| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Pathfinder 2nd Edition is not an Old School Revival game. And Old School games had a lot of kicking in the door.You'll still do better in PF2 if you treat the game as if it's OSR levels of deadly. Just remember that your characters have no idea this is a fantasy game of carefully crafted encounters. To them, every fight is one where they may not get to go home afterwards.
EDIT: You can still have a lighter tone while playing smart. You don't need to act like a unit of special forces members to play your character to their strength and us their abilities to get the drop on enemies.
Ha ha ha. In my Strength of Thousands campaign, the student PCs do believe that they have teacher-crafted encounters on their class field trips. I had teacher Takulu Ot accompany them to fight a will-'o'-wisp during a Rivers of the Mwangi Expanse class. I had teacher Lesedi accompany them to fight some zombies in a Defeating Undead class. The service projects in Nantambu assigned by the Magaambya Academy are supposed to be carefully vetted so that the students can handle them. Whenever a mission was a lot rougher than appropriate, the faculty apologized for misjudging the situation. By the end of the 1st module, the PCs had proven that they can handle dangers beyond most students, so they were promoted to Conversant (graduate student) rank and assigned to help the police. Now at 7th level, they are more powerful than the police officers, who range from 2nd to 6th level.
In the 3rd module, Hurricane's Howl, they will go on a field expedition and understand that the Magaambya has no control over the dangers, but the expedition is simply supposed to be archaeology in the wilderness. In the 4th module, Secrets of the Temple-City, they will go on a diplomatic mission to a hostile city, which could be truly dangerous. In the 5th module, Doorway to the Red Star, they step into the unknown. The acknowledged danger clearly ramps up each module. The 6th module, Shadows of the Ancients, is foreshadowed trouble that crops as a surprise, so it largely breaks the pattern.
I did point out a few days ago that Strength of Thousands does attempt to be easy on the low-level characters. But the writers made some mistakes.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
I feel like a lot of responses in this thread that are adverse to fixing the math discrepancy at low levels pretty much amount to:
"Get gud noob!"
And that is incredibly disappointing.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The issue is that at levels 1 and 2, a GM needs to apply the weakened template (or make some other kind of compensation) to achieve the same kind of game play experience for moderate encounters at higher levels.
Conversely, I could say that at levels 5+ (exact starting point may vary) you can apply the Elite adjustment or redo encounters to be Severe or Extreme to achieve the kind of difficulty you're looking for.
That's a massive overstatement. Difficulty is overall the same at level 1 and 5. The main difference is that progression is faster at level 1 creating a bigger difference when you face higher or lower level enemies. Also, combats are much faster.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
I feel like a lot of responses in this thread that are adverse to fixing the math discrepancy at low levels pretty much amount to:
"Get gud noob!"And that is incredibly disappointing.
I see only three solutions that do not involve such a major change that we would have to wait for Pathfinder 3rd Edition:
1) Play with experienced players so that the party starts with good tactics.
2) The GM softballs the 1st-level encounters to ensure that they are not fatal.
3) Apply a houserule that every character starts with 12 more hit points than the rules suggest. To be fair, give the monsters 12 more hp, too.
I am not sure that 12 hit points is the right number. I started the calculations but they ended up lengthier than I expected.
I was using method (1), mixing the new players with my experienced players. Until this thread, I did not realize how much I was also using method (2).
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
I feel like a lot of responses in this thread that are adverse to fixing the math discrepancy at low levels pretty much amount to:
"Get gud noob!"And that is incredibly disappointing.
I see only three solutions that do not involve such a major change that we would have to wait for Pathfinder 3rd Edition:
1) Play with experienced players so that the party starts with good tactics.
2) The GM softballs the 1st-level encounters to ensure that they are not fatal.
3) Apply a houserule that every character starts with 12 more hit points than the rules suggest. To be fair, give the monsters 12 more hp, too.I am not sure that 12 hit points is the right number. I started the calculations but they ended up lengthier than I expected.
I was using method (1), mixing the new players with my experienced players. Until this thread, I did not realize how much I was also using method (2).
And it's great that you know to do that. And that's how I think a lot of people handle it...it just sucks that you have to know the system doesn't work and have a good grasp of what levers to pull to get the right result.
I'd prefer the system actually be correctly tuned.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I don't get this mindset at all. If you don't need to sweat at least a little, where's the fun in overcoming challenges coming from?
Great question, maybe the lizard brain.
Or maybe because I have a challenging and stressful job and a 3 year old. I have enough challenges in my life already. I don't need or want more.
And massacring imaginary enemies soothes that lizard brain inside my head.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I feel like a lot of responses in this thread that are adverse to fixing the math discrepancy at low levels pretty much amount to:
"Get gud noob!"And that is incredibly disappointing.
Actually my response has been different.
I feel the math is not a discrepancy but a feature of the game. It makes low level PCs feel more vulnerable and that results in players getting a sense their characters are not yet badasses that can destroy everything they come across without any caution.If you do want to have the baddass at level 1 experience then yeah you would need more HP at level 1.
