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Math's constructed scenario is a good example to demonstrate how this specific low HP issue creates a death spiral, where all the party's actions and choices change in response to a PC dropping; no longer being spent to win the fight, but are instead spent to prevent dying.Classic beginner mistake. I generally play healers, I don't heal downed PCs. And when I go down I refuse being healed unless there's no real danger left.
But it has nothing to do with low HPs, I see the same mistake being done at every level.
Yes, it does. The "average hits until downed" being so low at L1 vs L8 means this does have a much greater effect upon L1 play vs L8 play, etc.
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And no, it's not a mistake to heal downed PCs. Dying is essentially a perma stun, and healing them gets them able to act again.
Unless you are 1 single turn from ending the threat yourself, spending 2A to heal a downed PC is the better move in like 90+% of scenarios. Again, dying is a form of hard CC on the PC, healing them is the way to remove that debuff.
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Now, if they were already wounded before dropping a 2nd time, that adds more risk/consideration to the affair. A *second* revive into wounded 2 can put them in range of crit insta dead, so the benefit of another actor back in action has much more risk paired with it.
To be clear, it's still usually better in terms of winning that combat, as the PC who gets sent dying 4 via crit still took a blow that would've hit someone else, but most parties would rather leave them on the ground and play at a handicap than risk death-death and healing them up.
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Tristan d'Ambrosius, are you arguing that a character who has been knocked to dying 2 by a critical hit in the 1st round is best left for dead? That makes the critical-hit problem worse.
No I was arguing that your easy-peesy solution of picking up the rogue and moving and raising the shield was not so easy-peesy as you presented it.
But yes sometimes it is better to leave a down comrade down and let the the dying rules play out for a round allowing you to be proactive against the enemy before its turn comes back around
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How effective it is to heal a dying PC depends, imo, on these factors:
1) How valuable are the downed PC's actions over the rest of the encounter? Are those future actions worth the immediate action cost of getting them up? The earlier in the encounter you are, the more you probably want that heal.
2) How valuable is an extra body right now? Having 4 possible targets instead of 3 can, in itself, be pretty valuable. The tempo loss from having fewer players and targets can spiral very quickly if someone else goes down. 3 PCs might not be so bad if the fight is closer to finishing, but 3 is very bad early on.
3) How bloodthirsty is this encounter (or DM)? If the enemy will leave a downed PC alone and use them to play for tempo, you have a lot of leeway. If the enemy is more the kind to just take the kill, you're absolutely screwed if you don't get them off the floor.
4) The dying value, of course. Dying 1 is substantially less scary than any other value. Dying 2 should start raising alarm bells no matter what, since it's easier to get crit and hit if you're already on the floor.
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She says the fighter should have delayed his turn until the wizard Recalls Knowledge and casts Light on his shield. Then the fighter should have entered the cave to stand over the unconscious rogue, shield bashed the corpselight, and raised his shield. The druid could cast Stabilize on the rogue from a distance. Later, the druid and wizard had spells that deal bludgeoning damage, such as Timber and Telekinetic Projectile. The tactical plan is to force the corpselight to respond to the attacks rather than finish off the rogue.
Ok, but the point of this thread is that *the game* doesn’t do a good job at teaching new players how to play.
In this hypothetical, level 1 situation that you have presented, if it was applied to new players, bereft of your wife’s storied and obvious tactical acumen, there is no way they would a) understand any of those functions, capabilities or even possibilities let alone b) execute them in a co-ordinated manner.
It’s not even HP that is a problem. In one of my recent PbP PF2 games the GM advised that my character *should* have used the Crawl action upon waking in a tent to sounds of combat. I didn’t even know there *needed* to be a Crawl action, let alone that there was one and that it was an option. (The same GM refused to let us start encounters with weapons in hand “because he’d watched dev’s games on Youtube who played that way” even after I pointed to the “Example of Play” in the Player Core that has Iconics doing just that. But I digress…)
I’m ancient, been playing DnDs since 1982, so the whole dying early level is not foreign to me. And I do think Deriven Firelion’s point that this latest iteration has given 1st level PCs more of everything than previous editions. However I also think that there is a tendency to think that means something in a graded or gradual sense, editions improving etc. It doesn’t to me. It just means a different playing field, and I would totally agree with posters here who say that the *lethality* of PF2R encounters for 1st/low level characters is absolutely a thing. Just the fact that enemies have multiple actions, meaning more than not - multiple attacks, meaning more than earlier editions and even with MAP - more chances to inflict hits, damage and possibly crits. It doesn’t matter if the players also have more actions, especially if they are new, and have no understanding of how the system is geared to have them operate.
And the game, in the rulebooks, *does not* teach this. By all means think that specialised player bases will be boned up on all the minutiae, be tactically savvy and approach the game gradually learning al the tricks and pitfalls to avoid as they level, so that at level 5 they are totes awesome. But I’ve been playing for a *long* time, and it’s all a bit of a morass to me. I can’t imagine a new player, absent a convincingly compelling “fantastic game” being all that impressed.
I ran a game of PF2R for my crew, and they found all the “dos” counterintuitive and the “don’ts” questionable, and I had a hard time disagreeing with a lot of their points. PF2R is incredibly bespoke. It isn’t clear, or simple. It’s a system, at times convoluted, and at times incredibly elegant. It’s my favorite iteration so far but I heavily houserule it to favor the way I play and run it. And one of the trickiest things to “learn” is the “synergy/teamwork stuff”. Not that you should employ it or attempt, but all the ways the “combos” interact. You don’t walk in off the street and start doing that. Generally.
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Unless you are 1 single turn from ending the threat yourself, spending 2A to heal a downed PC is the better move in like 90+% of scenarios.
You need 2 rounds to get back the actions you lost, not 1. Considering you're taking a great risk by healing the PC (they're Wounded 1 with low hit points and now at actual risk of dying) and also a potential waste of resources (free healing is rare), it's a strategy to keep for extreme cases.
It's much more effective to heal before they go down. Healing downed PC is a beginner mistake.
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Unless you are 1 single turn from ending the threat yourself, spending 2A to heal a downed PC is the better move in like 90+% of scenarios.You need 2 rounds to get back the actions you lost, not 1. Considering you're taking a great risk by healing the PC (they're Wounded 1 with low hit points and now at actual risk of dying) and also a potential waste of resources (free healing is rare), it's a strategy to keep for extreme cases.
It's much more effective to heal before they go down. Healing downed PC is a beginner mistake.
With the way turn order works, it's most likely that another PC will have at least one turn to heal the dying before they need to make a dying check, which is when the party looses their 3 actions.
Witch did a great job laying out the factors as to if you should get them conscious again.
I'll just highlight how easy it is for those questions to be a yes. Even ol' reliable of Electric Arc can be cast as soon as they are conscious again, prone or not.
Trading your 2A to heal for them to then use a 2A damage spell is a good way to show exactly what sort of trade is going on; yes, your 2A to heal will likely be way better than what the downed's actions will be on that turn, but that stand up turn is not a complete waste, it's closer to Slowed 1:2 caster:weapon-user.
It can even be an outright DPS gain quite easily. If one foe is in kill range of Electric Arc, and the healer lacks the ability to AoE the remaining foes (but could still down the weak foe) that still means the party *gains* DPS via healing the PC conscious, as EA is 2 targets, both getting that last hit and damaging the next target.
The dying are perma CCed until healed. To say it's better tactics to leave them dying is to say that the down PC's entire future combat actions are worth less than the _A from a healer. It can be true! But in like 90% of cases, I'd wager the math to heal checks out.
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Yes, we'd all like to heal in a preventative manner. The 1,2 A penalty of getting KOed sucks.
But golly, it's almost like there's some issue with underlying system math, where characters can be at full HP, but get dropped all the way to dying before a PC is even allowed to act.
Really would make it "hard to teach" players that it's often fine to "waste" healing via overheal if PCs kept getting one shot.
Good thing the system reliably does / not do that depending on what level you are playing at!
(sarcasm aside, this is exactly *why* the low HP issue is worth fixing. At low level, the system teaches the players that healing the 15% HP ally is actively stupid when they get one-shot @ 100% right after the heal)
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This is also why Soothing Tonic is underrated, especially next to Numbing. Soothing's fast healing buff will auto-raise the dying, and I have genuinely used this proactively when I knew a PC was about to get pancaked.
We should not forget that there's no negative HP in pf2. Just as the action cost of standing up is typically a bad penalty, sometimes it can be a good trade. In my specific case, there was very low chance of me out-healing the boss (and resource / spell slot considerations are very real. Alch's now only have 2 turns of max VV burn, so they are included too).
By instead pre-loading the PC with some fast healing, that choice traded the wounded 1 debuff & 1A stand up for the overflow negative HP damage.
