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This arbitrary yardstick to measure "good" and "bad" design wildly changes shape and size depending on what table is looking at it, so it's meaningless. Your complaints are with GMs and writers making scenarios that take your agency away and can kill you outright. This is yet again NOT a system issue, because no duh throwing a full PL+4 boss at you is gonna end badly (or being ambushed at an inn while sleeping with a full room chain lightning, for that matter). But I got curious and went to read some of that AP's suggestions for using her ambushes, as I haven't touched that AP.
All in all, this is a collaborative game. If the players aren't doing their part playing the game as the table would like (i.e. being murderhobos, being disruptive, infighting, not being interactive, whatever) or the GM isn't being cooperative (antagonistic design that harms player fun, railroading, giving no chance for player survival) Then someone at the table is in fact making an error in these suggestions of "no error full to down = bad gameplay" because the only "objectively" bad gameplay is when the table isn't enjoying the game. Which sometimes could be not connecting with a system as written. It would be great if there was a system so perfect everyone could enjoy it exactly as it's written, but I find it doubtful such a thing exists, there's always going to be something in the designs of these things some players disagree with and that's why it's a collaborative effort to find a way to play it that the table enjoys.
You're not wrong for not enjoying what has happened in your games, however that's an issue to take up with the way your table handles adventures, I'm also not wrong for thinking those possible outcomes are good in my games with my own groups because it is good for us. And it all circles back to the whole point of this thread: "GMs and/or players could be taught better" to balance things out for their play experience, especially for the GMs who are the main arbiter of game difficulty.
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Hell, level 1 is basically the only time in the entire game when PCs are actually at risk from the massive damage rule (which is why I ignore that rule). A Creature 3 encounter (which APs do at level 1) is fully capable of outright killing a level 1 PC via massive damage with a crit. Extinction Curse has one encounter in particular that it's very possible for this to happen even to a tanky PC like a Champion. This simply can't happen at level 10 because no Creature 12 is capable of doing that kind of damage.
Gotta disagree about the level 1 thing. I had an encounter in Abomination Vaults at level 3 where a +2 lvl caster cast a Chilling Darkness at our cloistered cleric, critted and would have massive damaged the character from 100% to -100% in one shot, if I hadn't forgotten that, yes, clerics of Sarenrae are indeed sanctified holy. 10d6 times two via critical hit can absolutely kill a character with massive damage even at level 3, if you roll just a little above average.
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In order to establish "bad" and "good" design principles, some base premises needs to be agreed upon to then be used in conversation as measuring tools.
If "green is good, and blue is bad" then we can try to talk about how much blue a thing has, and how much green. If we can never agree that green is good in the first place though, there's simply no way to meaningfully talk.
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(in encounter mode)
I hope we can agree it's good for players to be "rewarded" for expressing good tactics, such as by taking less damage, dealing more to foes, etc.I also presume the opposite is a fine point of agreement, that it's "good gameplay" for a player's tactical "errors" to be mechanically punished via damage, etc.
If you require this reward/punishment to be deterministic in outcome, PF2 cannot provide 'good gameplay' to you ever, really, without becoming a radically different game. If you are also allowing for the mere improvement of the odds of a reward/punishment occurring to be counted as 'good gameplay', then I agree that this is good to have a high amount of, though not always maximally so at the expense of other goods (for example, there should be concern for strategic decisions as well, not just tactical, and also the game should still sometimes just surprise the players/GM).
Personally, I think the quality function of the game isn't just linearly dependent on factors such as the amount of player agency or the frequency of 'surprise kills' or anything else, it's more complex than that. Might need the right mix of green and blue, in other words.
You brought up chess and its a great example. It would be as if the other player put your king in check but exposed another piece now not defended for the king to take. You take the clear choice of taking that piece but have to roll for it cause its pathfinder chess. Well the roll didnt come out in your favor so your king couldnt take the other piece and now the other player takes your king (presumably in this imaginary version of pathfinder chess if you fail the roll to take another piece your piece stays in the position they started and your turn is over.)
It could have been the best most likely to succeed move you had available but once chance is involved the dice can invalidate your choices. It also means you can make a terrible choice with very low odds of success and the dice can validate your choice. In fact the dice validating a longshot where failure means losing the character is very fun for a lot of players.
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Yesterday I ran a game session in which the PCs flew kites simply because the wind was good, and today my wife is going to leave me.
Sorry, I could not resist the drama of the juxtaposition above. My wife, one the my players in Strength of Thousands, is leaving on a five week vacation, and due to other scheduling conflicts our next game session is delayed until June 17, four weeks from now. I did not want the next big mission in the module, Thieves' Swamp, to be split across two game sessions with a 4-week delay inbetween, so I invented some new material that was definitely lightweight.
The 1st module, Kindled Magic, spent 4 pages describing Spire Dormitory where the PCs live. That does not include the 5 pages that describe their dorm-mates. A nice lawn stretches between the dormitory and Nantambu canal that circles the Magaambya campus. I declared that the Chime-Ringers (the police force which the PCs regularly aided) needed time to prepare the raid on Thieves' Swamp, so they just had a day of classes and relaxation. Their dorm-mate Haibram, so obsessed with flight that he built a hang glider, pulled out a collection of kites (nine different kite tokens copied from the internet) and offered to lend them for a kite-flying day. The wind was blowing strongly toward the canal. They encouraged their dorm-mate Tzeniwe, a mother with 2 children, to join in so that they could teach the children to fly kites.
I let the players roll Acrobatics for handling the kite or Survival or Sailing Lore for knowing the wind with DC 15 to get the kites flying over the canal. Tzeniwe, still stuck at 2nd level with only a +5 Survival, had trouble and needed Aid from Haibram to get her kite airborne. The champion rolled a natural 1 and declared that he had fallen into the canal. And the players asked whether his kite had tangled with any other kite, and the die declared Tzeniwe's kite. The kineticist/wizard used the Friendfetch spell to fish the champion and the two kites out of the canal. (I am amused because Friendfetch was introduced in Kindled Magic as an iconic spell for Tzeniwe to pull in wandering children.)