But there are things the current math does reward.
It rewards having at least one character in the party that has a high AC and good HP. It rewards positioning so that character gets attacked by the strongest melee creatures you face.
It punishes those who did not invest in HP and AC that draw strikes from powerful enemies.
It rewards parties that position well and buff the AC of their best defenders. When doing this the chances of that PC going down drop dramatically.
But before encounters actually begin there is more happening, and its something I have seen in my games. Players may pay attention to possible threats before fighting begins. I have seen perception checks to get a sense of how many foes there would be change the party from deciding to push an NPC into a possible fight to deciding to avoid doing so.
The higher you increase the survivability at lower levels the less caution and more were going to win anyway attitude you bring to the game.
its fine to want to have a game thats just a button mashing experience but its not really appealing to me that way.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I don't get this mindset at all. If you don't need to sweat at least a little, where's the fun in overcoming challenges coming from?Great question, maybe the lizard brain.
Or maybe because I have a challenging and stressful job and a 3 year old. I have enough challenges in my life already. I don't need or want more.
And massacring imaginary enemies soothes that lizard brain inside my head.
If that's what you want, what's the issue with the GM tossing the weak template on everything, including more minions and troops in fights, and letting you go to town? It really feels like the experience you want is there in the core system from level 1.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Can I play a super tactical game where I'm thinking through every decision and making the "best" decision with the knowledge I have? I mean probably, but that's not what I want to put into the game, and it's not fun for me to put in that amount of work.I don't get this mindset at all. If you don't need to sweat at least a little, where's the fun in overcoming challenges coming from?
When my household wants a super-tactical game, we pull out a board game. Focusing on the best decisions every turn is easier without roleplaying at the same time.
One member of our household is a genius scientist. He carefully plans his strategy in a board game. Sometimes the plan works but sometimes random elements sabotage it. I have a more freeform style, adapting to the random changes without thinking ahead as much. The scientist's wife keeps her eyes open for opportunities and exploits them to the maximum. The weird case is my wife, who simply plays by seeing the game clearly. She wins half the games, exceptional because we have four players.
We copy my wife's style in roleplaying games. We play for the enjoyment of the events we create. We invent fictional people and their stories while also solving strategic obstacles and combat. The plot resolution and character growth do not go as expected and that makes the story feel more real. Why bog down in super-optimized tactics when the story could be about students engaging in a school's community in Strength of Thousands or in leshies isolated in the deep forest venturing out to the wider world in A Fistful of Flowers? Would the movie Casablanca be more enjoyable if every ten minutes the characters paused to strategize on defeating the Nazis? Would the novel To Kill a Mockingbird be better if it focused more on lawyer Atticus Finch carefully planning the legal defense of Tom Robinson rather than on his young daughter seeing the reaction of her town to her father defending a young black man?
A roleplaying game is not about its optimization. It is about its characters.
EDIT: By the way, my wife has no objection to the extra difficulty at 1st level. She is a tactical mastermind and can deal with the difficulty.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If that's what you want, what's the issue with the GM tossing the weak template on everything, including more minions and troops in fights, and letting you go to town? It really feels like the experience you want is there in the core system from level 1.I don't get this mindset at all. If you don't need to sweat at least a little, where's the fun in overcoming challenges coming from?Great question, maybe the lizard brain.
Or maybe because I have a challenging and stressful job and a 3 year old. I have enough challenges in my life already. I don't need or want more.
And massacring imaginary enemies soothes that lizard brain inside my head.
You can handle it that way, the issue is for new people not familiar with the system and all sources of knowledge out there to know that they need to do that.
Bluemagetim considers it a feature. I consider it a bug.
Fix the bug so it's consistent across all levels. If you want more of a challenge, apply the Elite template.
When you tell me "Why can't you apply the weakened template?" I ask you can't you apply the Elite template.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Can I play a super tactical game where I'm thinking through every decision and making the "best" decision with the knowledge I have? I mean probably, but that's not what I want to put into the game, and it's not fun for me to put in that amount of work.I don't get this mindset at all. If you don't need to sweat at least a little, where's the fun in overcoming challenges coming from?When my household wants a super-tactical game, we pull out a board game. Focusing on the best decisions every turn is easier without roleplaying at the same time.
One member of our household is a genius scientist. He carefully plans his strategy in a board game. Sometimes the plan works but sometimes random elements sabotage it. I have a more freeform style, adapting to the random changes without thinking ahead as much. The scientist's wife keeps her eyes open for opportunities and exploits them to the maximum. The weird case is my wife, who simply plays by seeing the game clearly. She wins half the games, exceptional because we have four players.
We copy my wife's style in roleplaying games. We play for the enjoyment of the events we create. We invent fictional people and their stories while also solving strategic obstacles and combat. The plot resolution and character growth do not go as expected and that makes the story feel more real. Why bog down in super-optimized tactics when the story could be about students engaging in a school's community in Strength of Thousands or in leshies isolated in the deep forest venturing out to the wider world in A Fistful of Flowers? Would the movie Casablanca be more enjoyable if every ten minutes the characters paused to strategize on defeating the Nazis? Would the novel To Kill a Mockingbird be better if it focused more on lawyer Atticus Finch carefully planning the legal defense of Tom Robinson rather than on his young daughter seeing the reaction of her town to her father defending a young black
...
