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That looks like the outdated (preRemaster) rules for crafting. That was buffed in the Remaster to at least be less time consuming. Current Rules.
Main differences:
If you don't have the formula for the item, you can still create the item if it is common, and it only takes 2 days of setup instead of 4.
If you do have the formula, you can create the item regardless of rarity and it only takes 1 day of setup.
So if you have the formula and are willing to pay full rulebook listed price for the full plate, then you can craft it in one day. If you don't have the formula, you can create it in two days. And if you have more downtime available than that, you can get the discount for working on the item for more days.
The purpose of Crafting during downtime is for narrative purposes for characters that want to build their own equipment or for campaigns that want to avoid having item shops in overly convenient places constantly.
The balance point of Crafting items is to be comparable to Earn Income during downtime. Crafting loses 1 or 2 days of possible income, but it doesn't depend on settlement level (so the discount earned from two weeks of crafting an item at a higher crafting level than the settlement supports could be more than the two weeks of income that you could earn at the settlement's level).
Also, note that you can't gain a discount of more than half the item's cost no matter how long you work on it. For the item, you will have to reduce your character's or party's wealth by at least half the cost of the item. That can be described in a variety of ways narratively.
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I am now running two PF2E groups and loving it. I'm still new to the system, so have questions. We use Foundry, so I think some of the questions I have are from its automation. When it works, it's great, but it seems my second level group overwhelmed Foundry with all of the automation such that it struggled to work. Movement is still janky with it. Those are Foundry issues, though, not PF2.
Movement shouldn't be janky in Foundry unless something odd is going on. Are you running a lot of modules? Some of them can have a real impact.
Crafting - Am I correct in thinking that the system still assumes X amount of gold, or time, spent on equipment? The crafter spends half the gold and four days then spends the rest to finish it then or uses the crafting table to keep going until the other half is paid for. (If I have done the math right, a 2gp level 0 steel shield takes four days base then 20 days at 5 cp per day, or 24 days total.)
Two days in the remaster, or one day if you have the formula. But yes. Crafting items is useful for giving you access to stuff you can't buy and letting you get things "in the field" when you're far from the ability to shop. It's not there to let you get gear cheaply, though it can do that in a campaign like Kingmaker where two months of downtime isn't that abnormal.
It's quite handy to be able to repair gear in the field, or find a cool rune and take a day to put it on a weapon without having to return to town. Or if you just happen to need a specific item and have a couple of days, you can get it.
On shields, has there been a reason that they aren't usable for partial AC in broken condition? In the games I have going, I have not seen a shield get destroyed in a level+2 appropriate encounter. Immediately get broken by a critical hit, yes, but not close to destroyed. I think the option to use the broken shield for some AC, and some blocking, more meaningful than it can't be used at all and can be repaired.
The reason is basically "because the rules say so". Shield block comes with a cost, and that cost is that you can break the shield and not get the AC anymore. It's generally better to shield block smaller hits vs crits for that reason. (And also why Sturdy Shields were just the best ones for any character that does want to shield block frequently.)
That said, you could house rule this so that the shield gives -1 AC while broken instead and its unlikely to cause problems. If that feels better for your group then go for it. :)
Do note that Foundry's automation won't do it for you, though.
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No need to apologize. The crafting rules were indeed changed not so long ago.
I haven't looked at all of the dragons specifically. What I do understand from the creature building guidelines is that creatures - especially creatures that are intended to fight solo against the party - have unique and interesting abilities.
Interesting to make each fight a bit of a tactical puzzle rather than just a numbers game.
Unique, similarly, to make things be engaging and unexpected rather than "Oh look, a dragon. Get ready to counter Ground Slam."
And similarly to the crafting rules, chromatic dragons are preRemaster. There are new and unique Remaster dragons such as a Brine Dragon, Forest Dragon, and Conspirator Dragon.
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I apologize. I am trying to discuss RAW and if the answer for a reason, is because of "the rules say so" or "balance" that's fine. At least I understand the intent of them. In talking with a player, sure, if the shield is damaged and then they get hit by a critical hit, that might break the shield. Otherwise, shields were broken in the game at only half hit points, which is why I wondered why they can't still be used. I could see at quarter damage, it's useless but still repairable but that's as subjective as half! I'm not sure if I will do that or leave it.
"Broken" is a condition in this context: the shield is damaged to the point that it doesn't serve its intended function but it can be fixed. If it goes down to 0 HP it's destroyed. You can picture a "broken" shield as one that has its arm strap snapped and a big crack/dent in it where you can't hold it probably and another hit is likely going to shatter it.
The distinction is mostly that its relatively easy for a crafter to repair a broken item (hilariously so at high level with Quick Repair), while its much harder and more expensive to replace a destroyed one.
Sturdy shields have substantially more HP and thus can take more hits before breaking, and they feel a lot better for a character that wants to block a lot. There is also a reinforcing rune that you can put on a shield if you have a magic shield you like, to make it tougher.
I generally find that shields feel pretty good if you're using a sturdy one: they can take a beating before becoming broken. The basic ones feel very flimsy.
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It's also worth noting that players can decide to Shield Block AFTER the triggering damage is known. As such, a shield should never break from Shield Block unless the player allowed for it.
I saw some 1st Edition terminology being thrown about.
You are playing 2nd Edition, aren't you?
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It's strange I rarely see a shield being broken. Usually this only happen when the players tries to block criticals. Something that I don't recommend unless you have an Indestructible Shield.
Ground Slam is pretty good action as both to add some more damage after a breath and to be used before use Draconic Frenzy to try to put some player in Prone to attack it off-guard. But if this dragon is fighting with minions (or if it is a minion of another creature) it have to be careful with friendly fire maybe avoiding it usage and move to a better position. But dure lore reasons you can make it don't care to make some friendly fire (white dragons are know to be brutish, predatory, and chiefly motivated by self-preservation and usually doesn't care with their "allies").
About breath what do you thing it needs more? Damage or AoE? The damage of breaths are basically the same of the fireball heightened to its level. So they basically can make cone "fireballs" every 1d4 turns.
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Dragons aren't meant to stand toe to toe with adventurers. After level 10 a +2 creature is pretty easy to take out. I've seen a well built fighter all but solo a +2 dragon like creature that got ambushed in a confined space.
Rather dragons can all fly, so they should be doing strafing runs, staying out of range before swooping in to breath weapon down on as many targets as possible and fly away next turn. After softening targets up then they can move in and take out the least armored target.
With their fly speed dragons can hit and run nearly any combination of party with impunity. Some have burrow or swim speeds to work circles around parties as well.
Fighting a dragon should almost always be a terrible experience unless you are prepared to counter their advantages. Dragons are smart and know how to make a fight one sided, and generally have the tools to do so.
Each type of dragon also has special tricks to add to the basic strafing tactics to mix things up.
It can be hard to play a dragon properly as it can feel like your punching down on your players. Dragons have speed that allows them to dramatically out pace the party, have aoe abilities that force the party to spread out, and martial prowess to pick off separated members. You should always telegraph a dragon fight well ahead of time so players can prepare, because most groups just don't have what it takes to fight a dragon randomly.
For ground slam itself, it's a nice ability. Small area but can help to disengage if needed.
Compare that to a Horned dragons impaling charge. If the charge hits, the dragon can just fly away with it's victim.
