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We should take this to a new thread and work on this idea.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! ...
Okay, I created the thread: An Adventure Path for Beginners.
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Saw this post over on reddit, it's a post from a newbie player seeking advice & asking for a "is this normal?" check. Very fitting for this topic.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1kthhlz/are_we_doing_somethi ng_wrong_our_party_feels/
They are currently L4 in Kingmaker.
Interesting to see what is, and what is not, being talked about in regard to OP's rough low level experience.
(And yes, I'm pointing the finger at the low-level HP math as having a lot of the blame.)
Variance definitely favors the monsters in PF2.
Not inherently so, but rather because variance favors the underdog, and the monsters are the underdog in PF2. If your party rolls up on a Severe encounter, you are an Extreme+ encounter for the monsters (basically a 240XP encounter). This is the case in the vast majority of combats.
It is 100% true that in a vacuum, RNG is usually a net-negative against players, because the players need to win 100% of the time, and foes only need to get lucky enough to kill only once.
But, this is not really ~accurate in that the scope of that framing is the whole campaign of fights.
As soon as you zoom into a single fight, in a mirrored rules system, RNG is already neutral, helping and harming both sides in equal measure.
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However, it's important to remember that pf2 is not in a vacuum, nor has mirrored rules; pf2 has asymmetric mechanics that influence the relationship to RNG.
Hero Points are pretty obvious, so instead I'll harp on about the Dying state.
By default, only PCs get to drop Dying when taking damage. Not only is this a *massive* advantage generally, but the nature of nullifying the "lucky killing blow" & all overkill damage specifically helps the PCs suffer less from RNG compared to foes.
A big "question" that can help explore this and find the systemic nuggets involved is: "who can afford to gamble with RNG, when, and why?"
In pf2, the PCs can constantly afford these gambles in ways that foes cannot.
PCs have safety nets like Dying, Hero Points, and fortune abilities that foes do not. Even something simple like having the max R Heal spell on standby is relevant here; a tool that works to reverse damage is a tool that allows a party to gamble more with the possibility of taking damage.
(This is *especially* true for the common scenario of a PC barely surviving a hit. With a big Heal on standby, the party can afford to gamble with dodges and leave them at low HP. It'll often be outright superior tactically to save the 2A of a preventative heal, and keep going on the offense most of the time.
The "luck ran out" consequence of that final hit connecting is reduced by the lack of negative HP, to the point that spending 2A on a preventative Heal can often be mathematically worse due to the combo of "wasting" the negative HP damage +plus+ the cost of spending those early turn actions on healing instead of more offense (including action-stealing debuffs).
Foe's cannot afford any of those gambles. They typically do not even get to play with / make choices like that at all, due to how rare healing even is for them.)
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These are not simply "making up for" the baseline campaign-aggregate foe-favored bais; imo the asymmetry of Dying mechanic alone makes pf2's high RNG variance drastically favor the PCs.
Because even that basic tenet of "PCs only need get unlucky once" is the opposite of true in pf2. Foes need to get lucky multiple times, while PCs only need to get lucky once.
Again, it's honestly astounding that once R3 spells come online, spellcasters have a fallback choice of Slow to fish for a fight-winning anti-climax nat 1. IMO, that's the kind of un-fun RNG that most games know to avoid these days.
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Trip H. The play experience you want is already available. Just use pl -1 to pl+1 creatures. Using pl+1 as bosses and +0 and -1 as the majority of encounter budget.
No extra HP needed. No game design changes needed.
Doing this will mean the party will almost always not run into incapacitate issues, likely wont face massive damage issues, won’t fear going down in a single hit excepting the most extreme roll results from the highest tuned pl+1s against the lowest tuned pcs.
What I don’t like about changing things is this. If you want the easier experience you thave the tools and encounter guidelines to make it that way. If others want encounters that allow what you call BS kills they also have the tools to make those encounters by putting in pl+2 and +3 creatures.
Both ways of making encounters give players a good chance of beating them but they need to be approached differently.
Pl+2 and 3 creatures have the raw numeric advantage but less actions compared to the party.
So the party actions that work best in those fights are ones that close the numeric gap and further reduce the creatures actions. Because of the numeric superiority 1 instance of bad luck or one risky move on the pcs part is more punishing than it is with any one instance with a lower level creature. But then again that higher level creature has fewer instances where they can act in comparison to the same budget full of lower level creatures.
This is the basic design that balances things out. If that higher level creature had impact similar to what a pl 0 creature has now and the pl 0 creature has impact like a pl-2 has now that would make the game a lot easier overall.
Think about the way a party acts with lower level creatures. How do they approach combat? Are they more tactical or do they exercise brute force?
By changing the math to give PCs more hits till they drop you shift the pl+2 and 3 fights to less cautions tactical approaches and more brute force approaches.
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Again, it has never been about the as-is math making the game "too difficult." Suggested changes are not about making it "easier," it's about making the combat more fun to play.
The specific tactics and strategies that "become meta" in a low HP, high RNG game are imo not fun.
(and high RNG swings really do make it harder for newbies to figure out what is and is not a good strat)
Right now, low level play involves a lot of fretting outside of engagement range. Once exchanging blows is unavoidable, combat devolves into a rocket-tag style rush down.
(this is also why leaving PCs Dying to do more offense is very common at low level)
As someone who plays Alchemists, low level play mostly means loading the party with prebuffs before the fight, especially Fast Healing from Soothing, maybe using one bomb, and then spamming Electric Arc.
The balance between different options is completely different at low level, where low HP means damage is king.
And I'll say again, now that I have been through it, it's not "hard." It's just an unfun slog where you *have* to shrug at the crazy RNG swings dropping creatures on both sides, because the only thing you can "do" about it is to level up as quickly as possible.
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To summarize: it's never been about low level play being "difficult" (as pf2 is not a game you can really loose) it's about the differences in math making low level play unfun. Especially the differences in what a "good combat choice" is for a PC.
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As to the "what to do about it" phase, it's a pretty serious lift to suggest editing every encounter.
Most pf2 play is with their published APs. I'm not talking about homegrown campaigns, and never have been.
For a GM running AP. If a single bonus to PC HP can help at least the PC side of the "bad math," then that imo is a much more appealing edit.
Even if editing the foes is on the table, adding a flat HP bonus to them as well seems a much easier, and more predictable, alteration than trying to edit a level change.
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Yeah, I'm not attempting to frame it as some kind of cure-all.
The main "hard" reason to do something like +20HP is to change the breakpoint of when PCs exit one-shot / full-->down territory due to HP growth.
How someone plays will be suuuper different psychologically if they are confident they can take a hit/ stay up until their next turn, versus how they play if they think they will drop from a single unit of aggression.
Think about a shooter game, like TF2. You are running around doing your business, then get 1-shot sniped.
Now that you know there is a sniper able to one-shot, that completely changes your approach.
Again, it's not about it being "imbalanced" or "difficult," but it instead enforces different playstyles, one that players generally see as un-fun.
Bringing that back to pf2, it's not even consistent across the levels.
It's like if a sniper's headshot damage changed after the payload hit the first checkpoint, and can no longer one-shot.
It's just a very abnormal outcome resultant from their chosen math, one that's completely alien to most gamers.
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Again, it has never been about the as-is math making the game "too difficult." Suggested changes are not about making it "easier," it's about making the combat more fun to play.
The specific tactics and strategies that "become meta" in a low HP, high RNG game are imo not fun.
(and high RNG swings really do make it harder for newbies to figure out what is and is not a good strat)Right now, low level play involves a lot of fretting outside of engagement range. Once exchanging blows is unavoidable, combat devolves into a rocket-tag style rush down.
(this is also why leaving PCs Dying to do more offense is very common at low level)As someone who plays Alchemists, low level play mostly means loading the party with prebuffs before the fight, especially Fast Healing from Soothing, maybe using one bomb, and then spamming Electric Arc.
The balance between different options is completely different at low level, where low HP means damage is king.
And I'll say again, now that I have been through it, it's not "hard." It's just an unfun slog where you *have* to shrug at the crazy RNG swings dropping creatures on both sides, because the only thing you can "do" about it is to level up as quickly as possible.
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To summarize: it's never been about low level play being "difficult" (as pf2 is not a game you can really loose) it's about the differences in math making low level play unfun. Especially the differences in what a "good combat choice" is for a PC.
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As to the "what to do about it" phase, it's a pretty serious lift to suggest editing every encounter.
Most pf2 play is with their published APs. I'm not talking about homegrown campaigns, and never have been.For a GM running AP. If a single bonus to PC HP can help at least the PC side of the "bad math," then that imo is a much more appealing edit.
Even if editing the foes is on the table, adding a flat HP bonus to them as well seems a much easier, and more predictable, alteration than trying to edit a level change.
Ok so this is a conversation about how fun the math makes the game.
Bad math for you means the current design does is not fun for you when PL +2 and higher creatures are introduced at low levels.Thats pretty subjective territory. Like I said you have the tools to make a game with only PL -1 to +1 creatures and keep things in that zone making encounters feel a certain way consistently. PL+2 and higher have a different dynamic and your right that they have a learning curve to them. You can't just stride up and attack and stand there till the other thing drops like you can with lower level creatures.
But I find that learning curve fun. I like having a range of dynamics that come out of the different encounters I can set up.
But more to your situation, It seems the fact that APs use PL+2 and higher creatures and that you play them means you are subjected to a game that is harder than you would like.
And I disagree on the difficulty comment. It is a massive factor when your giving the PCs more HP or lowering enemy damage. It is a lot less difficult to play a game where you can stride and go all out without thinking about positioning and defensive abilities. Which is the result of more HP for the PCs as they now have the HP to take enough hits to get the kill before they could go down. It invalidates defensive built characters because not going offensive is just a waste of time when the extra defense at the cost of offense becomes excessive and unneccessary.
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Again, what "PL+2" even means changes based on the level.
Which is why, even if it was an easy to edit variable (which it really is not), I don't think focusing on PL +- is the right tool for the job. That changes a whole lotta math in ways that may be harder to predict than one might assume.
Flatly increasing the time to kill via +HP would imo be a better way to let players have room for more setup-->payoff style tactics, feel less pressure to power-game optimize, avoid the "oneshot mindset," etc.