That 2A foe power attack damage was much much more than I could heal in 1A, so risk of death via wounded aside, it was genuinely worth it to explicitly not heal the near 0 PC until after they dropped dying. But, as I already had the spare action that turn, I went ahead and applied fast healing then.
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In general, be very wary of any attempt at absolutes, in a contextual game like pf2, they are always wrong sometimes, and it's often more likely than we'd guess.
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She says the fighter should have delayed his turn until the wizard Recalls Knowledge and casts Light on his shield. Then the fighter should have entered the cave to stand over the unconscious rogue, shield bashed the corpselight, and raised his shield. The druid could cast Stabilize on the rogue from a distance. Later, the druid and wizard had spells that deal bludgeoning damage, such as Timber and Telekinetic Projectile. The tactical plan is to force the corpselight to respond to the attacks rather than finish off the rogue.Ok, but the point of this thread is that *the game* doesn’t do a good job at teaching new players how to play.
In this hypothetical, level 1 situation that you have presented, if it was applied to new players, bereft of your wife’s storied and obvious tactical acumen, there is no way they would a) understand any of those functions, capabilities or even possibilities let alone b) execute them in a co-ordinated manner.
Back in comment #53 I said that we needed a free Strategy Guide on the Internet. Earlier commenters had suggested that Paizo publish a Strategy Guide, but most new players have a low budget for buying books. I am working on writing one again. I will need months to finish.
But my scenario of a corpselight critically hitting a rogue is not regular strategy and tactics. It is disaster management tactics. See all the disagreement posted here and now among us experienced players, because such advanced tactics are especially difficult. Trip.H is right that forcing players with low-level characters, the starting point of most new players, to deal with disaster management is a significant flaw in Pathfinder. For better gameplay the responsibility is shifted to the GM to ensure that the low-level players don't face a disaster.
It’s not even HP that is a problem. In one of my recent PbP PF2 games the GM advised that my character *should* have used the Crawl action upon waking in a tent to sounds of combat. I didn’t even know there *needed* to be a Crawl action, let alone that there was one and that it was an option. (The same GM refused to let us start encounters with weapons in hand “because he’d watched dev’s games on Youtube who played that way” even after I pointed to the “Example of Play” in the Player Core that has Iconics doing just that. But I digress…)
I have written up the part of my new guide covering Basic Actions.
Crawl [one action] (Rarely used)
The prone condition is usually considered an impairment, so most player characters prefer to Stand to end the prone condition rather than Crawl. But if a character is prone in order to Take Cover against ranged attacks, Crawling twice and then Taking Cover is a way to move while retaining cover against ranged attacks.
I view OceanshieldwolPF's GM's advice to Crawl as a misunderstanding of the rules. Crawling is not stealthy. Nor does Crawling increase AC. It does enable Taking Cover against the ground for an AC bonus against ranged attacks, but only if the player knows about that aspect of the Take Cover action. A more logical action would be to Sneak to the entrance of the tent to peek out at the combat (you can flavor the sneak as keeping one's head down, almost crawling). But that has table variance, because a harsh GM could declare that the Seek action to assess the combat breaks stealth.
I’m ancient, been playing DnDs since 1982, so the whole dying early level is not foreign to me. And I do think Deriven Firelion’s point that this latest iteration has given 1st level PCs more of everything than previous editions. However I also think that there is a tendency to think that means something in a graded or gradual sense, editions improving etc. It doesn’t to me. It just means a different playing field, and I would totally agree with posters here who say that the *lethality* of PF2R encounters for 1st/low level characters is absolutely a thing. Just the fact that enemies have multiple actions, meaning more than not - multiple attacks, meaning more than earlier editions and even with MAP - more chances to inflict hits, damage and possibly crits. It doesn’t matter if the players also have more actions, especially if they are new, and have no understanding of how the system is geared to have them operate.
I am slightly more ancient, since my first D&D game was in 1979. And I remember the "natural attacks" of animals in D&D 3rd Edition and Pathfinder 1st Edition, in which a CR 1 animal could take a full-round action to attack with jaws and both claws, though the claws were penalized as secondary attacks. Rather, the big difference with multiple attacks in PF2 is that critical hits are more likely. An animal in PF1 would crit only on a natural 20 that was confirmed by a second d20 roll.
We old fogeys can reminisce about when wizards rolled 1d4+CON for their entire 1st-level hit points and could end up with fewer hit points than a house cat.
And the game, in the rulebooks, *does not* teach this. By all means think that specialised player bases will be boned up on all the minutiae, be tactically savvy and approach the game gradually learning al the tricks and pitfalls to avoid as they level, so that at level 5 they are totes awesome. But I’ve been playing for a *long* time, and it’s all a bit of a morass to me. I can’t imagine a new player, absent a convincingly compelling “fantastic game” being all that impressed.
I ran a game of PF2R for my crew, and they found all the “dos” counterintuitive and the “don’ts” questionable, and I had a hard time disagreeing with a lot of their points. PF2R is incredibly bespoke. It isn’t clear, or simple. It’s a system, at times convoluted, and at times incredibly elegant. It’s my favorite iteration so far but I heavily houserule it to favor the way I play and run it. And one of the trickiest things to “learn” is the “synergy/teamwork stuff”. Not that you should employ it or attempt, but all the ways the “combos” interact. You don’t walk in off the street and start doing that. Generally.
I almost alway run games with my wife as a player, and she teaches the newbies. I wrote an example in comment #34. I have faced one new player who was a clueless learner, but the party incorporated the stubborn newbie's clumsy tactics into the team's tactical plans.
I seldom see regular use of synergies, because my players' favorite tactics are to vary the tactics.
The questionable "don'ts" in PF2 are typically roadblocks to prevent abuses of rules that had happened in PF1. Since my players don't abuse the rules, I often houserule the don'ts away myself.
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The first fight i put my level 1 players through I used the numbers in the GM Core to create foes.
The main enemy was level 1 +9 to hit doing 1d6+3 had a shield reactive strike and shield block, these are the high values. 18 Ac between extreme and high, and 20 HP moderate.
There was a level 2 wizard but his goal was only to escape the fight, casting spells only if needed to escape.
The rest were level -1 foes with shortbows +7 to hit doing only 1d4 thats between high and moderate to hit and mod or low damage, also had daggers doing 1d4+1 Used 14 AC and 8 HP both moderate.
I also gave some advantages.
Foes were on elevated terrain with a set of stairs leading up to them across the middle of the map. The lower elevation did have shop stalls players could use for cover.
Because of player choices some of them triggered this encounter before the rest arrived. Half of the party was delayed 1 turn before getting to join in. (Time wise it should have been more turns, fun wise one turn was enough to feel the time lapse)
One player was even entering from a different side of the map.
My players really enjoyed the fight. The ranged characters got to go for cover and fire back.
The vine leshie got to show off their climbing advantages and scale the wall.
The champion got to shove foes off the wall after getting up there.
No one felt safe but they didn't feel like they didn’t stand a chance either.
It was a good encounter.
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I'll just highlight how easy it is for those questions to be a yes.
If you heal a downed PC, they are on the ground with low hit points and at a position where they can take quite some damage (as they took quite some damage already). If they go down again they reach Dying 2 (at least) and are now at actual risk of dying. Considering that they certainly haven't acted enough to get your 2 actions back, you are now in real trouble.
So, the question boils down to: Has this encounter real risks of ending with a PC death? If yes, then raise the downed PC. If not, they please don't, not everyone likes to die during a Moderate encounter because an idiot Battle Medicined you and the dice then decided to hate you.
Moderate encounters being way more common than deadly ones, raising downed PCs is in general a very bad idea.
As a player, I've already refused healing, especially low healing like potions, Battle Medicine or Soothe (with a maxed out 2-action Heal, my chances of going down again are rather low).
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Back in comment #53 I said that we needed a free Strategy Guide on the Internet. Earlier commenters had suggested that Paizo publish a Strategy Guide, but most new players have a low budget for buying books. I am working on writing one again. I will need months to finish.Community strategy guides are great! But I would favor a fix over them for a couple reasons. Not every player will want to read them. Newbies least of all. Second, early level APs should not require reading a community strategy guide to survive.
Frankly, IMO, early level APs should not require heavy use of tactics to survive at all. Their importance in combat should ramp up so that players can learn how to use them over multiple sessions. But that's just me, and I totally get it if old hands want more complex, tough L1-5 APs that challenge their system mastery starting in the first encounter of the first session. I can imagine a player base appetite for such product...it's just a really bad product for new players.
