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I was just about to post an appreciation for BigHatMarisa’s comments about removing the stumbling blocks with small sidebars here and there and how we definitely don’t need Paizo to repackage advice as a freakin’ gouging Strategy Guide.
This is mostly what I'm vouching for, yes. We don't need exact strategies or anything, but there are fundamental, base-level tips that can be doled out in relevant sections via sidebars - where it won't eat up more pages and fits in with all the other minor info that makes it into sidebars.
For example, a sidebar on Rogue can give a small (clearly stated to be nonexhaustive) list of ways that a creature can be rendered off-guard. It's the most common and oft-useful condition in the game bar maybe Frightened, so it's a good starting point to pull from.
Clearly labelling that some skill actions are meant for Encounter Mode, not Exploration Mode (Climb, Pick a Lock, Disable a Device) and reminding players that, if a situation is tense and every second matters, they can use Encounter Mode even if it's not combat!
Things like these, which are fundamental tips that all players (including the GM) can find helpful, and they aren't necessarily prescriptive, just helping bridge some knowledge gaps that the Player Core tends to have.
I don't expect these products to make experts out of new players, but it should be proficient at getting people familiar with the game's systems at a base level, and right now there are gears that could be greased to help that process along.
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If I were rewriting player core, i'd also have a list of skills that are good ideas for a given class, alongside the whole "You might, others might" section.
For example, for fighter it'd say "You might train in intimidation to demoralise your foes, weakening their defences more, or focus on athletics to trip and shove your opponents".
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If I were rewriting player core, i'd also have a list of skills that are good ideas for a given class, alongside the whole "You might, others might" section.
For example, for fighter it'd say "You might train in intimidation to demoralise your foes, weakening their defences more, or focus on athletics to trip and shove your opponents".
After their introductions, the Core rulebooks are written like reference books, which is almost opposite the style BotBrain suggested. For example, page 240 of Player Core defines Demoralize, "With a sudden shout, a well-timed taunt, or a cutting put-down, you can shake an enemy's resolve." It goes on to say that success makes the target frightened 1 (frightened 2 on a crit). To understand what that means, look up "frightened" in the Glossary and Index, "frightened (condition) Fear impedes everything you attempt. 444," and go to page 444 to find, " You take a status penalty equal to this value to all your checks and DCs." Fortunately, the Archives of Nethys has links.
Sometimes I have to make suggestions. At 3rd level in my Ironfang Invasion campaign, while fighting cultists in a cave system, the party stopped for Treat Wounds. I gave them 10 minutes to treat one PC, but a 4th-level cultist barbarian barged in confidently at the 11th minute. The party had five members plus an NPC rogue who had been a prisoner of the cultists and the champion's velociraptor animal companion, so the party soon had the barbarian surrounded and flanked. However, this barbarian had Deny Advantage, "You aren't off-guard to hidden, undetected, or flanking creatures of your level or lower, or creatures of your level or lower using surprise attack." The three rogues could not deliver their sneak attack damage, so the barbarian boasted of his relative invulnerability as he hit back. On the other hand, I had had more time to think about Deny Advantage, and technically the NPC rogue had fought the barbarian when he was captured, so that NPC tried to trip the barbarian. He failed, but the ranger wielding a +1 kukri tried, too, and he succeeded. The barbarian became off-guard due to prone condition and died to the sneak attack damage of the other two rogues.
The chain of logic for tripping is not obvious. Off-guard reduces AC and permits sneak attack, so the party wants the barbarian off-guard. Deny Advantages means no off-guard from flanking, hiding, or surprise. Other means of imposing off-guard are feint, grapple, and trip. Let's try trip.
I don't think it's the job of the Player Core to give tips and tricks on how to play optimally. There is a lot of wisdom that can be given, sure. But that is adding page space to an already 450 page book. And even if it did give tip after tip, there will always be blind spots. Even if a such tips would be useful, there will always be new wisdom that comes alongside new metas, so the first book of the line is the worst place to put such wisdom (see Age of Ashes and its growing pains as an example).
What this would call for is a PF2E version of PF1E's Strategy Guide. A whole book dedicated to tips and tricks, and experienced wisdom of how to make an optimum character from Level 1-20.
In short, if a GM Core exists to give GMs tips on how to optimally GM, a Strategy Guide can give players tips on how to optimally be players.
I think that a free Strategy Guide on the Internet, similar to the Guides for optimizing a character class, would suffice. Hm, the Guide to Guides already lists one, Pathfinder 2e Tactica, but it is pretty short.
I have tried writing such a guide. I have not been able to tame it into a coherent structure. And trying to cover of all the basic tactics, such demoralizing and flanking and tripping and shunning a 3rd Strike except under special circumstances, tired me out before I got to the advanced tactics such as There's no One True Way to play the game. And of course, given my nature I want to explain the mathematics, but that bogs down the narrative.
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^^^
So much this. "Teaching new players how to play," once you cover the basics on the three action economy, MAP, and how important the "little" bonuses and penalties from "combos"/teamwork (as they add up) are compared to a more "one-trick pony" mindset, is really something all the players have to be involved in as they brainstorm possible options for the specific characters involved and the specific opponents and situation at hand.
PF2's paradigm is very different from 3.x/PF1 in that a character's "build" (as long as a very low "optimization" bar is met; basically +3 or +4 in the character's most important ability at 1st level and don't focus on options that the character won't be able to do well at) is often less important than the "combos"/teamwork the group chooses during play. Because of the "bounded accuracy" math of PF2, it is extremely difficult for a "maximally optimized" character to be significantly better than a "somewhat optimized" character "on paper" or acting solo. And really, the only way to learn how to apply the "combos"/teamwork after the basics is through experience.
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Might just be me but I feel like the game doesn't get all that complicated as you level. You get more options but you also lose some.
Level one you can do most skills with a 7 point spread. By level seven you can have a 15 point spread on skills. (From max proficiency and stat to untrained and +0 stat)
As you level some options just become less and less usable to you, you learn what your character can and can't do. Once you know the handful of things your character is good at you generally stick with that.
Even playing FA to level 20 it never felt like the complexity really increased.
Might be best to sum up the game to players like this, as a group try to keep a circumstance and status buff on allies while keeping the same as a penalty on enemies. Mess with enemy action economy when able and focus targets down.
Figure out what options your class/build has for doing those things and that's most of the games combat.