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
When my household wants a super-tactical game, we pull out a board game. Focusing on the best decisions every turn is easier without roleplaying at the same time.
My group RPs in Gloomhaven when it could just be pure tactics, so I can't relate on this point.
One member of our household is a genius scientist. He carefully plans his strategy in a board game. Sometimes the plan works but sometimes random elements sabotage it. I have a more freeform style, adapting to the random changes without thinking ahead as much. The scientist's wife keeps her eyes open for opportunities and exploits them to the maximum. The weird case is my wife, who simply plays by seeing the game clearly. She wins half the games, exceptional because we have four players.
Just reading the board quickly and accurately in Eurogames is a huge advantage. It lets you see what paths are open, who's a threat, and when you need to push your chips in.
We copy my wife's style in roleplaying games. We play for the enjoyment of the events we create. We invent fictional people and their stories while also solving strategic obstacles and combat. The plot resolution and character growth do not go as expected and that makes the story feel more real. Why bog down in super-optimized tactics when the story could be about students engaging in a school's community in Strength of Thousands or in leshies isolated in the deep forest venturing out to the wider world in A Fistful of Flowers? Would the movie Casablanca be more enjoyable if every ten minutes the characters paused to strategize on defeating the Nazis? Would the novel To Kill a Mockingbird be better if it focused more on lawyer Atticus Finch carefully planning the legal defense of Tom Robinson rather than on his young daughter seeing the reaction of her town to her father defending a young black
...
That's fine, but from what your accounts of games played say, your group uses above-average tactics, especially those related to mutual support. You don't need to go full try-hard to avoid common pitfalls and taking bad fights.
I don't mind pulpy action, but even in Casablanca, you can see the results of experienced people doing their thing. Tactics don't need to take 10 minutes; they can be as simple as everybody knowing their role and what they can do pre-combat to tilt things in their favour.
To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic, but if its sequel were a dense legal treatise going over case law relevant to the events of the book, that would have been awesome.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
You can handle it that way, the issue is for new people not familiar with the system and all sources of knowledge out there to know that they need to do that.
Bluemagetim considers it a feature. I consider it a bug.
Fix the bug so it's consistent across all levels. If you want more of a challenge, apply the Elite template.
When you tell me "Why can't you apply the weakened template?" I ask you can't you apply the Elite template.
Most people, after playing for any amount of time, will have zero trouble with the current difficulty at all levels. So, an across-the-board nerf will lead to the D&D 5e issue where everybody just starts games at level 3.
The better solution would be at least one beginner-focused product yearly, and sidebars about how to customise your game aimed at said new players. It's better to give people tools to learn themselves than to make it so they can make it through without needing to master the system.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If that's what you want, what's the issue with the GM tossing the weak template on everything, including more minions and troops in fights, and letting you go to town? It really feels like the experience you want is there in the core system from level 1.I don't get this mindset at all. If you don't need to sweat at least a little, where's the fun in overcoming challenges coming from?Great question, maybe the lizard brain.
Or maybe because I have a challenging and stressful job and a 3 year old. I have enough challenges in my life already. I don't need or want more.
And massacring imaginary enemies soothes that lizard brain inside my head.
You can handle it that way, the issue is for new people not familiar with the system and all sources of knowledge out there to know that they need to do that.
Bluemagetim considers it a feature. I consider it a bug.
Fix the bug so it's consistent across all levels. If you want more of a challenge, apply the Elite template.
When you tell me "Why can't you apply the weakened template?" I ask you can't you apply the Elite template.
If the game was designed as your suggesting it should have been I also wouldn't be complaining. I would just apply the elite template or use higher level creatures in fights.
But I would also hope the encounter building guidance and XP charts to be adjusted anyway to that new norm. Really it would end up being the same as it is now just shifting the xp at 0 +1 +2 and so on.It would be the equivalent to changing the shirt sizes to say they are one size smaller than they are now. People will still need to pick the size that fits them no matter what the number is.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
To address the just apply an elite template argument, my issue with that is that far more experienced players play APs than new players. So any system that requires adjusting power up to meet current expectations is a lot of work. Sidebars suggesting tuning things down and specific beginner modules only impact those new players, and only for a short time, while they adjust. I favour the solution that impacts the fewest players.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
There's no need to denigrate the play preferences of others. It's fine to just say "I would not enjoy that". We all have different preferences for how a game runs. For some, anything where you don't have four characters ready to go because instant death awaits anyone who doesn't have a ten foot pole to check every single tile on the floor feels lacking, but they don't need to declare all easier games to be of a negative quality.
That's why this is a player preference discussion and not some bad game design issue as some are stating like it is an absolute.