We old fogeys can reminisce about when wizards rolled 1d4+CON for their entire 1st-level hit points and could end up with fewer hit points than a house cat.I'm an old fogie too...and I also remember that since the 90s at least (maybe 80s), non-d20-level systems solved this issue when they wanted to. Some chose not to because they wanted their games deadly right from the first session, but others fixed it so first session death wasn't such a looming problem. The point being, the only thing that keeps beginner play far deadlier than higher level play for d20-and-level games is cultural resistance to change. It's certainly not down to an inability to figure out a fix, because game designers have been successfully overcoming this problem for 30+ years.
I don't want a "fix myself. I'm glad PF2 made the game deadlier again. I think a lot of people wanted a return to a deadlier game. These games are really boring if too easy. Making it easy from first level when the game gets progressively easier as you gain more power means the game is easy from level 1 all the to level 20.
There will be no sense of mortality left in the game. It will be a padded walls and corners game where the players think they can wander through it and nothing will happen to them. They always win. Danger barely exists. No one ever dies even facing terrible monsters and demons. It's a laughably easy game like 3E, 4E, or 5E.
Players having to learn tactics right from the beginning makes it clear that these types of games are different from other games. You need to be thinking right from the beginning.
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I don't want a "fix myself. I'm glad PF2 made the game deadlier again. I think a lot of...
It sounds like you find it a feature, and the rest of us find it to be a bug out of line with the rest of the game.
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The benefit of a well balanced system is that it increases its ability to hold up to stressors like a difficult encounter / AP.
If the devs can trust certain norms/rules to hold true (such as no one-shots), then they can construct scenarios that count on them.
And a system with normal one-shots is as stupid delicate and fragile as it comes. You simply cannot perform setup --> payoff when a single hit can break that plan.
As was mentioned upthread, because of how much the luck of a single roll can create a death spiral for either team, the notion of "predictable difficulty" is barely a thing at low Lvl play.
If starting HP is padded out enough to avoid one-shots, that only *increases* the ability to design difficult and lethal fights to be fair and fun.
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To approach this issue from the opposite angle, right now, low level pf2 is "deadly" yes. But it is the definition of artificial / bullsh.t difficulty.
Absurdly often, there is no misplay involved in being the recipient of a 100 --> 0 event.
When the players learn that the math behind the bullsh.t is mathematically that unfair, it makes the stench of that BS all the more intolerable.
There's absolutely a time and table for ye olde meat grinder, but it is counterproductive to the new norm of collective storytelling.
My AV GM added/edited content for each individual PCs personal story. We needed to make a pit stop in Absalom? A PC's mom runs a tavern there, time for a sidequest to help her out of a jam. A PC is on a revenge quest against her slaver who sought the Vaults for power? He's in there, somewhere.
If the PCs dropped dead due to some BS like a froghemoth ambush on the water instead of reaching those story events, that would have wasted a significant amount of that GM's time.
That kind of narrative, where the unique characters actually matter, is why the "adventure" norm of rare PC death has completely taken over. The kind of story where the PC's get *personally* involved is outright incompatible with the old meat grinder.
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Is the main argument about the math that level 1 parties should be able to handle serious or extreme grade encounters that have +2 or +3 creatures involved because at higher levels pcs can handle them?
And that its bad design because they cannot?
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I don't want a "fix myself. I'm glad PF2 made the game deadlier again. I think a lot of...It sounds like you find it a feature, and the rest of us find it to be a bug out of line with the rest of the game.
The rest of us in this thread? Yeah, I guess the majority in this thread are of this mindset.
I want a deadlier game all the way up myself. I think PF2 slightly moved the game back to slightly more deadly, but I'd like to be even more so. My entire group likes the game more dangerous with mortality being important.
It's hard to sell a game of dragons and demons and devils and other horrifying looking creatures as scary when you beat them easier than Mario stomps mushrooms or some other video game on easy mode.
I'm not quite sure why so many on this thread want easy mode and even easier mode at the lowest levels. It's pretty strange.
PF2 goes out of their way to make a game that is at least slightly more dangerous which I had heard people asked for as they were tired of PF1/3/0 the easy mode, crush everything game where they removed save or die spells and nearly every harsh ability in the game including making poison and disease almost a non-factor to a slightly more lethal game where poison, disease, traps, and monsters were more dangerous again.
You got Trip H saying he's having an easy time past the early levels where he and his group are sleepwalking through the game with the only dangerous levels being 1-4.
Now folks like yourself seem to want an even easier game at 1-4. I don't want that. It's not fun. Game should have the lethality increased more at the higher levels to mirror 1-4 play. I'd rather have that occur. That would make the game more dangerous and entertaining making the game more consistent, but the other way.
I'm still unhappy so many ask for the removal of save or die spells. That random dangerousness was fun.
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Is the main argument about the math that level 1 parties should be able to handle serious or extreme grade encounters that have +2 or +3 creatures involved because at higher levels pcs can handle them?
And that its bad design because they cannot?
That seems to be what Trip H is saying.
Him and his group are having a super easy time past those early levels. The theory seems to be that 1-4 is the problem rather than the game becoming too easy at higher levels. So he wants 1 to 4 to be easy so beginners can ramrod through it like he's doing at later levels.
I don't know. Not what I want. I guess we'll see if Paizo's customers want an easier game after it seems like the PF2 design team was given information to turn the lethality up a knob or two from PF1. They did. I guess too high at levels 1 to 4 even though they are the easiest level 1 to 4 in any D&D type of game.
I'm not even quite sure what they want. My group and I didn't have much trouble at 1 to 4, but we're very experienced so don't count as beginners. When we were beginners, the game was many times more lethal than it is now. But we liked that part of the game. Made it seem more like what you would want a game like this to be fighting fantasy monsters.
I guess maybe we're in the minority. Who knows.
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I'd like for the HP math at low levels to make game design sense.
When it's normal to get one-shot from full, it really does ruin the tactical depth of the game and turn it into rocket tag.
It's frankly disheartening that some people seem so entrenched in norms from twenty years ago that this is not getting through to them.
Low level combat is straight up rocket tag right now, except worse due to players only having L1 tools.
One shots are not good for gameplay. In roguelikes, they are b%~~~!*! that'll quickly have players swapping to a different game even in a genre with 0 unique character investment. Even in "meat grinder, the genre" one-shots like that are a bad design outcome that invalidates the concept of HP/defense, and every tactical consideration around those numbers.
In a collective storytelling ttrpg like pf2, b%@$!#@* oneshots killing PCs is so bad, they typically exist in the "not allowed to happen" realm of events, and trigger GM-intervention to prevent/undo.
It does not matter what level we are talking about, BS deaths should not happen. Players must have had agency in that death, and had the ability to avoid it.
The low level HP math is f++%ed right now because of a different norm 30+ years ago, for a different game that was NOT doing the same things that pf2 is today. There are other "for legacy reasons" vestiges included in pf2 which be annoying, but are not game-disrupting, not like this one is.
Not being able to survive one turn of aggression IS a game-warping scab of decades-outdated design in direct conflict with the rest of pf2.
If an ill-fitting mechanic from call of cthulhu or shadowrun had been implanted into pf2, people would not hesitate to criticize and deal with it. That this low HP nonsense was in an older, different game, is not a valid argument for it being a good fit for pf2.
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I'd like for the HP math at low levels to make game design sense.
When it's normal to get one-shot from full, it really does ruin the tactical depth of the game and turn it into rocket tag.
It's frankly disheartening that some people seem so entrenched in norms from twenty years ago that this is not getting through to them.
Low level combat is straight up rocket tag right now, except worse due to players only having L1 tools.
One shots are not good for gameplay. In roguelikes, they are b*#!%!!# that'll quickly have players swapping to a different game even in a genre with 0 unique character investment. Even in "meat grinder, the genre" one-shots like that are a bad design outcome that invalidates the concept of HP/defense, and every tactical consideration around those numbers.
In a collective storytelling ttrpg like pf2, b!#$+*!* oneshots killing PCs is so bad, they typically exist in the "not allowed to happen" realm of events, and trigger GM-intervention to prevent/undo.
It does not matter what level we are talking about, BS deaths should not happen. Players must have had agency in that death, and had the ability to avoid it.
The low level HP math is f##@ed right now because of a different norm 30+ years ago, for a different game that was NOT doing the same things that pf2 is today. There are other "for legacy reasons" vestiges included in pf2 which be annoying, but are not game-disrupting, not like this one is.
Not being able to survive one turn of aggression IS a game-warping scab of decades-outdated design in direct conflict with the rest of pf2.If an ill-fitting mechanic from call of cthulhu or shadowrun had been implanted into pf2, people would not hesitate to criticize and deal with it. That this low HP nonsense was in an older, different game, is not a valid argument for it being a good fit for pf2.
I'm not sure what to tell you. My groups likes characters dying.