Then the plot began. Two boats each piloted by two drunk people were racing down the canal. The PCs' friend Chime-Ringer Virgil Tibbs was chasing after them in a taxi boat. He messaged them (Nantambu Chime-Ringer Dedication gives a single cantrip) to stop the recklessly racing boats by taking down their sails, don't hurt the people.
The rogue with cold powers froze one sail with Rime Slick, cutting the boat's speed in half. The champion dove back into the canal and swam over to that boat, where the drunks offered him beer. The magus shot an arrow spellstriked with Ignition. I warned her that the arrow would poke an inconsequential hole in the sail, but if he critted for persistent fire damage then the said would light on fire. She made the crit. But the kineticst/wizard flame jetted over the that boat and put out the fire with half the sail remaining to prevent the boat igniting. A bard cast Tangle Vine to wrap up the rest of the sail. The other bard cast Levitate and parasailed with her kite to that boat. Chime-Ringer Virgil caught up to the boats, manacled the drunks, and towed to boats to a nearby dock. One drunk tried to punch Virgil, so the champion aided in restraining him. The drunks will face fines for reckless racing, but avoid the higher fines for crashing into the other boats that the map displayed further down the canal.
My players had fun, especially with the kites, but this challenge was totally nonlethal. This example is a counterargument that life-threatening danger is necessary for a good challenge.
For that matter, the module intended for the party to face the Thieves' Swamp mission at 6th level, but due to me moving the 7th-level Flooded Mansion mission earlier for a more coherent plot, the party will handle Thieves' Swamp at 7th level. The challenge will be low, but it will resolve the last plot thread in Spoken in the Song Wind.
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For the umptieth time, nobody is arguing to remove RNG or even lethality.
That should be clear by this point.
To achieve the goal of a fun and exciting set-piece encounter that is tactically engaging and satisfying you need to be able to have a back-and-forth. It must be possible to switch tempo, to react, to force the opponents to react.
The players' choices must matter. RNG must matter too, obviously, but not to the extent that it dominates and invalidates everything else, especially not the players' choices.
The sweet spot you need to hit is much, much smaller at lower levels.
This is why in the examples I gave I was mostly concerned with set-ups where the odds of an opponent taking out 2 PC's in the 2 opening rounds are too high. If this is possible, we are likely in a scenario where nothing the PC's could have done would have changed this outcome. And at the levels the odds of this occurring are the highest, you have the least tools to recover from this.
And no, whatever you do before combat starts such as scouting and whatever won't do anything. Seriously. It's not as if we don't play the game or don't GM it.
As we're talking AV now and being anecdotal, both played through it and GM'ed it.
On my playthrough we handled the first level without permanent casualties, though it was a rough experience, and I know the GM had to hold back a couple of times. It was our group's first experience with the system and there were serious doubts about continuing.
AV has plenty of examples of crazy encounters where RNG rules, even at higher levels. There was that L+4 encounter we stumbled into, but got lucky with magus spellstrike crit followed by the barbarian critting in round 2 taking it down, because if it got to round 3 it would have been a TPK.
There was that spider hiding and ambushing us (yes, we were scouting, but missed it). Thankfully it was at the start of a session and we all had our hero points, because 3 pc's down by round 2. And I'm sure I'm forgetting many other
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AV is a bad example. If you read what James Jacobs was doing with AV, lethality was intended. He made it like an old school sandbox module like Keep on the Borderlands or something similar where if you wander into the wrong area, you die. Just like in Keep on the Borderlands way back when, you wander into the Ogre or owlbear cave or the hobgoblins or evil church too early, it was goodbye character time.
I believe this was intended design to create that old school sandbox experience that wandering into particularly dangerous areas was a likely goodbye to your character and likely a TPK. Some of us old school people remember these TPKs in old modules because they were built to happen by design. It made beating those modules when you finally did feel great and memorable.
Another AP that shouldn't be in the conversation is Age of Ashes as it was early design and they over-tuned it because the module writers didn't have a full grasp of encounter design.
Otherwise, most APs have a few encounters here and there that may be rough, but are otherwise very manageable.
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As stated previously, it's not agreeing with any specific case that's important.
In order to establish "bad" and "good" design principles, some base premises needs to be agreed upon to then be used in conversation as measuring tools.
If "green is good, and blue is bad" then we can try to talk about how much blue a thing has, and how much green. If we can never agree that green is good in the first place though, there's simply no way to meaningfully talk.
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(in encounter mode)
I hope we can agree it's good for players to be "rewarded" for expressing good tactics, such as by taking less damage, dealing more to foes, etc.I also presume the opposite is a fine point of agreement, that it's "good gameplay" for a player's tactical "errors" to be mechanically punished via damage, etc.
I'll also add that the better the mechanical punishment can match with the degree of misplay, the better the gameplay.
(EX: an rpg where I use a sub-optimal spell *should* punish the player less than it would for some more egregious misplay, such as moving a squishy backliner into the melee. One will cause the combat to take longer due to lower dps, the other might get a character killed/downed)These are unprovable game design principles we can use to measure with, but only after they are agreed upon.
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** spoiler omitted **...
To me bad design is when something doesn't work or is exceedingly unclear or creates a situation where the reading of the ability creates a situation where the ability is too powerful or too weak for the PC or NPC enemy. These are the types of things I consider bad design.
Bad design is something we might all see differently and would have to come to a consensus on what we see as bad or problematic design. This hit point thing you and a handful of others are bringing up isn't even on my list of problematic or bad design.
My level 1 or 2 party got wasted because the RNG in a dice rolling game went badly for me and my group isn't a problem for me or my group. That's bad luck. These dice rolling games have massive elements of luck and RNG that I have no interest in seeing this altered or removed.
If I do want something modified to a level I and my group prefer, I do it myself.
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AV is a bad example. If you read what James Jacobs was doing with AV, lethality was intended. He made it like an old school sandbox module like Keep on the Borderlands or something similar where if you wander into the wrong area, you die. Just like in Keep on the Borderlands way back when, you wander into the Ogre or owlbear cave or the hobgoblins or evil church too early, it was goodbye character time.
I believe this was intended design to create that old school sandbox experience that wandering into particularly dangerous areas was a likely goodbye to your character and likely a TPK. Some of us old school people remember these TPKs in old modules because they were built to happen by design. It made beating those modules when you finally did feel great and memorable.