I know plenty of people who like an easier game over the decades. We even have one player that prefers am easier game and runs the game where you know going in no one will die. One guy is indifferent either way. Three of us prefer a deadlier or more difficult game.
I know I stopped playing 5E because it was way too easy. I can't play a game where Demogorgon is easily kited and killed having no useful abilities to counter this. That just can't be happening in a game.
I also don't want to play a game where the customization options were not included in the balancing of the system. Thus when you add them, you break the game making it far too easy. That's what I consider a softball game that I won't play because it's way too easy.
I thought PF2 ramping the difficulty up across all levels again was an attractive feature of the game. 3E/PF1 may have been dangerous at low level, but it was a cakewalk at high level. PF2 changed that so you can make the game dangerous from level 1 to 20. It's not 2nd edition and earlier lethal, but definitely a step up from PF1/3E past the low levels. That was a welcome increase in difficulty and knobs the DM can turn to make the game feel dangerous and lethal.
I don't personally want those knobs turned down again. It's my personal preference.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
I feel like a lot of responses in this thread that are adverse to fixing the math discrepancy at low levels pretty much amount to:
"Get gud noob!"And that is incredibly disappointing.
This isn't an insulting statement or absolutist, is it?
It could be some of us don't see it as a problem and don't agree it is a bad design issue requiring a fix.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
I think there is either an exaggeration or a major play style discrepancy happening if critical hits at level one are regularly killing level 1 PCs at people’s tables. I can buy that level one PCs are falling unconscious fairly regularly, but fully dying 4? I have seen that maybe 2 times across 10+ campaigns. With 4 PCs per campaign that is like a 5% chance of dying during level 1, and usually it was more than bad luck that played a b mm ig role in it. That seems very reasonable to me.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I think there is either an exaggeration or a major play style discrepancy happening if critical hits at level one are regularly killing level 1 PCs at people’s tables. I can buy that level one PCs are falling unconscious fairly regularly, but fully dying 4? I have seen that maybe 2 times across 10+ campaigns. With 4 PCs per campaign that is like a 5% chance of dying during level 1, and usually it was more than bad luck that played a b mm ig role in it. That seems very reasonable to me.
I can't help but wonder if people are using killed when they mean downed.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I've read Claxon's past posts and he has often stated he misses the character building and power level of PF1. I think he mainly plays PF2 because his group moved to PF2. He likes that level of customization and character power. That doesn't exist in PF2. You can get dropped and wasted at any level in PF2 if the encounter is designed to be difficult.
It's easier to do at level 1 or 2, but it can randomly happen at high level too unlike PF1/3E where you could build nearly invincible characters.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
Downing PCs is not so GM dependent, but finishing PCs is highly GM dependent. How aggressively enemies target downed players is entirely up to the DM, and players die with much more regularity if so targeted. It's not odd you'd see a lot of variance.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Downing PCs is not so GM dependent, but finishing PCs is highly GM dependent. How aggressively enemies target downed players is entirely up to the DM, and players die with much more regularity if so targeted. It's not odd you'd see a lot of variance.
On that note, have a Level+2 boss and give his minions flasks of oil and torches. Players will be much more careful about getting hit when going down means burning to death.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
It is very easy to make combats challenging but survivable in PF2 as a GM without adjusting any numbers. Often times, APs include descriptions of how to do this with very difficult foes already.
The key is to have creatures with motivation more interesting than winning a combat simulator. When enemies take prisoners, accept bribes, let someone go to tell others of their power, etc, it is usually to the benefit of the narrative and the cohesion of the campaign. Maybe one character will still occasionally hit dying four, but if that is going to cause hurt player feelings than talking through an alternative with the table is perfectly reasonable. If everyone feels like the fights are too hard, then you can adjust numbers or scale back encounter severity, but I have found players can usually get over a character death that occurs from something like a predator creature running away with the corpse of one PC it killed rather than fighting on to risk its own death or a TPK.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I think there is either an exaggeration or a major play style discrepancy happening if critical hits at level one are regularly killing level 1 PCs at people’s tables. I can buy that level one PCs are falling unconscious fairly regularly, but fully dying 4? I have seen that maybe 2 times across 10+ campaigns. With 4 PCs per campaign that is like a 5% chance of dying during level 1, and usually it was more than bad luck that played a b mm ig role in it. That seems very reasonable to me.I can't help but wonder if people are using killed when they mean downed.
I suspect an exaggeration for dramatic impact. What would really happen is that a 1st-level frontline PC hit by a high-damage crit drops to dying 2. No-one played a character with magical healing or they used up the healing spells already or the character with magical healing is the unconscious one. And no-one invested in Healing Potions or the Battle Medicine feat, because they are newbies. So they have no easy solution.
Newbies might not realize that Heal spells are best saved for combat. If they healed between encounters with those spells rather than Treating Wounds, then they would run out of Heal spells before they run out of encounters.