I get it. Each player considers their character a special character they don't want to die. But someone has to take the hit to make the reality of fighting dragons and demons seem lethal. Someone has to be Boromir or Sirius Black or Lem in The Shield. It's best that the game show this with random lethality from the monsters and world to make it seem more real and dangerous. No one wants to build a character that's guaranteed to die, but it's more fun if someone does die because the random rules make the world seem lethal like such a world would really be.
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So in the encounter I described all of the -1 level foes had 8 hp.
They could be one shot by some players rolling high on non crits. The damage the -1's could deal was generally 1d4. They could not kill any of my level 1 player's characters even on a crit.
The level 1 foe was stronger doing 1d6+3, high damage for level 1 foes. A max crit couldn't have killed the champion or the barbarian.
It would have taken exactly a max damage crit to have 1 shot'ed the cleric or The Druid and he had a shield and could shield block to survive even a max damage crit. The ranger, rogue, and witch never got in range of the level 1's melee strikes and never had to.
There is design space to not let players get 1 shot'ed.
What I would not have done is thrown brand new players against a Level 2 or 3 creature that has the goal of killing the PCs for their first ever ttrpg encounter. (there was a level 2 wizard there but his goal was to escape)
More experienced players could handle it. They would know to mitigate the risk of going down by making sure to limit the action economy of the stronger foes, make sure the easiest target for them to get to are the hardest targets, have those two action heals ready to keep the best defensive characters up. I didnt expect that level of game mastery and didnt use level 2 and 3 foes. In fact 1 level 1 foe was challenging enough when grouped with a bunch of -1's and an elevation advantage.
The argument I have heard so far is that it is bad design for level 1 parties against higher level creatures to be unfair fights. That level 1 parties should be fighting level 2 and 3 foes without worrying about getting 1 shot'ed on a crit.
I don't see this as a design problem, it looks more like an outcome of a design goal. Lower level characters can't take on as amazing a feat as higher level ones can. Lower level characters are vulnerable and need to be careful of danger that higher level pcs can handle with their abundant resources and options.
But really there is nothing wrong with the experience you want to have, and nothing should stop you from playing with folks that want the same experience out of their game.
The first is join a group that wants the game at low level to be less lethal. With a group that has that goal in mind there are so many ways to make that happen. Start at higher level, start with magic items and consumables, use the weak template on everything, give all pcs a temp hp boost as a divine boon, ect...
And you know, if it really is more popular to have a more powerful low level start to the game you know the game will change to meet it. Thats just a good business decision to make the game your customers want to buy. I am not certain that what your saying you want is that popular.
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It's interesting to hear how different everyone's experiences are with PF2E. In the groups I've played with, we haven't really run into the "rocket tag" issue beyond the first few sessions, once we got a better feel for the system. I wonder if it might come down to playstyle or how the GMs are running encounters?
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Well that's not exactly the sense I got from your prior comments this. The new comment amounts to: don't waste time in combat on healing that could be done out-of-combat.
Not at all.
I've seen enough fights turning deadly because someone decided to heal a downed PC that I know it's in general a bad tactic. But it looks like I made an error: It's not a beginner mistake, it's just a common mistake. People blame the dice, the monsters or the downed PC player actions without getting to the original mistake because it happened 3 rounds earlier: The healing.
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That wasn't what I was suggesting at all. I'm suggesting better evenness across levels, or even perhaps that the game get more risky as you get higher in level. Right now, getting one-shotted is primarily an early level phenomenon. Why should that be the case? What's the logic of making it easier to one-shot a newbie's first PC than an advanced player's umpteenth 10th level PC? Shouldn't it be the other way around? I.e. that the advanced player has to make greater use of tactics, preparatory buffing etc.? Because they're going to know how to do that stuff, and the newbie won't. Because they won't lose interest in the game because their umpteenth PC got ganked, while a newbie in their first game easily could.Making it easy from first level when the game gets progressively easier as you gain more power means the game is easy from level 1 all the to level 20.
There will be no sense of mortality left in the game. It will be a padded walls and corners game
If PF2 didn't give so many hit points at low level, I guess I could see it. But it does give a lot of hit points.
Evenness? Why would low level characters have an easier time than high level characters? How would that show progress? Low level characters don't even have access to many tactics. The entire game is simple at low level.
The unevenness of the levels is supposed to show progression. That's why you go from new player who can get one shotted at level 1 to level 20 where you can kill ancient dragons with ease.
And I don't know what you want. Less damage from the monsters? Fourty hit points at first level so you never have to worry about getting crushed?
To me it's pretty clear the designers demarcated certain levels as major increase in power and progression that you really feel the upgrade to in play. It's not just 1 to 4. It's 5 to 7, 8 to 11, 12 to 15, 16 to 19, the 20 as the capstone legendary hero. It's a build up to ultimate power.
I don't want this evening some seem to be requesting myself. I like progression that feels like progression. Level 1 to should feel vastly different from level 20 and all along the way. Even level 2 should be feel like a slight upgrade and it does.
PF2 is about as well done progression as can be managed without turning the game into meaningless progress.
I'm surprised I hear this critique while I see some other video claiming the game feels the same from level 1 to 20.
The criticisms are all over the place for PF2 from different people. I don't even know how you parse the data if you're the design team to make the game fit every group of critics that want some change made to suit their individual sensibilities.
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It's interesting to hear how different everyone's experiences are with PF2E. In the groups I've played with, we haven't really run into the "rocket tag" issue beyond the first few sessions, once we got a better feel for the system. I wonder if it might come down to playstyle or how the GMs are running encounters?
It's a multifaceted issue, really. I've personally never experienced a "rocket tag" game beyond... well, the early APs. Specifically, Extinction Curse (yes, I will complain about it forever, thanks for asking). After that, I came away with an understanding of my own: more, lower-level enemies (to a point) is better design for low-level combat encounters if you don't want to experience as much swingy-ness.
Level -1 or 0 enemies will very VERY rarely one-shot you at level 1 unless you have heavily tanked your HP. Many of them have negative strength or are plinking away from range or are designed to not really be swinging at you much with low to-hits. If you have a 6 HP ancestry with a 6 HP class and a -1 Constitution... I think a new player will rarely make this kind of character, but if they did, I think it's easy to understand the repercussions of "I picked the lowest possible HP". Perhaps it's still a problem that somebody CAN make a character like this, I suppose? But it's a fairly corner case. And even then, plenty of -1 enemies won't even kill these kinds of PCs.
But the thing is, that's the primary point of the thread: that's AFTER I've already experienced the oopsies I had. The early APs really kinda soured a lot of people off of low levels because it presented them with Severe/Extreme encounters fairly regularly, and the Moderate or Low encounters it did put them up against were typically single-threat encounters (which are still notoriously swingy even past low levels, you just have more obvious cheats to swing the math in your favor by then). If I'm not hallucinating it (correct me if I'm wrong), there should be a blurb in the Encounter Building rules that mentions single-enemy encounters being something to be wary about, but it's true that even two PL+0 enemies at level 1 can be closer to Severe than Extreme, and are still quite swingy. But even then, is a new GM gonna know what that means? They're a new player too, after all; we can't expect there to be an experienced GM for each group of newbies.
I can see why Trip and such have an issue with the early game math, and honestly I wouldn't mind if there were a sort of "Health Buffer" variant rule that was prominently displayed in the GM Core (or even part of Playing the Game in Player Core) to convince beginners to experiment with their basic tactics early and let the people who want less squishy early game have it.
The way I've "solved" it? Just don't do as much direct combat in early levels. Your characters are neophytes at this point; just getting their boots in the ground for this whole "adventuring" thing. Give them hazards to bypass, locks to pick, social encounters to maneuver. Give them a "taste" of danger with stealth or chases. Combat should REALLY be an "oh s!#$" moment if it's with intelligent creatures - not a last resort or punishment, per se, but a climactic moment for green adventurers. If you wanna have combat beforehand, it should be against slow or uncoordinated creatures - something that really gives the new guys a chance to stretch themselves, or to run if things do take an unlucky turn. "Live to fight another day" and all that.
You could call this sidestepping the issue, and I wouldn't necessarily disagree, but I think it also happens to mitigate the "Encounter Mode = Combat" misconception that a lot of new players might have from those early APs as well, which I personally think is a bigger problem, so it's my preferred.
But that came with experience. New players don't have that, and I think there are some things that could help mitigate that (though I disagree that the HP math is "bad" at early levels; I just think the encounter guidelines should be a little more clear as to the expectations). I actually really like early levels, to be clear; but I do see why it puts others off sometimes.
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It's interesting to hear how different everyone's experiences are with PF2E. In the groups I've played with, we haven't really run into the "rocket tag" issue beyond the first few sessions, once we got a better feel for the system. I wonder if it might come down to playstyle or how the GMs are running encounters?