Compare to Adamantine dragons swallow whole, rupture 29 at level 11 (assuming +2 dragon) can be very difficult to do for many characters. So one action take someone out of the fight.
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Why don't all dragons have Ground Slam like the white dragon? Or do they have something that's similar but I'm missing it?
Pathfinder copied the chromatic dragons from Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition, where their main distinguishing feature was their color and their breath weapon. White dragon's breath weapon dealt cold damage. Red dragon's breath weapon dealt fire damage. Blue dragon's breath weapon dealt electricity damage. Etc. They also had immunity to their damage type.
The designers of Pathfinder 2nd Edition decided to develop the dragons to have more of a theme based on their energy and their habitat. White Dragons became snow dragons and developed other ice-related powers: Snow Vision, Freezing Blood, Ice Climb, and Shape Ice. Ground Slam is not specifically based on ice, but maybe it was designed to mimic a miniature snow avalanche. Red Dragons are fire themed, but young red dragons start out slowly with only Smoke Vision. Adult red dragons add Dragon Heat and ancient red dragons also add Redirect Fire and Manipulate Flames. In contrast, Blue Dragons gained a desert theme rather than an electricity theme. Young blue dragons gain Desert Thirst and have create water as one of their arcane innate spells. While white dragons can live on an icy glacier or mountaintop and red dragons can live near a volcano, Golarion has no environment associated with electricity. Acid-based Black Dragons became swamp dwellers; however, young black dragons have no additional acid or swamp powers. Adult black dragons gain Corrupt Water, and that's it. Some habitats simply don't suggest interesting powers.
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@YuriP - I'm surprised you don't see shields broken but of course, I don't know your group. In my group, all but the wizard have a Sturdy Shield (lesser) and use it often. Two players weren't using shields until they saw the effectiveness of them and decided to use them. Not every combat sees one of their shields broken but usually hit. Shields have been a great add, IMO, for the tactical thinking it brings to combat.
It's because I don't know how do you rule shields. But my players learn learned the hard way early that to not block critical with shield. Instead is better to take all damage and then heal once that repair a shield during an encounter is unfeasible and switch shields wastes too much actions. So they just restrict to block only normal damage this basically stop them to break shields.
I do think the breath weapon needs to do more damage, upwards of 75% more dice. This gets into a lot of topics about game design, monster design, roles of monsters, and more. I'm not saying I'm an expert. More on this below.
As I said before. The breath damage is based in fireball damage. Do you also think that Fireball spell needs to be 75% stronger?
Considering that an adult white dragon does 11d6, so avg 38,5 damage in a failure but I will round up to 40 to help the math and a player with same level with 8hp class investing in con as 3rd most important attribute have a +4 con in this level so their avg HP is about 120HP. So a single failure breath is able to damage around 1/3 of all players in the AoE without interfere in MAP. Do you think it's weak?
Or let's go to a severe encounter math:
The players now are lvl 7. So their avg con is now +3 and their avg HP is 77. So now a failure breath takes half of their HP in a failure. Do you think this is a low damage for a single activity (the dragon still has it's 3rd action)?
The point is. Is the breath that is weak or the dragon or your players that got luck or are well prepared? You haven't used your dragon flight also matters. For a flighting dragon that avoids to land or that breath in the air, then fly down, attack then fly up changes a lot the difficult. This matter to monster balance too. If the breath becomes too strong in a situation where's the dragon have the advantage it may become too dangerous.
PF2e tactics are usually so relevant as the difficult level.
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It's because I don't know how do you rule shields. But my players learn learned the hard way early that to not block critical with shield. Instead is better to take all damage and then heal once that repair a shield during an encounter is unfeasible and switch shields wastes too much actions. So they just restrict to block only normal damage this basically stop them to break shields.
It is a good tactic - but this is so much the opposite of expectations that it really hurts my enjoyment of PF2.
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Ooh, I love encounter design talk. Well, it’s monster design, but what we’re really looking at is how encounters involving dragons should be designed. Like you have correctly said, Pathfinder doesn’t have “solo monsters” in the sense of having a specific classification for them. However, nearly anything can function as a solo encounter - it’s just really a matter of it would make an interesting solo encounter. There’s nothing inherently fun about fighting an ogre who just spends the entire combat Striking and nothing else - they lack a lot of the interesting abilities to make such a big encounter actually worthwhile.
Dragons are, of course, interesting. While the topic at hand seems to be the white dragon, I do want to note that they’re from the “Premaster” days of chromatic dragons and we do have a nice new slew of dragons that are quite different from the color family and have stronger niches. But let’s stick with the white dragon to keep things simple - it’s not like they’re obsolete now!
Let’s start with encounter difficulty. You went with a Party Level + 2 (PL+2) creature versus your party, which makes this a Moderate encounter - difficult, but definitely doable. I would say that you get into the territory of “someone might go down here” in the Severe category of difficulty. This would mean a PL+3 solo creature - though that comes with a caveat that your players should have a good handle on the rules and their characters because the numbers are not skewed in their favor (even though the action economy is). They should be ready to buff up, debuff, and think tactically to overcome the opponent.
Which brings me to flight. I love flying enemies, even when I’m on the player side of the GM screen. However, this is where encounter design comes into play. If your group is walking through a flat plain with nothing around it, what can they do about a flying enemy who harasses them from afar? Why doesn’t the dragon just stay in the sky waiting for its Breath Weapon to recharge and blasting them while they run - especially if the group has no recourse (such as a ranged martial or spellcaster). That is a valid strategy and as a GM, I would run a creature that way, but I would never design an encounter that way.
A PL+3 creature is already a difficult challenge for a group, so I would give the group chances to solve the puzzle that is the dragon. Give them terrain to Hide + Take Cover behind. Give them chances to Climb up trees, ledges, crumbling masonry, whathaveyou and Ready actions to Leap onto the dragon as it gets close. Heck, have the encounter take place near an old ballista they can operate or even scatter a few nonmagical longbows on the ground.
I can be a bit of a brutal GM from time to time, and believe that if you’re at the level to fight dragon, you should have options for taking care of aerial enemies. That doesn’t mean, however, that I can’t provide the group with (less optimal) options.
But players can also use the system to their advantage as well! As an example, I was playing a level one Sparkling Targe magus in a PFS game against a number of flying opponents who would swoop down, attack me, and Fly away. I had no ranged options and was a sitting duck. When my turn came around, I ran away before Readying an action to Trip an enemy when they attempted to leave a space adjacent to me. The group, who Delayed, would then rush in to deal with the downed enemy.
I would 100% play dragons as the cunning, intelligent creatures they are - even the dumb ol’ bestial white dragon, that overgrown labrador - but I would also expect my players to showcase their talents and cunning as well, making certain that I don’t stack the deck against them.
Like I said, who wants to have an encounter against a boring opponent? Or the inverse, who wants to play as the boring PC who doesn’t have to think about the encounter?
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On Dragons: A lot of things on that, as I said in my post, where I talked about game design. I may be doing some things wrong in my combats, per RAW, since I used the white dragon in my example as a solo. The dragon was CR+2, which seems like it should be a good encounter.
I had ignored this before. But CR+2 isn't exactly a truly challenging encounter, especially for prepared players. According to the difficulty table itself, the challenge actually starts at CR+3 when you place a solo enemy.
But as you said, since your players weren't exactly well prepared to face a flying creature, you opted to use solo tactics so as not to make the combat too boring for them, even though it meant that the fight could be suboptimal for the dragon.