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But new players need to start with less complexity. At level 1, you have at most one feat to choose from, your character is simple and mostly limited to its class abilities. At level 4-5, your character starts fleshing out due to your number of feats and such. The choice of level 1 is a choice of simplicity, so I understand why Paizo chose it as first level.For me, the bigger difference is in the numbers, not the complexity. That's around when things start stabilizing and the encounter guidelines become more accurate.
I agree with your overall argument , although I would place the cutoff point as level 3 instead of 5. It’s negligibly more complex than level 1 but avoids how the 1-3 experience sets a very warped baseline, meanwhile 3-5 still feels weak initially but by level 5 between increased options, hp, and core feature growth players really start to move past those perceptions without internalizing them.
It also solves most of the issue of low level caster play being heavily unrepresentative of the actual experience by starting them off with 5 slots and quickly reaching 8 slots (along with the critical rank 3 “now you can *really* start doing interesting things” slot). Starting play with a non-insignificant chance to whiff your 2 slots at level 1 and spend the rest of the adventuring day as a worse ranged martial is a major contributor to negative player perceptions, particularly since those two slots feel so precious and limited that seeing what their class received “instead of playing a fighter” accomplish less than a fighter striking twice at the same level can be deeply demoralizing for them.
To remind everyone what this looks like, I once saw a Kingmaker campaign that started at 1st level in the manor, as is the common setup. After the attack started the fighter and magus each consistently dropped 1-2 assassins every round while the two casters, working together, dropped 0-1 assassins per round using cantrips. One even tried using their 1st level attack roll spell but low rolled 3 damage total to an assassin and, after using 2 actions and one of their two spell slots for that pitiful showing, was followed by the fighter to moving up, one shotting the assassin to the left of the first for 1 action, then finishing off the other with their second strike. Another low rolled their cantrips and ended up spending 3 back to back rounds to drop another.
I couldn’t even blame them for being upset after the session, that was an objectively poor play experience, and one that had absolutely nothing to do with conflicting expectations from prior game systems. In a game that is “lauded” for its tight balance it was painfully obvious to everyone at the table that the martial and caster characters weren’t anywhere close to balanced in capabilities.
Considering how these kinds of early play experiences stick with people and shape how they view the game going forward it’s no wonder “casters suck in pf2e” ends up being a common opinion floating around the internet, the early gameplay experience is extremely warped compared to what’s actually normal once gameplay stabilizes.
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PF2's paradigm is very different from 3.x/PF1 in that a character's "build" (as long as a very low "optimization" bar is met; basically +3 or +4 in the character's most important ability at 1st level and don't focus on options that the character won't be able to do well at) is often less important than the "combos"/teamwork the group chooses during play. Because of the "bounded accuracy" math of PF2, it is extremely difficult for a "maximally optimized" character to be significantly better than a "somewhat optimized" character "on paper" or acting solo. And really, the only way to learn how to apply the "combos"/teamwork after the basics is through experience.
This is actually the single most important thing for experienced TTRPG players learning PF2, especially so for those coming from PF1 (although that wave of people is mostly done).
But learning that you CANNOT "win" the game during character creation as you can in PF1 is a huge learning curve that is challenging for experienced players to understand, because they came from games where you could be so overpowered that you could handle an entire adventure nearly on your own. That does not exist in PF2.
Instead, your party as a whole needs to understand each characters strengths and weaknesses and work together to support each other....but that is something I absolutely DON'T expect the rules to teach. Mostly because it too complex and party dependent to provide any kind of real frame work on, other than something like "Hey, using intimidate to frighten and athletics to trip can cause very useful de-buffs that your allies can benefit from that are better choices of actions than making an attack at maximum MAP".
It's true, but also very generic advice. And it can't go much deeper, without getting specifics about each party and build.
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Man, that was a rough experience to read about.
Did you get the opinion of other players privately before making the decision? Just curious.
Community & Social Media Specialist
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I ended up writing him a private message reminiscent of the Performance Improvement Plan I got from my boss at work once, and he noped out rather than change.
I just wanted to say your patience was commendable here. It sounded incredible frustrating just to read, and I can't imagine actually being involved. I'm sure some people would have kicked him out far sooner, and without any feedback for improvement, so good on you.
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I hope he is able to find a GM better able to meet his unique needs someday.
;P
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It's true, but also very generic advice. And it can't go much deeper, without getting specifics about each party and build.
Again, I'll stress that this is what I want in things like Player Core and the Beginner's Box. Generic tips are valuable for newer players, since this is a dense game and it can be hard to grasp for a starting seed of knowledge to work from. Once you get that seed, generally the flow gets a lot easier and you start to discover things, but providing non-prescriptive knowledge can prevent forming misinformed habits.
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That defensive player story is interesting because that matches my 4th level build in PFS, but I used tactics - grappling, tripping, weapon infusion, healing allies, and thoughtful positioning. Winter Sleet is a pain to use before safe elements if your allies are in a cramped space, but that's a team tactics issue. Going pure tank as a kin can work quite well if you're a team player.
Now, tanking +3 level that early is... a heroic sacrifice. And yeah a low-level kineticist can build a hot tub easily enough, but at level 4 you're making half a brick at a time... there's a reason permanent igneogenesis takes a full hour, and even then you're going to need good crafting skills to be able to justify anything more complex than a stone igloo, and that's going to be four hours to make something about the size of a tent.
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Small tangent, but it has a potential impact on tactics if you have a camp or base:
Interestingly creating bricks at 1 bulk could create stone enough to build a small building (~5,000 bricks) after about five hours - though I think structural stone is about 50% heavier than brick, so let's round it up to 8 hours. I would say that, without also using wood for beams and a roof, this should be doubled because you've got a heavy stone roof and need to make stone pillars. So, after 16 hours, you have a crude stone igloo and you probably need some significant crafting checks to not have it all collapse or leak, and that's assuming they have a sound blueprint and have taken time to flatten the land and know how to do so. So, being generous, if they have a blueprint, I'd say four days of dedicated labor with the right measuring tools and skills (and lores!) would be reasonable - but that's a lot of your build invested for shabby housing. It would also be far better to have a wood/earth kin for this.
A wood/earth/metal kin carpenter would be *fascinating* but this is pretty niche! The kind of thing for a quirky inclusion in tertiary books like that potion garden thing.
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While I love the idea of wood/earth/metal kineticist making structures using their elemental powers...the current rules that kind of enable it make it not such a great idea and come at the expense of other more relevant adventuring options.
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Yeah, it is one of those things that could break a campaign like Kingmaker if the players have too much leeway in those kind of powers.