Another AP that shouldn't be in the conversation is Age of Ashes as it was early design and they over-tuned it because the module writers didn't have a full grasp of encounter design.
Otherwise, most APs have a few encounters here and there that may be rough, but are otherwise very manageable.
That seems directly at odds with James Jacob's GM advice at the start of Abomination Vaults, which states:
Let the players gauge whether their characters are in over their heads and retreat (or flee!) if the situation demands it. When the heroes face harder-than-expected challenges for their current level, they earn more XP, and when they face easier-than-expected ones, they earn less.
It seems pretty clear to me that the intention is not for players to walk into harder-than-expected challenges and just die, at least not if they're willing to retreat.
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Like how video gamers will insist they prefer games that don't tell them what they are supposed to be doing in any clear and direct fashion and then happily look up a guide to find out what they swore they didn't actually want to be told.
As if knowing which wikia to go to is some secret piece of information that only the "true" players know. Which is kind of gatekeepy and generally unhelpful.
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That seems directly at odds with James Jacob's GM advice at the start of Abomination Vaults, which states:Yup. James did want to have the "you might find your way to tougher encounters depend on which way you choose to go" aspect of the old-style dungeon crawls, but is not an incompetent enough designer to actually have wanted taking a wrong turn to be an actual death sentence for the characters because... well, to phrase it as simply as possible; there's a reason why that's no longer the generally accepted design approach and why even back when it was the generally accepted design approach significant numbers of groups made alterations or various kinds to mitigate the impact of that kind of design.
I feel like it's just another example of the gamer phenomena in which someone touts a particular unhelpful design choice as being actually good as a matter of ego and then mitigates it for themself while treating self-mitigation as fine to do even if the result is the same as the designed-mitigation they are decrying as a bad thing. Like how video gamers will insist they prefer games that don't tell them what they are supposed to be doing in any clear and direct fashion and then happily look up a guide to find out what they swore they didn't actually want to be told.
in other words hypocrisy
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No. Absolutely not asking for that. Categorically not asking for that. What I am asking for is slightly less RNG domination. A bit more predictability, and mainly at the lower levels.
That is literally asking for the game to be easier. A more predictable game is always favourable to the PCs, and a more random one is more favourable to the enemies.
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One thing to consider is that the game has difficulty guidance already using the encounter budget.
ENCOUNTER BUDGET
Threat XP Budget Character Adjustment
Trivial 40 or less 10 or less
Low 60 20
Moderate 80 20
Severe 120 30
Extreme 160 40
dice introduce randomness and the designers accounted for that by making most encounters an unfair fight in favor the the party. But due to randomness even a moderate encounter can become dangerous and that is actually the design principle to make the game interesting. Most moderate encounters wont be that dangerous just because the amount of luck that needs to favor the enemies to win is quite a bit.
Severe encounters are meant to be challenging to the party but its still not a fair fight for the enemies. Randomness in favor of the enemies just has less ground to cover to get to a win.
Extreme is where the fight is an actual fair fight. Fair fights with randomness can go either way.
Its important to see a character going down as one possible method of depleted party resources to win the encounter. Its not a TPK, but the more fair the fight and the more luck favors the enemies the more likely an outcome it will be.
Also consider that the party losing is an outcome that can happen with enough luck on the side of the enemies. Even with no misplays as Trip H defines them. The closer the encounter is to extreme the less luck is needed going against the party to make that happen.
Is anyone actually taking the position that we cannot effectively use these guidelines to make encounters at low levels?
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Come on dude.
RNG variance is not the same thing as difficulty, those are completely different metrics.
Are you disputing that low variance in a game vastly favours the players and their characters?
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Because, again, RNG goes both ways. It was genuinely a gameplay problem that Belcorra could and did roll a 1 vs Slow, and get completely deleted as a threat.
Same thing happened to another single foe fight, one that the GM worried might TPK us. It makes for genuinely "bad gameplay" if and when fights are decided by a single bad roll. Everyone at the table knows it's b+!#$~&&, even when it's in our favor.
It damages the fun every time it happens.
I'll be completely honest in that I don't know what the goal of this thread is anymore, because it seems wildly off topic now more than ever. All I can say is if being downed by an errant crit or having a boss downed by an errant crit early in battle isn't fun, that's a problem for your table to solve in how they run encounters somehow, or by removing/modifying degrees of success. But this really has nothing to do with teaching the game anymore and is just complaining about unrelated parts of the system, so I'm checking out of this.
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No. Absolutely not asking for that. Categorically not asking for that. What I am asking for is slightly less RNG domination. A bit more predictability, and mainly at the lower levels.That is literally asking for the game to be easier. A more predictable game is always favourable to the PCs, and a more random one is more favourable to the enemies.
A more predictable game is also more favorable to the GM, too. The GM and the PCs are not enemies; instead, the enemies are fictional creatures designed to challenge the party. Challenge not destroy.
Currently, I have to design 1st-level encounters that won't go fatal after routine bad luck. If I did not have to worry so much about bad luck, then I could give the 1st-level PCs more difficult challenges, such as a level+2 opponent. More predictable would let me raise the difficulty level.
Well, for some definitions of predictable. Back in 1978 my first D&D character died in the first room of the dungeon. If characters always died in the first room, then that would be 100% predictable and 100% fatal. In this discussion "predictable" means less influence by the dice.
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I recently started a new homebrew campaign at 1st level and, when designing the first boss encounter, I decided to throw a beefy CL+1 foe at the PCs. I knew that, if I were to crit and roll max damage, I could deal massive damage to one of the PCs (an inventor) which means instant death, but since the inventor in question had a reach weapon and was planning to focus on support a little bit in the first few levels, so I thought it was very unlikely for an instant kill to happen. Well, as unlikely as it was, I was exactly 1 point of damage away from killing the PC on a unlucky crit.
I also feel that when playing at 1st level I feel a little exposed since I tend to favor the attributes that contribute to the skills I plan to use than Constitution on character creation, so massive damage always feels like a possibility with my characters in the 1-2 level range. I get why this rule exists, but I feel that having your character instantlly killed when you are trying the system for the first time can lead to a very bad impression of the system, which is really bad because massive damage is only really a thing at 1st or 2nd level for PCs. I feel either massive damage shouldn't exist, be a variant rule, or hit points be overhauled in such a way to make it impossible for a 1st level character to die from that.