This could made you feel that the dragon abilities like breath looks weak.
I think you have two questions. Let me flip your first question back on you. If an area of attack by a solo monster does a third of any characters hit points, was that an effective attack for it to win? I say no because if that's all it does on its turn, they aren't even bloodied, they can last another round. Even if it could use its breath weapon again the next round, it still wouldn't take out on character on average. With no penalties based on hit points, until zero hit points, they all have full actions. Further, they can spend their last action to take a potion, to further reduce the effect of the breath weapon. In that same fight, if the breath weapon did two thirds of their hit points in damage, the cleric is probably going to heal, which takes them out of inflicting damage. Even then, the dragon, or opponent, still faces the other three characters' full actions.
* I've highlighted a part of your text in bold to point out something interesting. It may be a bit off topic, but it adds to the idea of whether the dragon should really do so much damage with just one breath.
Yes this isn't enough to make the dragon win but we have to remember that the main objetive of a TTRPG isn't make the dragon win. It is make the dragon dangerous and challenging. We know that a character that loses 1/3 or 1/2 of its HP in a Breath could easily recover this HP in PF2e but the point is to passa a dangerous sense:
- Player that fail in the reflex and loses 1/3 of its HP: Oww! This thing took almost half my HP in one hit and more is coming! (it still has its 3rd-action) We need to take care and recover because if this thing is able to do it again or a similar thing we may become dying in next round!
- Player that critically fails in the reflex and loses 2/3 of its HP: Oh god, please dragon don't Strike me or I maybe fall!
- Rogue player that succeeded critically succeeded due Evasion: Weak :P
So yes in practice we know that players have resources to recover but when we start to make them to worry about that they will need to use these resources and take actions to survive this already made them to feel the challenge.
All that said you still want them to feel the really danger with about 50% chance of survive put a CR+4 creature and make this an extreme encounter! An Adult White Dragon doing 11d6 cold damage in a 40-foot with a DC 29 cone may fell that it isn't enough so try an Adult Sea Dragon doing 13d6 bludgeoning damage in a 25-foot burst within 50 feet (DC 32 basic Reflex save) maybe just improve 2d6 looks isn't enough but the DC 32 increasing the change to fail and critical fail by 15% will make it pretty more dangerous, maybe including for the rogue too :P (swith a cold dragon to a water dragon maybe break the thematic but was for the example).
For the seventh level characters where they take half damage, that's better but almost as ineffective. Since the dragon can't follow that up the next round with its breath weapon, it's likely many will have received healing or used a potion to get back up over half, to know they can survive another hit like that. Again, is that good?
Depends. Are you really trying to kill them? Because if the have a bad roll (and yes sometimes the unpredictable bad roll happens) and all them critical fails they will be dead due an ability that hit their entire HP in a single blow!
But even without this. It's an AoE, if you positioned the dragon to hit all they all will need a heal. So unless that everyone have a healing, probably an area healing wouldn't enough to them to fully recovers and will loose a player entire turn just healing.The second question you have is about fireball. Do I think fireball does low damage? No. A fireball is two actions out of the standard four character party's 12 total actions. Further, by RAW, it's a basic save so there is a chance the dragon takes no damage. (That is very disheartening from what I have seen among my players, which is a small sample.) If it was upcast, it might be doing more, and if the monsters have more than one creature, the fireball spreads out the damage. When looked at with all other factors, the fireball is at the correct place to me.
Again, though, I'm looking at a dragon as a solo, which it isn't supposed to be in PF2, if I understand it better now.
Now I think I'm understanding the problem. It isn't really about the damage but the number of actions and yes a single creature in a numeric disadvantage will have to deal with a lot more attacks. But this easily compensated by critical hits and higher AC (and lesser chance to take a critical) (including a critical hit recharges a dragon breath) that a higher level creature does. Just try to make it a CR+3 (severe) challenge next time (you ca just improve the creature to Elite if you don't want switch it to another). Maybe this put your players in a more dangerous situation.
PF2e usually deals well in single creatures boss fights. But moderated encounters still are moderated they aren't really that challenging they are more like difficulties that you find along the road.
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Ooh, I love encounter design talk. Well, it’s monster design, but what we’re really looking at is how encounters involving dragons should be designed. Like you have correctly said, Pathfinder doesn’t have “solo monsters” in the sense of having a specific classification for them. However, nearly anything can function as a solo encounter - it’s just really a matter of it would make an interesting solo encounter. There’s nothing inherently fun about fighting an ogre who just spends the entire combat Striking and nothing else - they lack a lot of the interesting abilities to make such a big encounter actually worthwhile.
Dragons are, of course, interesting. While the topic at hand seems to be the white dragon, I do want to note that they’re from the “Premaster” days of chromatic dragons and we do have a nice new slew of dragons that are quite different from the color family and have stronger niches. But let’s stick with the white dragon to keep things simple - it’s not like they’re obsolete now!
Let’s start with encounter difficulty. You went with a Party Level + 2 (PL+2) creature versus your party, which makes this a Moderate encounter - difficult, but definitely doable. I would say that you get into the territory of “someone might go down here” in the Severe category of difficulty. This would mean a PL+3 solo creature - though that comes with a caveat that your players should have a good handle on the rules and their characters because the numbers are not skewed in their favor (even though the action economy is). They should be ready to buff up, debuff, and think tactically to overcome the opponent.
Which brings me to flight. I love flying enemies, even when I’m on the player side of the GM screen. However, this is where encounter design comes into play. If your group is walking through a flat plain with nothing around it, what can they do about a flying enemy who harasses them from afar? Why doesn’t the dragon just stay in the sky waiting for...
This is an interesting point.
As GMs many times we care about how the players will deal with a challenge. So it is valid to avoid tactics like fly vs players that are too melee focused but also it's an opportunity to show them that they have weak points to worry too.
The idea is to not bully the players with their weakness all the time because this is unfair and boring. But having fate hand things to them on a silver platter isn't fun either. Sometimes the life will put them to face encounters perfect to them, sometimes not! Also they doesn't have to win all the times. Maybe they have to run away because they are unprepared to face a flying dragon and the dragon can let them go due the lack of interest (dragons usually are territorials and chromatic dragons are proud and like to spread fear sometimes. Just allow some "weak" adventurers to flee may help to spread fear and their might along the region). This will give the players an opportunity to prepare better for next fight buying some fly scrolls/potions and ranged weapons.
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Some old players still call the level of the monsters as CR. It's technically wrong but it's easy to understand.
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Alright, I couldn't help myself re:Dragon talk. I've been making a ton of encounters lately and this idea got stuck in my head: Could a dragon just Fly and use its Breath Weapon only for an entire encounter?
So I sat down and made an encounter, not to show that a dragon could do that, but rather to show how both the dragon and the PCs are better off for that not being the optimal playstyle and how that happens mechanically.
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Just an addon. The idea is not only Breath and Fly. But Breath fly then Fly (going down), Strike, Fly (going up)... with only if the players have move reactions or ranged weapons/spells the dragon lands and fight them on land.
The Dragon doesn't need to be stupid, if he notices that flying isn't working he can easily change tactics.
About healing, one hour it ends.
About scatters. The dragon doesn't need to focus into every one, it can target one player at time and the others will come back to help (or just abandon its ally).
