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It's always a tossup as to how wordy to be, but I should have been a bit more specific when including that specific ambush.
That night ambush was an example of non-rocket tag "BS difficulty" that needed GM intervention outside the low levels. We all ate the first chain lightning with no downs, but that put us into danger range for a 2nd one, and yeah, being prone and getting zapped sucked.
We forgot about unconscious being a -4 to the save, that could have downgraded one or two of us and been a lot worse, yikes.
I performed the calculations about Chain Lightning. It deals 8d12 electricity damage, average 52 damage, with a basic Reflex save. A 12th-level CON +2 6-hp-per-level character of a 6-hp ancestry would have 102 hp. I presume that a 6-hp-per-level character would not leave their Constitution at +0 after the 5th-level and 10th-level attribute score boosts. Nevertheless, 102 hp is less than twice 52 damage, so a critical failure would take this minimum-hit-point character down from full hit points. Of course, most players would spend a hero point for a reroll, but I have seen rerolling into a second critical failure before.
The main difference between taking down a 1st-level character with a single critical hit and taking down a 12th-level character with a single critically failed save is probability. Downing a 1st-level character is much more likely and does not require a minimum hit point build.
As for Trip.H's Strength of Thousands venting, the module Secrets of the Temple-City appears to deserve it. As far as I can guess, the night ambush was supposed to serve as break between the boring exposition of High Sun-Mage Oyamba explaing the party's diplomatic mission to temple-city Mzali and the boring diplomacy of talking to eight prominent people in Mzali to gain influence points. It serves no plot purpose, but it is the only combat in Chapter 1 of the module. That the Magaambya Academy and the city of Nantambu want to open diplomatic relations with Mzali makes sense, but adding the party of adventurers to their delegation of diplomats makes no sense until the diplomacy is over and a new adventure starts in Chapter 2, Raising the Sun.
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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.
All of the heavy armors from Player Core (and hopefully heavy armors in general) come with padded armor as part of the suit of armor.
I believe it is expected that heavy armor users sleep in that, and so maintain some level of protection and maintain their runes even while resting.
Even if that's not the intent of the developers, that's certainly how we play it at my tables.
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Damn, thanks for bringing the math. That shows that even I was underestimating how long this one-shot potential lingers.
A PL -1 caster (solo!) still being able to one-shot the squishes at L 12 was outside of my expectation. I had presumed that a L12 one-shot would require something like a PL +1 caster w/ Never Mind or other non-damaging incap spell to bypass HP.
Considering that said NPC caster could /"should" have feats like Quickened Casting to open with yet more damage, yeah, I'm surprised and saddened to agree that the example I went to explicitly compare against low level rocket tag, itself definitely still qualifies as rocket tag (that the player can never shoot first in). Ooooof.
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Honestly surprised to learn that there was outright one-shot potential on a high rolled crit fail, even my PC w/ 138 was not outside that danger.
Looks like a ~5% chance on crit to reach 138 & outright oneshot.
Comparing that 5% high roll to your average caster dropping to Dying 2 in their bed on a 56% likely dmg roll goes to show how quickly that oneshot danger vanishes with a small boost to HP though.
The notion that it's still published content to have sleeping PCs be subject to one-shot magic as an opener is such indefensible math, idk what to even say. The -4 & -1 of being asleep & armorless makes it that much worse.
Smallest of silver linings is that saves are rolled by players, and subject to hero points.
Though, considering that a 2nd chain lighting can be thrown when PCs only have time to stand + grab (+ 1A interact to get free of the bedsheets if your GM is of that kind), goooood luck surviving that fight if run "legit."
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Oh, and I'm guessing the room is supposed to be fully dark as well. Thanks to Darkvision Elixirs being 24 hr, that was not a problem for us, but it would be yet another "holy s&+!, this is unwinnable" problem for some parties needing 2A to get some light while the foes are launching rockets.
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Considering that said NPC caster could /"should" have feats like Quickened Casting to open with yet more damage...
Why? NPCs are not built anything like PCs. The shouldn't have feats at all. What leads you to believe that they should possess abilities that work against balanced encounter design?
Once per day abilities like Quickened Casting are powerful, designed specifically for PCs, and are often reigned in only by their once per day limitation. To put such an ability on an NPC or creature that is likely only going to live long enough to use it once anyways essentially does away with that limitation, and thus serves only to imbalance the encounter unnecessarily.
As with any encounter you're building, you need to ask yourself "is this likely to make the encounter more, or less, fun for my players?"
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Why? NPCs are not built anything like PCs. The shouldn't have feats at all. What leads you to believe that they should possess such abilities?
By and large, a lot of NPC humanoids do seem to ape or mirror PCs in their available actions (though their math, like Strike dmg, is whatever the designer wants). Unlike NPC Strikes, spell effect math being hard-coded tends to make it more likely those casters will ape PC casters, or even have a unique feat unavailable to PCs, like how Teacher Ot had some assistive magic reaction to someone else casting a spell.