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And you seem to oddly unable to accept that I enjoy high difficulty games.
It's has been a looong time since I've seen a PC death at a table.
I *want* the threat of PC death to be genuine, but the asterisk is that a PC death has to be earned, and it needs to be legit. No scripted save-or-die nonsense.
We actually did get pretty close in Stolen Fate a few sessions ago. The Barbarian was just so far from the party that when they dropped, it was a long run to get them back up.
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...Again, what "PL+2" even means changes based on the level.
Which is why, even if it was an easy to edit variable (which it really is not), I don't think focusing on PL +- is the right tool for the job. That changes a whole lotta math in ways that may be harder to predict than one might assume.
Flatly increasing the time to kill via +HP would imo be a better way to let players have room for more setup-->payoff style tactics, feel less pressure to power-game optimize, avoid the "oneshot mindset," etc.
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And you seem to oddly unable to accept that I enjoy high difficulty games.
It's has been a looong time since I've seen a PC death at a table.
I *want* the threat of PC death to be genuine, but the asterisk is that a PC death has to be earned, and it needs to be legit. No scripted save-or-die nonsense.We actually did get pretty close in Stolen Fate a few sessions ago. The Barbarian was just so far from the party that when they dropped, it was a long run to get them back up.
Well there is something to the difference of what PL+2 means at any given level.
What the charts I posted showed was that there is a increased capacity for taking strike damage as characters level. But there are things that chart cannot show, namely as levels increase creatures gain stronger abilities beyond basic strikes.PCs have to have more overall resilience to strike damage because there is more going on than just strikes. More de buffing auras, spell effects, combo attacks making more strikes, AOE abilities ect...
The creatures at higher levels are getting new abilities to continue to to provide interesting challenges appropriate for PCs getting better at taking strike damage.
Conversely at the lowest levels creatures dont have super impressive abilities and most rely on strikes so they need to be more effective at the lower levels vs PC ability to take them than they do at the higher levels when they have a lot more going for them.
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I've got no clue why you are protesting this now.
Furthermore, it's a little disingenuous to bring up monster abilites/etc increasing, without putting it into context of PCs also growing in defensive abilities, such all the different forms of passive damage resistance, tHP effects, etc.
It kinda feels like you are needlessly re-litigating what has more or less already been agreed up.
Low level combat is known to be much more lethal, with a much lower "hits till down" number than higher level pf2 play. This includes special abilities, etc.
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I've got no clue why you are protesting this now.
Furthermore, it's a little disingenuous to bring up monster abilites/etc increasing, without putting it into context of PCs also growing in defensive abilities, such all the different forms of passive damage resistance, tHP effects, etc.
It kinda feels like you are needlessly re-litigating what has more or less already been agreed up.
Low level combat is known to be much more lethal, with a much lower "hits till down" number than higher level pf2 play. This includes special abilities, etc.
I actually don't understand your response. Nothing has been settled and accepted. I mean plenty of points have been made about how there is no actual bad math design but that hasn't convinced you has it?
I was giving you the fact that as PCs level what constitutes a PL+2 changes. But tempering it with the fact that as strikes get less and less affective at taking out PCs in the same number of hits creatures are gaining more ways to take out PCs than only using basic strikes. So in actuality the danger of a PL+2 doesn't necessarily go down, for some creatures it could be considered as going up.Also when you mention defensive abilities are you saying that those abilities are canceling out the offensive abilities creatures are gaining? Mostly they are only mitigating them.
And I have to say this about low level play. The PCs are more vulnerable and bad luck can kill them sure, but I have to disagree that it is more difficult. There are so many less moving parts at low level that its much easier to work out how to gain advantages and beat those creatures in encounters.
But to tie it back to training new players, it is at these low levels that system mastery makes the difference before all the new shiny abilities are gained from leveling. And this game does have a lot of system wide options for players in combat. At later levels you have all the system wide elements but both PCs and creatures add in new abilities to complicate things you might have taken for granted as safe in lower level play.
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Dude, you still cannot stop putting words in my mouth and arguing against a straw man that does not exist.
I've never once said low level play is "more difficult," nor that it should be "easier."
FFS, stop.
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Dude, you still cannot stop putting words in my mouth and arguing against a straw man that does not exist.
I've never once said low level play is "more difficult," nor that it should be "easier."
FFS, stop.
Your only solution presented for fixing the issue does little but make the experience easier. The math and logic behind why adding extra HP at low levels favours the PCs has been made perfectly clear. Just admit you want the first few levels to be easier.
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Your only solution presented for fixing the issue does little but make the experience easier. The math and logic behind why adding extra HP at low levels favours the PCs has been made perfectly clear. Just admit you want the first few levels to be easier.Dude, you still cannot stop putting words in my mouth and arguing against a straw man that does not exist.
I've never once said low level play is "more difficult," nor that it should be "easier."
FFS, stop.
For a logical debate to clear up a strawman argument or an accussation of a strawman argument, the debaters should clearly state their positions. Trip.H has partially stated his position: he never said to make the game easier. (And he made a more recent post that I have only skimmed so far.) RPG-Geek, in contrast, argues about Trip.H's "only solution" without mentioning any details about that solution except that it is easier. Is RPG-Geek talking about the proposal for more hit points or the proposal for less variance in dice rolls or a third option?
Further muddling the issue is that in a brainstorming thread like this, we often propose incomplete solutions in the hope that other people will help refine them.
Let me start with a solid position. Back on May 16 in comment #459 I said:
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).
I later realized a 4th solution would be that the GM start the game at a higher level, such as the adventure paths like Spore War that start at 11th level.
Let's talk about the most radical solution I proposed: an extra 12 hit points for all characters and creatures. The purpose of these extra hit points is to prevent an early downing of a character or creature in the first turn before they get to act. It also reshapes the hit point curve to more closely resemble the shape of the damage curve.
Does it favor the PCs? A little. A typical human bard currently starts at 17 hp and a fighter would be 19 hp. In contrast, Table 2–7: Hit Points in the GM Core suggests that a 1st-level creature could have low hp at 14-16, moderate hp at 19-21, and high hp at 24-26. Taking 18 as the average for PCs, 12 extra hp is 67% more. Taking 20 as the average for creatures, 12 extra hp is 60% more. The PCs get an extra 7% benefit in quantity.
On the other hand, PCs are much more likely to rely on spell slots. And more hit points on the opponents means consuming more spells to take down the monsters, so the blaster spellcasters are shortchanged. Likewise for the healer spellcasters, because the longer battles will mean that they lose more hp and require more healing back to full. I think that that disadvantage is balanced against the 7% advantage.
That is a clearly stated solution. Please state other proposals just as clearly.
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For a logical debate to clear up a strawman argument or an accussation of a strawman argument, the debaters should clearly state their positions. Trip.H has partially stated his position: he never said to make the game easier. (And he made a more recent post that I have only skimmed so far.)
Every time I try to state a flat position, the entire conversation backslides thanks to surprise contrarianism against what's supposed to be a mutually agreed premise, lol.
Like above where now tim's suddenly arguing that low level play *doesn't* have a significant different "hits until PC down" number compared to high level play.
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I'll re-stake a flag upon these claims:
* The "hits until PC down" (theoretical) metric changes across pf2's levels, being much lower at low level
* It is statistically unavoidable in low Lvl play that PCs will suffer "full-->down" or "pancake" events with no way to react and interrupt that sub-outcome. This can be outright one-shots, the dreaded: reg hit --> nat 20 combo, etcetera.
* The specific difference in player perception between being able to survive one unit of aggression and retain agency to retreat/heal/etc, |VS| the perception of a likely full-->down event, is hugely impactful upon the player's choices in and outside of combat.
I'll leave it there for the moment, as I gotta take a whiz.
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I didn't strawman you at all.
We have all been here for the thread so far.
You say the game design is bad for low level play. You assert the math at low levels is bad. When you say bad you mean the assertion that low levels don't do as well against PL+2 and 3 creatures as higher levels do.
You wanted 20 more hp at level 1 to fix what you perceived as a problem. But now it seems your asserting that you can give those 20 HP and not change the difficulty of those low levels?
And I will stand by my statement that vulnerability at low levels is a different thing than difficulty. That low level characters are more vulnerable but because of all the other circumstances at those levels the game is actually less difficult.
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Adding hit points at level 1 changes more than just how quickly characters creatures drop.
1. It makes all the death and dying rules happen much less frequently, making low level death almost impossible, and frees up hero points from being used to save characters.
2. In combat healing, especially low level, gets made a lot worse.
3. Out of combat healing takes even longer.
4. It makes low damage weapons a lot worse.
5. It makes casting a lot of damage cantrips worse too.
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Well, looks like my rather tame post got mod deleted. Super frustrating that there's 0 notification when that happens.
Good think I copied it out just in case, lol. Edited down as the post it was partly replying to also got mod removed.
honestly, might as well start separating out my comments into multiple posts. That way, the spicy responses to a@*@#%! comments don't get the real talk shadow nuked.
Anyways, below is the copy/paste:
If I can inject any meme, how about this one:
difficulty is relative and in pf2, it may depend more upon the specific optimization and state of the PCs before combat than it does upon the encounter itself.
A Wiz Linguist full of fun feats and neat spells, in contrast to a "meta" Wiz is simply a bigger difference than if a fight is PL +0 or +1.
Even a clever party preparing for the wrong fight will massively spike the difficulty of the combat itself.We already talk about this all the time, such as the difference btwn having the ability to hit a weakness every silvered strike vs 0 PCs being able to proc it.
This was most blatant when I started AP 2 & 3 so soon after clearing my first. I even played a Chirurgeon for all three. Even though PCs were still falling Dying (at low level), it wasn't "difficult" because of how absurdly quickly foes were being popped in Gatewalkers, and how the SoT party quickly gained defense & mitigation greater than the damage that the foes could output.
The "noobie dif" of it no longer being our first pf2 AP was just that massive.
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IMO, when noobies play the game, they play it at their "normal" until they get pancaked.
After that, you have the "sniper mindset" problem, where their entire approach changes because of the unreactable full-->down threat.