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I'm not sure what you meant here? Could you please clarify what your expectations were? How does it hurt your enjoyment?It's because I don't know how do you rule shields. But my players learn learned the hard way early that to not block critical with shield. Instead is better to take all damage and then heal once that repair a shield during an encounter is unfeasible and switch shields wastes too much actions. So they just restrict to block only normal damage this basically stop them to break shields.It is a good tactic - but this is so much the opposite of expectations that it really hurts my enjoyment of PF2.
I think Gortle said that the way Jon Goranson's players Shield Block, letting their shields break in order to block some damage from a heavy-damage critical hit, makes the most sense storywise. It has the drama of sacrificing the shield to save the character. Tactically, however, keeping the shield unbroken by not blocking heavy damage and instead blocking only light-damage hits prevents more damage in the long run. Each shield block prevents the shield's hardness in damage, and the excess damage beyond the hardness is duplicated on the shield. The less excess damage the longer the shield lasts. When the character does not block the critical hit, the shield survives to prevent the damage from several later small hits.
PF2 Shield Block has a non-intuitive design that way.
If an area of attack by a solo monster does a third of any characters hit points, was that an effective attack for it to win?There are no solo monsters in PF2. Well, maybe of 25th+ level, but not less. 17th level dragon is not a boss for 20th level characters.
CR doesn't exist in pf2 either.Fair points. I'm still learning PF2, so that's on me. I will try and watch it but appreciate the corrections.
One thing I need to explain about my DMing is that my players, over the past thirty years, come to the table expecting to be able to handle what is thrown at them. No matter how many times I tell them retreat is valid, that's not what they do. Someone might say to have a TPK, which I did, and then they weren't happy with me that the fight wasn't winnable. All of that to say that when I design an encounter, I try and make it something they can win, even if it's tough.
More to say but interrupted.
Thanks for the discussion!
My players, in contrast, like to take control of the narrative and often confront enemy forces on their own initiative. They know that they might have altered the encounters into something more dangerous than I planned. Thus, they also plan exit strategies that will let them retreat.
One countermeasure that allows risky combats is planning a deus ex machina. For example, I threw some heavy combats at the party during the playtest of the new Runesmith class . I threw five Giant Hermit Crabs, creature 5 at a 6-member 5th-level party (one player was absent) aided by a 5th-level NPC runesmith. That is a 114-xp Severe-Threat encounter, so it could kill a PC if the dice roll deadly. Therefore, I planned for some friendly minotaurs to show up to aid the fight if the dice hated the party. They did show up, but mostly to end the combat as the game session ran long. (Virgil Tibbs, Playtest Rune Smith, comment #16)
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It's because I don't know how do you rule shields. But my players learn learned the hard way early that to not block critical with shield. Instead is better to take all damage and then heal once that repair a shield during an encounter is unfeasible and switch shields wastes too much actions. So they just restrict to block only normal damage this basically stop them to break shields.It is a good tactic - but this is so much the opposite of expectations that it really hurts my enjoyment of PF2.I'm not sure what you meant here? Could you please clarify what your expectations were? How does it hurt your enjoyment?
If an area of attack by a solo monster does a third of any characters hit points, was that an effective attack for it to win?There are no solo monsters in PF2. Well, maybe of 25th+ level, but not less. 17th level dragon is not a boss for 20th level characters.
CR doesn't exist in pf2 either.Fair points. I'm still learning PF2, so that's on me. I will try and watch it but appreciate the corrections.
One thing I need to explain about my DMing is that my players, over the past thirty years, come to the table expecting to be able to handle what is thrown at them. No matter how many times I tell them retreat is valid, that's not what they do. Someone might say to have a TPK, which I did, and then they weren't happy with me that the fight wasn't winnable. All of that to say that when I design an encounter, I try and make it something they can win, even if it's tough.
More to say but interrupted.
Thanks for the discussion!
Now I understand your situation.
So what you really have to do is increase the challenge level until you find one that they feel is challenging, being careful not to kill them.
In my opinion, it's a bit of a boring situation because they get used to the fact that they can't lose and then it's hard for you to balance things out, making the encounter challenging, but without the risk of them losing.
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I'm not sure what you meant here? Could you please clarify what your expectations were? How does it hurt your enjoyment?It's because I don't know how do you rule shields. But my players learn learned the hard way early that to not block critical with shield. Instead is better to take all damage and then heal once that repair a shield during an encounter is unfeasible and switch shields wastes too much actions. So they just restrict to block only normal damage this basically stop them to break shields.It is a good tactic - but this is so much the opposite of expectations that it really hurts my enjoyment of PF2.I think Gortle said that the way Jon Goranson's players Shield Block, letting their shields break in order to block some damage from a heavy-damage critical hit, makes the most sense storywise. It has the drama of sacrificing the shield to save the character. Tactically, however, keeping the shield unbroken by not blocking heavy damage and instead blocking only light-damage hits prevents more damage in the long run. Each shield block prevents the shield's hardness in damage, and the excess damage beyond the hardness is duplicated on the shield. The less excess damage the longer the shield lasts. When the character does not block the critical hit, the shield survives to prevent the damage from several later small hits.
PF2 Shield Block has a non-intuitive design that way.
And the most important if you avoid to break the shield you don't lose you +2 AC bonus.
I think PF2 has a lot of these strange situations. No game is going to be perfect, of course. PF1 was more simulation. The system tried to simulate reality. It breaks down after twelfth level but works reasonably well until then. Mostly. PF2 seems to have these ideas that look to simulate reality, as well as a game can, and then throws them out the window at times. My best example of that is crafting. Going back to my crafting example, someone making a breast plate, with the formula, has a start up cost of a day. Then it will take them several months in Craft checks to finish it, which is reasonable. Or we can throw reality out the window like the rules do and by paying the rest of the gold, it's done in a day or two. These are the kind of contradictions I keep finding in PF2.
Yes, these contradictions and realism issues are common in PF2e, because the designers chose to prioritize balance and gameplay instead. But often, as a GM, you can get away with a lot of this.
For example, in the matter of crafting in 2 days, paying the rest of the amount. I consider that when a character does this, due to the rush, he didn't make the entire equipment from scratch, instead, he searched and found several ready-made parts and basically assembled the item.
And like this:
Option 1: Forge the entire sword and its blade from scratch, spending days/months crafting until it's ready.
Option 2: Buy the ready-made blade, the ready-made hilt, and just forge to join the parts together so that they are safe and resistant, doing this in 2 days, but with a higher cost because instead of crafting most of it, most of it was purchased pre-made parts.
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Some old players still call the level of the monsters as CR. It's technically wrong but it's easy to understand.Yes, they should retrain. Retraining takes a week or a month or two. And it has been years already.
When you play a game you use its terminology, not rename everything as you like. Especially if you want to be understood universally.
If everyone can be understood, then it doesn't really matter. If you know what CR is, then you know what they mean here even though CR no longer exists.
There's no need for the snarky reply when a simple "it's creature level rather than CR now" would suffice.
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Just an addon. The idea is not only Breath and Fly. But Breath fly then Fly (going down), Strike, Fly (going up)... with only if the players have move reactions or ranged weapons/spells the dragon lands and fight them on land.
I should say that I consider this a non-issue as the Ready action does fine work here - even if PCs are just prepping Strikes and don't have access to Titan Wrestler. It's also a pretty awful trade-off in terms of action economy that we go back to "the PCs are given plenty of time to form countermeasures - even if that's just running and hiding." Three actions to hit once versus the party's - at worst - two actions to Strike once. That's assuming there's truly no one with any ranged capabilities.
