's part of why I hesitated to recommend it. If you want gritty, that's as gritty as it gets for PF2. It does mean that lower level creatures can still threaten you! But, you know, the HP still has to go up.
I think Proficiency Without Level and keeping the damage scaling to the minimum and removing spell heightening would probably be fine enough.
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Hello everyone.
I've been quite a fan of Pathfinder since the first edition, I tried DD5, but I honestly don't like it, I much prefer Pathfinder 2e.
But I also like games with horizontal progression, so understand that I find that the HP goes up way too quickly.
I would like to know if there are rules solving this problem to stay at a "human" level of power.
Thank you all.
Proficiency without level, staying at levels 1-5 and using ABP will keep the party on the low-range of encounter types that are more mundane.
However, you should consider giving other systems a chance, since they can offer the experience you're looking for with less effort, even if they don't offer the tactical depth of PF2e.
The Witcher RPG, for example, might offer a good blend of sword and sorcery, with a deep combat system. Shadowdark is a good blend of old and new, that offers that old school experience while not forgetting the benefits of newer design.
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Exactly what LR said. There are all kinds of hacks for PF2 and 5e, and some of them are pretty cool, but honestly, sometimes it's better to find an RPG that's just built for the experience you're looking for. Smaller RPGs deserve a shot at your table! When I want to play a game focused on camping and cooking and such, sure, I could play PF2 with the camping subsystem--which I love--but I could also pull up Ryuutama or ICON or Wanderhome, or go searching through more itch.io to find something new. Or go back to bothering my friend to finish designing Trihex so I can play it.
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I like Pathfinder for its 3-action system, the very varied races it offers, its crafting system and many other things that other games don't include or only very sporadically.
I made the following modifications:
- The increase in HP only adds constitution from level 2 (minimum 1). From level 11, there is no increase in HP.
- Mastery does not increase with levels, only mastery level.
- Strinking: No longer gives damage dice, instead we simply choose the highest dice.
Spell level is limited to level 5.
that's it for the moment, with my table it seems to work for the moment.
This might be the kind of situation to bring back P6 for. If you're not familiar, it was a moderately prevalent house rule for PF1 to play lower power games. Basically, the game only runs from 1-6 instead of 1-20. "Leveling" after 6th just means getting extra feats, still capped at 6th level.
6th level is really good for keeping things at a loosely human baseline - only two damage dice on weapons, expert skills are roughly "the best real-world people can manage", and spells go up to third rank. (It might be worth bumping it to 7th, so casters get expert proficiency to stay ahead of multiclass, everyone has a master skill but the skilled classes have an extra master skill feat.)
For other side low-levels have a great delta between levels. You HP increases a lota proportionally between level 1 to 2. Also lvl 1 games are limite to minimum of -1 creatures whats difficulties the balance and usage of a higher number of enemies per encounter or a rank 2 spells dubles the damage power of spells when compared to level 1. Curiously as higher is your level less the progression changes your character. For example a 17-20 play a caster only gets an extra rank 9 slot and 1-2 slots for level 10 spells that usually are just a bit more stronger than a lower level spell.
The ways as PF2 is designed the difference between lower levels are way more impacting than the difference between higher levels.
I like Pathfinder for its 3-action system, the very varied races it offers, its crafting system and many other things that other games don't include or only very sporadically.
I made the following modifications:
- The increase in HP only adds constitution from level 2 (minimum 1). From level 11, there is no increase in HP.
- Mastery does not increase with levels, only mastery level.
- Strinking: No longer gives damage dice, instead we simply choose the highest dice.Spell level is limited to level 5.
that's it for the moment, with my table it seems to work for the moment.
Take care that you need to balance the creatures too.
The higher level creatures expects that the damage dice increases and that the HP increases too. You will need to rebalance each monster that you use diminishing its damage and HP or they will become impossible to your players.
Remember that PF2e is considered a hard difficulty TTRPG for many players if you don't take care enough you might ending with many TPKs
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I think the stamina variant rule combined with the not adding level to proficiency variant rule will get you pretty close to a viable “gritty” setting, as long as you treat attacks that only do stamina damage as near misses instead of hits. If you just make characters die at dying 2 instead of dying 4, it will be very lethal, and I would strongly recommend using Automatic bonus progression as well to cut down on time spent trying to fit items into the character creation process.