You quickly run into a place where players start going "Hey, why can't I make Mesa Verde?"
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Yeah, it is one of those things that could break a campaign like Kingmaker if the players have too much leeway in those kind of powers.
You quickly run into a place where players start going "Hey, why can't I make Mesa Verde?"
Agreed. Some ideas that are interesting but super niche might be amazing for a sandbox campaign but destroy something like Kingmaker. Sometimes it's important to accept some limits to enable certain kinds of stories, as with the Pathfinder Society restrictions.
Learning to respect that is important for players.
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Learning to respect that is important for players.
Very important. If a player can't learn to accept that when I, as a GM, tell them no. It's no because I don't want them to have a good time. It's because I foresee it breaking something in the game or potentially harming the fun for other players.
TTRPG games are just make believe with some rules to resolve the age old dispute of "I shoot you with my gun! Nu uhhh because I roll and dodge out of the way!" with a common groundwork shared between all the player (which includes the GM).
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One of my favourite examples of game concepts combining in unexpected ways with "the real world" (or stuff like kingdom building) is the Bottled Monstrosity Worm Vial.
This thing can create a 40' tunnel through solid rock in two Actions. The applications in construction are enormous. I consider it to be the biggest argument against Alchemists being able to use Advanced Alchemy or Quick Alchemy to create Bottled Monstrosities.
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It might be fast, but it's EXPENSIVE!
For 600gp, I could hire a thousand unskilled laborers to dig for two months.
Alternatively, I can hire THIRTEEN teams of 10 unskilled laborers and 1 skilled laborer (foreman) to dig for 1 month with a bit of coin left over for unexpected situations.
I suspect that would go much farther in most cases.
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You can at least separate the levels in 4 brackets: First levels (1-2) where the game is super swingy and fights last 2 rounds, low levels (3-6) where characters are not really fleshed out, martial still dominates and fights tend to be rather quick, mid levels (7-12) where characters are fleshed out, martial/caster balance is fine and fights last 4-5 rounds, and high levels...Haven't got to play as much PF2e as I would like (and no remaster)-- is this a pretty universal breakdown?
Around 7-12 is the sweet spot of class balance, options, fight length, etc.?
My players love tactical teamwork, which changes how the levels feel to them. First level is fragile. The characters are weaker in combat than a generic town guard, though they are better trained in skills. A critical hit from a 1st-level muscular monster can knock a full-hit-point 1st-level PC to dying 2. That gives the party only 2 rounds to stabilize them.
But at 2nd level, players good at teamwork can protect each other, so the game plays with less worry. The characters evolve level by level to their intended character concept as they gain features and feats. Some concepts are low level, other concepts are high level, so the sweet spot varies.
My experience with high-level play, 15th level to 20th level, is that finding plausible villains higher level than the PCs requires a lot of convoluted storytelling. Such high-level enemies are rare, so why does the party keep running into them? But the combat is still as balanced as at 3rd level.
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You can at least separate the levels in 4 brackets: First levels (1-2) where the game is super swingy and fights last 2 rounds, low levels (3-6) where characters are not really fleshed out, martial still dominates and fights tend to be rather quick, mid levels (7-12) where characters are fleshed out, martial/caster balance is fine and fights last 4-5 rounds, and high levels...Haven't got to play as much PF2e as I would like (and no remaster)-- is this a pretty universal breakdown?
Around 7-12 is the sweet spot of class balance, options, fight length, etc.?
I'd say the game still feels similar into higher levels. It avoids devolving into rocket tag, and if anything, fights get a bit longer (as implied).
The biggest difference between 7-12 and lategame is caster power. Casters do still pull away from martials a bit, even if to nowhere near the same degree as older editions. It won't look like they do if you're used to wizards whose only weakness is that they can't survive being mauled in the face if they lose initiative and have zero prep time before the encounter. But they still gain access to extremely powerful and encounter-warping battlefield control that outstrips what martials get to access—especially if you're willing to use incap spells and can metagame encounter budgets, though just using quandry is fine too.
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I don't know about 7-12 being a sweet spot for play, but it does certainly seem like many of my character concept builds fall into that range anyways.
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To speak more toward the initial question, I do agree that pf2 "fails to teach" new players how to play. I'll also echo that it's incredibly difficult for a ttrpg to really "teach," because of how much variance there is between what "good play" even is. It's a true statement that one group's "overpowered" tactic will be "meh" or worse for another table.
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(Even if they run Paizo APs!) If a GM's style is to have foes be genuinely intelligent, the entire "meta" of how PC play is balanced completely reshuffles.
Just one single tactical "no brainer" difference is outright game changing; if your GM focus-fires into a single PC.
If your GM chooses to mirror what the PCs will naturally do themselves, this tactic will have PCs dropping from full to Dying, perhaps outright dead, before PCs will be able to get a turn until very late in level. (All those odd spells, potions, etc, to gain Reactions to split dmg with an ally that seem worthless are contextually A tier).
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IMO, the genuine, "serious problem" I have with pf2 and how it treats newbies is the absurd HP math at level 1 (when it's the most problematic to have such bad math due to the lack of PC options!).
PC health is so low compared to incoming damage, that it's statistically likely that PCs will drop Dying 2 from a single incoming crit. This *will* happen multiple times in written APs before they gain enough HP and defensive options via leveling.
I think the "focus fire 1 PC" is so universally avoided by pf2 GMs *because* of this; the GMs are themselves being taught that if they play fair and mirror PC tactics, the foes *will* kill PCs at those low levels. So they lobotomize the foes, and never re-install their brains later when it's safer to do so.
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If you want to talk about the system teaching players poorly, it all comes back to this HP problem. The low level HP math tells every newbie that pf2 is a game that *starts* with absurd rocket tag combat, and who knows how many get sick of that and quit before learning that's not the case as levels go up.
( I think the playerbase generally is so skewed toward "short round" combat tactics *because* of the "lessons" / trauma of low level play. Long term spells/actions are genuinely underrated in power imo, but such discussion always has the asterisk* of not talking about that sub-5 world of oneshots)
It was easy for me to forget how bad low level was during the closing of my first AP, but oh boy, when I started AP 2, that was when I had the experience to realize how much "this is genuine b%%@+~%!" exists at the first 3 or 4 levels of pf2 play.
This low level HP problem is bad enough that it has honestly killed my interest in ever starting another AP at level 1. Every time I hear pf1 vets talk about "the ills of ye old rocket tag" I just shake my head and bite my tongue from warning against low level pf2 play.