That would leave Administer First Aid to Stabilize the dying character upon a successful DC 17 Medicine check. One action to Stride to the dying character and two actions for Administer First Aid while standing only 10 feet away from the monster that took down a party member in one blow. That would be scary for a newbie. Some people have already advised fighting the monster and hoping that the dying character stabilizes on their own DC 12 flat recovery checks. Two rounds later, the dying character could reach dying 4. Or if the party is fighting a Goblin Pyro who happens to Breathe Fire over the unconscious character, then additional damage could speed up the dying.
Another risk is persistent damage as a result of a critical hit by some spells, such as Ignition.
In practice in my campaigns, the 1st-level stormborn druid in my PF2-converted Ironfang Invasion campaign reserved two spell slots for Heal and attacked with cantrips and Tempest Surge focus spell, the playtest animist in my Fistful of Flowers campaign had the Garden of Healing focus spell, and one bard in my Strength of Thousands campaign learned Soothe and the champion had Lay on Hands. The other bard's player had played the animist in Fistful of Flowers and was tired of healing. Experienced players plan their healing.
In the battle against a will-'o'-wisp in my River into Darkness Revisted class trip in Strength of Thousands the wisp critically hit the 2nd-level healing bard for 21 damage, leaving her at 3 hp. The bard cast Soothe on herself. The kinetist used her turn to Reposition the bard further away from the will-'o'-wisp and the rogue Grappled the wisp. Next round the wisp critically hit the rogue twice to knock her to dying 2 instead of trying an Escape. The bard cast Soothe on the rogue. The rogue did not remain at dying 2 long enough to roll a recovery check.
Okay. a 6th-level will-'o'-wisp is a dangerous battle for a 2nd-level party, but they had the aid of two 6th-level NPCs, so the threat was actually Trivial. My players like unusual challenges.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
Downing PCs is not so GM dependent, but finishing PCs is highly GM dependent. How aggressively enemies target downed players is entirely up to the DM, and players die with much more regularity if so targeted. It's not odd you'd see a lot of variance.
If we are going to differentiate between unconscious and dead, as we should, then we should probably differentiate between players and their characters too.
;)
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Downing PCs is not so GM dependent, but finishing PCs is highly GM dependent. How aggressively enemies target downed players is entirely up to the DM, and players die with much more regularity if so targeted. It's not odd you'd see a lot of variance.If we are going to differentiate between unconscious and dead, as we should, then we should probably differentiate between players and their characters too.
;)
You don't dump your players out of their chairs when their characters are downed? What kind of Carebear GM are you? ;P
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
You don't dump your players out of their chairs when their characters are downed? What kind of Carebear GM are you? ;P
XD
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
So clearly there are multiple different perspectives being expressed here when people are talking about how "lethal" the game is at low level. For some, any character dropping feels unfun, which is going to be problematic for people talking about the base assumptions of the game, because there are a whole lot of game design decisions based around characters being able to get healed in combat and get back up and into the fight that greatly reduce the "lethality" of combats. Just doing things to make characters harder to drop in the first place thus greatly reduces the chances of characters dying because it reduces the frequency that any of those other counter measures ever even have to get brought into play.
It seems pretty natural that people who like where the game is currently dialed in would be strongly opposed to changes like this (like increasing starting HP) because they are looking at lethality as a sum of all the pieces, while someone just looking to reduce the frequency of characters dropping unconscious isn't concerned about any of that because the effect of being unconscious feels the same as being dead to them (as far as applying to their character, not themselves as a player, RD XP).
Personally, I really like that one or more PCs dropping to 0 HP is a fairly common occurrence in PF2. It is something that greatly changes the dynamics of a battle, and without it characters would move even less and end up falling into routines of doing the same 3 actions over and over again even more. More players should be planning and preparing for their character to be in a standing position needing to get another PC healed up as action and resource efficiently as possible, as that distributes the burden for spending actions on healing more effectively around the table. A first level character who's only option for healing is spending an action moving, and 2 actions making an untrained first aid check to stabilize a PC (assuming they even could afford a healer's toolkit), should be seen as underprepared as a wizard who takes no damaging cantrips because they envision themselves to be a support caster, and is then left having to move into melee to attack with a staff or a dagger when damage is the only useful thing they could really be doing during this turn of a combat. Like some builds might make other options difficult, but one elixir of life is cheaper for a starting character than a healer's tool kit and is going to be so much more effective the one time they are likely to need either.
Maybe more class starting kits should try to factor healing in as an essential starting option and either include an elixir or life, or maybe a new consumable that just heals one hp could cost something like 8 sp and be standard in starting adventure's packs? It feels like the game's desire to restrict healing options as class specific resources has pretty much been thrown out the window from its early days and updating starting equipment to reflect that could probably help with the "new players don't know that healing is for everyone" problem.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I have an idea for a new way to spend your Hero points:
Beginner's Grace
Reaction.
Beginner's Grace can only be used at level 1. It can be used while unconscious.
Spend a hero point to heal 1 HP and end all ongoing damage effects currently affecting your character.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Downing PCs is not so GM dependent, but finishing PCs is highly GM dependent. How aggressively enemies target downed players is entirely up to the DM, and players die with much more regularity if so targeted. It's not odd you'd see a lot of variance.If we are going to differentiate between unconscious and dead, as we should, then we should probably differentiate between players and their characters too.