The issue was kinda invisible to me for a while, as when you're in the middle of the session, you (hopefully) are busy with immersed thinking.
Later when I was making homebrew is when I noticed how quickly HP ramps with level, and how crazy low it is at L1. The napkin math of "wait, this is stupid low for enemy damage" was surprising, and didn't match my "first glance" memory.
I take pretty decent session notes, and a *few* of the "no error BS KOs" were blatant enough to stick in my brain.
I was genuinely surprised when I went back to review in a more play-by-play manner, and found that every single low level AP had triggered BS downs from this low HP problem.
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The catch is that the GM is there, trying to make it a fun time. Because the GM integrated Wrin's save vs the Corpselights so well, I *genuinely* thought that Abm Vlts had an NPC rescue mechanic. With how he played into her claustrophobia, he made it seem like Wrin was the freebie surface-only rescue, and that we might or might not find allies that would help us deeper.
(It was my first pf2 AP, so I didn't have a clue what sort of design norms and mechanics they featured)
This "GM intervention" covering up the rocket tag goes much further than that GM's more "yes, and" style of letting the dice fall, and improvising from there.
Both others I've played with are heavy into the "contextual lobotomy" style where if they think there's an excuse for leaving the low HP / dying PC alone, they will take it every time.
This is *much* harder to make it into a notes log, but still very impactful.
With how us players kinda treat SoT's writing as a joke now, that GM has become a lot more open with the 'behind the screen' stuff. Open enough to say things like "yeah, that caster could(should) have cast Chain Lightning more times, but that would have just been unfair and definitely would have killed all of you."
Even at L12, GMs still need to intervene to prevent bullsh.it and unfun deaths. The low lvl HP issue is just one that is easy to lock-on and ~fix via just upping the starting HP.
(In that case, it was a scripted night time ambush when we were not expecting combat. The AP writer likely did not think about how crazy brutal it is to be woken up by Chain Lighting when you're gearless. No armor nor runes, no kits on your hip for Med or Alch. We shouldn't have had spells, but the GM insisted that we pretend our PCs were loaded for combat/adventure and had not used any during the day. This is a writing / scenario mistake unrelated to the HP problem, but it is an example of what *should* have been a "fair" TPK as per the rules, yet every player would call bullsh.t due to the lack of agency involved. There was no player "mistake" and we didn't even have a choice of being there.
Our PCs could safely eat 1 Chain Lighting, but not 2, or even 3. And considering it was not a 3v1, but was a 3v3 fight, any attempt to GM that scenario "legit" would have had an absurd % chance of TPK, like 90+%)
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Too long summary:
It's super easy to not notice or remember the rocket tag for multiple reasons, from being focused on other things, to GMs redirecting the rockets mid flight.
The math is so crazy lopsided, that I'd wager >95% of play through AV, SoT, and Gatewalkers would result in multiple "0 misplay full-->downs" when run "legit" explicitly due to this low HP issue. I cannot speak to AP's I've not played, but the math is still there.
Ravingdork, I'm curious if you can retrospectively sift through those memories and find a couple yourself. I certainly didn't log notes about the stove bomb trap, but remembered it enough to find later and confirm that it's a literal one-shot on a min rolled reg fail, lol.
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And I don't know what you want. Less damage from the monsters? Fourty hit points at first level so you never have to worry about getting crushed?
Example HP gain on that example Alch level up:
L1 --> L2: 15 -- +9 --> 24 | + 37.5% max HP
L4 --> L5: 46 -- +10 --> 56 | + 21.7% max HP
L9 --> L10: 105 -- +11 --> 116 | + 10.4% max HP
L14 --> L15: 174 --> +12 --> 186 | + 6.9% max HP
L19 --> L20: 234 --> +12 --> 246 | + 5.1% max HP
This math is stupid. I'm not going to dance around it with kid glove phrasings of "it's problematic", I'm going to say outright that it is just bad game design for an rpg system like this.
In almost all games where characters gain HP via leveling, PCs start with a substantial base pool, and have rather small [% total] gains. Especially during the early levels (which can even have artificially limited leveling/stat growth for the sake of tutorialization & fun; think of skill/stat trees like FF13's crystarium that cap and unlock via story progression).
Pf2 not only has the starting HP pool be way too tiny, but it also has the % total gain stay crazy high for quite a number of levels before those gains start to become more reasonable with the growing total.
And literally all of this problem can be retroactively understood as a result of the original dev not thinking of HP in a "start with a 100% base HP pool, then add to that" with things like class, species, etc, all being additions TO a base pool. Instead, they ARE the base pool.
That single originating dev didn't know or brain-farted that math, and that missing step is how you get such a low starting HP, and that crazy variance in % total gains across the game's levels.
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This is so blatant, that I'm willing to flatly say this HP norm is the result of copying a math/design error from 40+? years ago, because "that's what they did" back then.
I'm no longer going to be delicate about how absurdly obvious this error is to anyone with game dev experience.
It's always possible to post-hoc justify the bad math equation with arguments to personal taste, or because it "makes narrative sense."
It's a rather serious giveaway that after all this talk, I don't think I've seen a single claim attempting to make the case that the low HP issue makes for superior gameplay when compared against a system with proper HP growth (and no normalization of L1 one-shots).
Pf2 is a great and fun system to play, and it's normal for it to have problems. It's *not* normal to use one's overall conclusion of "it's a great system" to deny or refute the existence of obvious and gameplay-affecting flaws. No list of pros is complete without some cons.
Imo, this issue is enough to kill my interest in L1-3 combat entirely, but that conclusion is my own taste.
I cannot get invested in that kind of combat when luck is mathematically expected to wreck clever strats, and where degenerate cheese preventing foes from having a chance is the "legit" way to survive.
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I personally want fair difficulty. I love a challenge, and that is explicitly why I'm more aware of, and more disapproving of, nonsense math like that.
I can only hope that pf3 doesn't copy-paste the same error.
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And I don't know what you want. Less damage from the monsters? Fourty hit points at first level so you never have to worry about getting crushed?Example HP gain on that example Alch level up:
L1 --> L2: 15 -- +9 --> 24 | + 37.5% max HP
L4 --> L5: 46 -- +10 --> 56 | + 21.7% max HP
L9 --> L10: 105 -- +11 --> 116 | + 10.4% max HP
L14 --> L15: 174 --> +12 --> 186 | + 6.9% max HP
This math is stupid.
In almost all games where characters gain HP via leveling, they start with a substantial base pool, and have rather small [% total] gains, especially during the early levels (which can even have artificially limited leveling/stat growth for the sake of tutorialization & fun; think of skill/stat trees like FF13's crystarium that cap and unlock via story progression).Pf2 not only has the starting HP pool be way too tiny, but it also has the % total gain stay crazy high for quite a number of levels before the single levelup gains start to become more reasonable with the growing total.
Personally I agree with Deriven on this, there's no real issue with these numbers. It makes the early levels "more deadly" because honestly, why wouldn't they be? You're new to adventuring, or at the very least out of practice and likely to take a beating in all out combat.
And these HP numbers are perfectly in line with leveling up in video games I've played when you take into account characters in most RPG video games grow from level 1 to 99 or so while PF2 characters only go to 20, so the growth has to be spread differently. The games I'm familiar with also function on a similar philosophy that you will likely die if you make a mistake or bad decisions, or simply have a bad dice roll particularly at low level. These types of games exist, and they're not wrong for existing with that as a baseline, but much like PF2 they have an easy mode option that weakens the enemies and strengthens the party if anyone isn't skilled enough to complete the game on the normal difficulty. a GM is the arbiter of this difficulty setting, and when it's realized the players are not ok with that level of deadliness, it gets tweaked.
On the actual topic of the system teaching you, I look back to my experiences in the video game RPGs I've grown up playing. Simply put, my favorite ones didn't do any teaching, I was thrown in, picked a party of various classes and came out with dead party members, game overs, and experience. But I understand this being a collaborative game needs more nuance in learning, so I agree there could be better guidance on expectations and especially on what enemy level compositions are more viable for lower level PCs to handle for a slightly lower stakes adventure.
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And these HP numbers are perfectly in line with leveling up in video games I've played when you take into account characters in most RPG video games grow from level 1 to 99 or so while PF2 characters only go to 20, so the growth has to be spread differently.
No, they are not. The only games I have ever seen using this "style" of starting HP math directly ape / copy the design of those ancestral pen & paper rpgs. And many computer games that *do* ape the style of pen & paper know better, and use different math.
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The detail I'm trying to reveal with this math is that with the steady shrink of the %HP gains, you can see there is a missing "starting HP pool" that would have the level up growth be much more even from levels 1 through 20.