I've seen this mean something as small as swapping a cantrip for Shield, then escalate to larger spell/feat changes.
I've also directly seen a player get thrashed, then on the spot ask the GM if they can rework their PC between sessions.
(I've also seen a player who didn't react to combat outcomes (pancaking) at all, and kept Leroy-ing inside foe formations until the GM talked to them about it over PM)
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The presence of easy full-->downs changes the psychology of play in a way that "makes the game easier" because of how the players react on a meta level.
What's really a systemic fun hazard for pf2 imo, is that nothing the players can do will likely work to stop them from getting pancaked at those starting levels, so there is no "pressure release" until the uneven HP growth outpaces the incoming damage growth.
Yet, the "real danger" of getting pancaked is actually quite small in pf2 imo. Wounded is not a performance-affecting debuff, and it's not going to persist for any significant amount of time.
Even the notion that noobies may not take 10 to clear Wounded is one tiny example of how this low HP math affects difficulty. If dropping becomes a sometimes thing, they will have less opportunities to engage w/ the Wounded condition, and will be more likely to enter combat already Wounded.
(Because I have to clarify else it'll be misrepresented: I'm not saying that noobies adventuring while Wounded, while vets never do, is a "good" thing. I'm only saying that it increases the difficulty in an irrefutable way)
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Rephrasing the prior point: pf2 is a game where it is "normal" for low Lvl PCs to get dropped Dying.
This is abnormal to most player expectations, putting a strong, yet phantom, pressure upon them to power game and optimize to avoid that "normal" bad outcome of the Dying state.
Because this is so baked into the game via low HP math, they never feel comfortable and exit the "sniper mindset" until they see PCs eating crits and staying up, for sake of discussion, after hitting L6.
Parties of players that normally would be having fun with sub-optimal builds and archetypes are pressured to re-do those choices. It's already seen as "mandatory" to max one's starting attribute points a certain way. It's a common Q&A change to edit a PC with KAS of +2/3 into a +4, which is literally just making the game easier. There's no other way to phrase the outcome of such a stat change, that kind of optimization has the function of "decreasing the difficulty."
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So, no, I disagree with the notion that upping starting HP will net-total make the game "easier," especially the notion that it'll make the game "easier in a way that's less fun."
As I have said before, I do genuinely think that increasing the time to kill via an HP bump would not significantly decrease "difficulty" due to how turn based ttrpgs are so massively influenced by the PC's build and RNG. Giving the players more room to exhibit risky behavior can often result in them doing exactly that, with those risks leading to difficult situations.
A change like +20 starting HP absolutely will increase the number of hits it takes to down PCs, and that in isolation will give the PCs an advantage.
(Though if the +HP is ~mirrored, that wonderfully de-fangs that objection, so let's assume that's the assumption going forward)
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I didn't strawman you at all.
We have all been here for the thread so far.You say the game design is bad for low level play. You assert the math at low levels is bad. When you say bad you mean the assertion that low levels don't do as well against PL+2 and 3 creatures as higher levels do.
You wanted 20 more hp at level 1 to fix what you perceived as a problem. But now it seems your asserting that you can give those 20 HP and not change the difficulty of those low levels?
And I will stand by my statement that vulnerability at low levels is a different thing than difficulty. That low level characters are more vulnerable but because of all the other circumstances at those levels the game is actually less difficult.
When you say bad you mean the assertion that low levels don't do as well against PL+2 and 3 creatures as higher levels do.
I have no idea why you are so invested in being so obviously wrong, you refuse to let this go, and you keep twisting my assertions into things that I never said.
As stated above, I've got those 3 core assertions around the low level math. None of those involve PL+X. I kept it all PC-side as to the "bad HP growth math."
Iirc Mathmuse keyed into the fact that the absurd early acceleration meant that a PL+X fight would make the "hits till down" metric even more absurd.
My entire point has always been about how a full-->down meta changes how people play the games, what is and is not meta, etc. It's effectively a time to kill of 0.
IMO, math that results in that kind of "0 agency downs" is "bad math."
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Yes, you are still strawmanning me a fair bit. I can directly say
The main "hard" reason to do something like +20HP is to change the breakpoint of when PCs exit one-shot / full-->down territory due to HP growth.
yet this somehow goes in one ear and out the other. You still keep putting words in my mouth.
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I'll go ahead and pin you down a bit. Do you or do you not think that low level pf2 play has a significantly lower "hits until PC's down" metric compared to higher level? I'm talking about this "end your turn at 100% HP, then are Dying before you get to take the next turn" scenario.
You seem to be contradicting yourself, so I'd like to get at least this straight.
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Adding hit points at level 1 changes more than just how quickly characters creatures drop.
[...]
Absolutely.
However, making other changes like weak / elite templates, etc, would seem to have many *more* knock-on changes than a +HP boost would.
It's also a bit reductive/inaccurate to say things like healing get "worse" when they are able to reverse the exact same amount of damage as before; it's just that the damage is instead a smaller % of the HP total.
As far as damage-dealing options becoming less appealing due to doing less % foe HP, umm. Yes?
That's part of the point? I'm pretty sure I'm not stroking out, and that the community considers it a bad thing that low level meta play is dominated by damage, while buffs/debuffs struggle to get used much at all.
More swings before the foe drops means Bless gets a little more viable to cast, etc.
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Adding hit points at level 1 changes more than just how quickly characters creatures drop.
[...]
Absolutely.
However, making other changes like weak / elite templates, etc, would seem to have many *more* knock-on changes than a +HP boost would.
It's also a bit reductive/inaccurate to say things like healing get "worse" when they are able to reverse the exact same amount of damage as before; it's just that the damage is instead a smaller % of the HP total.
As far as damage-dealing options becoming less appealing due to doing less % foe HP, umm. Yes?
That's part of the point? I'm pretty sure I'm not stroking out, and that the community considers it a bad thing that low level meta play is dominated by damage, while buffs/debuffs struggle to get used much at all.
More swings before the foe drops means Bless gets a little more viable to cast, etc.
How would you know what the community thinks given the concentrated number of posters in this thread and you the main one making the argument for your position? How does that equate to community agreement by even 51%?
I would rather see what Paizo's internal data states on the matter as I consider this an unimportant change in my considerations for games.
Most games are:
1. Point-based systems that are more lethal like GURPPs which allows targeted shots that near guarantee death.
2. A level-based wound system like Boot Hill which takes random death to a much higher level.
2. A point-based wound system that is pretty easy to die on as well. Wounds stack pretty easily and you really have to ramp up defensive skills to counter them.
3. LARPing type of play where death is some narrated event with no RNG.
4. Or a level-hit point system which makes wounds and dying ambiguous with no targeted strikes allowing for higher survivability. They primarily operate on the idea that low level players are green and more easily slain until they become near invincible superheroes at the highest levels. PF1 and 2, D&D.
What other types of systems are there that are less lethal than a PF/D&D type of game at low level or low point starting total?
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I didn't strawman you at all.
We have all been here for the thread so far.You say the game design is bad for low level play. You assert the math at low levels is bad. When you say bad you mean the assertion that low levels don't do as well against PL+2 and 3 creatures as higher levels do.
You wanted 20 more hp at level 1 to fix what you perceived as a problem. But now it seems your asserting that you can give those 20 HP and not change the difficulty of those low levels?
And I will stand by my statement that vulnerability at low levels is a different thing than difficulty. That low level characters are more vulnerable but because of all the other circumstances at those levels the game is actually less difficult.
When you say bad you mean the assertion that low levels don't do as well against PL+2 and 3 creatures as higher levels do.
I have no idea why you are so invested in being so obviously wrong, you refuse to let this go, and you keep twisting my assertions into things that I never said.
As stated above, I've got those 3 core assertions around the low level math. None of those involve PL+X. I kept it all PC-side as to the "bad HP growth math."
Iirc Mathmuse keyed into the fact that the absurd early acceleration meant that a PL+X fight would make the "hits till down" metric even more absurd.
My entire point has always been about how a full-->down meta changes how people play the games, what is and is not meta, etc. It's effectively a time to kill of 0.
IMO, math that results in that kind of "0 agency downs" is "bad math.".
Yes, you are still strawmanning me a fair bit. I can directly say
The main "hard" reason to do something like +20HP is to change the breakpoint of when PCs exit one-shot / full-->down territory due to HP growth.yet this somehow goes in one ear and out the other. You still keep putting words in my mouth.
.
I'll go ahead and pin you down a bit. Do you or do you not think...
The one shot thing you see as a problem only happen at PL+2 or more for low level PCs and only when looking only at strike damage to PC HP in a vacuum. Just dont use PL+2 or more in your game and you wont experience it.
Really I didn't strawman you at all. Rather I think there is a disconnect for you between what your claiming is a problem and what actually causes the things you don't like.The other thing that weve said time and time again is the things you dont like others do so for them its not a problem. You claim what you want to happen isnt making the game easier now and that is absurd. You increase the HP of PCs you will make PCs stronger and the game will be easier for them. thats not a far out claim there.
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You say the game design is bad for low level play. You assert the math at low levels is bad. When you say bad you mean the assertion that low levels don't do as well against PL+2 and 3 creatures as higher levels do.
Why merely assert the math when I can do the math!
I looked over the 1st-level common creatures in the Archives of Nethys and discovered the Paizo carefully capped their weapon damage at 1d8+4 (Elk and Oread Guard) with more creatures dealing 1d6+4 or 1d8+3. A critical hit with 1d8+4 deals an average of 17 damage. That will take down a human wizard but not a human fighter.
At 2nd level 1d8+4 and 1d10+4 damage showed up fairly often, but I also saw 1d8+6 (Azarketi Explorer), 2d6+4 (Boar), 1d10+6 (Cave Fisher), 2d6+3 (Deinonychus), 1d12+4 (Draugr), 1d8+6 (Giant Tapir), etc.
Let's look at the Boar, a Remasterd creature 2 in the Monster Core. It has "Melee [one-action] tusk +10 [+5/+0], Damage 2d6+4 piercing." A 1st-level character in light or medium armor has at best AC 17, so a boar will crit on an unpenalized attack on a roll of 17 or better, a 20% chance. Its average damage on a critical hit is 22 piercing damage.