Mainly, a medium, or small, sized creature being able to trip a dragon to bring them down! Again, that's the trade off for a fun game and so something I have to work to overcome in my mind.
That's definitely your perogative, but I would say that grappling or tripping larger creatures was possible in older editions, just difficult. Now in PF2, you do require a skill feat to be able to do so.
Something I'd like to add, as someone with a similar background spread across multiple decades and multiple systems, is to approach game design from a different angle. There are many in-grained habits that we as GMs have accumulated over various games, and trying to replicate them can slow a game down. Your example of multiple PL+2 giants (I'm assuming multiple) with the PCs having a PL-2 dragon ally is a good example - the dragon wouldn't be able to effect the giants with much at all with the level difference and the PCs are left with an (at least) Severe encounter in which a dragon occasionally comes to take a hit or two before going down.
That is to say, there are design sensibilities, but if you create encounters that don't showcase them or work counter to them, you may take away an impression of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. The math is tight, but both monsters and PCs can adjust that through their various actions. If it feels like everything comes down to a die roll, I would encourage you to look at more tactical options and how to design with those in mind.
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A good way to ground a Flying Enemy, is the 8th level Fighter feat Felling Strike. This assumes your Fighter has a ranged weapon and didn't take Blind-Fight at this level instead.
I would recommend spells that allow flight, like Fly or Aerial Form, but most dragons are going to have a whole lot more Fly Speed than you will.
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The math is tight, but both monsters and PCs can adjust that through their various actions. If it feels like everything comes down to a die roll, I would encourage you to look at more tactical options and how to design with those in mind.Can you expand on what you think of as the tactical options? Are you talking about dragon as solo? Are you talking about within dragon as solo? (And yes there is no concept of solo monsters in PF2.)
"Tactical options" is a very vague term from me because it covers such a broad range of possibilities. I'll focus in more on what I said about die rolls feeling more important (which they are, of course, but coming from other editions, that's something I over emphasized as a knee-jerk reaction to the math).
First, I'm okay with calling things "solo" monsters because while there is no classification for them, they certainly exist. The GM Core even calls it out in the Combat Threats section. A solo monster is technically any monster that faces off against the group solo (typically a PL+2 or PL+3 creature), but what we really want is a creature that functions unsupported and can make for an interesting and deadly encounter on their own. And that's where the math feels like it comes down to luck - i.e. With a PL+3 creature having an AC that can only be hit on a roll of a 14 or higher or something akin to that, why wouldn't it just be a numbers game of how often we can roll to get above that 14?
As a player, I can alter those numbers through circumstance and status buffs and penalties. The most obvious of these are inflicting off-guard through flanking (unadvised when facing off against a creature that can spend its turn ripping apart anyone adjacent to them), making it frightened (not as reliable to do without magic or abilities), or getting it prone in some way. On the extreme end of things, you could swing the odds up to 8 points in your favor, but more realistically, you should aim for a 2 to 3 point swing on average. This means rolling scoring a hit with an 11 or 12 becomes more likely - more so if the effect lasts longer than a turn.
But that's just the raw numbers of hitting something. More importantly is actually considering what your actions do in an encounter. A solo creature like a white dragon can rip apart an adjacent opponent with a Draconic Frenzy before lifting off to fly away. Why should PCs let that happen? Players can also impact how effective an opponent is by simply moving away from enemies or positioning in ways that make attacking them beneficial to the group in the long run. I'm actually going to point at one of everyone's favorite actions in the game and ask people to consider what it does. Shield Block. Shield Block is good! But, after running PFS for years, I can't tell you the number of times I've seen it used inappropriately. Standing next to a solo opponent and that Shield Block comes up and... I suppose you might have prevented a critical! But it's just as likely that a PC could have moved into a better position to force the creature to spend actions moving and potentially put it in harm's way.
To say nothing of players stacking up their turns effectively using the Delay and Ready actions! Nothing like running around a corner to Ready an action to Trip an opponent who comes around the corner only to have your entire Delayed party leap out of the shadows!
This ended up being longer than I intended, and I was going to talk about how tactical thinking should look from the GM's side, but I think I can sum it up more easily. As a GM, it enhances the experience of everyone involved if you build encounters with these considerations in mind. Give PCs cover to Hide behind when the monsters have ranged attacks. Throw in difficult terrain that can be bypassed by carefully Balancing over a fallen tree. Add in areas of darkness so that PCs (or monsters) can exploit it to catch opponents off-guard. Play with line of sight to keep combat fluid.
I hope that doesn't sound preachy, but what I hope my core message should be is "The dice matter, but tactics matter more."
Let me phrase this another way. Are there game mechanics to bring down a flyer other than Trip? Called Shot? Damage to wings? I'm willing to allow my players to use a ranged weapon to inflict a status that stops a flyer from flying until they fix it. I'm wondering if it already exists.
As Maxim D'Ahmagge mentioned, there are a few ways to ground fliers through class feats. But I would call that an unsatisfactory answer because the follow up question will always be "What if they don't have that feat?" So more accurately, is there a general action that PCs have access to to bring down fliers?
The best answer here is that fliers can actually be brought down in a multitude of ways, it's just that it requires a little doing. Importantly, Fly has the Move trait, and if you can't Move, you can't fly. This means that any action that grabs or restrains a flier will cause them to fall if they do not escape the condition by the end of their turn. This includes Grappling, plenty of spells, and the occasional item. Heck, even a well-placed shot from a bow with the critical specialization can restrain an opponent (but not for long).
Also, while it's a bit of a cop-out answer, I have always enjoyed putting my melee characters into positions that forced fliers to engage with me in only one direction, such as in a cavern entrance, before Readying attacks to bring them low. But I also haven't seen too many players go in this direction because it feels like a bad trade off of action economy. However, after watching several PFS players spend their turns waiting rather than pulling out ranged weapons or moving into more advantageous positions, I would be willing to admit that it can be tricky to consider alternative tactical options in the moment.
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"Tactical options" is a very vague term from me because it covers such a broad range of possibilities. I'll focus in more on what I said about die rolls feeling more important (which they are, of course, but coming from other editions, that's something I over emphasized as a knee-jerk reaction to the math).The math is tight, but both monsters and PCs can adjust that through their various actions. If it feels like everything comes down to a die roll, I would encourage you to look at more tactical options and how to design with those in mind.Can you expand on what you think of as the tactical options? Are you talking about dragon as solo? Are you talking about within dragon as solo? (And yes there is no concept of solo monsters in PF2.)
My players are excellent tacticians, so I can cover tactical options.
Pathfinder 1st Edition often has a paragraph on its monster stat block called "Combat" that describes what the creature will do during combat. Pathfinder 2nd Edition skips that, because it arranges the creature abilities to be self-explanatory. My favorite example is the Crocodile. It has "Deep Breath The crocodile can hold its breath for about 2 hours," and "Aquatic Ambush [one-action] 35 feet." The Monster Core explains Aquatic Ambush as, "Requirements The monster is hiding in water and a creature that hasn't detected it is within the listed number of feet; Effect The monster moves up to its swim Speed + 10 feet toward the triggering creature, traveling on water and on land. Once the creature is in reach, the monster makes a Strike against it. The creature is off-guard against this Strike." The crocodile is going to hide under water and then rush out to attack. Its jaws Strike has a Grab option and it also has a Death Roll ability that applies to a creature it grabbed. This is clearly based on real-life crocodile's hunting technique.