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I'll be completely honest in that I don't know what the goal of this thread is anymore, because it seems wildly off topic now more than ever. All I can say is if being downed by an errant crit or having a boss downed by an errant crit early in battle isn't fun, that's a problem for your table to solve in how they run encounters somehow, or by removing/modifying degrees of success. But this really has nothing to do with teaching the game anymore and is just complaining about unrelated parts of the system, so I'm checking out of this.
Most threads with over 100 comments have topic drift. The reasonably good drift is when the commenters spend all their time talking about some narrow aspect related to the original topic. That happened here. The main topic is that Pathfinder 2nd Edition does not provide clues in its rulebooks about how to play well so that the PCs can survive encounters. The current topic is that survival is especially hard at levels 1 through 4 and that is worse for new players who don't know to plan for it. We also have a side argument whether a low survival rate is good for gameplay or not. Is dying at 1st level and learning a lesson from the death a good way to teach PF2? Alas, since this is the internet, side arguments often continue for the sake of argument, not to truly understand the topic. I am guilty of that myself, easily pulled into an argument by anything that resembles a mathematical error.
And I have an amusing Strength of Thousands story about a pair of errant crits at 4th level.
Entombing Grasp [two-actions] (earth, manipulate) Requirements A foe within Stone Ghost’s reach is standing on stone or soil; Effect Stone Ghost briefly extends his intangibility to a foe and drags or pounds them into the earth. He makes an Athletics check against the target’s Fortitude DC. On a success, the foe is planted waist-deep in the ground and is immobilized and flat-footed until it Escapes (DC 22). On a critical success, the foe is completely buried and must hold its breath until it is free or else start suffocating. A successful Escape returns the foe to its original square on the surface, or the closest unoccupied square.
Stone Ghost fled the large party because 7 PCs and 1 NPC looked too much to handle in open combat. He ambushed them later. He Strode to the PC bard Jinx Fuun from his hiding spot and rolled a critical success with Entombing Grasp. Jinx was completely buried under the soil. The Stone Ghost planned to flee for another ambush, but he had used three actions, so he was stuck standing in plain sight. The other bard Stargazer sang and the champion Wilfred Strode up to the Stone Ghost and Struck with his +1 striking longsword. Incorporeal creatures have low hit points for their level, because their incorporeality cuts most damage in half. The Stone Ghost had only 40 hp. Wilfred critted and rolled nearly maximum damage plus Courageous Anthem damage and had selected his champion's Divine Ally(Weapon) ability to give his sword ghost-touch. He dealt 40 damage to the Stone Ghost, taking him down in one hit.
So the Stone Ghost had taken down Jinx Fuun in one blow but left himself vulnerable, so the champion Wilfred took the Stone Ghost down in one blow in response. It seemed fair and dramatic. The party dug Jinx Fuun out of the dirt before she suffocated. The Stone Ghost stabilized and the party fetched the Magaambya teachers to judge him rather than finishing him off.
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Are you disputing that low variance in a game vastly favours the players and their characters?Come on dude.
RNG variance is not the same thing as difficulty, those are completely different metrics.
I didn't know that was your perception, and I most certainly will contest it.
In pf2, the insane RNG variance usually favors the PCs.
I've got no fking clue why, but it's still pf2 standard for Big Bads to literally be single foes, maybe with some backup mooks if the AP feels like it.
This is very imbalancing when the solo Big Bad is -vs- a party of heroes. When a PC rolls a 1, that single PC can be taken out of the fight. But there are still ~3 other PCs, plus all party minions/companions/etc.
If a Big Bad rolls a 1 vs Slow, they cant even use 2A spells anymore, they are cooked by a single bad roll (which can be invoked x Heroes p round by the party).
(Foes designed to be used in solo vs party fights "should" have more than 3A to make sense in the 3A system. Else every action-stealing effect becomes imba as hell)
Whoops, almost forgot Hero Points (and fortune effects in general). Even if how many is very table dependent, that alone is biiig weight on the scale that makes the RNG nonsense benefit the PCs.
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Even the Dying mechanic itself is absurd when it's not mirrored for foes to use it too, as that REALLY imbalances the RNG nonsense in the PC's favor.
If a foe goes down to a lucky crit, they are dead--dead.
If a PC goes down to a crit, then they can get back up for 1A from another PC. Or even 0, thanks to things like Fast Healing, 3A Heal, etc.
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Like, maybe actually sit and ponder a bit before making such claims, please.
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I'll be completely honest in that I don't know what the goal of this thread is anymore, because it seems wildly off topic now more than ever. All I can say is if being downed by an errant crit or having a boss downed by an errant crit early in battle isn't fun, that's a problem for your table to solve in how they run encounters somehow, or by removing/modifying degrees of success. But this really has nothing to do with teaching the game anymore and is just complaining about unrelated parts of the system, so I'm checking out of this.
My goal is always seeking a way to improve things. I can only make an edit that'll *improve* the present norm if I can figure out what's "objectively bad" right now, and what system/rule/math is responsible for that present "bad" thing, and how one creates the other.
This is why I opened by locking onto the crazy HP growth math and pf2's ~"game dev abnormal" low HP & one-shots.
People cannot know what to homebrew if they don't understand what systemic issues are responsible for the present outcomes.
The only reason someone could think to +20HP all PC starting health is if they thought it would help improve the gameplay.
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A more predictable game is also more favorable to the GM, too. The GM and the PCs are not enemies; instead, the enemies are fictional creatures designed to challenge the party. Challenge not destroy.
You like games as games and as a vehicle for telling stories. I prefer messier worlds where the PCs can die because they walked into the wrong dungeon or crossed the wrong person. Have a strong session zero and embrace the chaos. If you die in session one, we'll go from there.
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In pf2, the insane RNG variance usually favors the PCs.
I've got no fking clue why, but it's still pf2 standard for Big Bads to literally be single foes, maybe with some backup mooks if the AP feels like it.