The chance of rolling exactly 22 I can calculate as a 3-dimensional cross-section of a 4-dimensional object. Let me split that into 11 2-dimensional objects for simplicity. (1*1 + 2*2 + 3*3 + 4*4 +5*5 + 6*6 + 5*5 + 4*4 + 3*3 + 2*2 + 1*1)/(36*36) = 146/1296 = 0.1127. Thus, we have a 55.6% chance of rolling a 22 or more. The chance of rolling exactly 21 is (1*2 + 2*3 + 3*4 + 4*5 + 5*6 + 6*5 + 5*4 + 4*3 + 3*2 + 2*1)/1296 = 140/1296 = 0.1080. We have a 66.4 chance of rolling a 21 or more. The chance of rolling exactly 20 is (1*3 + 2*4 + 3*5 + 4*6 + 5*5 + 6*4 + 5*3 + 4*2 + 3*1)/1296 = 125/1296 = 0.0965, We have a 76.0% chance of rolling a 20 or more.
Thus, a boar has a (20%)(76%) = 15% chance of taking down a 1st-level character with AC 17 and 20 hit points in one blow. If it has only a regular hit, 50% chance, on its first Strike, then its second Strike as a 45% chance of hitting, and the combined damage of two regular hits also have a 76% chance of dealing 20 or more damage, so that is another 15%. And that neglects the 5% chance that the second Strike is a critical hit, so the chance of taking down the 1st-level character if the boar does Stride, Strike, Strike is 32%. (And I am avoiding the +2 circumstance bonus from Boar Charge.)
I think that that is too high for fun play. That is the most extreme 2nd-level case, but creatures such as the Giant Tapir, Tatzlwyrm, Triton, and Wereboar come close.
So perhaps a 1st-level human fighter should have 24 hp to stay on his feet after a critical hit on a boar charge. With CON +2, the current fighter would have 20 hp, so he would need 4 extra hp. A rogue would need 6 extra hp.
Then we get to 3rd-level creatures, such as an Ankhrav, "Melee [one-action] mandibles +13 [+8/+3] (acid), Damage 1d8+4 piercing plus 1d6 acid. It has a 35% chance of a critical hit against AC 17 and its average damage on a crit is 24. Fortunately, the +13 to hit is exceptional. Most of the 3rd-level heavy hitters, such as a Grizzly Bear, have only a +11.
Either give the fighter 6 extra hit points, or avoid all 3rd-level high-damage creatures. The boar and the ankhrav can have 6 extra hp, too, boosting 40 hp to 46 hp.
The one shot thing you see as a problem only happen at PL+2 or more for low level PCs and only when looking only at strike damage to PC HP in a vacuum. Just dont use PL+2 or more in your game and you wont experience it.
And with the highest-damage PL+1 creatures when PL equals 1st level.
But Bluemagetim just restated Trip.H's and my complaint about the lowest levels: they are more fragile than the higher levels that can stand up to all PL+2 creatures. Because of this, an experienced GM like me would avoid the heavy-hitting creatures, saying that boars and grizzly bears are not for 1st-level encounters. New GMs will use those real-world animals because their encounter budget looks reasonable. Players will learn early in PF2 that PCs drop easily, and over-prepare for that at higher levels.
A more consistent risk level would aid in learning how to play PF2.
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Thank you Mathmuse for running some numbers.
So in your example those are creatures with extreme damage for their level.
They are no joke. Like with that boar. So how you engage them and position your team is important, and beating those odds through better tactics is fun for some and not fun for others. Maybe the better option is to not fight a boar showing nature some respect lol. That fighter with 20 HP and likely 18 AC in breastplate and +1 dex should be positioned to be the boars first target and with a shield raised would have a 20 AC and 5 hardness from a shield block to stave off that now lower chance of getting crit.
The basics coming into play become important to stay up in the fight. You can't leave the boar to go after any one they want, you need to engage it in a way that gives the party an advantage. Recall knowledge becomes important to know that reflex save is a weakness. Trip the thing every round to waste its actions.
Now if its fun or not depends on how much you enjoy a tactical combat where mistakes can cost you the fight. And lets throw this out there, if the boar is able to charge one of the lower AC members of the party then that was the parties first misstep against an extreme damage PL+1 that is doing about as much damage as a high damage PL+2.
Also the boar is tempered with just 15 AC so after a trip and demoralize or fear the creatures 40 hp wont keep it up very long.
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For a logical debate to clear up a strawman argument or an accussation of a strawman argument, the debaters should clearly state their positions. Trip.H has partially stated his position: he never said to make the game easier. (And he made a more recent post that I have only skimmed so far.) RPG-Geek, in contrast, argues about Trip.H's "only solution" without mentioning any details about that solution except that it is easier. Is RPG-Geek talking about the proposal for more hit points or the proposal for less variance in dice rolls or a third option?
Trip.H has been arguing for adding 12 to 20 base HP at level 1. The side debate about variance was meant to clarify why this made the game easier. Whatever Trip.H's intentions, the net effect of making changes to low-level play is that it makes those levels easier.
Let's talk about the most radical solution I proposed: an extra 12 hit points for all characters and creatures. The purpose of these extra hit points is to prevent an early downing of a character or creature in the first turn before they get to act. It also reshapes the hit point curve to more closely resemble the shape of the damage curve.
Does it favor the PCs? A little. A typical human bard currently starts at 17 hp and a fighter would be 19 hp. In contrast, Table 2–7: Hit Points in the GM Core suggests that a 1st-level creature could have low hp at 14-16, moderate hp at 19-21, and high hp at 24-26. Taking 18 as the average for PCs, 12 extra hp is 67% more. Taking 20 as the average for creatures, 12 extra hp is 60% more. The PCs get an extra 7% benefit in quantity.
On the other hand, PCs are much more likely to rely on spell slots. And more hit points on the opponents means consuming more spells to take down the monsters, so the blaster spellcasters are shortchanged. Likewise for the healer spellcasters, because the longer battles will mean that they lose more hp and require more healing back to full. I think that that disadvantage is balanced against the 7% advantage.
That is a clearly stated solution. Please state other proposals just as clearly.
Hurting spellcasters at low levels should be non-negotiable, as they already suffer greatly in the early stages of play.
Aside from that, the math for attacking in general favours the PCs over a longer battle. The PCs want consistent average results, while the NPCs always want to spike high rolls or to see the PCs spike low rolls.
I don't think there is a satisfactory solution to the issue that doesn't impact the game in undesirable ways, so I'd propose that the best course of action would be to address the issue with a special low-level only use of hero points. Either as I suggested before, to bring a downed PC back to 1 HP and end all ongoing damage effects, or to prevent a PC from falling below 0 HP from any attack that dealt 80% or more of their base HP, instead leaving them standing at 1 HP and cleared of any ongoing damage. These would only work for level 1 characters.
That said, I still agree with Bluemagetim that even the Boar isn't out of line at 1st level, so long as the players have been introduced to the basics first. Using a shield, using terrain, and being willing to retreat or otherwise outsmart a low-intelligence foe are all viable ways to overcome a melee-only creature with poor reflexes and low AC.
Even an RP maxing Civic Wizard that brought zero damage-dealing spells with only Tangle Vine, Enfeeble, Schadenfreude, and Summon Construct as combat spells, has a good chance to neutralise the Boar with a single Tangle Vine attack. That's +7 to hit for a 65% chance to hit or better, with a 40% chance to crit against 15 AC. If they had more consideration for possibly being a fight, they could have Hydraulic Push or Pummeling Rubble from their school spells.
It doesn't take much for even a non-combatant character to ruin the Boar's day. From there, you finish it off, pick up anybody who was downed, and continue on your way.
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You say the game design is bad for low level play. You assert the math at low levels is bad. When you say bad you mean the assertion that low levels don't do as well against PL+2 and 3 creatures as higher levels do.Why merely assert the math when I can do the math!
I looked over the 1st-level common creatures in the Archives of Nethys and discovered the Paizo carefully capped their weapon damage at 1d8+4 (Elk and Oread Guard) with more creatures dealing 1d6+4 or 1d8+3. A critical hit with 1d8+4 deals an average of 17 damage. That will take down a human wizard but not a human fighter.
At 2nd level 1d8+4 and 1d10+4 damage showed up fairly often, but I also saw 1d8+6 (Azarketi Explorer), 2d6+4 (Boar), 1d10+6 (Cave Fisher), 2d6+3 (Deinonychus), 1d12+4 (Draugr), 1d8+6 (Giant Tapir), etc.
Let's look at the Boar, a Remasterd creature 2 in the Monster Core. It has "Melee [one-action] tusk +10 [+5/+0], Damage 2d6+4 piercing." A 1st-level character in light or medium armor has at best AC 17, so a boar will crit on an unpenalized attack on a roll of 17 or better, a 20% chance. Its average damage on a critical hit is 22 piercing damage.
The chance of rolling exactly 22 I can calculate as a 3-dimensional cross-section of a 4-dimensional object. Let me split that into 11 2-dimensional objects for simplicity. (1*1 + 2*2 + 3*3 + 4*4 +5*5 + 6*6 + 5*5 + 4*4 + 3*3 + 2*2 + 1*1)/(36*36) = 146/1296 = 0.1127. Thus, we have a 55.6% chance of rolling a 22 or more....
What if this is the intended progression?
Levels 1-2: Don't fight over PL equal to PL+1 creatures.
Levels 3-6: You can start taking on PL+2 fairly easy.
Level 7-16: You can take on PL+3 fairly easy.
Level 17-20: PL+4 becomes fairly easy.
I've noticed at really high levels PL+4 creatures are a much, much easier. The power of the enemy or encounter you can take on seems to be built into the overall math starting with taking on very weak creatures to creatures that would wipe out a lot of parties at lower level.
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Adding hit points at level 1 changes more than just how quickly characters creatures drop.
[...]
Absolutely.
However, making other changes like weak / elite templates, etc, would seem to have many *more* knock-on changes than a +HP boost would.
It's also a bit reductive/inaccurate to say things like healing get "worse" when they are able to reverse the exact same amount of damage as before; it's just that the damage is instead a smaller % of the HP total.