The problem with very lethal PF2 is that characters take too long to build for most players to be happy bringing 4 of them to the table each game. PF2 already is pretty lethal (for characters, not as a hobby), and many players struggle with how easily it feels like their characters can die, so talking over table expectations is a good idea for any GM trying to dial up the grit. Especially as Grittiness really can be a tone thing more than a mechanic thing. Don’t let players have 10 minutes between encounters and even a string of moderate encounters can get very dark very fast.
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OP: How can I play PF on gritty hard mode?
Community: Play something else.
Really folks!?
No no. It's actually not too bad: You could make zero modifications to the baseline mechanics!
Just eliminate Low and Trivial Encounters altogether. Keep within Moderate and Severe, and use Extreme encounters once per Chapter instead of once per Campaign.
=)
If I were to do this, thus greatly increasing the probability of TPK, I would make the following three recommendations:
1) Have players create multiple PCs per player
2) Adjudicate (or Houserule) a way for players to Judge an Encounter's Difficulty before Committing
3) Discuss the Norms around what happens if the Party wants to Escape an Encounter - this may or may not involve a Houserule for Exit
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OP: How can I play PF on gritty hard mode?
Community: Play something else.Really folks!?
Really! "Play something else" isn't a dirty word or a curse. Different RPGs have different strengths, and when we get trapped in the mindset of "only two RPGs exist, how do I fit these square pegs to round holes", we do the art form as a whole a terrible disservice. It's the exact same mindset that leads to endless Reddit threads from 5e players asking how to make the system more granular or balanced. "Play another game" is the most accurate and helpful advice one can offer. I think your advice is fine and good, but it's still ultimately trying to get a game designed for a certain style of play to work for another style of play.
I don't actually think PF2 is especially hard. It's actually very easy--easy to build encounters for, easy to build effective characters for--but that's because it has incredibly tight math. It becomes hard when you start tinkering with that math without fully understanding it.* Replacing Striking runes with "use highest number" and removing all HP boosts are incredibly drastic changes. Every encounter becomes unpredictable because the math is broken. "Moderate" and "Severe" become less reliable labels when the damage numbers and HP aren't increasing at the carefully managed rates.
As an example: Many classes are balanced around the assumption that the combat will proceed for a fair number of rounds, and thus have lengthier setups to make up for extremely strong abilities when they hit their stride. Skirmishers like rogues spend time setting up their attacks before they get to attack because, in most encounters, they have a reasonable expectation of still being conscious long enough to capitalize. If you set out to make everyone drastically more mortal and thus shorten combats you now need to reduce that setup period somehow. Otherwise, a rogue or summoner is drastically less effective. How are you rebalancing healing-focused builds? Those are built around helping parties survive especially brutal combats, preventing one-sided curbstomps. Their job is to make dangerous short fights last longer. Now their healing is less effective, which means you need to rebalance everything tied to healing, which has heretofore been extremely tightly-balanced. I've done the math. It's really good math.
You can totally try it, and maybe it'll be fine, but yeah, my first advice is still to play another game. And that's because I... like other games? I like tabletops as an art form. I will always, always encourage people to explore the art form beyond their assumed comfort zone.
EDIT: Also, I just want to point out that the OP didn't ask for gritty hard mode. They specifically asked for how to remove or greatly reduce scaling HP. Plenty of us would be happy to offer advice for a gritty game, and we did! But that's not strictly what the OP asked for. Your solution is dodging the actual question just as badly as ours were.
*Which, to be clear, includes me. I don't want to seem pretentious or gatekeepy here; I am still absolutely getting the hang of this system.
OP: How can I play PF on gritty hard mode?
Community: Play something else.Really folks!?
No no. It's actually not too bad: You could make zero modifications to the baseline mechanics!
Just eliminate Low and Trivial Encounters altogether. Keep within Moderate and Severe, and use Extreme encounters once per Chapter instead of once per Campaign.
=)
If I were to do this, thus greatly increasing the probability of TPK, I would make the following three recommendations:
1) Have players create multiple PCs per player
2) Adjudicate (or Houserule) a way for players to Judge an Encounter's Difficulty before Committing
3) Discuss the Norms around what happens if the Party wants to Escape an Encounter - this may or may not involve a Houserule for Exit
The problem is that the OP wants to eliminate the power difference between levels to keep it in a more close to normal humans power level without give up from horizontal progression. It's not really want to make the game harder just keep the power level balanced.
But the HP+damage progression breaks this as long the player and monsters/NPCs progress as way more stronger they become when compared to a normal settlement guard for example. But being honest this have a good reason to exists once the players may face in a group of 4 over their progression stronger creatures like dragons, fiends and demi-gods so consider that these creatures can be defeated by a bunch of normal guards breaks the fantasy of this powerful creatures.