This is very imbalancing when the solo Big Bad is -vs- a party of heroes. When a PC rolls a 1, that single PC can be taken out of the fight. But there are still ~3 other PCs, plus all party minions/companions/etc.
If a Big Bad rolls a 1 vs Slow, they cant even use 2A spells anymore, they are cooked by a single bad roll (which can be invoked x Heroes p round by the party).
The math for a single encounter =/= the math for the entire game. Yes, a crit fail could take out a solo threat (this is a good argument for giving important NPCs villain points equal to the number of PCs facing them, or removing PC hero points), but on the whole, the party faces more dice coming at them than any foe ever will. High variance, combined with rolling more dice, means that foes will tend to get lucky more often than the players will.
There's a reason why X-Com fudges the RNG in the player's favour. There are reasons why the best PF1 and D&D 3.5 builds tried to eliminate the dice from the equation wherever possible. Never leave to chance what you can handle through planning.
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I think there are some GMs that don't think about the predictability of outcomes as being such an important thing because they are artificially setting the predictability by way of being willing to fudge their dice rolls. Since it's logically less important to have random undesired outcomes be genuinely impossible when you're already set on pretending results you didn't want didn't happen in the first place.
Or we just have groups that understand that a game that uses dice inherently opens the door for bad luck. Some people like PF2's character builder and very guardrailed systems, and some people are risking their character in the creation phase while rolling up a Traveller.
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I think it's about time I played offense for once, not going to let that s@!$ slide without a callout.
If you are going to claim that the RNG favors the foes, then justify it with a real reason. Point to a mechanic and show how the imbalance favors the foes.
I presented more than enough to make my case, you don't get to just say "nah, the action imbalance isn't there for every fight, so your whole position is bunk."
Well, you can say that, but everyone here will see how hollow and empty the counterargument is.
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The reason games lie about % odds, to the point of even using a pseudo-random roller in a d20 like in BG3, is because the RL math has a disproportionately negative impact on player fun.
In other words, loosing to RNG feels so s*&+ty, that it's rather normalized in game design to lie to the players about what the odds are. Meanwhile, winning because of RNG doesn't feel as good as it "should" so even though a perfectly mirrored game would be even, it feels s%%$ty to play.
This should tell you something about how big a problem it can be to loose a PC to a b+!+**&# turn 1 save or die roll.
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There is no guarantee a more consistent game favors the PCs. As silly example to prove the point: if I were to run PL+7 single enemy encounters for an entire campaign, I would wager that would be a pretty short campaign and we'd see some tpks. Is "consistently losing" not a consistent outcome? And as a less silly example, any horror game that wants simulate tropes where the protagonists die or walk away broken by their experiences or newfound knowledge will probably aim to consistently produce anti-player results.
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A more predictable game is also more favorable to the GM, too. The GM and the PCs are not enemies; instead, the enemies are fictional creatures designed to challenge the party. Challenge not destroy.You like games as games and as a vehicle for telling stories. I prefer messier worlds where the PCs can die because they walked into the wrong dungeon or crossed the wrong person. Have a strong session zero and embrace the chaos. If you die in session one, we'll go from there.
Yes, I do like games and stories. But I don't undertand RPG-Geek's statement about liking messier worlds. That is also a game and story to me, but with more potential to be cut tragically short. That works for some stories, such as horror and gritty realism, but not as well for heroic fantasy.
As for entering the wrong dungeon, Trip.H offered a story from Secrets of the Temple-City in which the GM sent them into an unsuspected night ambush because he did not point out that the party's diplomatic mission was very hostile, more hostile than made sense for the plot. They were sent into the wrong dungeon with no choice by the module. For another wrong dungeon, in Kindled Magic the faculty of the Magaambya Academy sent the party into the deadly Infested Caverns. My excuse was that they assumed it merely had some giant bugs to clear out, but they were wrong. I had the faculty apologize for their mistake afterwards.
For a third wrong dungeon, a warning to GMs after the Iron Gods' 2nd module Lords of Rust is that many parties will want to head to the capital city Starfall immediately after Lords of Rust because of clues in the module. But Starfall is the setting of the 5th module, Palace of Fallen Stars, and a 7th-level party is not yet strong enough to handle a 13th-level setting. Does the GM let the party get captured and tortured by the Technic League simply because the plot hooks for the 3rd module were poorly expounded? The Technic League won't release the PCs alive to continue the adventure path.
In Session Zero I describe the setting, plot, and theme of the adventure path, so that they can build appropriate characters, but I do not provide a road map of dungeons labeled by level. Do we GMs have to clearly label our dungeons with big signs, "Do not enter unless you are 13th level or higher"? Or can we use natural clues, such as rumors in local towns, that our players might miss?
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If you are going to claim that the RNG favors the foes, then justify it with a real reason. Point to a mechanic and show how the imbalance favors the foes.
If RNG doesn't favour the foes, why has PF2 felt the need to ensure PCs start every session with a Hero Point and can earn more? Because they understand that players dislike losing actions (or characters) to variance and prefer a way to combat unwanted outcomes. This directly favours the PCs by reducing variance.
Over any given encounter within the game's expected paradigm, the PCs are expected to win if the dice roll average. They can get lucky and make a hard fight easier, but the conceit of the genre and the game's base math is designed such that the PCs will win every fight where nothing unlucky happens. Over an entire campaign, a game with low variance designed to favour the PCs will rarely kill a PC unexpectedly, barring bad luck, very poor tactics, or a GM putting their thumb on the scale.
In a game with higher variance, such as PF1 with save or die spells that are online starting at level 1, those odds will catch up to the group unless they break the game and, via character build choices, negate that variance. It's why PF1 was a system where entire classes were deemed dead weight due to not having ways to access these systems of variance mitigation and/or not being able to force their enemies to do the same.
The reason games lie about % odds, to the point of even using a pseudo-random roller in a d20 like in BG3, is because the RL math has a disproportionately negative impact on player fun.
This isn't universal. While it's true that, on average, people tend to dislike missing their 90% hit chance shot and getting hit by an enemy with a 10% chance to hit, there are entire sub-genres based on overcoming these odds.
In other words, loosing to RNG feels so s~#@ty, that it's rather normalized in game design to lie to the players about what the odds are. Meanwhile, winning because of RNG doesn't feel as good as it "should" so even though a perfectly mirrored game would be even, it feels s#**ty to play.