As far as damage-dealing options becoming less appealing due to doing less % foe HP, umm. Yes?
That's part of the point? I'm pretty sure I'm not stroking out, and that the community considers it a bad thing that low level meta play is dominated by damage, while buffs/debuffs struggle to get used much at all.
More swings before the foe drops means Bless gets a little more viable to cast, etc.
Changing encounters in your planned campaign to fit your party's expectations for lethality/difficulty doesn't change basic, play-tested, calibrated core game mechanics that become much more complicated the more that the game has to change around them to accommodate them, like when people realize spell casting isn't as good and start trying to twiddle with changing the damage numbers on damage spells, or that healing magic in combat is now only good for just getting players back up from the ground, which is also something happening way less frequently (and thus saying "is worse" is not a reductive or inaccurate statement).
In parties I see, people love casting spells like bless, they just tend to do it before encounters begin or for encounters where the enemy doesn't start on top of the PC with the casting character going late in the first round. It is still not widely accepted that blasting is a fine combat strategy for casters, nor that you need to do it with spell slot spells that quickly run out, and it is far more common to see people talking about how support casting (with a few powerful debuff options added in) is the "only viable" caster strategy.
I would be very upset to see the core rules of the game bend to add a bunch of HP to either the PCs or especially to creatures and no other changes made to the game. We just don't need every martial using D12 2 handed weapons and casters essentially disappearing from the game.
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It's fine to use other games / systems as a point of comparison, but you have to be able to articulate & argue why a difference of that system makes for a *better* game, and would be appropriate for pf2.
Just pointing and saying "that's the way they did it" is a textbook example of a bad methodology. Even if you've not got charts to "mathematically justify" a position, you've got to explain / argue in a way that's claiming an improvement, like:
"a longer time to kill means more time for setup --> payoff tactical play, and that changes the meta in a way that is more fun"
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As far as "how would you know what the community thinks" I can only speak to those I've played with first hand, and those whose communication I've seen and read elsewhere. This should be the default assumption whenever someone talks like that.
A whole lot of newbies post online because they feel like they are "playing the game wrong," and seek advice
And what is the #1 "reason" they always cite for how they judged themselves to be failing?
PCs going Dying. More than any other reason, someone from the group makes a post because it's normal in their combats for PCs to hit Dying, sometimes multiple times.
The Dying state is "by default" a "mark of failure" for players, like it or not, most will interpret the event in that way.
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It is absolutely possible for them to min-max and get coached to a point where Dying doesn't happen that often at low level.
But this kind of low HP math, and the psychology of what it does to players, is imo rather plainly having this negative effect. And yes, all sorts of sample bias, etc, etc.
.
To be clear, I'd like to emphasize what exactly is happening during these newbie Q&As.
The newbie is under the impression that they are "loosing" too much, and ask for advice to avoid this. The community's answers serve to "lower the difficulty" for this group by empowering the PCs to change the balance of future fights. It's literally a process of "lowering the game's difficulty."
Again, I want to emphasize player psychology and the notion of HP and the dying state. IMO, every one of those posts is an example of "The bad HP growth math causing players to make the game easier."
And this "lowering the difficulty" is forever, once you learn optimizations, once you change around those attribute points, that info never goes away.
This is how I ended up needing to story-nerf my Stolen Fate PC to keep things fun. We really don't need Timber Sentinel at high level to avoid the "loss indicator" of the Dying state. I can leave that as a dead feat slot and be fine.
But you can bet your butt that it's one of the only tools in the system that's effective at that job in low level play.
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Ah, yikes, I was hoping it would not be that bad.
That many chances for outright 1A one-shots is not a good sign at all.If the foe is within 1A Stride distance, having 2A for offense is already a big step up in danger from your examples.
If I could construct my own "example breakpoint scenario" for what kinda "minimum survivability" I'd say is needed to keep things fun,
it would be 2 foes Striding up to a PC in a flank, and each making their attacks before a PC gets a turn.
IMO, that's a prototypical example of a danger that's unavoidable to the PCs.
A 2 foe flank is such a "basic spice" that I'll speculate it's normal to even some of the most mild GMs.
Looking at those examples, it seems like if you add in just a flanked +2 attack from a 2nd foe, that would make a whole lot of the bestiary enter that "full-->down" territory, which is hella yikes as far as I'm concerned.
(and who knows how bad it'd look if the example was 4 attacks from 2 foes)
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(Lvl 12),
we had a good example of that kind of situation.
Kin initiated by turning their familiar into a Brine Dragon, then moved up with them. Foes flanked and almost full-->downed the dragon.
Alchemist joined the ball to double Bttl Md the dragon, Oracle stayed back and cast at range.
2/4 foes in the ball, 2/4 spend a turn moving to the side of the ball in the middle, and making a Returning toss.
The next round, they both flanked and attacked the Oracle in the back.
As a surprise, the first AoO happened only when the Oracle ran to join the ball on his next turn.
From the players PoV, they got flanked and bloodied pretty severely, w/ 0 player agency & mistake, as spell ranges are kinda too low to stay further away.
Then the Stride happens, and they have "legitimately" made a ~mistake by procing the AoOs.
Oracle took 5 ish hits from that, split between the 3ish foe attacks and the "uh oh" +2 AoO.
The Oracle was still up, barely. In theory, he could have Stepped twice and cleared the AoO range, then strode.
In my opinion, that's about just right. There's no real "mistake" in standing in the back when foes can run so quickly. And the "real" mistake of the AoOs was a serious danger, but the PC had enough HP to afford that single "mistake" without dropping on the spot.
(had that been low level play, the Oracle would have dropped just from the flank attacks, and been Dying when their turn began. Before even having the chance to make a mistake. Yikes.)
As for GM advice, definitely read the outcome of the Ruse mechanic first, and have an NPC approach the PCs before the fight and give them enough clues to get some idea of what's going on.
The fight is a rare opportunity for a GM to safely brutalize the PCs via tactics, so don't hold back. Trip those PCs and AoO the get up, have all 4 dogpile a single PC, etc.
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I would be very upset to see the core rules of the game bend to add a bunch of HP to either the PCs or especially to creatures and no other changes made to the game. We just don't need every martial using D12 2 handed weapons and casters essentially disappearing from the game.
I don't know why exactly you think that would be the result of such a change, so I cannot precisely tune my response to address the specific worry.
I can say that one of the benefit from a flat +HP bump is that flat increases in HP does induce a (small) downward shift for flat damage increases compared to all non-dmg options in terms of meta balance.
This means that 2H d12 martials would in theory be less common;
the payoff for that investment got a tiny bit worse due to the % of foe HP changing, while Trip's target of Reflex DC did not change, etc.
I'm guessing you've said that out of a worry that +HP would encourage more glass cannon play, and I've said before that going all-in on offense is a common reaction to a system where it's math-normal for the party to suffer no mistake full-->down events.
If players feel that an investment into defense in and out of combat can make a real difference in their survivability, that's when you increase the likelyhood of that choice.
The "worst case" example of bad lessons is when a player gets pancaked, then swaps into a shield/defense, then gets pancaked again with no meaningful difference.
This can and does happen in (low level only) pf2, and yeah, the player then saying "F it" and going 2H d12, for the rest of the campaign, is a normal and rational reaction to that low HP norm.
(I keep saying full-->downs because I don't want people to think about outright oneshots. That's a distraction edge case, and it's normal in pf2 combat to get 2 foes dumping all their offense into a PC before they get their next turn. They need to be able to survive a reasonable gap between turns, have the option to retreat/heal/etc. )
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That fighter with 20 HP and likely 18 AC in breastplate and +1 dex should be positioned to be the boars first target and with a shield raised would have a 20 AC and 5 hardness from a shield block to stave off that now lower chance of getting crit.
Okay, AC 18 is correct. I had gotten AC 17 by forgetting to add level to proficiency. Let me redo the calculations.
With AC 18, the boar' tusk Strike with +10 to hit would hit on a roll of natural 8 and crit on a roll of natural 18. That gives a 15% chance for a crit. That gives a (15%)(76.0%) = 11.4% of dealing 20 or more damage on that first Strike. If the boar has a regular hit on that first Strike, then hitting on the 2nd Strike requires a natural 13 or better, for a 40% chance, which breaks down into a 35% chance of a regular hit and 5% chance of a critical hit. Combining the three cases gives (15%)(76.0%) + (50%)((35%)(76.0%) + (5%)(90%)) = 27%. The boar has a 27% chance of knocking the fighter unconscious and dying on its first turn.
That is not as bad as the 32% with AC 17, but it is more than one chance out of four.
As for Raising a Shield to increase the AC to 20, Trip.H's scenario is that the creature (he did not specify a boar) rolled higher in initiative, so the fighter did not get a turn yet. A fighter with a shield using the Defense exploration activity would have started with a raised shield, but if the party was trying to sneak up on the boar, then all PCs would be using the Avoid Notice exploration activity instead. And maybe that particular fighter did not have a shield.
But that has so many ifs and maybes. Let's look at an actual encounter in an adventure path I ran. In Trail of the Hunted, 1st module of Ironfang Invasion, the 2nd-level party is supposed to encounter Gashmaw, a CR 3 advanced boar. Since I converted the adventure path to PF2 rules, Gashmaw became a 3rd-level elite boar. In Trail of the Hunted the party and 20 villagers have escaped the Ironfang Legion's conquest of Phaendar Village by hiding in the Fangwood Forest. The module has them wandering in search of food (my villagers were more organized and had go-baskets of supplies ready for emergency evacuation, but let's stick closer to the module).
G2. The Tyranny of Gashmaw (CR 3)
A scouting or gathering party returns to camp with 1d6 of their number gravely injured, telling stories of an unusually large and clever boar that attacked them in the woods and made off with their packs. If Taidel or Lirosa escaped Phaendar with the group, that NPC identifies the beast as Gashmaw, an aggressive and territorial boar that has harassed hunters in the area for several seasons. If the PCs don’t deal with the angry boar, it continues to harry the refugees as they forage, dealing 1d8+4 points of damage to a random NPC every 1d6 days.