The weakness of such design is that the monster is built around a single tactic. It also has a backup tactic, but it is not as effective with that. My players love to control the battlefield and force their enemy into a less effective tactic than their primary tactic. For example, my Strength of Thousands party recently battled a pair of Ochre Jellies. Oozes like Ochre Jelly have low AC, lots of hit points, but immunity to critical hits. Immune to Critical Hits is somewhat misnamed, because the creature does take damage from critical hits and it suffers the critical success effects; rather, critical hit damage is not doubled. The Ochre Jelly can also split if hit with slashing, piercing, or electricity damage, which could lead to facing a mob of jellies for massive damage. The party was careful to not use slashing, piercing, or electricity damage, even though it meant the Starlit Magus had to give up on Spellstrike with her bow. The party reduced the mobility of the Speed 15 oozes so that the oozes could not attack the squishier spellcasters who kept their distance, and they hit the oozes with Ignition for fire damage and persistent fire damage from critical hits.
Okay, I exaggerated about monsters having only two tactics. Humanoid enemies who carry weapons and wear armor are more versatile. And dragons are even more versatile. A Young White Dragon, creature 6, has jaw, claw, and tail Strikes, Frightful Presence, Freezing Blood, Breath Weapon, Draconic Frenzy, Ground Slam, and Shape Ice that it can use for many different tactic. With Fly Speed 80 it can move wherever it wants on the battlefield. With Snow Vision, it could wait until the party is blinded by a blizzard and it can see fine. That versatility makes a dragon an excellent solo boss. Drakes, in contrast, are less versatile and are best used in pairs.
As a GM, I know that my party would be at a disadvantage against a dragon, because their control tactics would fail against its versatile tactics. Instead, they would have to switch to their defensive tactic of keeping each other alive while wearing down the white dragon with repeated attacks, preferably fire attacks. The dragon would last long enough to use its Breath Weapon three times, so I do wonder why Jon Goranson thinks that the Breath Weapon dealing 1/3 of their hit points is too weak.
Those are good options! I do like it.
A quick digression. I watched a YouTube video of a modern armorer using medieval tools, methods, and even iron to make plate armor. It took a year and I do think it was his only task but I could be mistaken. However. A lot of the time was getting the raw iron to a high iron content, which took a lot of heating and pounding and then reheating. I'm trying to remember how long it took after they had good iron. Overall, though, it showed me why plate armor took so long in our world. /digression
I need to remember that we aren't in our world and there is magic. The other PCs could help in small ways that add up. If they start with high grade iron, that's a lot of the time done. If the wizard can help heat the forge, that's time saved. Tools could be better and so on.
Thanks for the great discussion! It's giving me a lot to think about both with PF2 and my own campaign!
Take care!
Guns & Gears makes an interesting point about this, which is very similar to what you said.
In Golarion, many things are similar to Earth, but many things are not, mainly because of the existence of magic. But not only that, the presence of deities, different planes, all with different levels of perception and technology, in addition to Golarion itself varying a lot in this regard, from place to place. This makes the technological evolution in the world quite exotic and sometimes somewhat chaotic.
You mentioned that you saw a video with a blacksmith forging in the style of medieval technology. But I remember in AoA (this story is not really a spoiler because it is not important in AP) there is a wagoner who has a magic lathe. Can you imagine how much this changes things? Can an average citizen of relative small fantasy city have access to productivity tools, even if they are not yet industrialized, what can they do to improve productivity?
For example, in modern metallurgy we use liquid oxygen to greatly increase the temperature of furnaces, in Golarion this can be achieved through magic or even alchemy, allowing the quality of metals to be much higher than the quality of metals we had in the medieval era.
These things give tremendous boosts to various technological aspects and efficiency in the world, while also delaying others. In most of Golarion medicine is still very archaic. Simply because magic solves it.
Diseases such as Tetanus, Tuberculosis, Malaria or Bubonic Plague that were devastating to humanity here on Earth, taking thousands of years until effective medicines (antibiotics) were developed to combat these diseases. In Golarion, a non-arcane caster of rank 2 and especially rank 3 cures these diseases in literally seconds!
To give you an idea, depending on luck, a traveling bard can cure a tuberculosis patient that you acquired with a not very regimented life in a tavern in exchange for a good story and a good drink!
So why develop medicines and a treatment that takes months of bed rest, when magic can solve it in seconds.
These are things that need to be considered before treating something in a fantasy world like Golarion on a system like PF2e as absurd or impossible.
As for disease, while I agree that healing some of the items you mention took us time, I think it would hit hard in a fantasy world as well. Mainly because it spreads faster than the healers would be able to cure it. In this particular case, finding medicines or vaccines would be more effective than relying on magic.
In fact, the point the designers make is even more interesting than that.
Except in scenes where you go to extremely poor slums with people who don't even have access to decent sanitation or have to pay a fee to be treated by magical healers (there is little or no free treatment). The citizens of Golarion and most fantasy worlds are quite healthy, as common diseases are easily curable.
On the other hand, magical diseases and curses are added, which are often particularly potent to be cured only by high-level spellcasters, or not even that. This type of disease, a la Neverwinter Nights' Wailing Death with devastating pandemics, is precisely the pivot for many adventures, as these things rarely occur naturally in a fantasy world, so adventurers are often hired to investigate the cause, which may be some evil NPC/monster or organization, and get rid of it while searching for a possible cure.
That's why terrible natural diseases are usually treated very easily in TTRPGs, precisely to make room for more terrible plots that use diseases and curses that need to be faced in an adventure, not in a health policy! lol
About technology I agree that's why PF2e instead of avance it in a general way (except for Starfinder) the designers choose to make "islands" of different technology advancement to allow the GM to choose what allows or not.
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So speaking on tactics and the mechanics of PF2...
As several said, looking at tactical options and some of them don't make sense. With Off Guard via Flanking, and Flanking only coming from being opposite each other (I think there are exceptions to this by creature or feat), I think it's insane that a player would move their character to the other side of a creature. Yet the system seems to "demand" it to get that bonus. The rogue has done this a lot, because it "makes sense" for their abilities, but it also left them open to being flanked themselves.
I wouldn't say that the system "demands" the bonuses, but it does make higher-level encounters more manageable (and survivable) for PCs. That is to say, if your group is having fun and enjoying the mechanics that they are engaging with then there really isn't anything you need to change up. However, neglecting buffs and debuffs can make Severe and Extreme encounters slogs that can drag the pace of the game down. It's also important to note that flanking is good but, like every option in PF2, it has its drawbacks so players should consider their actions before committing to them.
For example, if I'm a rogue, I would obviously want an off-guard opponent and aim to get that whenever possible. A fellow melee martial makes that easy with flanking. However, maybe my opponents could just as easily flank me or my ally, making that an unattractive option. Or maybe we just don't want to end adjacent to this powerful creature! I have other options - each coming with their own drawbacks. I could Hide and Strike with ranged attacks. I could Sneak up and get my sneak attack that way. I could Feint before Striking. I could even Create A Diversion. Hey, I could even talk my fighter friend into specializing in swords or flails or just have a martial who loves to Trip an opponent. All of these provide ways to get what I want - some are selfish, but expose no other allies to danger. Others require more teamplay. Some are great for groups of enemies, while others require me to find cover or have outside assistance. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, really. Not every option will be perfect in every situation, which is why PF2 characters are encouraged to have a wide array of skills and abilities instead of hyper-focusing down one avenue. If the single strategy you employ is somehow made difficult, you need to be able to adapt.