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To bring it back to the thread topic, YES.
Pf2 has a horrible low level player experience, and it's astounding to me that the playerbase does not give the core most HP math more criticism, discussion, and community encouraged homebrew remediation.
If I were to GM a level 1 & up campaign, I would at minimum say/edit all ancestry HP to start w/ + 10. That static boost will get players out of 1-shot territory sooner, while slowly becoming less & less relevant as the levels go up. Also might have an NPC hand out those Belts of Good Health, as that'll eventually get swapped out due to [invested].
(It is genuinely sad that Paizo was aware of this serious problem enough to add those belts to the beginner box, but stubbornly refused to implement any real fix when they had the chance in the remaster)
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(Even if they run Paizo APs!) If a GM's style is to have foes be genuinely intelligent, the entire "meta" of how PC play is balanced completely reshuffles. Just the single "no brainer" tactic of foes all focus-firing into a single PC is outright game changing compared to a GM that refuses to do this; the foe tactic will have PCs dropping from full to Dying, perhaps outright dead, before PCs will be able to get a turn. (All those odd spells, potions, etc, to gain Reactions to split dmg with an ally that seem worthless are contextually A tier from this single GM difference).
The solution to that is straightforward but also embarrassing: at 1st level the GM should not set genuinely intelligent foes against the party whose goal is to kill the party. Treat the party was a band of well-meaning but uncoordinated teenagers facing enemies who are not killers, like the gang in the old Scooby-Doo cartoons, until the PCs finally learn coordinated teamwork.
This can be seen in the Paizo adventure paths since the original adventure path Rise of the Runelords. In that adventure, the PCs are simply enjoying a local festival--they might not have met each other yet--when goblins raid the town. The heroic PCs unite to fight off the goblins (er, in my game the rogue instead raided the cashboxes of the distracted festival vendors), but the goblins focus on burning and pillaging rather than hurting the PCs. Afterwards, the sheriff asks the PCs to help out with little problems around town, because having the heroes of the raid around makes the townsfolk feel safer, but they still face only small challenges.
And that was a Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition adventure, later converted to Pathfinder 1st Edition and then converted to Pathfinder 2nd Edition. The weakness of 1st level has been in the game through many editions. I have not run low-level Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, so I cannot compare that system.
I think that the optimized power builds of D&D 3rd Edition and Pathfinder 1st Edition helped cover up the problem. If the players could build a 1st-level character who could kill a level-appropriate enemy in one swing, then the enemies being about to also kill in one swing felt fair. Rocket tag (first in initiative wins) is fair though unsatisfying. Unfortunately, it teaches the misleading lesson that D&D-based roleplaying games are rocket tag at heart rather than roleplaying at heart.
Nevertheless, how ought a 1st-level party handle a 3rd-level Bugbear Tormentor, murderously angry because the party killed his dog after it bit them? They run away, just like the Scooby gang. With Twin Feint in melee the tormentor does not need a critical hit to take down a PC in one turn. 1d4+6 slashing damage on the first Strike and 1d4+6+1d6 slashing and precision damage on the second Strike averages 20 damage. But the tormentor's ranged attack is throwing his one and only dagger. The party can take potshots at him with ranged attacks if they get far enough ahead that they can afford to skip a Stride.
Though in my PF2-converted Ironfang Invasion campaign, the 4th-level party handled a 7th-level bugbear boss based on the Bugbear Tormentor and his minions, and won because the champion's Liberating Step reaction nullifies Twin Feint. But 4th-level characters have reasonable hit points.
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I just figured at level 1 it was understood a level 1 party should mostly be facing level -1, or level 0 creatures, maybe with a level 1 boss (because damage to HP ratio be swingy).
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Belt of Good Health is a pretty nice, small buffer; I'll keep it in mind whenever I get stuck running low levels again. Thanks for mentioning it, Trip.
I just figured at level 1 it was understood a level 1 party should mostly be facing level -1, or level 0 creatures, maybe with a level 1 boss (because damage to HP ratio be swingy).
Unfortunately, that is not the impression you would get as a new GM trusting the encounter builder—even if it is objectively the correct impression to get. Also not the impression you'd get from early APs, either.
Should probably aim to make it established "community wisdom," though.
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I just figured at level 1 it was understood a level 1 party should mostly be facing level -1, or level 0 creatures, maybe with a level 1 boss (because damage to HP ratio be swingy).
I mean that just kind of plays into the assertion that the game has weird expectations at low level that are kind of a problem, because the game absolutely doesn't spell this out anywhere.
I think as experienced, passionate players we sometimes forget that a lot of things that we understand to be true aren't actually part of the rules, maybe even sometimes contradict them outright.
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You're both right.
If you look at early APs and the encounter building rules, you wouldn't conclude that you should run it as I suggest. But from running the PF2 playtest back in the day, my group quickly learned and internalized that "hey, this isn't working" and tweaked it ourselves.
But it is something that isn't established anywhere but from experience or being told by someone experienced.
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As someone that started playing back with the red box, not sure I would like these games to be easy to learn. Part of the fun of them is they are a more complex game than a card game or a board game and don't have everything coded like a video game.
You have to think while playing them. You have to read to learn the rules and understand how the rules interact. Then someone has to choose to be the DM/GM and they have to put creative thought into the game.
This may be frustrating for people who want a simple game to get running. I'm not sure that's the target audience. For someone like myself, the appeal of these games is the intellectual and creative investment.
If that's not your cup of tea, not sure how easy they can make it to attract people who don't want to get deeply into these games. PF2 is has much simpler math than previous iterations of these types games when we were using THACO and saving throw tables the player and DM had to track and weapon speeds and initiatives with segment length. It's never going to be as easy as breaking open a board game and reading a small rules pamphlet, then getting going figuring it out as you go.
These types of games usually require some dedication and at least one person who is really interested and brings everyone else in by making the game easier to learn to play. This is usually a person that wants to DM the game and enjoys the creative aspects and is willing to teach the intellectual parts of the game to a player.
That's the way these games are built.
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I do think the games will be hard to learn in the grand scheme no matter what, but it can be made easier. Onboarding and complexity aren't mutually exclusive.
I've seen games that very intentionally have a sort of "level -1/level 0" tutorial tier of play, for example, that's not intended to be a part of character progression after learning the game. And there's also stuff like Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion, which is quite complex (and still ultimately a Gloomhaven tutorial). And there's also the beginner boxes we're all familiar with, though they could do a better job. These are all ways of trying to onboard players that don't sacrifice the complexity of the main game.