This is why, even if foes are carefully and manually dev edited for their dmg to be reasonable for their level, the PL+1/ etc gap is so much worse for L1 players, as that specific +1 level is an absurdly different jump in "expected HP" when compared against a later level.
That PL+1 Lvl 2 foe expects the party to have +37% bigger HP pools.
That PL+1 Lvl 15 foe expects the party to have +7% bigger HP pools.
That's absurd math, and a key piece of *why* low level is so plagued by full-->downs
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To be clear, even with matching PL+0, the set "expected hits before down" could be set too low/high.
That's a different nugget / question of the game's design that I'm not presently speaking toward.
If the above % growth issue is fixed, then this is a key balance knob can be tuned to help Deriven & CO's (including me, btw) get their desired high-lethality game that's genuinely fair.
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I'm tracing the visible outcome, that of only low level being plagued with expected one-shots / full-->downs, to this fixable issue of lacking a starting HP pool.
The manner in which this missing starting HP becomes less relevant as the levels go up perfectly mirrors the way in which low level *specifically* is plagued by this problem. It's not a coincidence, it's the single greatest causal factor in that outcome.
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Personally I agree with Deriven on this, there's no real issue with these numbers. It makes the early levels "more deadly" because honestly, why wouldn't they be? You're new to adventuring, or at the very least out of practice and likely to take a beating in all out combat.And these HP numbers are perfectly in line with leveling up in video games I've played when you take into account characters in most RPG video games grow from level 1 to 99 or so while PF2 characters only go to 20, so the growth has to be spread differently. The games I'm familiar with also function on a similar philosophy that you will likely die if you make a mistake or bad decisions, or simply have a bad dice roll particularly at low level. These types of games exist, and they're not wrong for existing with that as a baseline, but much like PF2 they have an easy mode option that weakens the enemies and strengthens the party if anyone isn't skilled enough to complete...
The thing about video games is you can typically reload your save. With a tabletop, the default is permadeath until you have access to in-game resurrection.
The punishments are on an entirely different scale of inconvenience and frustration. Very few games are designed such that a character death is permanent for a "playthrough" that could last hundreds of hours, but that is the default for a game like PF2E. This combination of playthrough length and permanence is basically unseen in video games, because it's considered bad design in that space. It's so unusual that games that buck the convention are usually either roguelikes (which often have short playthrough lengths anyways) or take on metafictional qualities just in virtue of bucking the convention and calling attention to it.
An unfair or difficult level 1 is fundamentally different when there's a "retry" button.
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Diablo has a permadeath mode. Playing that with friends was the most entertaining the game got. And yes you could end up in a situation where no amount of human response time could save you from what you walked into. You learned to be more careful, to give yourself leeway to GTFO before you commit to attacking whats ahead and to do that as a team.
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Personally I agree with Deriven on this, there's no real issue with these numbers. It makes the early levels "more deadly" because honestly, why wouldn't they be? You're new to adventuring, or at the very least out of practice and likely to take a beating in all out combat.
This kind of reasoning Is, and i don't mean to sound unkind, genuinely the reason the ttrpgs space hasn't evolved much in all these years: you're applying narrative "common sense" reason while we should all apply ludo-narrative academic reason in such situations.
The main purpouse of EVERY SINGLE GAME EVER Is to be fun, not to be realistic, not to be accurate, but fun, this Is the reason there's not a secret roll to see if you're gonna die from a stroke all of a sudden, It's the reason that shooters gun don't work like in real Life.
If we Want to create Better games we should completely ignore common sense and focus on academic game design
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Personally I agree with Deriven on this, there's no real issue with these numbers. It makes the early levels "more deadly" because honestly, why wouldn't they be? You're new to adventuring, or at the very least out of practice and likely to take a beating in all out combat.And these HP numbers are perfectly in line with leveling up in video games I've played when you take into account characters in most RPG video games grow from level 1 to 99 or so while PF2 characters only go to 20, so the growth has to be spread differently. The games I'm familiar with also function on a similar philosophy that you will likely die if you make a mistake or bad decisions, or simply have a bad dice roll particularly at low level. These types of games exist, and they're not wrong for existing with that as a baseline, but much like PF2 they have an easy mode option that weakens the enemies and strengthens the party if anyone isn't skilled enough to complete...
The thing about video games is you can typically reload your save. With a tabletop, the default is permadeath until you have access to in-game resurrection.
The punishments are on an entirely different scale of inconvenience and frustration. Very few games are designed such that a character death is permanent for a "playthrough" that could last hundreds of hours, but that is the default for a game like PF2E. This combination of playthrough length and permanence is basically unseen in video games, because it's considered bad design in that space. It's so unusual that games that buck the convention are usually either roguelikes (which often have short playthrough lengths anyways) or take on metafictional qualities just in virtue of bucking the convention and calling attention to it.
An unfair or difficult level 1 is fundamentally different when there's a "retry" button.
I very much know the difference between the mediums, I was using the comparison to explain my personal preferences and opinion that lead me to my view on this, and because the comment about FF13's character growth made me think about comparing the numbers to some games I've played with similar lethality. I just wanted to state my view on the matter, so the permadeath thing doesn't really change my opinion whatsoever because I'm into that feeling.
To be clear, I'm not *against* something like say PF3e moving the lethality needle in a way that suits the majority judging by this thread, I simply also just don't see the need on a personal level.
This kind of reasoning Is, and i don't mean to sound unkind, genuinely the reason the ttrpgs space hasn't evolved much in all these years: you're applying narrative "common sense" reason while we should all apply ludo-narrative academic reason in such situations.
The main purpouse of EVERY SINGLE GAME EVER Is to be fun, not to be realistic, not to be accurate, but fun, this Is the reason there's not a secret roll to see if you're gonna die from a stroke all of a sudden, It's the reason that shooters gun don't work like in real Life.
If we Want to create Better games we should completely ignore common sense and focus on academic game design
This is the "better game" to me, so I'm sorry for having the wrong fun, I guess?
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This is the "better game" to me, so I'm sorry for having the wrong fun, I guess?...
Again, with all due respect and without being mean, yeah you're kinda wrong.
There Is One such things as personal preferences (which are sacred and i cannot argue againts them) and game design (which can be treated as an academic subject), and here we are talking about game design, not personal preferences.
Like, i know this metaphor might sound stupid but It's the best i can come up with: i'd rather read furry smut all day long than reading the kharamazovs Brothers, and those are my personal preferences, but i would never, in a discussion that tries to be objective as much as a discussion can be, Say that an ao3 monster hunter world's smut fic Is Better than One of the greatest novels to ever be written
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I wouldn't go so far as to say there are Objective, Platonic Truths about what makes Good Design.
I would say there are empirical, observable truths about what design trends are in vogue at a given time. Likewise, there are observable truths about what design choices appeal to wider or narrower audiences at a given time.
Right now, a game that facilitates more narrative play is in vogue, and will appeal to a wider audience. A good game that focuses on more lethal, dungeon-crawl-y, OSR play will find an audience, but it won't be quite as wide. I won't say one is Objectively Better, because they scratch fairly different itches, appeal to different crowds, and so on. But I will say one has broader market appeal.
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This is the "better game" to me, so I'm sorry for having the wrong fun, I guess?...Again, with all due respect and without being mean, yeah you're kinda wrong.
There Is One such things as personal preferences (which are sacred and i cannot argue againts them) and game design (which can be treated as an academic subject), and here we are talking about game design, not personal preferences.
Like, i know this metaphor might sound stupid but It's the best i can come up with: i'd rather read furry smut all day long than reading the kharamazovs Brothers, and those are my personal preferences, but i would never, in a discussion that tries to be objective as much as a discussion can be, Say that an ao3 monster hunter world's smut fic Is Better than One of the greatest novels to ever be written
Yes, that's why I said "to me," felt I made it abundantly clear that it's my opinion and preference. The game design is fine to me based on my preferences, so to me it is good game design, but I don't expect it to fit everyone's preferences. So what is your point?
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What is the result of low level game design?
If the response is one singular answer your severely shortchanging the game.
Right now the tools in the GM core Monster core NPC core and Player core allow you as a GM to set up a game experience that hits any one of the difficulty points mentioned desirable by all of the posters here.
If your game experience isnt what you want it to be you might not be at the right table.
Tell me a Gm can’t make a set of low lethality encounters for a table that wants that?
Tell me a GM can’t make a set of high lethality encounters?
Something in between?
All of it is possible, the levers of encounter design are there. GMs choose when to adjust enemies add or remove them, what loot is given out, when. What circumstances change things.
Given this some point to APs but neglect the crucial fact that a GM, a person who can dial up or down anything in the adventure is there with the reigns in hand.