;)
Metonymy is perfectly fine here. I would never kill players! Their characters, on the other hand... depends on what vibe the group is looking for. c:
Most of the groups I've had prefer enough challenge for there to be a risk of death, and they get annoyed if I pull punches in ways that don't make sense or don't feel narratively appropriate. A lot of my tables do— for better or worse—end up closer to Deriven's tables than thenobledrake's, from what it sounds like here.
This is partially a function of experience with the groups. I actually started as a more softball GM. But over time, I realized I would routinely get positive feedback on more challenging nights where I was afraid things had gone a bit too far, and adjusted accordingly.
These days, if I had a new group, I'd probably ask them what they wanted up front.
===
Sort of as a half-sequitur, this is a reason I like strong player-side fudge tools like 1E hero points. It's a lot easier to let the chips fall where they may when players have powerful tools.
The GM fudging? Sucks, I was lied to. The game giving the players ways to fudge rolls and giving it some cool mechanical name? Peak, love it, saves me so much trouble.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
You ever play Dynasty Warriors? Where you're one person killing hundreds and sometimes thousands of enemies? That's my jam.Yeah, they're terminally boring to me. If I want to bash buttons, at least give me a Bayonetta or DMC where there's a challenge in getting good combo scores.
I mostly play BattleTech 2018 modded to the gills with an ultrahard difficulty mod, and I'll still go into battles 10 difficulty ratings (in a rating system out of 40) higher than me and walk out untouched.
Can I play a super tactical game where I'm thinking through every decision and making the "best" decision with the knowledge I have? I mean probably, but that's not what I want to put into the game, and it's not fun for me to put in that amount of work.I don't get this mindset at all. If you don't need to sweat at least a little, where's the fun in overcoming challenges coming from?
If i wanted to overcome a challenge i would either go play professional football or get down and prepare for my wittgenstein exam for my philosophy Major. Y'know, things that actually would be useful. I wanna play a roleplaying game where i'm not Stuck in my boring cog in the machine world, ever Heard of escapism?
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Please, can we avoid badwrongfun discussions?
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
If i wanted to overcome a challenge i would either go play professional football or get down and prepare for my wittgenstein exam for my philosophy Major. Y'know, things that actually would be useful. I wanna play a roleplaying game where i'm not Stuck in my boring cog in the machine world, ever Heard of escapism?You ever play Dynasty Warriors? Where you're one person killing hundreds and sometimes thousands of enemies? That's my jam.Yeah, they're terminally boring to me. If I want to bash buttons, at least give me a Bayonetta or DMC where there's a challenge in getting good combo scores.
I mostly play BattleTech 2018 modded to the gills with an ultrahard difficulty mod, and I'll still go into battles 10 difficulty ratings (in a rating system out of 40) higher than me and walk out untouched.
Can I play a super tactical game where I'm thinking through every decision and making the "best" decision with the knowledge I have? I mean probably, but that's not what I want to put into the game, and it's not fun for me to put in that amount of work.I don't get this mindset at all. If you don't need to sweat at least a little, where's the fun in overcoming challenges coming from?
Most of us in the same boat. If you want a less difficult game, make it less difficult. There is no reason to try to make the game easier for everyone as though your personal preference is what it should be for everyone.
The current difficulty is too low for my group. So I increase the difficulty on my own without asking Paizo to increase the difficulty of the entire game to suit my and my group's tastes.
I don't consider it some mistake of design that the game is too easy for my tastes. I look at my group as having particular tastes that want a more difficult game and adjust accordingly.
Paizo has set the game at a difficulty level that suits the majority of their customers. For some people that is too difficult for various reasons and for others it is too easy for various reasons. So anyone in those camps should adjust the game to be the difficulty level they desire.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If most deaths happen due to things like persistent damage, that would completely align with and support my claim that right now GMs are working to prevent the "real lethality" in the math from killing PCs.
IMO, this is not a good thing for the game, at all.
It feels incredibly cheap every time the GM blatantly lobotomizes a foe to prevent them from killing the PCs.
There's little worse for the feeling of victory and "merit" than for the player to realize the GM is cheating in their favor, and will defy logic to bail them out any time there's real danger.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
If most deaths happen due to things like persistent damage, that would completely align with and support my claim that right now GMs are working to prevent the "real lethality" in the math from killing PCs.
IMO, this is not a good thing for the game, at all.
It feels incredibly cheap every time the GM blatantly lobotomizes a foe to prevent them from killing the PCs.
There's little worse for the feeling of victory and "merit" than for the player to realize the GM is cheating in their favor, and will defy logic to bail them out any time there's real danger.
I respect that you like to play a specific way and I am not trying to say it is a wrong way to play, but I think I don’t understand what you mean by “the GM blatantly lobotomizes an enemy to prevent them from killing the PCs.”