A Proficiency without level like 5e solves only half of what the OP wanted but the damage and HP keeps progressing. But try to balance damage damage and HP will make the balance even harder and to keep everything in tracks more harder to GM to a point that many of use say "Why don't you simply try another system builded around the balance that you are looking for instead?". We aren't say that's impossible to do with PF2 just that "are you sure that this really worth all this effort?".
The other problematic point is the spells itself they becomes not only very numeric powerful as you progress but also they becomes too fantastic. You can call meteors from the sky, make earthquakes, ignite a sun in earth! All PF2 progression is made around that the PCs are becoming more and more epic as long they progress and it's hard to avoid this without just forbid then to progress (including this is an option, just keep the game limited to level 1-2 and the players won't become super heroes but you risk to make the game more boring due the lack of progression).
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It's like, PF2 is the kind of game where if you want to rebalance it, you have to already really, really love it. You have to understand what it is you're changing on a pretty fundamental level. My girlfriend is obsessed with this game. The numbers swim in her head at all times. She can guess an eleventh-level character's spell save DC just by knowing their class. She makes spreadsheets of class proficiency scaling for fun. She's the kind of person who would know how to make this change without ruining the game math, and you know what she said to me when I brought it up?
"... Oh, no."
Again, do what's fun for you! At the end of the day, having fun is all that matters. I loved playing the two-player Wii Mario Bros game like a PVP game, picking up barrels and throwing them at my fellow player. If this is what you want, I just hope you have fun!
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Oh, I just thought of a great rec! DC20! From what I've gathered (partially copying what a friend-of-a-friend said on Discord), it's a 5e(maybe 3e?)-inspired TTRPG with a more modular structure. For example, multiclassing is based upon "Talent Poaching" where you don't take levels, you take features. HP seems to be kept low, maybe even static. You die at -3 HP, and 0 HP is "Death's Door". It has a lot of really cool elements I'm excited for, even as a staunch PF2 player who's only ever really hopped systems when I wanted to change genre or playstyle altogether. I don't know what its ancestry/action economy/crafting systems look like, but it seems promising.
Good to know! I thought I'd heard it had similarities to Pathfinder, but a glance at the website unsurprisingly just mentioned 5e.
I think an OSR game would be a significantly better fit here.
Having DMed/GMed hundreds of sessions across several RPG systems, I can't say that I understand what "horizontal progression" means in practice. I understand slower upward progression, like old school D&D, Deadlands, or the Hero System, but progress is always upward. And breadth of abilities = power, even same-power-level additions increase one's power budget. Plus growth (even incremental) is a major reward for so many of my players, I can't imagine denying them that, much less playing a system whose math relies on exponential progress and then reconfiguring that to deny it.
And there's balancing the gold & items...oh, boy.
The OP's solution looks more like a power cap, which can be done so much easier by not leveling up (or doing so so slowly it keeps the PCs' arcs within the same power league throughout the campaign). As it is, the PCs will race to the cap, stall out, and practically freeze in place. I'm unsure what narrative gravitas is gained by that formula (and the hefty work to apply & adjudicate it!) vs. "we're gonna play a low-level campaign because I have a low-level story arc for y'all".
Really! "Play something else" isn't a dirty word or a curse.
It is clearly not the question asked.
Different RPGs have different strengths
Of course and I agree it is worth saying. But lots of people find it easier to play the same game system. Let them be.
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Not to be another 'play another system' person, but maybe have a gander at Pathwarden? It uses Pathfinder 2e as its base with ORC, so familiar things like action points are there, though that's about when the similarities end. It does have levels so a level 1 mook is not as likely to hit a level 5 char, but its classless and the hp scaling is less intense (so if that level 1 mook crits, the lvl 5 character is still going to feel it). Though I'll admit being unsure if it'll fulfil the gritty since, levels are still there--I haven't played/run it myself yet. (The author is pretty open to answering questions though if you wanted to check)
There's lots of games that can fulfil that fantasy grittiness out there, this was just the only other one game that came to mind that has a PF2e style action point system for combat (aside DC20 but I have no idea how that one plays at higher levels either, and it's also still in development whereas Pathwarden is done).
Otherwise perhaps capping levels and instead rewarding extra feats as players progress "past" the capped level would be the idea (like QuidEst mentioned). That's the kind of ruleset I enjoyed most in PF1e. Maybe add Proficiency without Level on top.