This should tell you something about how big a problem it can be to loose a PC to a b++@$%&& turn 1 save or die roll.
It tells me that a lot of people need to take a statistics course.
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There is no guarantee a more consistent game favors the PCs. As silly example to prove the point: if I were to run PL+7 single enemy encounters for an entire campaign, I would wager that would be a pretty short campaign and we'd see some tpks. Is "consistently losing" not a consistent outcome? And as a less silly example, any horror game that wants simulate tropes where the protagonists die or walk away broken by their experiences or newfound knowledge will probably aim to consistently produce anti-player results.
PL+7 encounters aren't a baseline assumption made by PF's design. In play that follows the expected encounter design rules, variance favours the enemy. It's why there's language about PL+3 and 4 encounters that specifically call out bad luck as a way they can turn from very challenging to a TPK.
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Yes, I do like games and stories. But I don't undertand RPG-Geek's statement about liking messier worlds. That is also a game and story to me, but with more potential to be cut tragically short. That works for some stories, such as horror and gritty realism, but not as well for heroic fantasy.
I feel like Heroic fantasy can exist as a messy place where characters die from bad luck. It's the difference between Harry Potter and LotR, and the Stormlight Archive and Wheel of Time. Both are high fantasy, both are heroic fantasy, the first are apt to present their world in shades of black and white and maintain a lighter tone, while the latter are more grey and are willing to kill off cast members more freely.
I like my heroic fantasy to feel grounded, where the idea of combat as sport is a quick way to have your adventuring career ended.
As for entering the wrong dungeon, Trip.H offered a story from Secrets of the Temple-City in which the GM sent them into an unsuspected night ambush because he did not point out that the party's diplomatic mission was very hostile, more hostile than made sense for the plot. They were sent into the wrong dungeon with no choice by the module.
There were a lot of GM errors in that encounter. You shouldn't design around that level of incompetence.
For a third wrong dungeon, a warning to GMs after the Iron Gods' 2nd module Lords of Rust is that many parties will want to head to the capital city Starfall immediately after Lords of Rust because of clues in the module. But Starfall is the setting of the 5th module, Palace of Fallen Stars, and a 7th-level party is not yet strong enough to handle a 13th-level setting. Does the GM let the party get captured and tortured by the Technic League simply because the plot hooks for the 3rd module were poorly expounded? The Technic League won't release the PCs alive to continue the adventure path.
If the GM doesn't do a good job of signposting things, I consider that a GMing error or a sign that the party isn't absorbing the right information from the NPCs. In either case, I'd be tempted to give the party one encounter with an isolated foe from the area, make it clear that this is a basic grunt, and let them figure out what to do with that information. If they push on anyway, yeah, I'd kill them.
In Session Zero I describe the setting, plot, and theme of the adventure path, so that they can build appropriate characters, but I do not provide a road map of dungeons labeled by level. Do we GMs have to clearly label our dungeons with big signs, "Do not enter unless you are 13th level or higher"? Or can we use natural clues, such as rumors in local towns, that our players might miss?
PF2 is bad at being an open world game because of how it refuses to uncouple everything from PL. You can't be Bilbo sneaking past Smaug in PF2 unless the GM fudges things in your favour. OSR games with fewer things decided by the toss of a d20 are better at this style of game because clever tactics can allow for bypassing many foes that would simply toss a d20 and find you in PF2.
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You're treating things as exclusive to each other when they aren't.
You also might be doing the thing many people do where they hold a belief without ever questioning it even as the moments pop up that outsiders can point to as a reason why questioning the belief would make sense.
There's a difference in tolerance for losing due to poor RNG. I'm closer to the high end for that, while I suspect that PF2 selects for those closer to the middle or even slightly below.
Because you're not actually talking about the difference between an open door for bad luck and a closed door for bad luck. I laugh off bad luck easily; in my most recent session of PF2 I critically failed 5 times, even including managing to have 2 hero points provide me natural 1s.
I'll laugh off that same event as my player whiffs 5 attacks and we're being scraped off the floor after a TPK. S~+@ happens. Stack the deck so you survive the bad luck, or accept the outcome.
But if a game makes it so that any bad luck even close to what I experience means massive consequences like sitting out of play or having to say goodbye to the character I have to stop and ask "Why?" I mean, it's one thing if I'm satisfied with having played the character and ready to try something new or if I've intentionally maneuvered my character into risky circumstances, and an entirely different thing if I basically can't ever be in low- to mid-risk scenarios in the first place because of how a games dice mechanics work.
Is any combat scenario ever really low to mid-risk? I'd argue that even the easiest combat scenario is at best mid-risk because poor luck against a motivated foe can and should lead to you dying, messily.
And the "die while creating your character" thing is a great example. In my experience no one is actually amused by those results. It's like rolling for ability scores; even the people that "love" doing it are actually meaning that they love when it goes a particular way - and most of them are going to keep at the random tries until it does go that particular way. The bad results are not a thing they actively enjoy and are not even a thing which improves their enjoyment by providing contrast, they are just a time sink and a pretense that are tolerated because the rest of what happens once they have passed is actually enjoyed. And instead of questioning whether "I like random character creation" deserves an asterisk elaborating upon the points which could actually be removed without spoiling the experience, it's just "I like random character creation." Even as they sigh and groan about the result they rolled this time being obnoxious.
Dying in character creation is a punishment for being risky in character creation. The rewards for taking those paths are often high, but you risk your character dying before finding the spotlight if they're all you take. A less extreme case is the Cyberpunk lifepath system it can hand out rewards, but as is fitting for the setting, it most piles on the s### and sets the stage for why your character is at the fringe of society shooting chooms for ennies on the eddie.
Meanwhile I'm over here thinking death during character creation sounds a lot like a video game crashing when you try to start a new game. It's not even really "quirky" for it to have been an on-purpose possibility, it's just someone having had an idea and run with it because they don't care how their choices relate to player psychology, or because they didn't even have the design sense to consider what a player would be experiencing while attempting to play the game from any perspective other than their own.