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The issue is not one of complexity nor difficulty, it's that you are essentially playing a different game from L 1-4 than you are from about 6 and up.
Basically, low level play "lies" to everyone about how the rest of the game's combat works.
The issue is "dishonesty" through mathematic inconsistency.
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And no, rocket tag is not "fair" just because it's the rules.
If a game is "fair" or not is about player agency, and ttrpgs do not have the "mirror match" luxury of a PvP game, where even poker can be fair because of the symmetry. For ttrpgs, it's the complete opposite, and it's incredibly easy for them be unfair.
In pf2, you can be forced to cross some water, only to be prompted to roll a 20 on an encounter table. I think this was the first time I'd ever seen the mechanic of a random encounter table used in pf2. That 20 was supposed to result in us getting hopelessly murdered by a Froghemoth (but the GM called b%+$@*@+).
Had the GM run it as written, that doesn't make it "fair" because that was the result that someone rolled.
That specific issue is a stupid bullsh.t vestige from another era of design where heroes were supposed to be disposable, and the unfairness was intentional.
Pf2 really does still have a lot of inherited nonsense, and I get that veterans are used to it, but no one should excuse it whenever it's identified.
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[...]The issue is not one of complexity nor difficulty, it's that you are essentially playing a different game from L 1-4 than you are from about 6 and up.
Basically, low level play "lies" to everyone about how the rest of the game's combat works.
The issue is "dishonesty" through mathematic inconsistency.
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And no, rocket tag is not "fair" just because it's the rules.
If a game is "fair" or not is about player agency, and ttrpgs do not have the "mirror match" luxury of a PvP game, where even poker can be fair because of the symmetry. For ttrpgs, it's the complete opposite, and it's incredibly easy for them be unfair.
In pf2, you can be forced to cross some water, only to be prompted to roll a 20 on an encounter table. I think this was the first time I'd ever seen the mechanic of a random encounter table used in pf2. That 20 was supposed to result in us getting hopelessly murdered by a Froghemoth (but the GM called b!+$@$!&).
Had the GM run it as written, that doesn't make it "fair" because that was the result that someone rolled.That specific issue is a stupid bullsh.t vestige from another era of design where heroes were supposed to be disposable, and the unfairness was intentional.
Pf2 really does still have a lot of inherited nonsense, and I get that veterans are used to it, but no one should excuse it whenever it's identified.
I don't see that much at all and I'm not not sure where you get that conclusion.
Once again as someone that played since the basic ruleset, this level 1 to 4 is the easiest I've ever seen.
In old D&D, you could always die. That's why your high level characters were so memorable. Damn. I got hit. I'm dead. I was hasted and missed my system shock. I'm dead. That guy cast a death spell and I missed my save. I'm dead. Damn. that trap killed me. Was there even a save? No, ok.
Then 3E/PF1 which at low level was also a different game with very weak healing and could die fairly easy at low level. Cantrips were trashed. Your low level caster was using a weapon and hoping to land some lame level 1 or 2 spell to do some kind of effect.
After all this, I'm supposed to pretend that PF2 is some different game at low level even though every class starts with around 20 hit points, the heal spell is better than it's ever been starting off low, and you have spells like Runic Weapon or an animal companion which is much better than they were before? Your starting stats are better and more balanced than they've ever been.
I'm not seeing it. 1 to 4 is easier than any edition of the game. This just seems once again like someone looking for a problem that isn't there trying to drum it up with logic that doesn't even make much sense.
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The issue is not one of complexity nor difficulty, it's that you are essentially playing a different game from L 1-4 than you are from about 6 and up.
Basically, low level play "lies" to everyone about how the rest of the game's combat works.
The issue is "dishonesty" through mathematic inconsistency.
I asked my wife. She says it is not dishonesty; rather, it is a reflection of life. You learn different things at different stages. Gaining one mastery is not the end, because it opens up new masteries to gain.
She is also more extreme than I about 1st level. She says that 1st level is not more dangerous than the other levels. It is a level of little power so tactics are more vital. This does tie back to the original point of this thread: PF2 players need to learn tactics, and the PF2 rulebooks do not teach tactics.
My own opinion is that all levels differ in flavor to keep variety in encounters. First-level flying creatures are small, such as eagles, or swarms of tiny creatures. At 2nd level we see large Hippogriffs and Pteranodons. Player characters can take to the air at 7th level with the 4th-rank Fly spell. The game gradually changes from 1st level to 20th level.
And no, rocket tag is not "fair" just because it's the rules.
If a game is "fair" or not is about player agency, and ttrpgs do not have the "mirror match" luxury of a PvP game, where even poker can be fair because of the symmetry. For ttrpgs, it's the complete opposite, and it's incredibly easy for them be unfair.
In talking about that definition of fairness, no, encounters are not fair. In most encounters the party is at least twice as strong as the opponents. A Moderate-Threat encounter would be four party members versus two enemies of the same level as the party. The GM deliberately sends the party into dungeons that they can handle (except in the infamous Tomb of Horrors and similar ruthless adventures), and the PCs step over the bones of weaker lower-level adventurers who had tried those dungeons earlier.
In pf2, you can be forced to cross some water, only to be prompted to roll a 20 on an encounter table. I think this was the first time I'd ever seen the mechanic of a random encounter table used in pf2. That 20 was supposed to result in us getting hopelessly murdered by a Froghemoth (but the GM called b$&#+*!~).
Had the GM run it as written, that doesn't make it "fair" because that was the result that someone rolled.That specific issue is a stupid bullsh.t vestige from another era of design where heroes were supposed to be disposable, and the unfairness was intentional.
Pf2 really does still have a lot of inherited nonsense, and I get that veterans are used to it, but no one should excuse it whenever it's identified.
One piece of nonsense that PF2 largely dropped is the random encounter tables. The PF1 adventure paths had random encounter tables at the beginning of their Bestiary articles and the challenge rating of the encounter varied widely. The table in Vault of the Onyx Citadel, the most recent PF1 module I own, lists 18 encounters from 4 elder mud elementals (CR 15) to 1 jinushigami (CR 20). I viewed the random encounter table in Palace of Fallen Stars as especially bad, because it scrambled together encounters inside the city of Starfall with encounters with creatures outside Starfall that would never be allowed into the city. In contrast, I own the PF2 adventure paths Extinction Curse and Strength of Thousands and they totally lack random encounter tables.