On top of those issues, action economy and using actions "well" is definitely a thing with my players. They don't like Ready an Action costs two actions. (side question, can a caster never Ready an Action to cast a spell due to that? That's how I have been playing it but it really penalizes the casters.) I do agree that Delay needs to delay their entire turn, so glad it can only be done at the start of their turn, but my players don't like that. They want to delay during their turn because if they would get the rest of their actions later, it's better than Ready. I think non damaging actions having the Attack trait limits options as well. This could be my players not having success with Trip and not using it that much, if at all. They understand they have cost their opponent an action to stand up but their low success rate means they would rather attack to do damage, especially since it's about the same bonus.
First up, no you can't Ready a two-action spell (but you could Ready a single-action spell - like jump or even heal). I can understand casters feeling limited by this, but I have a funny example of why it's pretty necessary. I had spellcaster player who also hated the rule and petitioned against it. I tried out a session or two with his homebrew suggestion and before I knew it, he was shutting down the encounters with easy rank 1 spells. He could effectively double his range and turned spells like grease, hydraulic push, and tangle vine into full turn enders. It trivialized encounters. It's been discussed before and it's almost universally agreed to be a poor idea in terms of game design.
Now, when it comes to the Ready and Delay actions, like flanking, they are not universally the best choice at all times. Again, PF2 does not have a "winning strategy" - it has strategies that should be used to succeed. For instance, I very rarely have to Ready actions in your average combat. However, in situations where I can't effect things typically - like, say, fighting a quickling who can Stride 100 feet, Strike, and Stride away - then having a Readied action to put myself in a position where I can effect things is key. The same goes for Delay - though I would argue I use this more frequently because I might be playing a character who wants more set-up. Let's say I'm a hasted flurry ranger who happens to have a flaming rune on my blades. I might Delay so that my group can impose a fire weakness and Shove the enemy into range so that I can get the most out of my turn (inspired by true events). But that's an extreme example - PCs can even just Delay so that the bard can toss up a courageous anthem before Demoralizing the opponent, already swinging the math at least 2 points in their favor (or an increased 10% chance to hit/crit).
On the topic of players not engaging with these mechanics, they might not have a reason to. I'm not sure what level you're playing at, but you already pointed out that you could have played a dragon in such a way as to harass the group who had no recourse, but didn't (to keep the game fun). But they do have the ability to engage with the dragon, they just either didn't consider those actions, considered such a thing impossible, or assumed you would allow them to perform "their routines" as normal. I would say that one of the strengths of PF2 is forcing PCs out of their comfort zone and having them still be able to contribute meaningfully by playing smarter. "We're losing on action economy" stifles design here because if there's only one way your PC wants to approach an encounter, then there's very little need to engage with any of the other systems within the game. "This attack will fail, so I would rather attempt to deal damage - i.e. Death is the best condition" has been stated numerous times since the release and it's a big hurdle for those coming from PF1 or other systems. Death is the final condition, but it's not all that great if you can't actually get there. The +10/-10 crit system showcases just how important it is to focus on accuracy more than raw damage. Getting that -1 AC on an opponent from a whiffed fear spell can be the difference between a 10 damage hit and a 20 damage hit followed up by another 8 point hit. Athletics maneuvers are fantastic, but they still need to be used tactically. When I watch PFS players attempt to Grapple high Fortitude giants or Trip high Reflex skeletons, I always feel a little taken aback. I understand wanting to "do what my build excels at," but if the chance of failure is high, it does feel like a waste. Another reason why players give a lot of praise to the Recall Knowledge action.
Aid is also seen as a bad option or at least they don't use it often. I don't like how it's defined at all. Maybe it shouldn't be used in combat? If the DC scales, and they are already finding it tough to hit the opponent, they don't want to risk the penalty, even if it requires a critical failure. If it doesn't scale, I suppose it's a question of what the player thinks is the best use of their character's reaction. I guess in my mind, Aid has to scale with the difficulty of the task, or it should be a flat modifier they can give rather than rolled. I'm spending too much time thinking about Aid as I write this. There is something about it I don't like but can't quite figure out what.
The Aid DC doesn't really scale - it's nearly always 15. You can certainly make it scale up, but then players lose incentive to actually use it. It's also an action that is situational (again, like everything) and often forgotten. When I have players looking at their sheet with an action left and not wanting to make a -5 MAP attack, I tend to suggest setting up an Aid. It's typically a +1 bonus to an attack or skill, but at higher levels this is a +2. I mean, consider that you're bumping someone's proficency up a level, which is a massive boost. If that isn't a good visual, it's giving someone another 2 levels of accuracy at the cost of an action and a reaction. Again, something that doesn't look effective on paper, but is dramatically more useful when you think about it. "I could spend my last action on low-odds of accomplishing something, move away to get into a better position, or give my ally a bonus 10% chance to crit."
At the end of the day, if your group is enjoying the game without going deeper into the mechanics that make encounters more tactical and less luck-based, then... mission accomplished. Fun is the goal. But if players (yourself included) are left feeling like your choices don't matter, then you need to look at what choices you can make. As a GM, we can incentivize diversifying choices through our own encounter design. Against level 1 PCs, an ogre warrior can actually be an amazing encounter. Its got low Perception, meaning it's quite easy to Hide and Sneak around (heck, an entire party could Avoid Notice and skip the encounter entirely). Its Reflex and Will are lagging, making them susceptible to being Tripped and Demoralized. However, the ogre's damage output is insane and can easily take out a PC without doing anything special. This means a group that's paying attention would need to actively keep the ogre from getting to them through movement and debuffs. This will also quickly dissuade groups from the "tank and spank" strategy as even a shield-focused champion is going to eventually take a crit that blows through their shield and sends them to dying. All this while the massive HP pool of the ogre keeps them up a bit longer to acts as their combat teacher (and that 17 AC prevents any non-20 crits unless the PCs actually start inflicting conditions on it).
Actually, the more I think about it, a Moderate 1 encounter versus a single ogre warrior is a pretty good explanation of PF2 design in a nutshell. This is an easy fight that will absolutely kick the ass of a group who doesn't play tactically. Showcase even a bit of strategy and it suddenly becomes a cakewalk.
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We played Thursday and I started by listing out other options, as @Ruzza had, such as Hide, Sneak, Feint, Recall Knowledge, and other skill uses. One of the things that can be bad about having a lot of actions defined is looking for them instead of saying what their character will do. We talked about that as well. Bob World Builder had a good video on this, which is almost anathema to PF? He says to Be Direct. Don't ask how strong the rope is but instead say you want to tie it to the leg of the ogre and bring them down like an AT-AT in Empire. He does suggest the GM have an open mind as well, unless the players ideas are out of tone for what the group is doing. The bad part of this is the player having a good idea but by the rules, it's too many actions for one round. Not sure what to do in that case.