So no there is no bad design here. You want harder fights you make harder encounters, you want easier ones you make easier encounters AP or not.
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This is the "better game" to me, so I'm sorry for having the wrong fun, I guess?...Again, with all due respect and without being mean, yeah you're kinda wrong.
There Is One such things as personal preferences (which are sacred and i cannot argue againts them) and game design (which can be treated as an academic subject), and here we are talking about game design, not personal preferences.
Like, i know this metaphor might sound stupid but It's the best i can come up with: i'd rather read furry smut all day long than reading the kharamazovs Brothers, and those are my personal preferences, but i would never, in a discussion that tries to be objective as much as a discussion can be, Say that an ao3 monster hunter world's smut fic Is Better than One of the greatest novels to ever be written
Not true at all. These games have lasted all these years because people like the progression of starting off weak and getting strong. It is the illusion of progression.
You and Trip H want to pretend this is an objective truth when it isn't.
The only thing that causes change is a sufficient number of customers wanting it, not a handful of customers pretending they know more than the people that do this for a living.
That's why I'm assuming the 3E/Paizo designers had sufficient community information to remove save or die spells or weaken them to the point they are practically non-existent.
Do they have sufficient information to think people have a problem with level 1 to 4? They had enough to boost the hit points, create effective cantrips, and ensure every class gets max hit points per level rather than rolling.
Yet for some this still isn't enough of a change. They want even easier.
What changes in the so called TTRPG that didn't "evolve" did they make?
1. Ancestry hit points
2. Max hit points rather than rolling
3. Increased statistics
4. More powerful healing
Still just not enough. Gotta make it even easier so you start off with more hit points because even low level should be death free.
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I would actually contend there aren't levers to pull that create engaging combats at low levels. It's usually either too swingy or too obviously in favor of the PCs—and it's hard to overcome that by adding additional lower level enemies. (And that's ignoring that running a ton of low-level enemies is often undesirable for a number of other reasons even if it would work, such as gamespeed, ratio of player time to GM time, etc.)
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And I don't know what you want. Less damage from the monsters? Fourty hit points at first level so you never have to worry about getting crushed?Example HP gain on that example Alch level up:
L1 --> L2: 15 -- +9 --> 24 | + 37.5% max HP
L4 --> L5: 46 -- +10 --> 56 | + 21.7% max HP
L9 --> L10: 105 -- +11 --> 116 | + 10.4% max HP
L14 --> L15: 174 --> +12 --> 186 | + 6.9% max HP
L19 --> L20: 234 --> +12 --> 246 | + 5.1% max HPThis math is stupid. I'm not going to dance around it with kid glove phrasings of "it's problematic", I'm going to say outright that it is just bad game design for an rpg system like this.
In almost all games where characters gain HP via leveling, PCs start with a substantial base pool, and have rather small [% total] gains. Especially during the early levels (which can even have artificially limited leveling/stat growth for the sake of tutorialization & fun; think of skill/stat trees like FF13's crystarium that cap and unlock via story progression).
Pf2 not only has the starting HP pool be way too tiny, but it also has the % total gain stay crazy high for quite a number of levels before those gains start to become more reasonable with the growing total.
And literally all of this problem can be retroactively understood as a result of the original dev not thinking of HP in a "start with a 100% base HP pool, then add to that" with things like class, species, etc, all being additions TO a base pool. Instead, they ARE the base pool.
That single originating dev didn't know or brain-farted that math, and that missing step is how you get such a low starting HP, and that crazy variance in % total gains across the game's levels.
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This is so blatant, that I'm willing to flatly say this HP norm is the result of copying a math/design error from 40+? years ago, because "that's what they did" back then.
I'm no longer going to be delicate about how absurdly obvious this error is to anyone with game dev experience....
Superior gameplay? What does that even mean given gameplay is to your preference? For my group more death equals superior gameplay.
My group would rather they make the game more lethal as you level up. That is what they consider superior gameplay.
Game feels incredibly unrealistic to my players if no one can die. So if my players had their personal option incorporated into the game, you'd be having TPKs and death from level 1 to level 20. It would always be a possibility, sometimes a strong one.
We've had TPKs and deaths at high, high level quite often in older editions of the game. Memorable, tough, where only a few characters survive.
So this idea of superior gameplay you're pushing is not what everyone wants. Yet here you are pushing it like you are the arbiter of good game design.
These games have millions of players. All with different preferences or ideas of what they consider superior gameplay.
To my group a much harder game at all levels is superior gameplay. They have never worried about low hit points at low level in the forty plus years we've been playing. Never been an issue they worried about.
Yet here you are pretending this is bad game design and a huge concern out of nowhere with a handful of people agreeing with you to carry this thread on hoping Paizo game designers somewhere agree.
The Paizo design team already moved to shore up the complaint you have with all the measures listed. Does my group think it's better? No. They came up when death was a standard part of the game and miss those days.
We died so many times in [b]Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil[/i] that we shrugged about it. One of our players lost three characters in quick succession in that module due to bad luck and tough monsters. Tomb of Horrors was a character grinder module.
That's what we consider superior, memorable gameplay. We don't worry about hit points.
But we accept that game companies must have received customer data indicating the lethality was too high. So iteration after iteration makes the game easier and easier for the younger generation who doesn't care for deadly game older gamers grew up on.
As far as superior gameplay, that definition only applies to you and your group, not me and mine. My idea of superior gameplay was removed heavily from the game many iterations ago. But I still like gaming with friends, so I deal with the watered down game as I like some of the changes, dislike others.
I would prefer a far more lethal game myself across all levels.
Maybe Paizo will agree with you and start you off with so many hit points you don't have to worry about being one-shotted or knocked down by a powerful enemy any longer at any level.
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I would actually contend there aren't levers to pull that create engaging combats at low levels. It's usually either too swingy or too obviously in favor of the PCs—and it's hard to overcome that by adding additional lower level enemies. (And that's ignoring that running a ton of low-level enemies is often undesirable for a number of other reasons even if it would work, such as gamespeed, ratio of player time to GM time, etc.)
ive done it for a my 7 player party. All I did was use the GM core guidelines.
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I haven't been following the arguments too closely, but it sounds like there is a difference of opinions around how narratively important it is that specific characters (the PCs) are to a campaign against the narrative importance of actual danger. For some, their enjoyment is lost if their character can be killed by random factors. For others, without a sense of legitimate risk there is no sense of actual accomplishment.
My answer to the first group: This is exactly the reason Hero Points exist as core rules (not optional rules) in PF2. Note: The GM should, as part of the player(s) Hero Point use, allow them a way to "fight another day" instead of pursuing a TPK.
My answer to the second group: There is no "one true way" to play RPGs. Note: TBH, as an old school gamer who cut their teeth on 1st Edition AD&D and BECMI D&D, I incline toward the mindset that adventuring should have elements of risk (to include death of a character); I just don't feel it's productive to call "badwrongfun" on others who don't agree.
To both groups: There are (fairly straightforward) ways to make the game either less or more lethal, including just applying the weak or elite templates to adjust things on the fly. Even for published adventures.
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Full-->downs with no misplays are smoking gun evidence of bad game design.
You seem unable to comprehend that "difficulty" is a different consideration than "can be one-shot at all times"
Again, it is only "technically" valid to have a game with that full-->down norm. For all intents and purposes, there is no rpg game that has balanced combat & where no mistake full-->downs are expected math.
The cost of those full-->down is the deletion of tactical depth.
That kind of fragility promotes degenerate strategies that avoid exposure to foe attacks at all costs. Killing a group of foes without ever rolling initiative, such as by fire/smoke can be fun once, but that kind of "then avoid combat entirely" cheese is the logical endpoint of a badly designed combat system that is not fun to play.
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Even those few "you're going to die" games like Fear & Hunger do NOT have this kind of b$%!@+*# math that low level pf2 does in regard to it's PC fragility.
In the F&H games, any foe that has a % chance to take a limb on normal hit is treated by the designer with extreme respect, and the player always has the agency to work around those foes. Players can even swap into gear that grants immunity to that risk altogether.
Just as importantly, the game is built around the ability to retry on death. Yes, it expects you to get surprised by a coinflip attack and loose your legs from a single swing, but it doesn't expect you to try to clear the game after that. *When* the the player experiences that "going to happen" coin-flip event, the designer expects the player to crawl along in that likely-doomed run and scout for new info before resuming at checkpoint and loosing an hour.
Despite being a one-man indie game, F&H was able to blow up in popularity (even with how off-putting it's content can be) entirely because of how *fair* the games are.
This is in large part because the dev was able to admit when things didn't work toward that goal of "one single mistake can cost you an arm or a leg, but it *was* a mistake," and the game kept getting small patches and tweaks to remove the "BS" from its difficulty.