Instead the Pathfinder Remastered GM Core has a section on Encounter Design in Chapter 2: Building Games. It starts, "Encounters play a fundamental part in roleplaying games, but it can be tricky to know where to start when building them. It's important to follow the rules and guidelines, but creating a compelling encounter goes beyond that. Good encounters have a place in the story, compelling adversaries, interesting locations, and twists and turns to make them dynamic."
Chapter 5, Subsystems, includes random encounters in the Hexploration mechanic. Some hexagonal territories have nothing in particular prepared in advance. Instead, the GM Core recommends making a random encounter table. "You can instill additional danger into your hexploration by including random encounters, whether they take the form of interesting features, natural hazards, or creatures native to the terrain. It can help to create a series of short lists in advance, each including a mix of three types of encounters: harmless, hazards, and creature encounters. Then create tables to randomize the results, or simply pick whichever encounter you think would work best for your hexploration narrative when these encounters occur (as described in Random Encounters on page 209). It's often easier to create a list by terrain rather than for each hex. The forest hexes could have their own random encounter list while the plains beyond have a different list, possibly with some overlap."
RANDOM ENCOUNTER TYPE
1d10 :: Encounter
1–5 :: Harmless
6–7 :: Hazard
8–10 :: Creature
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Dude, I literally called out the "it was always bad" in ye olden days counter"argument" as a precaution.
I certainly didn't expect someone to actually use that nonsense, especially not right after I preemptively addressed it, rofl.Presuming it's even true, a previous game having the same problem is not an excuse! FFS. It's almost like the whole point of making a new system is to improve upon the old.
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Again, if you play Paizo APs, there are many, many encounters in those early levels where a foe landing a single crit will send 8hp classes dying 2. The math is so bad, that the number of HP is irrelevant due to the damage being a one-shot. An HP 8 class w/ Con +1 has 15 HP at Lvl 1. Fifteen.
Besides the outright one-shots, there are many, many times where a PC will have 0 ability to prevent going dying before they get to act. Just 2 foes striding up to the same L1 PC and taking a 2 swings each is mathematically getting to close where it's >50% likely that PC is going to be dying before just those 2 foes are done with their turns.
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There's moments where I remember checking the damage numbers realizing there was the potential to trigger the double-HP instant death damage rule, that's how frankly stupid the low level math is. The one I can recall off the top of my head was a bomb trap at L3 ish in Gatewalkers.
Loosing a PC to a hidden trap is just stupid. It didn't even make sense in-story for it to have been there, as the trap would have killed their own people.
Basically every single-foe encounter in those low levels is just stupid, and you can expect one-shots.
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Meanwhile in level 11-20 APs, even a Wizard can rely upon being able to tank a crit to the face while having tools that grant them agency to address that specific risk.
It's a completely different game, and the reverse difficulty curve honestly sucks. Our party has kinda been sleepwalking through Stolen Fate, and I'm pretty sure the GM has been trying to ramp it up where he can.
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Dude, I literally called out the "it was always bad" in ye olden days counter"argument" as a precaution.
I certainly didn't expect someone to actually use that nonsense, especially not right after I preemptively addressed it, rofl.Presuming it's even true, a previous game having the same problem is not an excuse! FFS. It's almost like the whole point of making a new system is to improve upon the old.
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Again, if you play Paizo APs, there are many, many encounters in those early levels where a foe landing a single crit will send 8hp classes dying 2. The math is so bad, that the number of HP is irrelevant due to the damage being a one-shot. An HP 8 class w/ Con +1 has 15 HP at Lvl 1. Fifteen.
Besides the outright one-shots, there are many, many times where a PC will have 0 ability to prevent going dying before they get to act. Just 2 foes striding up to the same L1 PC and taking a 2 swings each is mathematically getting to close where it's >50% likely that PC is going to be dying before just those 2 foes are done with their turns.
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There's moments where I remember checking the damage numbers realizing there was the potential to trigger the double-HP instant death damage rule, that's how frankly stupid the low level math is. The one I can recall off the top of my head was a bomb trap at L3 ish in Gatewalkers.
Loosing a PC to a hidden trap is just stupid. It didn't even make sense in-story for it to have been there, as the trap would have killed their own people.
Basically every single-foe encounter in those low levels is just stupid, and you can expect one-shots.
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Meanwhile in level 11-20 APs, even a Wizard can rely upon being able to tank a crit to the face while having tools that grant them agency to address that specific risk.
It's a completely different game, and the reverse difficulty curve honestly sucks. Our party has kinda been sleepwalking through Stolen Fate, and I'm pretty sure the GM has been trying to...
Maybe being weak at low level is a feature of low level games like every single low level game I've ever played that was level based. Heck, even non-level based games I've played early on can lead to one shots and death because these games tend to assume you are start off as what I would refer to as the gift neophyte.
Even in video games that are level based, you start off as a low level weakling who can die very easy.
When something is a feature, you accept it as a feature of these types of games.
As far as the rest, join the club of experienced adventurers. The difficulty level of PF2 past the roll-based one shotability of the low levels is experienced, tactical players can crush the game at the standard difficulty level, especially for APs.
The difficult was set a bit high in say Age of Ashes which is why some folks complained. Now the APs are set at an average to beginner difficulty which your DM will have to boost up to make it challenging for experienced players.
The one thing I like about PF2 is it is easier to boost up enemies than previous editions. The work I had to do to make enemies difficult in previous editions was too much. Now it's boost a CR or boost numbers slightly, increase hit points, work in some tactic to the enemies that will throw the PCs of a bit.
PF2 or these types of games period cannot account for experienced players crushing the game once they make it past the neophyte levels where a lucky or unlucky roll can take you down. That's how most of these games are built.
Not sure why you're worrying about it as it's been a feature for time immemorial of these types of games. Your DM should know if your group is too strong for standard difficulty and bump it up like a video game might do when the standard game is built for standard difficulty while some players are so good at them they need hardcore to feel any challenge.
No one to my knowledge has been able to fix this aspect of these types of games whether level-based or point-based. So maybe it is not fixable and provides players with the feeling of advancement to go from one-shot weakling to combat monster who can fight ancient dragons and demons. Maybe the designers found people like this and thus haven't spent much time thinking about how to "fix it" for a small group that doesn't like this advancement paradigm.
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Reverse difficulty curves, where the L1 play is the hardest, is the bane of games of all kinds. It's a huge background / unaware reason why so many people "get bored" and quit before finishing.