Mainly, it makes me think that every enemies sole goal is to see all the PCs killed as quickly as possible, like every creature on Golarion is a ruthlessly efficient killing machine, and that should be their only purpose in the game. The enemies most likely to act that way are mindless destroyers or really murderous assassins/elite soldiers. Almost every other thinking creature could very reasonably have other goals that might not be best served by killing everyone and just counting on each enemy to carry a journal laying out their goals and next steps to help them figure out who just invaded their lair, why, whether the threat is over, or whether the invaders have a sweet camp full of loot somewhere near by.
It kinda feels like gaming conventions of RPGs that have to accommodate impetuous murder hobos is supposed to apply universally to the world when that often just leads to boring narrative, that people don’t usually expect or want to see in their fantasy stories.
It doesn’t even take a logical mind or benevolence to have an enemy that might not want to flat out kill everyone enemy they meet as quickly as possible. Demons and other cruel creatures just might be arrogant and vile enough to expect to win easily enough that they want to be able to play with their victims more later, and not switch into “fighting for their lives” until the fight has really turned against them.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I've read Claxon's past posts and he has often stated he misses the character building and power level of PF1. I think he mainly plays PF2 because his group moved to PF2. He likes that level of customization and character power. That doesn't exist in PF2. You can get dropped and wasted at any level in PF2 if the encounter is designed to be difficult.
It's easier to do at level 1 or 2, but it can randomly happen at high level too unlike PF1/3E where you could build nearly invincible characters.
Spot on, though I would argue characters weren't ever really invincible, but when you had a party of highly optimized characters and each was capable of ending an enemy NPC before they had a turn due to damage output or CC, the party only really had a problem if there were a larger number of high threat NPCs than PCs. So to your point...effectively invincible. And I absolutely did enjoy that.
However, I should clarify that as a player I like PF1 better. As a sometimes GM, PF2 is a much better system to run because of all the reasons/things I liked in PF1 make it a b~!#+ of system to GM. I admit, it is a bit ironic how that works.
It's also worth mentioning my perspective on encounter building in PF1 is that the system and information provided didn't really ever work unless you had players that actively avoided optimization.
In PF2, the system is mostly pretty good and gets the intended feel (IMO) except at the earliest levels of the game where it is much more challenging.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If i wanted to overcome a challenge i would either go play professional football or get down and prepare for my wittgenstein exam for my philosophy Major. Y'know, things that actually would be useful. I wanna play a roleplaying game where i'm not Stuck in my boring cog in the machine world, ever Heard of escapism?
Hate to break it to you, but rules analysis and discussion is basically taking the same hatchet to a different tree. You're escaping philosophy by doing more philosophy.
Sincerely, a philosophy MA c:
Good luck on your exam, btw. I really like later Wittgenstein, personally. It's insightful, if not always 100% right or followed all the way through.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I don't get how this is somehow me stating "bad wrong fun" when I'm describing a personal experience as shared one.
The players are expected to take the narrative seriously, which includes encounter mode.
If the PCs get in a fight to the death, it's incredibly immersion breaking if(when) the GM babies the players to spread the damage out, shapes an AoE to avoid the dying PC, etc.
We've all seen it happen, and any time as a player you "clock" that the GM switched into "easy mode" it sucks the fun out of the encounter.
.
Yes, sometimes it makes sense that the foes want to capture rather than kill. It can even sometimes make sense that a foe may not expect healing magic, or they could be an ooze incapable of comprehending healing magic.
It is also fair to say that, in quite a lot of cases, it's completely absurd when creatures fighting to the death will overdose on stupid pills and leave dying PCs alive. Or spread themselves out instead of flanking, not using their special abilities/spells, or any number of incredibly blatant pulled punches (that only happen *after* the fight becomes legit dangerous).
Clocking a GM swapping into baby mode is contextual, which is such a "no s*%&" statement, I shouldn't have to specify that, yet ofc I get the least charitable reading. It's asinine that I cannot talk about my own feelings without that being mischaracterized as a personal attack on others. Not every opinion needs a g!%$$+ chart to justify it.
.
When obvious lobotomies happen, it sucks all the fun out of the encounter, and now I'm second guessing every choice the GM's making to see if/how much of "baby mode" has been activated.
I get why this can be so triggering to hear, but when I as a player realize the GM is cheating in my favor, it completely breaks the promise of the ttrpg and trust of the player in that GM. How am I supposed to care about a campaign if there's a reality-warping shield keeping PCs safe?
This is the other side of the "0 agency deaths are BS and should not exist" coin. "Dynamic" difficulty that's cheating for the players to win is also fun-killing BS that should not exist.
This is why I recommend GMs talk about stuff like this over the table. As an example, if an encounter table roll is BS that'll 95%+ likely tpk everyone, it's imo a better approach for the GM explain the situation, say "we're not doing that" and reroll openly or homebrew. Being secretive only promotes distrust.
In large part because of the mechanic of the dying state, it can be incredibly obvious when the GM hammers in the lobotomy pick and puts on the kid gloves.