In any form of "fair" game, even in the most difficult, there is no place for full-->downs to be mathematically expected. That is just incompatible with good game design.
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It is outright incorrect to conflate bad HP math with difficulty. As I have repeated many times now, the issue is not one of difficulty, but of full-->downs. This is rocket tag, and makes a dev's encounter balancing job impossible. It's also anti tactics, and anti fun.
Paradoxically in some ways, those brutal-difficult games like F&H work so well *because* of their difficulty. The moment you slack off and get lazy, the game will smack you down and kill someone. This kind of immediate feedback makes it a great teacher for players to learn how it works.
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And yeah, in comparison to a game where it's content warnings should *not* be ignored, pf2 low level play is a mathematical joke.
The "being in Stride distance is a lethal risk" is not an exaggeration.
Intelligent foes at L1, even in a mirror match, will be decided by initiative due to dog-piling and AoE damage.
It only kind of "works" right now because of GM intervention and the splitting of HP across multiple PCs. Even when balanced to accommodate, this issue was way more "showstopping" for my 3 PC SoT campaign compared to the ~5 PC Gatewalkers campaign.
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(5 mil youtube vid talking about F&H and why it works, considering your comments Deriven, if this has slipped your radar, it should be right up your alley. F&H2 is a LOT less, traumatizing, than playing F&H1 if that's too intense for anyone curious (F&H2 is my recommendation))
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The way I've "solved" it? Just don't do as much direct combat in early levelsThat's a solution for a home brew campaign. Not great for APs.
However...
That is why I said it came with experience. Notably, Season of Ghosts also follows this approach, having fairly few actual direct combat encounters before you hit level 2 - and the one Severe encounter in Book One is warned against and given a way to bypass it. The book's encounters take place in open space, giving plenty of opportunity to run. And the enemies are... well, I won't spoil much further, but the early enemies aren't supposed to be all that smart.
I think there's a way to write adventure paths to not be automatically deadly to level 1 adventurers and still be fun - and Season of Ghosts proves it. But, as I asserted in my post, I agree that a new player isn't going to necessarily "get" all these tips and tricks.
Again, I don't think the math is inherently "broken", since you can still make interesting and non-deadly Moderate encounters by following the guidelines in GM Core. But I wouldn't mind a 1st level health bump either; it's not like it hurts me or anything. If the Paizo designers don't deem fit to change it themselves, then I wouldn't mind a common houserule wisdom for new players to be "start Level 1 with (2 x class HP + Ancestry HP)". That gives your average Elf Wizard player 20 HP or so to work with - you're still squishy compared to your Fighter friend, but even a PL+1 crit isn't likely to down you from full.
Of course, actual changes would be nice because new players aren't going to be checking for colloquial wisdoms online necessarily, but changes to the game are gonna be slow and steady regardless, so having stopgap houserules to help them is still in good faith, I think.
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What counts as a misplay?
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The questionable "don'ts" in PF2 are typically roadblocks to prevent abuses of rules that had happened in PF1. Since my players don't abuse the rules, I often houserule the don'ts away myself.
Yep, I this has been my experience. I find some of the assumptions of the system *might* be played/run don’t line up with how I *prefer* it to be played/run. Luckily the in-my-opinion elegance and structure of the core chassis of PF2R are more than up to handling the tinkering I like to engage in.
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It's interesting to hear how different everyone's experiences are with PF2E. In the groups I've played with, we haven't really run into the "rocket tag" issue beyond the first few sessions, once we got a better feel for the system. I wonder if it might come down to playstyle or how the GMs are running encounters?
My GM playstyle is that I apply routine changes to the adventure path to customize it to how the players want to play it. For example, in my current Strength of Thousands campaign, most players want to roleplay as students rather than as adventurers. This works with the Magaambya Academy in the adventure path because they send students out on service projects. Due to various scripted heroic events in the 1st module and to my Runesmith playtest, in the 2nd module I told them that their service job in the Fall Semester was to aid the local police force known as the Chime Ringers (I guess they ring chimes instead of blowing whistles). In the module as written, the PCs can consult the Chime Ringers in some mysteries they face, but the Chime Ringers are mostly useless.
This customization gives me ample opportunities to fix badly designed encounters in the modules. And I have an upcoming example below.
This "GM intervention" covering up the rocket tag goes much further than that GM's more "yes, and" style of letting the dice fall, and improvising from there.
Both others I've played with are heavy into the "contextual lobotomy" style where if they think there's an excuse for leaving the low HP / dying PC alone, they will take it every time.
This is *much* harder to make it into a notes log, but still very impactful.With how us players kinda treat SoT's writing as a joke now, that GM has become a lot more open with the 'behind the screen' stuff. Open enough to say things like "yeah, that caster could(should) have cast Chain Lightning more times, but that would have just been unfair and definitely would have killed all of you."
Even at L12, GMs still need to intervene to prevent bullsh.it and unfun deaths. The low lvl HP issue is just one that is easy to lock-on and ~fix via just upping the starting HP.
(In that case, it was a scripted night time ambush when we were not expecting combat. The AP writer likely did not think about how crazy brutal it is to be woken up by Chain Lighting when you're gearless. No armor nor runes, no kits on your hip for Med or Alch. We shouldn't have had spells, but the GM insisted that we pretend our PCs were loaded for combat/adventure and had not used any during the day. This is a writing / scenario mistake unrelated to the HP problem, but it is an example of what *should* have been a "fair" TPK as per the rules, yet every player would call bullsh.t due to the lack of agency involved. There was no player "mistake" and we didn't even have a choice of being there.
Our PCs could safely eat 1 Chain Lighting, but not 2, or even 3. And considering it was not a 3v1, but was a 3v3 fight, any attempt to GM that scenario "legit" would have had an absurd % chance of TPK, like 90+%)
Trip.H has provided excellent forewarning to me about Strength of Thousands in another thread, so I looked up the encounter he described. An 11th-level hunter, mage, and warrior attack the party bedded down for the night. The encounter is snarkily named "Welcome Gift," because the party arrived in town that day, and rated at Moderate 12. The rating is a lie.
By the Encounter Budget, an 11th-level opponent versus a 12th-level party is worth 30 xp. Three of them add to 90 xp, closest to the 80-xp Moderate Threat. But due to a factor I called "readiness" in my encounter design thread, Encounter Balance: The Math and the Monsters, the difficulty increases.
1) The party was not in their armor and had no time to don it. This reduces their AC and their saving throws, because their Resilient runes are on their armor. Because of the party's weakened defenses, the threat goes up to Severe.
2) The party was caught in bed unconscious. If they wake up when initiative is rolled, they still need two actions each to grab their weapons (or alchemist's kit) and Stand. If they wake up when hit by the Chain Lightning (and unconsciousness penalizes Reflex saves by -4), then the opponents have essentially gotten an extra turn for free. Due to lose of actions, the threat goes up to Extreme.
3) The party has three members instead of four. Unless the GM removes one of the opponents or gives them a 12th-level ally bunking in the same room, the party is at only 3/4 strength. The threat goes up to Beyond Extreme.
Issue (1) is part of the flavor: night attacks happen. I won't face issue (3) because my party is oversized. But issue (2) is created by a writer's oversight. I can understand the PCs not setting up a watch schedule for the night, because they are sleeping in a secure inn in a city. But surely they closed and locked the doors and windows, right? The module says that the hunter, mage, and warrior scaled the walls of the inn and crept through its courtyard. But none are trained in Thievery, so they must have opened the window with Force Open. The warrior has Athletics +23, enough to smash any ordinary window. However, that is a loud action that would wake most of the PCs. And the opponents would then have to Climb in through the window using another action each. Their action advantage would be wasted in climbing in.
An inexperienced GM would see the module describing the opponents in the room and not think about how they got into the room. The PCs are described as in their room for the night, so the GM would realize that they are in bed without armor. But the opponents climbing up the wall start disadvantaged, too.
This encounter in Trip.H's campaign was rocket tag because the writer skipped the preliminaries. My GM style is to not skip the preliminaries.
As for teaching the tactics of the game, I remember the Dungeons & Dragons informative joke about paladin pajamas. A character who relies on armor that must be removed while sleeping can keep a separate set of comfortable armor to sleep in, such as armored cloak, armored coat, explorer's clothing, padded armor, or quilted armor. At 12th level they can afford to enchant their pajamas with +1 armor and resilient runes. This is a non-obvious tactic, taught by cruel experience after a couple of encounters while sleeping.
EDIT: I described the night attack to my wife, without mentioning that her character will face it in about 8 months. Her first response was, "They didn't keep watch?" I will have to add Keeping Watch to my tactics guide, because the PF2 rulebooks don't teach it.