This is where system knowledge from both sides of the screen will come in handy, and I appreciate that you're keeping an open mind. If something ends up being "too many actions" then as a GM it can be very important to ask the players "What's your goal with doing that?" I've had players break down their turns into strange monstrosities when it could be solved much more easily. "I want to jump onto the table. One action! Then I leap over the head of the first opponent to avoid his Reactive Strike. Ooh, that would be two actions, huh? But I want to Feint the other guy and Strike him. That would be... five actions."
"What's your goal?"
"I guess my goal is to hit that guy without being hit, but I still want my Sneak Attack damage." To which I can say, you may have to make some sacrifices with your turn. You can always Long Jump over the opponent, sure, but you won't get that Feint before you Strike. You could play more risky and possibly get hit with the Reactive Strike to be able to Stride there, Feint, and Strike.
And once players grasp more of the rules and dig in deeper, these become less of issues at the table. Really, you typically only need one other person who has a bit more game knowledge at the table to help offer up some ideas (so long as they don't turn into the quarterback issuing orders). It sounds a lot like your players have looked at PF2 as "a game we know, but with slightly different rules" rather than "a quite dramatically different ruleset" and they haven't dug too deep into the Player Core/Core Rulebook. And it sounds like you're coming at this from a general game design theory standpoint, but aren't really connecting with the much more specific design elements at play here.
This can be tough in Pathfinder when so much is defined. I find that's good; rules over rulings, but it can feel restrictive.
This is a sentiment that gots tossed around a lot, which I understand when you look at a book full of rules and feats and see them all as exceptions or unknowns that you have to study, when it really isn't like that. At the end of the day, the game is always going to be "set a DC, roll to beat the DC," and the rules just make that easier. I'm not sure what sorts of things your group is asking to do, but generally most actions can be answered with an "Hmm, okay, give me a (skill) check," even if that's not entirely correct by the rules. I had a group set up a trap once where they tied a rope to a rickety joist in an crumbling building and stated they were going to "bring the house down" as soon as the enemy crept into the room. And just as in every edition of every TTRPG, I stared with dumbfounded shock for a moment before saying, "Okay, give me an Athletics check to see if this plan works." As always, the Level-based DCs chart and Simple DCs are your friend.
And something that really draws a lot of people to PF2e is that there are rules for that super cool thing they want to do. If that aspect feels like it's restraining your gameplay, you might be thinking too much about it or it could be a tough sticking point.
Dragons, high level planar creatures, liches, and other similar creatures should have options on the player's turns. I want Freezing Blood to be once per turn, not round as an action. I want other dragon's to have a similar ability. I would be fine if some of them don't start until the creature is bloodied. I want a lich power that instead of counterspell, they can take control of any targeted spells with an Arcana check. Something that shows their high INT. (Are there liches for divine and the other magic types? I would like that as well!) I'm surprised that dragons don't have a damaging aura. Something like Armor of Flames but no save and only damage, not persistent damage. I see these abilities as easily overcome with Resist Energy if they don't have items that give resistance.
Feel free to go wild with homebrew, there is literally no one stopping you. However, as someone who writes a lot of homebrew monsters, items, hazards, spells, and more... don't.
Yet.
Don't do it yet. Like I said, you're looking at this from a general game design perspective when PF2 does come from a different perspective. Already looking at what you're proposing and it's a sort of meshing of 4e and 5e ideas which are very much their own separate games. It's a bit like saying, "I really enjoy the pepporoni on pizza, so that might work out great on this chocolate sundae." And hey, it might work and be a unique taste that your group really digs, but if you're really digging into the design of the game I would sit down with the GM Core and go over encounter and monster design. Use the Combat Threats section and design some encounters in Low, Moderate, and Severe for your party. See how differently a Severe encounter versus a solo PL+3 opponent feels versus a Severe encounter with three PL creatures. Make a Low encounter that still forces the players to think strategically, even when their opponents are a PL-1 mook and its two PL-3 lackeys. Look up a rule you don't understand a put it in a game so you get to understand it better. (Worked with me and Stealth mechanics, and now my players know when it's time to start Seeking,)
To echo Errenor somewhat, you are still learning the system from the sounds of it, but it sounds like you're trying to force a square peg into a round hole. It doesn't matter that a PL+2 dragon doesn't feel like it deals a lot of damage - that's a Moderate encounter. Shift that dragon up a level (either by rebuilding it or adding the elite template) and suddenly the players are critically failing those saves more often and you'll see that the damage is where it needs to be.
In my limited experience, having the wizard do no damage over two rounds of mid tier spells (4th and 5th) is a huge morale hit.
I have to ask, what level are your PCs and what level did you all start playing at? I understand that PF2e has a learning curve, but it's also one that gets a lot trickier to explain and understand if your experiences are at levels that most groups don't even get to play in. You've mentioned white dragon encounters, frost giants, and now 4th and 5th level spells and it sounds like your group is quite high level.
Okay, I'm done with this. I don't know what I did but feel attacked hard in these past two posts, even as nice as most of @Ruzza's response is. My apologies for upsetting people or wasting your time. It doesn't help that people are liking the posts that attacked me.
ETA: Okay, that's as much of an over the top response as the responses I got. I don't understand how people are offended over the way I run my games.
I came here to discuss RAW, how it works, how it was intended, and for the most part I got that.
I offered my opinion on game theory that a breath weapon that only does 1/3 hit point damage and can only be used every 3 rounds on average is not scary, having seen that in action. Only when the breath weapon did 80% hit point damage to a character or drop one, did the players feel any threat at all. In explaining that, I got decent responses which explained to me PL and how it isn't CR, how boss monsters aren't a thing, and how to adjust a dragon if I felt the need. Those were helpful; attacking me is not.
People here can be a bit rude sometimes (a bad habit after spending hundreds of posts discussing rules and defending different points of view). But don't worry, they're not really attacking you personally, they're just worried that your homebrews might ruin your and your group's experience with PF2e, especially at this time when you're still adapting to the system.
We say this with a lot of experience behind us. I've had my share of unnecessary homebrews in PF2e and I believe this was the case with Ruzza and Easl as well.
Homebrew in PF2e is very easy to do and usually doesn't break the game, but after more than 5 years of GMing this system, I can say that most of my homebrews were unnecessary or caused more side effects than benefits. So when we see someone wanting to adjust something they didn't like in the game, we end up tempted to give them these warnings so they don't make the same mistakes some of us did. Especially in the beginning when players might end up jumping to the wrong conclusion that the problem is with the system when in fact it was homebrew gone haywire.
But perhaps the best way for you to realize and accept this is to try it! So if you are still not convinced, just try it, make the adjustments that you think are best and over time the results will show you if it was worth it or not. In general the system is balanced and stable enough to survive these homebrews and indicate whether it was worth it or not.
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We are missing a lot of context here. How do you not do any damage with damage spells of 04th / 05th level over two rounds? Was it using spells which try to hit AC or maybe not recalling knowledge and trying reflex save spells against high reflex save bosses? A bit more detailed explanation would be very helpful for good responses.
We are missing a lot of context here. How do you not do any damage with damage spells of 04th / 05th level over two rounds? Was it using spells which try to hit AC or maybe not recalling knowledge and trying reflex save spells against high reflex save bosses? A bit more detailed explanation would be very helpful for good responses.
A common mistake I see with converts is throwing encounters several levels higher thinking they will measure up like PF 1e or D&D 3/4/5.
If that's the case here, then a couple of crit successes on saves could easily negate incoming spell damage.
We won't know for sure without more details.