If simply saying that "GM's often cheat to keep PCs alive" somehow sounds like a personal attack to you, I'd like to ask you to think about why you've taken it that way.
(and yes, this issue is deeply entangled with the low level HP math / over-lethality.
I've seen this specific "a PC is dying, time to hit the lobotomy" many times in the few APs I've played, to the point I'm comfortable saying it's "normal" pf2 GMing to do so)
.
.
And quick tip/reminder, all persistent damage happens at once, so a creature can only every get dinged one extra Dying stage at most.
The damage you take from persistent damage occurs all at once, so if something triggers when you take damage, it triggers only once; for example, if you're dying with several types of persistent damage, the persistent damage increases your dying condition only once.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I don't get how this is somehow me stating "bad wrong fun" when I'm describing a personal experience as shared one.
The players are expected to take the narrative seriously, which includes encounter mode.
If the PCs get in a fight to the death, it's incredibly immersion breaking if(when) the GM babies the players to spread the damage out, shapes an AoE to avoid the dying PC, etc.
We've all seen it happen, and any time as a player you "clock" that the GM switched into "easy mode" it sucks the fun out of the encounter.
...
In the Youtube video Why there’s a DM shortage in D&D the Rules Lawyer discusses this same frustration from the DM side. He says that some tables view combat as a sporting event in which the PCs are not supposed to die, and after some bad luck the DM has to weaken the opponent or the opponent's tactics in order to prevent PC death. It is frustrating for the DM, too.
I started a thread, Pathfinder versus the Illusion of Difficulty, back in September 2024 to discuss this issue. Trip.H had posted in that thread. Nevertheless, this topic of GMs pulling the enemies' punches in the middle of combat would better fit there.
My own technique for weak PCs at 1st level has been to use encounters where the enemies' goal does not require killing the PCs. They fight the PCs just because the PCs are meddling and would be content if the PCs ran away. For example, at the beginning of Rise of the Runelords goblins raid town. They wanted loot rather than murder.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The other thing is not all GMs are actually pulling punches.
In the last fight I set up for my players going from level 1 to level 2 in my home game I downed two of the party before they won the fight.
And given the scope of the battle if no one went down they would have thought I was pulling punches.
That area was a set of chain encounters a total of 15 level -1s, a +0 creature, and a +1 foe with some -1s rounding out the last part of the chain. The party also had to save NPCs that would have died if they took too long to save them.
Some of the party going down in this fight was a result of the numbers I threw at them and made it feel as difficult as it was supposed to feel.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I do like the presented ideas to alter outcomes *after* death / tpk, as the moment encounter mode ends, the "fair outcome" has happened, and the GM is free to improvise in a way that doesn't break the notion of a fair fight.
This is also why I am drawn to pre-fight changes, like the L1 HP boost, as they also keep the adjustments outside of the mid-fight pulled punch realm.
And after re-reading that old post in the thread Mathmuse linked, I would like to echo that I still think that pf2e really has a *very* good sweet spot in terms of a cannon PC death being both very painful to fix, but also being completely doable.
Getting the body is not automatic, and the gp is not negligible. Likely, the dead PC will have one or two potent items liquidated for the cost, and the party's detour may be a full sidequest to find an NPC who can cast it. As such, getting a resurrection is "reliable", but not in a way that seriously damages the threat of death.
All steps of that process RaW are quite good as is, but it's also just as important that the GM can tweak any step of the resurrection for the sake of the narrative. Such as an NPC having a pre-paid scroll, etc.
Once a GM has the understanding of the resurrection process in mind during the initial death event, because it is such an "outside the page" event, they have full agency over the details.
If the party retreated, then they may find the body the next day, stripped of valuables (side quest to recover?), or they could find the body with only the sword gone, find no body but a trail to follow, etc, etc.
All of that flexibility can help tremendously, but imo the combat being "as fair as possible" is still more significant for a GM to allow PCs to die / refrain from punch-pulling. The more the GM feels that the foes/ an encounter is BS, the harder it is for them to let that BS result in a PC death, even if later resurrection is possible.
.
.
To bring it back around to the OP topic, and to put a pin in this sidebar, I will say that a GM changing the difficulty mid-fight absolutely does cause symptoms expressed in the thread's OP.
The on-the-fly cranking of a bunch of invisible knobs to reduce the chance of death makes it all the harder for newbies to learn the system.
I supposed in addition to the "bad math means one cannot separate good tactics from good luck," I'll add another, that: "a single GM pulled punch makes one less able to distinguish good tactics from (the uncertainty of) GM intervention."
In many ways, imo GM mode-swapping is a much thicker smokescreen that's harder for newbies to see through. Math is math, so it's straightforward to write some scribbles and test some theories. Invisible levers being changed is who knows how hard to notice, as now we are outside the system and into the realm of social performance. Yet, as the whole point of the GM doing the mode-switch is to alter the outcome of the encounter, this is more or less "required" for players to eventually understand this switch and its impacts in order to account for it in their play. The ambiguity, and complexity, grows tremendously.