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Really! "Play something else" isn't a dirty word or a curse.It is clearly not the question asked.
Different RPGs have different strengthsOf course and I agree it is worth saying. But lots of people find it easier to play the same game system. Let them be.
If we both agree that what I said was worth saying, I don't see any conflict here. :P
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The classless bit gives me the heebie-jeebies.
As for DC20, I took a look and felt that a) having four actions felt like “hey, wow, not three…but four!!! actions” as a nod to “we are totes different” as well as player-facing “you are the star of the show!!!” kind of approach and b) the low damage concept didn’t feel like it was going to work across the system, given it really deviates from 50 years of DnD or 25 or so of 3.0/3.5/d20 approaches while still trying to maintain much else that is central to those systems.
Then again, I’n pretty cynical, and even the slightest stench of “hype” tends to bring out the worst in me. I remember watching part of the Daggerheart playtest video and when Matt Mercer held up the “doo-allidy die” (“duality”) I remember thinking “No, mate. That’s a d12. Cool, and yes, woefully underused and always a magnet for the coolest kids to think it’s…a cool die. But still, just a bloody d12.”
I'm also not the biggest fan of DC20. It kinda feels to me that it wants to be both D&D 5e and PF2e at the same time but without having to commit to neither of them. Also, the system seems near unplayable without a VTT due to all those charts it has. Unlike PF2e's which are easy to remember, they feel arbitrarily made as if it was something that happens in the background of a computer game. I don't see people from 5e trying it more than a couple of times before switching back to 5e.
The classless bit gives me the heebie-jeebies.
I agree partially. Being classless is not a bad thing but I thing that classes works like a guide for most players in order to make their characters creations without fall into many decision paralysis or to thrown power creep players in the same metas over and over. Yet it still feels pretty interesting for many players.
As for DC20, I took a look and felt that a) having four actions felt like “hey, wow, not three…but four!!! actions” as a nod to “we are totes different” as well as player-facing “you are the star of the show!!!” kind of approach and b) the low damage concept didn’t feel like it was going to work across the system, given it really deviates from 50 years of DnD or 25 or so of 3.0/3.5/d20 approaches while still trying to maintain much else that is central to those systems.
I have a doubt sensation about the 4 actions. IMO this is almost like "everyone prizes the PF2e action economy so let us copy it but add one more action to say that it's better". OK I exaggerating here because the proposed DC20 action economy this 4th action in practice comes from the reaction IMO, we can say the PF2e 3-actions was a boundless version of move action, main action, bonus action, so the 4th action of DC20 is the default reaction added into the same action economy giving the option to trade between actions and reactions freely what's pretty interesting and more easier to balance in practice. Yet it still feels a bit like they was selling more actions for the win :P
But the main problem of the currently proposed rules of DC20 is that it's currently overwhelmed of things to track and due how the 4 stats system makes a character too much jack-of-all-trades in this game.
Then again, I’n pretty cynical, and even the slightest stench of “hype” tends to bring out the worst in me. I remember watching part of the Daggerheart playtest video and when Matt Mercer held up the “doo-allidy die” (“duality”) I remember thinking “No, mate. That’s a d12. Cool, and yes, woefully underused and always a magnet for the coolest kids to think it’s…a cool die. But still, just a bloody d12.”
I simply dislike the Daggerheart proposed dice rolling system it put an additional pressure into GM's creativity and also looks too punitive (if you succeed the check with hope you win, if succeed the check with fear you succeed but will be penalized too, if you fail the check with hope you fail, if you fail the check with fear is almost a critical failure) too lucky dependent and I honestly don't understand why 2 d12 instead of 2d10 it just arbitrary and just difficulties the DC conversion between systems or it's just tries to compensate the additional compensation to help to make the 2d12 roll less punitive giving a bit higher minimum and max result.
Anyway this is just a highly superficial analysis. Every thing could change in the final version and many things certainly will be improved in these games. I still have good hopes for these systems and theirs competition will be beneficial to everyone. They will indirectly help the new versions and supplementary books for PF and D&D to get some good new ideas and improvements.
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I do feel like I agree with every aspect of OSW's and your analysis, including the allergy to hype. Other aspects, on the other hand, really interest me, like the heavy emphasis on social skills in combat and the actual spell duel system. If we can get a D&D-alike that actually makes spell duels feel as cool as they are in my head, I'll definitely give it a try.