Maybe the better option is to not fight a boar showing nature some respect lol.
That is what my players did. They were quite far from Gashmaw and their planned journey took them farther away.
But let's pretend that they decided to hunt Gashmaw for food (it was worth 5 Provisioning Points). The party consisted of the elf ranger Zinfandel, the gnome druid Stormdancer, the gnome rogue Binny, and the halfling rogue/sorcerer Sam. They were all trained in Nature and would have combined their knowledge of boars before seeking Gashmaw. Binny was an expert in Stealth with the Quiet Allies feat, so they could sneak up on Gashmaw and attack from good positions. Zinfandel and Binny were archers and Stormdancer had Ray of Frost, so they would attack from 90 feet away. Sam, on the other hand, relied on Produce Flame with a 30-foot distance. He might pull out his shortbow at first and also stand 90 feet away. Gashmaw's elite AC 17 would drop down to AC 15 due to the flat-footed/off-guard penalty. Thus gives the PCs a good chance of a critical hit, but doubling the damage on a 1d6 shortbow with 1d6 sneak attack, 1d8 longbow, or 2d4+4 Ray of Frost would not take down an elite boar with 55 hp. Let's assume that Binny got a crit, the non-rangers got only one hit, and flurry-edge Zinfandel got two hits. That would be 4d6 + 2d6 + 2d8 + 2d4+4, averaging 39 total damage.
I am not replacing the pre-Remaster Ray of Frost with the Remastered Frostbite, because Frostbite has only a 60-foot range and would have a tougher time against the boar's elite Fortitude +12.
Gashmaw's first turn would be somewhere in the middle of the round, say after the two rogues but before the ranger and druid. Binny had a habit of Hiding at the end of her turn, but Sam would use the more reliable Take Cover behind a tree. Gashmaw would Stride 40 feet closer and then make a two-action Boar Charge at Sam in order to cover the remaining 50 feet. Sam's cover would cancel out the +2 circumstance bonus from the charge, so it would be the boar's +12 to hit versus's Sam's AC 19. That gives a 20% chance of a critical hit, and with the extra +2 damage from elite template, the average critical hit damage would be 26 piercing damage. Sam has 24 hit points and the old math still applies for a 76% chance that Sam drops to dying 2.
The druid Stormdancer has to abandon her planned Ray of Frost and switch to Heal on Sam. Thus, at the end of the round, Gashnaw would be down to 40 hp and Sam would be prone but back up to 12 hp.
Knowing Sam's player (my adorable wife), Sam would use Produce Flame while prone right in the boar's face next turn and Take Cover behind the same tree without moving. The boar would take down Sam again and maybe have enough actions left to charge after another PC, too. Gashnaw's hit points would probably last through this 2nd round, too, so we are likely to end with Gashnaw dead but two PCs unconscious. All because of 15% bad luck that a critical hit on a tusk Strike dealt enough damage. In an encounter that qualifies as Low Threat.
If we reduce the party down to 1st level and Gashnaw to a 2nd-level non-elite boar, the party would probably fail on sneaking up on Gashnaw without the Quiet Allies. Sam would have only the 1d6 shortbow and not his 2d4 Produce Flame, but that is only 1 or 2 damage difference. The chance of bad luck is probably the 27% rather than 15%.
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I see players use actions like trip, grapple, demoralize all the time in regular play without any increase to HP. I would say I see these base actions more often at low level, because at higher levels there are usually other ways to add the conditional riders.
adding something like 12 hit points to every enemy creature is much more like adding 3 extra hits (so often 5 to 6 more attacks, especially for level +1/2/3 creatures) when you are talking about cantrips that do 2d4 or weapon attacks that do D4/d6. And the correlation between HP and AC makes any flat number boost to creatures push high AC creatures, or creatures with lots of resistances into much more difficult territory, while more minimally impacting lower AC, higher HP creatures.
I think, if you are a GM, and you are worried that your party is not going to like it if multiple foes focus fire on one PC to bring them down as quickly as possible...don't have your enemies play that way. It really shouldn't be common to face multiple higher level enemies that even can, unless the party has made a tactical blunder and done something like have the barbarian with a movement speed of 40 sudden charge their full 80ft movement into the enemy line and the healer with a movement of 20ft can't even get there and do anything for another round. In my opinion, that is not bad luck, and I want the game to be able to bring the barbarian who does that down quickly and face the very real chance of having the character die.
You talk about encouraging players to play more defensively if everyone has more HP, but I strongly disagree that is how players would respond. The game has already given you the equivalent of a shield's worth of extra HP. If you didn't think defense was important before, you are not going to think it more so because the enemy now has more HP. You are going to think, the fight is going to go on longer, my shield is more likely to just break, and with a higher damage weapon, a lucky crit might still be enough to knock an extra round or two off of this combat, or down right end it, whereas a crit with any other weapon has a real chance of still doing less the extra HP this creature has.
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What if this is the intended progression?
Levels 1-2: Don't fight over PL equal to PL+1 creatures.
Levels 3-6: You can start taking on PL+2 fairly easy.
Level 7-16: You can take on PL+3 fairly easy.
Level 17-20: PL+4 becomes fairly easy.I've noticed at really high levels PL+4 creatures are a much, much easier. The power of the enemy or encounter you can take on seems to be built into the overall math starting with taking on very weak creatures to creatures that would wipe out a lot of parties at lower level.
If that is the intended progression, then why was it not mentioned at all in the Encounter Design section of the GM Core, pages 75 to 78. Instead, the rules say:
Choosing Creatures
In all but the most unusual circumstances, you'll select creatures for your encounter that range from 4 levels lower than the PCs' level to 4 levels higher (see the Creature XP and Role table). Each creature has a part to play in your encounter, from a lowly lackey to a boss so mighty it could defeat the entire party single-handedly.Each creature costs some of the XP from your XP budget for the encounter, based on its level compared to the levels of the characters in your party. For instance, if the PCs are 5th level, a 2nd-level creature is a “party level – 3” creature, a lackey appropriate for a low- to-moderatethreat encounter, and it costs 15 XP in an encounter's XP budget. Party level is typically equal to the level of all the characters in the party (find more detail on page 57).
There is no hint that the GM has to treat low-level encounter design differently from high-level encounter design.
Changing encounters in your planned campaign to fit your party's expectations for lethality/difficulty doesn't change basic, play-tested, calibrated core game mechanics that become much more complicated the more that the game has to change around them to accommodate them, like when people realize spell casting isn't as good and start trying to twiddle with changing the damage numbers on damage spells, or that healing magic in combat is now only good for just getting players back up from the ground, which is also something happening way less frequently (and thus saying "is worse" is not a reductive or inaccurate statement).
But what about uncalibrated game mechanics? I believe that the progression that Deriven Firelion described is an unintend flaw in PF2 design. As a GM I have had to carefully vet 1st-level encounters to ensure that they would not kill off PCs in meaningless deaths by bad luck alone. That make designing the plot and the adventure more difficult and reduces my fun.
I would be very upset to see the core rules of the game bend to add a bunch of HP to either the PCs or especially to creatures and no other changes made to the game. We just don't need every martial using D12 2 handed weapons and casters essentially disappearing from the game.
In my recent calculations involving a 2nd-level boar versus a 1st-level party, it appears that 6 more hit points is enough to let 1st-level parties handle heavy-damage 2nd-level creatures. For 3rd-level creatures, an extra 8 hp would be more appropriate. The Elite Adjustment gives a creature 10 more hit points and that just raises its level (technically, one of four steps in raising its level) rather than breaking the game. For a 2nd-level creature, the Elite Adjustment give it 15 hp. So what is so bad about giving a PC 8 more hit points, half the Elite Adjustment of its opponent? And giving the opponent the same 8 hp. It is about the damage dealt by a 1st-level Needle Darts cantrip, so the spellcasters don't have to use up a spell slot.
My original estimate of 12 more hp from the shape of the hit-point and damage curves was not far from the 8 more hp that the boar example suggests. And it would help realign the core rules back to what the designers intended.
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The boar is a very low AC creature with a lot of HP already. Additional HP for it are not that big a deal as far as extending a fight. Extra HP on a High AC, low HP creature are going to be what adds a lot more attacks to defeat.
It is true that the elite template runs into the same problem, except you don’t add that template without intentionally making the encounter much harder, and adventure writers are hopefully thinking about which creatures to add it to. It is a dual for controlling encounter difficulty.
Sure 8 hp on both sides has less of an impact on the game system than adding 12, but it is still has a bigger impact than adding 0. I think the ability of some creatures to be particularly threading to PCs at specific level differences is something too nuanced to fix with a bludgeoning tool like adding hp across the board. A level 7 Bargest, for example turned out to be an absolutely brutal foe to encounter at level 4. It wasn’t HP that was the issue there. I think Paizo is paying attention to feed back they get about specific encounters for future adventure design. Collecting information like that to share with GMs online is probably the most effective “fix” for something that doesn’t seem to be as universal a problem as this thread has tried to make it out to be.
I think a level 2 boar vs level 1 PCs is a good enemy to teach PCs how battlefield control can dominate melee brutes that could otherwise wreck the party in close. Take away its ability to drop a party member from full to down in one hit and it doesn’t teach that lesson nearly as well. The boar isn’t a creature that should be fighting to kill off down PCs or even necessarily to kill off the whole party instead of chasing them off. Motive can absolutely be applied by the encounter designer to not have a boar vs level 1 party likely to end in a TPK.
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What if this is the intended progression?
Levels 1-2: Don't fight over PL equal to PL+1 creatures.
Levels 3-6: You can start taking on PL+2 fairly easy.
Level 7-16: You can take on PL+3 fairly easy.
Level 17-20: PL+4 becomes fairly easy.I've noticed at really high levels PL+4 creatures are a much, much easier. The power of the enemy or encounter you can take on seems to be built into the overall math starting with taking on very weak creatures to creatures that would wipe out a lot of parties at lower level.