A system like that, keeping away players that won't vibe with the game's ethos, is a good thing. Not every game is for everybody and putting that up front so players bounce off at intake rather than pitching a fit several sessions in is good for all involved.
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You are absolutely asking for the game to be easier and less lethal. I don't see the point in pretending you are not. It sends the wrong message to Paizo.No. Absolutely not asking for that. Categorically not asking for that. What I am asking for is slightly less RNG domination. A bit more predictability, and mainly at the lower levels.
I mean, Season of Ghosts is the next AP I'm considering using and I will have to spend more time reworking it to have exciting encounters, especially in the first chapter, than previous AP's because it is way, way too tame for my group.
We like our combats big, dynamic, spectacular and deadly. Not clear one room, rest, rince and repeat. More an entire floor/series of encounters chaining into each other, preferably with some additional environmental effects and objectives beyond killing team monster.
PC's being slightly more durable at lower levels means there is more freedom in encounter building, especially on the more challenging end. I'd like to be able to use L+2's and the above set-piece fights sooner and without a few consecutive high rolls immediately threatening a TPK instead of a set-back.
Bump the hit points then if you feel the need. I don't like spending much time under level 10 myself. I push the PCs up as fast as possible to get past level 10. 10 to 20 is the level range I most like to play in. I usually run 1 to 9 as fast as possible to push the PCs up.
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AV is a bad example. If you read what James Jacobs was doing with AV, lethality was intended. He made it like an old school sandbox module like Keep on the Borderlands or something similar where if you wander into the wrong area, you die. Just like in Keep on the Borderlands way back when, you wander into the Ogre or owlbear cave or the hobgoblins or evil church too early, it was goodbye character time.
I believe this was intended design to create that old school sandbox experience that wandering into particularly dangerous areas was a likely goodbye to your character and likely a TPK. Some of us old school people remember these TPKs in old modules because they were built to happen by design. It made beating those modules when you finally did feel great and memorable.
Another AP that shouldn't be in the conversation is Age of Ashes as it was early design and they over-tuned it because the module writers didn't have a full grasp of encounter design.
Otherwise, most APs have a few encounters here and there that may be rough, but are otherwise very manageable.
That seems directly at odds with James Jacob's GM advice at the start of Abomination Vaults, which states:
** spoiler omitted **
It seems pretty clear to me that the intention is not for players to walk into harder-than-expected challenges and just die, at least not if they're willing to retreat.
GMing advice has nothing to do with how he designed it. It's advice on how to handle a sandbox because he's helping customers deal with the high difficulty he put in when designing a module in an old school sandbox where you can walk into rooms you have no chance of winning.
I don't think it's a good example for complaints in this thread. AV was not built to be a by the numbers AP with railroading. It is a sandbox where you can randomly walk into the wrong encounter and get wasted quite easily and quickly if you are the wrong level.
You might not even have time to run unless the DM screams, "Run or you die."
I read AV and it was clear this was a sandbox with a few areas that if you walked into them at the wrong level, you likely weren't walking out. Your only chance is to run and I'm not sure inexperienced players would know this unless an experienced GM told them.
That quote is basically that advice. I'm pretty sure James Jacobs has been playing and designing RPGs long enough to know he tossed some owlbear rooms and minotaur labyrinths that level 1 or 2 characters could wander into they weren't going to wander out of if they chose the wrong direction.
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If the GM doesn't do a good job of signposting things, I consider that a GMing error or a sign that the party isn't absorbing the right information from the NPCs. In either case, I'd be tempted to give the party one encounter with an isolated foe from the area, make it clear that this is a basic grunt, and let them figure out what to do with that information. If they push on anyway, yeah, I'd kill them.
Good advice, but it reminds me that the thread's topic, "The game doesn't do a good job at teaching new player's how to play," could also cover teaching new GMs how to run the game properly. Leaving the proper clues for the PCs to follow is tough. I once made a mistake with a single word in a paragraph description and the PCs headed off west instead of north. The word was "first," the enemies were returning to their first oupost. The players decided that the first outpost was the first one that they had discovered, not the first one the enemies had established.
Foreshadowing future encounters is excellent, and it also gives the PCs practice against new types of enemies. But it is a GM tactics that newbies won't necessarily think of.
How can we teach new GMs?
Is any combat scenario ever really low to mid-risk? I'd argue that even the easiest combat scenario is at best mid-risk because poor luck against a motivated foe can and should lead to you dying, messily.
Taking out a sentry to sneak into a camp or castle is low risk. If something goes wrong and the sentry alerts the camp, then the party is in great position to run away. If the quick response to the alert can kill a character, then the camp was too tough to risk in the first place.
And my story in comment #557 yesterday about arresting drunken sailboat racers was a zero risk encounter. The drunk who tried to punch Chime-Ringer Virgil missed by a wide margin. I used 0th-level Dockhands for their stats, except with Sailing Lore. The party received 30 xp for good service to the police and no xp for defeating the four drunk people.
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Good advice, but it reminds me that the thread's topic, "The game doesn't do a good job at teaching new player's how to play," could also cover teaching new GMs how to run the game properly. Leaving the proper clues for the PCs to follow is tough. I once made a mistake with a single word in a paragraph description and the PCs headed off west instead of north. The word was "first," the enemies were returning to their first oupost. The players decided that the first outpost was the first one that they had discovered, not the first one the enemies had established.
Foreshadowing future encounters is excellent, and it also gives the PCs practice against new types of enemies. But it is a GM tactics that newbies won't necessarily think of.
How can we teach new GMs?
Products focused on onboarding new players, playing PFS sessions, watching gameplay-focused shows, etc. There are more resources now than ever for new players wanting to get into PF2.
I'd support making new player-focused APs and adding sidebars to the first chapters of future APs to help with this as well.
Taking out a sentry to sneak into a camp or castle is low risk. If something goes wrong and the sentry alerts the camp, then the party is in great position to run away. If the quick response to the alert can kill a character, then the camp was too tough to risk in the first place.
If you're sure that the sentry is alone and know the level of the camp, that's likely as close as it gets to low risk.
And my story in comment #557 yesterday about arresting drunken sailboat racers was a zero risk encounter. The drunk who tried to punch Chime-Ringer Virgil missed by a wide margin. I used 0th-level Dockhands for their stats, except with Sailing Lore. The party received 30 xp for good service to the police and no xp for defeating the four drunk people.