And no, video games absolutely do not (intentionally) have reverse difficulty curves. The whole point is to train the player's growing mastery while raising the difficulty along with them simultaneously, with spikes for bosses/climaxes and dips for the introduction of new mechanics. If a game gets too easy and the player starts becoming overpowered, then that risks them getting bored and playing another instead.
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It seems to be presumed truth that the OG ttrpgs did design that lethality and reverse curve on purpose, but again, those were different games with different goals. Chiefly, they involved simply slapping down the next character sheet and laughing at how the last one died. Parties were revolving doors, and it was not even abnormal to use near-clones of a character when the prior died.
The player characters themselves had little "character" to speak of, to the point that classes & species were locked together, because the idea of the unique character potentially being any class was an alien desire to those designers.
The character's "Elf" entry was literally both a species & class at the same time.
Echoing those design elements in the modern "adventure" era, where RP and long-brewing character stories are the norm, is counterproductive & antithetical to what Paizo is attempting to do with the APs.
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It is frankly asinine to attempt to "defend" the low HP problem as being desirable, but then also whine about "maybe it's just unfixable."
Dude, how stupid do you think we are? If you genuinely like the low level world of oneshots, then have the balls to stake your flag on that claim and leave it there. No one can argue against (honest) taste.
Groping toward the "I like it that way" argument only to then run and hide behind the skirt of "but maybe it's impossible to fix" only makes you look like you don't believe in anything you're actually saying.
Because yeah, it's just as stupid to claim it's unfixable. It's easy math anyone here could poke around with in an afternoon, if not an hour.
You can outright "fix" it with a custom PC HP scaling, and leave all other numbers alone;
the aim is to start with higher HP, and appear to gain it slower than normal as levels go up.
Because there's only 20 levels, anyone can just make a chart that contains a mod formula at each level to input the normal HP and output the adjusted HP. This is the kind of simple task where the "guess and check" methodology is all one really needs.
Something like: adjusted = (input * 1.2) + 7 for the Lvl 1 cell would change that starting 15 into a 25.
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Furthermore, Paizo themselves are aware this is a problem worth addressing, else they would not have invented the Belt of Good Health for the beginner box.
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Reverse difficulty curves, where the L1 play is the hardest, is the bane of games of all kinds. It's a huge background / unaware reason why so many people "get bored" and quit before finishing.
And no, video games absolutely do not (intentionally) have reverse difficulty curves. The whole point is to train the player's growing mastery while raising the difficulty along with them simultaneously, with spikes for bosses/climaxes and dips for the introduction of new mechanics. If a game gets too easy and the player starts becoming overpowered, then that risks them getting bored and playing another instead.
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It seems to be presumed truth that the OG ttrpgs did design that lethality and reverse curve on purpose, but again, those were different games with different goals. Chiefly, they involved simply slapping down the next character sheet and laughing at how the last one died. Parties were revolving doors, and it was not even abnormal to use near-clones of a character when the prior died.
The player characters themselves had little "character" to speak of, to the point that classes & species were locked together, because the idea of the unique character potentially being any class was an alien desire to those designers.
The character's "Elf" entry was literally both a species & class at the same time.Echoing those design elements in the modern "adventure" era, where RP and long-brewing character stories are the norm, is counterproductive & antithetical to what Paizo is attempting to do with the APs.
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It is frankly asinine to attempt to "defend" the low HP problem as being desirable, but then also whine about "maybe it's just unfixable."
Dude, how stupid do you think we are? If you genuinely like the low level world of oneshots, then have the balls to stake your flag on that claim and leave it there. No one can argue against (honest) taste.
Groping toward the "I like it that way" argument only to then run and hide behind the skirt of "but maybe it's impossible to fix"...
Are you really making this that big a deal?
Who even spends that much time at those levels to become the problem you claim it is? Are new gamers really spending so much time at low level that they are getting driven out of the game due to the hit point math?
I don't see any difference in a video game having a newbie area and a TTRPG having a bunch of CR-1 monsters like goblins and such to provide the newbie area experience. In PF2 you have 15 to 20 plus hit points which is plenty to survive the CR-1 experience with maybe an occasional boss monsters like a Big old Boss gnoll in a video game or a big named hog like you see in newbie video games.
But here you are telling me that somehow level 1 to 4 is so hard against the little newbie CR-1 monsters and I'm not seeing it. In PF2 they have made the early game pretty darn easy with the 15 to 20 hit points starting, cantrips like electric arc or ignition or a greatsword doing enough damage to wipe out a kobold or goblin warrior with a hit and take a few hits from them with an occasional boss monster being a possible tough fight, but you got healing so likely you'll survive.
Yet here you are making this claim that doesn't align with my experience in PF2 with the first four levels of any AP other than the early Age of Ashes AP. Otherwise, 1 to 4 has been pretty easy to get through.
Where are you getting this stuff? Then digging in like it's a universal experience that we're all having problems with. I haven't had any issues with it and PF2 has been the friendliest start to a RPG I've seen, so problem seems to have been addressed by giving more hit points to start the game, better healing, and better starting damage for casters and martials.
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Who even spends that much time at those levels to become the problem you claim it is? Are new gamers really spending so much time at low level that they are getting driven out of the game due to the hit point math?
Honestly, given that almost all the older "community wisdom" is reflective of play patterns almost entirely exclusive to L1-L4, I'd say it's an issue.
Most campaigns don't come anywhere near finishing, and most start at level 1. If they're APs, they barely make it out of book 1 or book 2 before the campaign collapses due to scheduling issues or something else. A lot of people's only experience with PF2E just is low level.
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Yup, 100%.
Most games have the opposite state of affairs, where the opening chapter is the most polished and well balanced, with things falling apart later as they cannot maintain balance (which also seems to happen a bit in pf2 to be fair).
A player being "engaged" with the game they are playing requires a number of "minimum bars" to be continuously met. If the game fails to do that, then the player is no longer having fun. Challenge is one specific piece of that "engaging gameplay" chunk, but it is *the* most essential piece.
If players feel no reason to perform the more tricky maneuvers, then they will optimize the fun out of their own play. High scores exist because it's a way to chase challenge even when hitting the same win state.
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I just played a bit of Expedition 33, a new turn-based rpg that's finding an audience far above their budget / team size. I certainly have notes, and here's one single nugget of absolutely intentional smart design.
At the very, *very* earliest opportunity, the devs place an optional mini-boss. A character will bark, "that one looks tough" when you get close, and it'll stand there motionless for you to choose to engage or skip.