If that is the intended progression, then why was it not mentioned at all in the Encounter Design section of the GM Core, pages 75 to 78. Instead, the rules say:
Choosing Creatures
In all but the most unusual circumstances, you'll select creatures for your encounter that range from 4 levels lower than the PCs' level to 4 levels higher (see the Creature XP and Role table). Each creature has a part to play in your encounter, from a lowly lackey to a boss so mighty it could defeat the entire party single-handedly.Each creature costs some of the XP from your XP budget for the encounter, based on its level compared to the levels of the characters in your party. For instance, if the PCs are 5th level, a 2nd-level creature is a “party level – 3” creature, a lackey appropriate for a low- to-moderatethreat encounter, and it costs 15 XP in an encounter's XP budget. Party level is typically equal to the level of all the characters in the party (find more detail on page 57).
There is no hint that the GM has to treat low-level encounter design differently from high-level encounter design.
Changing encounters in your planned campaign to fit your party's expectations for lethality/difficulty doesn't change basic, play-tested, calibrated core game mechanics that become much more...
It's never been mentioned in any of d20 games that I know of, but this progression has always existed. Low level you can't take on very powerful creatures and at high level you can absolutely crush them.
Everything seems to be built to progress the characters from green, easily killed new guys to high fantasy superheroes that can level dragons easily.
Even the math seems to support this where you have a difficult time using skills or hits against even a PL equal to PL+1 creature at early levels, then level 15 to 20 even PL+4 creatures are fairly easy to defeat, especially if solo.
The designers tend to know you become much, much stronger with far more options at high level. In PF1 it led to a broken game at high level where the PCs far exceeded the encounter design math loosely referred to as quadratic power increases. PF2 tightened the the math so the increase at high level is less substantial, but still gives the feel of massively increased power and resilience while not being invincible.
But the general feel of progression seems the same due to the stacking math.
At level 1 to 4 or so, you have very few stacking bonuses to skills. This makes dealing with encounters, especially PL+ encounters very, very difficult.
By the time you are level 15 to 17 plus, you have a ton of stacking bonuses through feats, items, spells, and the like. It reaches a point where a character has a hard time using a maneuver or attacking a PL+1 or 2 creature, so where a high level character has so many stacking bonuses and debuffs at PL+4 creature gets hammered.
To a level 1 character a PL+4 character is a very deadly encounter likely to end a level 1 or 2 party. To a level 20 character a PL+4 enemy becomes like a goblin or kobold where you end it fairly quickly and easily.
They don't talk about it in encounter design other than in general terms in different areas of the book such as indicating more powerful, experienced characters can handle greater threat encounters or implying it. Since I don't read those parts of the book hard for me to say, but given my experience with the game it's pretty easy to see this his how the math works.
At level 1 you have very few options against a PL+1 to 4 creature. At level 15 and up, you can drop a synesthesia with a true target by the bard, trip the creature or gang up, and absolutely rip apart a severe encounter easily.
When I finished Agents of Edgewatch as an example at level 20, we took the final encounter and shredded it. The end encounter was an extreme 20 encounter. For level 1 characters, they should have gotten absolutely crushed the creatures in this encounter at an equivalent level. It was a cakewalk at level 20.
This is how progression feels like as you level up. You go from having a hard time handling a single powerful creature to handling multiple powerful enemies easily.
This may not be discussed in encounter design, but it's definitely part of the math and progression from green neophyte to fantasy superhero that occurs over the game progression.
Maybe that is intentional. Maybe it is intended that an extreme or severe encounter easily killing level 1 or 2 encounters while the same extreme or severe encounter barely causes discomfort to a level 20 character.
This seems pretty intentional to me over the years with PF2 making the high levels at least a bit more challenging, even if level 15 to 20 still has the math and options heavily in the PCs favor.
On a side note, it's similar to caster progression. No one tells you in the class description Mr. Caster is going to be horribly weak at low level, then the most powerful class in the game at high level. I can't imagine the designers didn't know this was going to happen when they built the classes. It's the underlying feeling of progression the math and design that isn't directly talked about.
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As far as "how would you know what the community thinks" I can only speak to those I've played with first hand, and those whose communication I've seen and read elsewhere. This should be the default assumption whenever someone talks like that.
A whole lot of newbies post online because they feel like they are "playing the game wrong," and seek advice
And what is the #1 "reason" they always cite for how they judged themselves to be failing?
PCs going Dying. More than any other reason, someone from the group makes a post because it's normal in their combats for PCs to hit Dying, sometimes multiple times.
The Dying state is "by default" a "mark of failure" for players, like it or not, most will interpret the event in that way.
So you're basing this on the tiny number of people you've played with and a small fraction of people who had difficulty and posted about it online. You're then extrapolating this into the position that the community as a whole struggles with low-level play. Without access to data that only Paizo is likely to have, you can't make such an assertion with any certainty.
It is absolutely possible for them to min-max and get coached to a point where Dying doesn't happen that often at low level.
But this kind of low HP math, and the psychology of what it does to players, is imo rather plainly having this negative effect. And yes, all sorts of sample bias, etc, etc.
Isn't min-maxing encouraged in PF2 with how retraining works? You struggle, then you retrain based on lessons learned, and try again with a build that suits your party's needs and playstyle better.
To be clear, I'd like to emphasize what exactly is happening during these newbie Q&As.
The newbie is under the impression that they are "loosing" too much, and ask for advice to avoid this. The community's answers serve to "lower the difficulty" for this group by empowering the PCs to change the balance of future fights. It's literally a process of "lowering the game's difficulty."
Again, I want to emphasize player psychology and the notion of HP and the dying state. IMO, every one of those posts is an example of "The bad HP growth math causing players to make the game easier."
And this "lowering the difficulty" is forever, once you learn optimizations, once you change around those attribute points, that info never goes away.
This is how I ended up needing to story-nerf my Stolen Fate PC to keep things fun. We really don't need Timber Sentinel at high level to avoid the "loss indicator" of the Dying state. I can leave that as a dead feat slot and be fine.
But you can bet your butt that it's one of the only tools in the system that's effective at that job in low level play.
So, a small subset of players feel like being downed, a normal play experience in PF2, is a loss condition, get bad advice about how to handle this, and your idea is to change the entire low-level experience rather than giving those players better advice or adding some sidebars to future GMG printings. The response is not proportionate to the threat.
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It's definitely intentional that players get stronger and have more points of reliability relative to an "at-level" challenge as the game progresses. The math on skill progression vs. DC by level, at a minimum, makes that clear. (Legendary skills matched with a primary stat have extremely high success rates, far in excess of what's available earlier on.) I'm less sure it's intentional that this strength progression ends up changing encounter difficulty as much as it does, but that seems like a necessary consequence. How can you make it so players are stronger/literally mathematically succeed more often than before without also making things easier for them?
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It's definitely intentional that players get stronger and have more points of reliability relative to an "at-level" challenge as the game progresses. The math on skill progression vs. DC by level, at a minimum, makes that clear. (Legendary skills matched with a primary stat have extremely high success rates, far in excess of what's available earlier on.) I'm less sure it's intentional that this strength progression ends up changing encounter difficulty as much as it does, but that seems like a necessary consequence. How can you make it so players are stronger/literally mathematically succeed more often than before without also making things easier for them?
It empirically changes encounter difficulty. I've seen many people state it on this board.
I don't disagree with Trip H that the game is very different from level 1 to 4 or 1 to 2 compared to the rest of the game. I disagree that it is bad design as it seems more like intentional design for all games like this whether point-based or level-based and everything between.
I still recall low point GURPS characters going from easily killed to dodging and evading everything easily killing most enemies with targeted shots. And the level based D&D games have always gone from weak, one-shotted neophyte to fantasy superhero fantasy characters with the wizard in original 3E becoming the peak of this.
Having played multipole PF2 campaigns to 17 to 20 from level 1, PF2 seems built he same way. I could not state the exact math nor do I want to take the time to work it out, but progression in PF2 seems to allow for the higher level characters to more easily handle harder and harder enemies and encounters more easily until level 18 to 20 characters are ripping apart CR+4 enemies and extreme encounters like a level 1 character might kill a CR-1 kobold or goblin, maybe even easier.
A high level caster using a level 9 banishment can get rid of up to 10 extraplanar creatures with a single spell compared to a level 1 character having problems with an imp.
The encounters are not renamed because it's intended that a severe or extreme encounter for a level 1 is deadly while a severe or extreme encounter for a level 20 operates more like a low or moderate encounter. This is how the game shows you going from Green Newbie to Superman. It's fully intended to happen. I think the designers clearly know a level 20 character will likely paste a CR20 severe or extreme encounter. It's what makes you feel like you have truly progressed from that day way back when as a level 1 character fearing an orc to a level 20 character that is slaying avatars of gods fairly easily.
The math is fairly tightly designed to push this progression outcome. PF2 just managed to do a better job of making it easier on the DM to at least make it more challenging at high levels given PF1/3E turned the high levels into "God Wizard Destroy All" and now it's more "Fantasy Superhero Avengers" win the day but make it look somewhat tough.
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How can you make it so players are stronger/literally mathematically succeed more often than before without also making things easier for them?
The issue is that due such wildly varying balance in terms of feats, access to consumables, etc, by and large pf2 is a "choose your own difficulty" game.
And when players get full-->downed, they are going to "turn down the difficulty" by swapping into more power.
Once you get a little familiar with it, know which consumables are busted, it's genuinely playing the game on easy mode. This is why a "phantom failure" with low level HP math making Dying so unavoidable, is imo such a fun-killing infohazard.
As Mathmuse spotlighted, it's all about the illusion of difficulty. You want players to think the odds are against them, without actually having math where it's 1/3 chance you'll end your turn full, then be dying before you get your actions.
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No one should give a flying f+#! about "difficulty" for the sake of it. It barely exists in a ttrpg like pf2. We should care about the game being fun to play.
To be as crystal clear as I can: a % chance of failure IS NOT DIFFICULTY.
That's just RNG. The "real" difficulty in a game like pf2 is the variable choices. How hard is it to find an optimal action, or how obvious is the correct move. That's the "real challenge" a player grapples with during play.
All you can do is make the most of your available tools to give your party the best chance of success. The RNG result is just a dice roll; yes it factors into the choice, but the outcome is completely disconnected from the player's success/fail in their choice of action. They can make all the right moves, and still die by RNG. Or, the Magus can Leory inside the foe formation, and stay standing.