That is the exception that proves the rule.
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There is no guarantee a more consistent game favors the PCs. As silly example to prove the point: if I were to run PL+7 single enemy encounters for an entire campaign, I would wager that would be a pretty short campaign and we'd see some tpks. Is "consistently losing" not a consistent outcome? And as a less silly example, any horror game that wants simulate tropes where the protagonists die or walk away broken by their experiences or newfound knowledge will probably aim to consistently produce anti-player results.PL+7 encounters aren't a baseline assumption made by PF's design. In play that follows the expected encounter design rules, variance favours the enemy. It's why there's language about PL+3 and 4 encounters that specifically call out bad luck as a way they can turn from very challenging to a TPK.
I just wanted to point out that "variance favors/disfavors the players" will not be categorically true. Even with your example, I could counter by saying, "if you run a bunch of trivial encounters with PL-3 enemies, variance will favor the players," since it's the players who will crit and hit more. Who variance favors will depend a lot of the specifics of the game and game balance and can change from fight to fight.
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If RNG doesn't favour the foes, why has PF2 felt the need to ensure PCs start every session with a Hero Point and can earn more? Because they understand that players dislike losing actions (or characters) to variance and prefer a way to combat unwanted outcomes. This directly favours the PCs by reducing variance.
Dude, you are not logical.
The Hero Point mechanic allows PCs to reroll. This means that while both sides have to make saves vs the same spells, etc, only the PCs have the ability to get a 2nd attempt.
This is a systemic, mathematical advantage provided by the RNG. It's insane to see a mechanic that clearly gives the PCs an advantage, and somehow claim it's evidence they are at a disadvantage. Like, genuinely, you pretending it's evidence of the exact opposite has made me realize I have wasted my time trying to reason with with a dishonest fool who cannot/will not defend his positions.
.
Because of Hero Points, when a PC rolls a 1 vs Slow, no they didn't. They instead got a much less extreme roll. They reduce the negative impact of RNG, while keeping the benefits.
The high variance in outcome based on RNG, where a Slow spell can have 0 effect vs Slowed 2 the whole fight, is an advantage for the heroes.
The unbalanced action economy & actor count, the Dying mechanic, all of these are PC advantaged in the face of RNG.
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I just wanted to point out that "variance favors/disfavors the players" will not be categorically true. Even with your example, I could counter by saying, "if you run a bunch of trivial encounters with PL-3 enemies, variance will favor the players," since it's the players who will crit and hit more. Who variance favors will depend a lot of the specifics of the game and game balance and can change from fight to fight.
PF2 is designed around removing variance. The whole system puts massive guardrails on things like save-or-die spells, and the 4-DoS system expects you to play with a very specific range of encounters and encounter types. If we remove incapacitation and make a natural 20 always count as a critical success and a natural 1 always count as a critical failure, adding more variance, that same swarm with a few casters becomes terrifying.
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How can we teach new GMs?Products focused on onboarding new players, playing PFS sessions, watching gameplay-focused shows, etc. There are more resources now than ever for new players wanting to get into PF2.
I'd support making new player-focused APs and adding sidebars to the first chapters of future APs to help with this as well.
An AP for beginners sparks my imagination.
Sarkoris Scar Adventure Path
Here be demons! The Worldwound portal that let thousands of demons invade Sarkoris has been closed, but now people must reclaim the land. Join the immigrants who want to make the land called Sarkoris Scar habitable gain. Go through relentless training and then face the true challenge. A three-module adventure path for 1st to 10th level. Each module contains an article of advice for new GMs.
Beginner Boot Camp
To defeat demons, a prospective reclaimer must train. The drill sergeants know that any lapse could lead to death, so they won't be easy on your characters. But don't worry, because medics are on standby to patch the recruits back together. For 1st-level characters.
Into the Shudderwood
The fey horrors of the Shudderword allied with the champions of Mendev to hold off the demonic horde. As allies they are not particularly friendly. Go into the woods to learn from the creepiest creatures this side of the Abyss. For 4th-level characters.
Demon Hunter
Finally the heroes are ready to hunt demons. Yet their adversaries lie in wait for any slip-up in their tactics. Only remembering and exploiting the weaknesses of these fiends can defeat them. For 7th-level characters.
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How can we teach new GMs?Products focused on onboarding new players, playing PFS sessions, watching gameplay-focused shows, etc. There are more resources now than ever for new players wanting to get into PF2.
I'd support making new player-focused APs and adding sidebars to the first chapters of future APs to help with this as well.
An AP for beginners sparks my imagination.
Sarkoris Scar Adventure Path
Here be demons! The Worldwound portal that let thousands of demons invade Sarkoris has been closed, but now people must reclaim the land. Join the immigrants who want to make the land called Sarkoris Scar habitable gain. Go through relentless training and then face the true challenge. A three-module adventure path for 1st to 10th level. Each module contains an article of advice for new GMs.Beginner Boot Camp
To defeat demons, a prospective reclaimer must train. The drill sergeants know that any lapse could lead to death, so they won't be easy on your characters. But don't worry, because medics are on standby to patch the recruits back together. For 1st-level characters.Into the Shudderwood
The fey horrors of the Shudderword allied with the champions of Mendev to hold off the demonic horde. As allies they are not particularly friendly. Go into the woods to learn from the creepiest creatures this side of the Abyss. For 4th-level characters.Demon Hunter
Finally the heroes are ready to hunt demons. Yet their adversaries lie in wait for any slip-up in their tactics. Only remembering and exploiting the weaknesses of these fiends can defeat them. For 7th-level characters.
We should take this to a new thread and work on this idea.
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On the variance and randomness topic if you removed all randomness from the game it becomes a puzzle where you either have the right pieces or not.
Easy puzzles might be solved by almost anything players do while impossible puzzles cannot be solved no matter what players do.
Some Fire emblem games on the hardest difficulty exemplify this because they become a series of correct choices to solve the battle with incorrect choices killing off characters.
Is it to the players favor to remove the randomness? It depends on how good they are at puzzles and how forgiving the GM is in making them. But also what yellowpete said. Thats exactly whats going on in P2E.