At this point, the devs can be *certain* the only way to win the fight is with parries and perfect dodges. If the player can do them, it's a short round fight that's very winnable, if not, then most attacks will one-shot.
This is the dev's way to help with the "players will optimize away their fun" problem. The game is less fun to play if players ignore the timing minigame of parries, which is the *one* single place that is a source of continuous challenge the players cannot memorize on routine.
Because QTE timings of the player skills are static, each one is only a challenge novelty for a short time. The devs *understand* that parry/dodging foe attacks is the one source of ever-fresh challenge, and they made sure to maximize the chances that the players will choose to spend the effort to engage with it.
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It's absolutely true that ttrpgs benefit from being a group hangout with other people, and the parallel activity of that hangout can result in an overall good time in spite of the gameplay.
It is also true that the game being fun to play matters one hell of a lot.
After getting started with video games and then dipping into ttrpgs after I had some dev experience (to be clear, not as a professional. College courses and game jams for fun), it was honestly a little jaw dropping to discover how far behind the ttrpg space was / is. Some of the systems they include for legacy reasons are outright self-sabotage in regard to gameplay fun, and these days there are many, many professional devs who can clock that from a mile away.
Because of the way ttrpgs are communal play, the sub-industry is astoundingly chained to brand recognition, and the innovators die on the vine.
Yet, it's not true to say that the few IPs that do have brand recognition have that strong of a bad incentive against innovation / improvement.
5E revitalized the entire concept of playing a ttrpg in large part because it was a better newbie experience than the older versions, because it did hugely break away from it's prior conventions. I'd even argue that pf2 has achieved success above it's brand power because it's just more fun to play.
While pf2 is certainly a much better system overall, 5E does know how important low level play is. Yes, I'm abnormal in that when I see the PC next to me get one-shot, I'm going to stop and analyze what happened under the hood. Yet, even for those who are not looking at it from that system-causal angle, it still hurts the fun of their experience when such things happen.
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To bring it back around, I do think the single biggest source of pain in pf2 comes from the bad HP math, most blatantly at low levels. If I could make any single change w/ the goal of increasing fun, it would be to the HP math.
(Though if I could, this fix would include the much too big gap between classes.
HP 6 classes being in the same system as an HP 12 class is frankly much too big a gap in a system that doesn't use % HP numbers/damage.
Like that late +1 --> +2 prof change, so much of pf2 can be described as "knowing exactly what the problem was, but not being confident enough to get the numbers where they should be.")
So, so many things make me think that some key Paizo staff 100% get this is a problem, it's not just the arbitrary invention of a belt which grants a flat HP boost.
Even what may seem like tiny, inconsequential details, like the scaling of Numbing Tonic's effect, seem pinpointed on this problem when you realize it's abnormally above it's own curve at L1.
Lvl 1: Numb = 2 tHP / 15 HP --> .133
Lvl 5: Numb = 5 tHP / 56 HP --> .089
Lvl 9: Numb = 10 tHP / 105 HP --> .095
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Maybe being weak at low level is a feature of low level games like every single low level game I've ever played that was level based. Heck, even non-level based games I've played early on can lead to one shots and death because these games tend to assume you are start off as what I would refer to as the gift neophyte.
But the variety of levels can create the feeling of weakness without having 1st-level characters that will drop to dying in a single critical hit in a level-appropriate encounter. It is enough to surround the 1st-level characters with Beyond-Extreme-Threat 6th-level dangers that they know to avoid.
WIZARD: The only route to our goal goes past Hook Mountain.FIGHTER: But my family warned me of the powerful ogres of Hook Mountain. They can kill veteran fighters and we are beginners. They are way above our level.
ROGUE: That is why we need to be very stealthy. I have been studying the Quiet Allies technique and maybe I can master it before the journey.
CLERIC: Or we can hire a boat over Stroval Deep and bypass that dangerous mountain entirely.
WIZARD: Stroval Deep has its own aquatic monster, the Black Magga.
CLERIC: Still, let's talk with the local people. Maybe we can join a well-guarded caravan.
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Because yeah, it's just as stupid to claim it's [the math's] unfixable. It's easy math anyone here could poke around with in an afternoon, if not an hour.
You can outright "fix" it with a custom PC HP scaling, and leave all other numbers alone;
the aim is to start with higher HP, and appear to gain it slower than normal as levels go up.Because there's only 20 levels, anyone can just make a chart that contains a mod formula at each level to input the normal HP and output the adjusted HP. This is the kind of simple task where the "guess and check" methodology is all one really needs.
Something like: adjusted = (input * 1.2) + 7 for the Lvl 1 cell would change that starting 15 into a 25.
Back on March 22 in comment #24" I looked at the math for the first 10 levels. TO fix the math of all levels, I simply need to find the general formula for all levels. For player character hit points, I used a CON +0 human bard, whose hit points were 8*level + 8. For Strike damage I used the high column of Table 2-10: Strike Damage. Now I need to convert that into a formula. The entries for levels -1 and 0 fit no pattern, the entries for levels 1, 2, and 3 fit Average Damage = 3*level + 3. The entries for levels 3 through 15 fit Average Damage = 2*level + 6. We have a slowdown at level 16 and then at level 17 the formula goes back to increasing by 2 per level, Average Damage = 2*level + 4.
The High Strike Damage column for levels -1 to 2 are 1d4+1 (average 3), 1d6+2 (average 5), 1d6+3 (average 6), and 1d10+4 (average 9). We can fudge those numbers a little to get a reasonable fit with the formula 2*level + 5. That would give 1d4+1 (average 3), 1d6+2 (average 5), 1d8+3 (average 7), and 1d10+4 (average 9), which looks prettier. Thus, I will use 2*level +5 as the formula for average high strike damage.
HP/damage = (8*level + 8)/(2*level + 5) = (8*level + 20)/(2*level + 5) - 12/(2*level + 5) = 4 - 6/(level + 2.5). At higher levels, a character can take 4 regular hits from a same-level high-damage creature. The -6/(level + 2.5) means that they can take two fewer hits at 1st level and one fewer hit at 2nd through 5th levels.
To get rid of that vulnerability term -6/(level + 2.5), we simply need to add 12 more hit points to every player character. To be fair, the creatures should get those extra 12 hit points, too.
Or we could change the formula for average high strike damage, but given that a STR +4, 1st-level fighter with a greatsword deals 1d12+4 slashing damage (average 10) we would really have to cripple the PCs to drop average strike damage.