Hence: "Pf2 does a bad job of teaching newbies how to play"
This is why "simple" boss fights are so dead-boring in pf2.
There is no "difficulty" in fighting a melee Strike only foe just because it's PL+5.
If the decision-making process is the same as if the foe were PL+0, the fight is just as difficult for the players. The only difference is the math % odds of win/loss.
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Focusing back into the core issue of the thread:
I cannot overstate how capital B Bad it is for a game to have "no mistake full-->down" events. That just nukes fun.
This is because of its affects on how players make choices, and how they can no longer chew on choices.
Chiefly, the possibility of full-->downs means that they cannot make proper strategic choices around defense, or even future payoffs.
When PCs are that fragile, players are in a constant state of that dreaded yolo "sniper mindset" where they just hope the guy next to them explodes before they do.
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In my opinion, avoiding those full-->down events is such a priority, that I have very little concern over any worries that the game "getting easier" will result in a less fun play experience.
I've not played it, but I have heard good things about Season of Ghosts, and iirc it's the top rated AP. It's also considered to be one of, if not the "easiest" in terms of combat difficulty. I really don't think that's a coincidence.
Because, yeah, most people are there for the group storytelling experience, and save or fail, they do not find the situation of a save-or-die spell fun. And when an AP understands that "fun challenge" comes from mixing up the player's action choices, they can get creative with weird combat scenarios and create something fun.
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It's never been mentioned in any of d20 games that I know of, but this progression has always existed. Low level you can't take on very powerful creatures and at high level you can absolutely crush them.
May I introduce you to 13th age (A 10 level d20 game by Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet) and its section on building battles.
When you set up a battle for your players, start with the idea that you’ll have one enemy creature per PC, with each creature being of the party’s level. For example, if the party consists of four 2nd-levelheroes, then four 2nd level enemy creatures will make a worthy fight.
But that’s only how it works at adventurer tier, levels 1–4. When the PCs hit 5th level, battles get harder. Champion tier PCs, levels 5–7, should ideally fight one enemy creature per PC, with each creature being one level higher than the PCs. A party of four 6th level PCs should fight at least four 7th level monsters for a good battle.
You can see what’s coming: at epic tier, levels 8–10, the monsters should weigh in at two levels above the PCs if they appear in equal numbers. Four 9th level PCs match up against four 11th level monsters!
It's got further rules on Mooks and Large monsters and some math on monsters that are off level.
It's an absolutely fantastic d20 game, with among other great things a lot of Designer Side-Bars explaining why things are written the way they are.
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How can you make it so players are stronger/literally mathematically succeed more often than before without also making things easier for them?The issue is that due such wildly varying balance in terms of feats, access to consumables, etc, by and large pf2 is a "choose your own difficulty" game.
And when players get full-->downed, they are going to "turn down the difficulty" by swapping into more power.
Once you get a little familiar with it, know which consumables are busted, it's genuinely playing the game on easy mode. This is why a "phantom failure" with low level HP math making Dying so unavoidable, is imo such a fun-killing infohazard.
As Mathmuse spotlighted, it's all about the illusion of difficulty. You want players to think the odds are against them, without actually having math where it's 1/3 chance you'll end your turn full, then be dying before you get your actions.
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No one should give a flying f%$# about "difficulty" for the sake of it. It barely exists in a ttrpg like pf2. We should care about the game being fun to play.
To be as crystal clear as I can: a % chance of failure IS NOT DIFFICULTY.
That's just RNG. The "real" difficulty in a game like pf2 is the variable choices. How hard is it to find an optimal action, or how obvious is the correct move. That's the "real challenge" a player grapples with during play.All you can do is make the most of your available tools to give your party the best chance of success. The RNG result is just a dice roll; yes it factors into the choice, but the outcome is completely disconnected from the player's success/fail in their choice of action. They can make all the right moves, and still die by RNG. Or, the Magus can Leory inside the foe formation, and stay standing.
Hence: "Pf2 does a bad job of teaching newbies how to play"
This is why "simple" boss fights are so dead-boring in pf2.
There is no "difficulty" in fighting a melee Strike only foe just because it's PL+5....
Why do you continue to state things in absolutes like we all share the same view of how this should run?
I do care about difficulty. I found PF1 difficulty set way too low. Even if you are doing the "illusion of difficulty" as these games are all illusion, I still very much want difficulty which is measured by how close you come to death. That is the metric I use to determine if my encounters are set where I want them. Not CR or what not. Just straight up did you I down a few characters and did you almost die. In a major boss encounter, I want a few PCs dropped with their wounded or dying value at 2 or 3 of I have failed to properly design that encounter.
Downside of this is if you mess up encounter design, you kill the party.
Upside is I find it more satisfying as a DM and my players seem to feel like victory was more meaningful.
You making the statements you've been making in absolutes is plain wrong. You do not speak for the whole player base. It would be nice if you stopped making statements as though you do.
If you and Mathmuse want to add some hit points, add some hit points. I have not had the problem at level 1 to 4 you are having. As an experienced DM, I can easily guide new players through the low levels to make it enjoyable and teach them how to handle games like these.
I would not care if Paizo included a recommendation for new GMs as this seems a problem primarily not of just new players, but new GMs as they would not know how to guide new players through introductory adventures with swingy math. Experienced GMs know how to handle this.
But you really seem intent on stating your positions as though they are based on the entire community agreeing with you. It seems to me if the community did provide Paizo with feedback about a low hit point problem causing new players to discontinue the game, they would have provided more of a buffer than they already did.
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That fighter with 20 HP and likely 18 AC in breastplate and +1 dex should be positioned to be the boars first target and with a shield raised would have a 20 AC and 5 hardness from a shield block to stave off that now lower chance of getting crit.Okay, AC 18 is correct. I had gotten AC 17 by forgetting to add level to proficiency. Let me redo the calculations.
With AC 18, the boar' tusk Strike with +10 to hit would hit on a roll of natural 8 and crit on a roll of natural 18. That gives a 15% chance for a crit. That gives a (15%)(76.0%) = 11.4% of dealing 20 or more damage on that first Strike. If the boar has a regular hit on that first Strike, then hitting on the 2nd Strike requires a natural 13 or better, for a 40% chance, which breaks down into a 35% chance of a regular hit and 5% chance of a critical hit. Combining the three cases gives (15%)(76.0%) + (50%)((35%)(76.0%) + (5%)(90%)) = 27%. The boar has a 27% chance of knocking the fighter unconscious and dying on its first turn.
That is not as bad as the 32% with AC 17, but it is more than one chance out of four.
As for Raising a Shield to increase the AC to 20, Trip.H's scenario is that the creature (he did not specify a boar) rolled higher in initiative, so the fighter did not get a turn yet. A fighter with a shield using the Defense exploration activity would have started with a raised shield, but if the party was trying to sneak up on the boar, then all PCs would be using the Avoid Notice exploration activity instead. And maybe that particular fighter did not have a shield.
But that has so many ifs and maybes. Let's look at an actual encounter in an adventure path I ran. In Trail of the Hunted, 1st module of Ironfang Invasion, the 2nd-level party is supposed to encounter Gashmaw, a CR 3 advanced boar. Since I converted the adventure path to PF2 rules, Gashmaw became a 3rd-level...
That sounds about right for fighting a boar.
I mean the point of having an extreme damage category is exactly the results gamed out.The game has room for creatures with lower damage too if you dont want to put players in a match like that. Another thing that boar stresses is the party comp strengths and weakeness against that kind of encounter. Perhaps a more defensive team with a sword and shield champion, and a warpriest with a shield casting benediction could handle the extreme damage types without going down while being less able as your party at other types of encounters(your party seems very capable at range and able to exploit multiple damage types for example)
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Mathmuse could you run the same numbers for this scenario? Edit: Actually its pretty intuitive after seeing two examples
The rest of the party can keep distance and avoid notice but the tanky shield fighter will use the defense exploration activity. This is to insure they are the most likely target. They can even be banging their shield as they walk to draw attention Edit: though on second thought I am guessing wild life like a boar might just run off at the sound if they are not protecting their territory.
If I were in a party hunting a boar I might recommend my party do something like this. The boar going up against a 20 AC on the first turn makes the chances of going down drop to a very favorable chance for the fighter. If they can shield block it makes going down a very minute possibility. After that first turn if another party member can come out of hiding and demoralize, another move in flank and trip. I think the boar will have a very hard time staying alive.
If were talking level 2 then the fighter might be in plate bumping the AC to 20 before a shield and 22 with one raised. i guess what I am saying is the way things are now investing in defense has a purpose and a benefit even if it never reduces the threat of a creature to 0.
If no one is going to go down why bother with defense at all?
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I still very much want difficulty which is measured by how close you come to death.
If you wish for difficulty, which is roughly ~"player skill challenge," to be related to how close one is to death, then you should be in full support of making that metric of "proximity to death" aka "hits till dying" to be a consistent and usable yardstick.
This very notion of "hits till down" being how players conceive of the "measure of difficulty" is exactly what I'm talking about, rofl. That is the normal psychological default.
This is exactly why that metric being so wildly variant based on level is such a problem. Player naturally adjust to a norm, it doesn't matter if it's a high or low HP game.
In ttrpgs, they can also take and tune the system up/down for their preference. But a core problem is that pf2 is not consistent.
Right now, the question of "how close am I to Dying?" cannot be used to measure difficulty because of the present HP growth.
Every newbie first time player will try to use it as a metric, but without knowing about the "old fashioned" HP growth pf2 inherits, they will be incredibly misled.
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If someone could make a Foundry mod that magically tweaked the "HP till dying" number to be more consistent across all levels, without "lowering the difficulty," would you still oppose that?
Considering that you've now reached the point of agreeing with those you think you are refuting, it really seems that there is a lot of "sacred cow" and anti-change stuff going on.
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Edit:
to be clear, dropping Dying at low level *does not* mean the fight was actually difficult.
While the chances of Dying happening are way high, the odds of overall victory are also still quite high. Low level fragility/lethality could be called "illusory" difficulty.
(Though it does make the chances of an unlucky PC death waaay too high in an otherwise easy fight)