I can say for certain the Ranger assassin was locking-in and doing Skirmish Strike, Twin Takedown, et al. It seems appropriate for the assassins to each have 1 or 2 feats relevant to their expertise, such as an assassin mage using Subtle Spell for discretion, or Quickened Casting for the quick-kill nature of the job.
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It's also just good for design & balance to have mirrored consistency like that.
NPCs don't need to have the same number of feat slots or anything, but it really does help the verisimilitude of the world, and even helps the math.
It can be a big "reality check" to one's system to uncover what numbers are BS when you construct a mirror match with the PC's toolkit.
And when spells, items, etc, (yes, including feats) ARE explicitly universal, making the combat functional in a mirror match is kinda Paizo's only option.
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In almost all games where characters gain HP via leveling, PCs start with a substantial base pool, and have rather small [% total] gains.
If you want that to happen, you need to drastically reduce the ability to fight up or down large level differences in creatures in another way; if level isn't a particularly large factor on total HP, then lower level characters will be much more effective at taking down higher level enemies than today (especially with things that mitigate or avoid target defences, like half-damage-on-a-save abilities or Force barrage). Once could boost their defences in other ways - make AC and saves scale more significantly with level, for example. That would introduce further complexity - for one, how would that scaling happen in PF2's design? Are there additional proficiency ranks for defences only? Is your total proficiency not equal to the same number for defences as other numbers (i.e. trained is 2+level for everything else, but 2+1.5*level for defences)? Do you get a penalty to attack higher level targets? Alternatively we accept that defences are just something that scales less than offensive capability with level, which could also be fine, but will affect the game's feel as well. I don't disagree that there's a significant problem with going down in 1 hit at low levels, but pretending that there's an objectively correct game design is foolish - any change to a game's design has wide ranging flow-on effects, and there's not an objective right or wrong answer to which set of side-effects is better. "Subjectively, avoiding the tactical consequences of low time-to-kill is more important to me than the consequences of doing so" is a perfectly reasonable statement, but it's not objective game design.
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Just to clarify, the issue is not even the |size| of of the % HP increase on level up. Some games like big dramatic differences between levels, others prefer it to be a bit smaller.
The issue is that the size of the HP% change itself changes by a factor of 7x across the levels. I'm not winging at the set velocity, I'm trying to reveal that there's acceleration going on.
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This changing change makes the very concept of a PL+1 fight an ambiguous challenge. Most of the time, that'll mean +1.x in most stats and defenses.
But how much of an HP difference that is, who knows.
It could be as large as 35+% jump in a single level up, or as small as 5% bump in a level up.
(IMO) that's just "objectively" a bit of bad game design, inherited from 40+ years ago when 'game design' was just a bunch of dudes winging it.
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And we can see the results as the low level one-shots and the tactics-destroying rocket tag play that cannot be refuted.
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I find one thing odd about using the term rocket tag though.
Its not a guaranteed one shot. Its not actually they case that any given enemy striking your character can or will one shot the pc.
In fact most of the time odds are against it happening.
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Most of the time, if a crit can take out a PC, so can a MAP strike + a MAP -5 strike. (The exception is for things with deadly, fatal, etc.) That's still pretty unstable.
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I personally consider that a PC going down is expected on any non trivial fight. I start worrying (as a player but also as a GM) when 2 PCs are on the ground.
I play in general in 5 or 6 PC parties. In 4-(wo)man parties, one PC down is still rather common but 2 is much more dire.
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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.
The issue isn't necessarily about hard or easy though. The issue is that at level 1/2 if you follow the normal encounter building rules, you get a result that is significantly harder than if you attempt to follow those same rules at higher levels, because of the randomness of dice rolls allowing for 1 shots to happen. THIS IS A PROBLEM.
Liking a more challenging game is fine, there is neither a right or wrong associated with that, just a personal preference.
At higher levels you could consistently run Severe/Extreme encounters and achieve that kind of challenge you're looking for.
The problem is that the rest of are pointing out that those trying to build moderate or even low threat encounters at level 1 & 2 are still finding them very deadly when the players have a string of bad rolls and the enemy a string of good rolls, to the point where a single lucky crit from the enemy can knock a player down to like dying 2. And that pretty much can't happen anywhere else in the game. And it's a bad design.
If you want a hard encounter, run Severe and Moderate. It doesn't mean that at level 1 and 2 the encounter building portion of the game is broken because the enemies at those levels, relative to player values of AC and HP, are too strong and results in a kind of game play very different from what happens from levels 5-20.
So flatly, your desire for a challenging game doesn't matter (no offense) and you're ignoring the issue the rest of us are pointing. The game already handles your desire that by changing encounter type you're building for. We're talking about the inconsistency of the encounter building chart at low levels compared to higher levels.
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It's a hard balance to be sure. I do think that the threat of death really needs to be there, meaning PCs "should" drop dying every now and again. But, it's also true that PCs "should" be making big mistakes in combat, and that downs really need to be resultant of mistakes as much as possible.
One design rule I've come to learn is that a "theoretically perfect-play" party *should* win every (winnable) fight. The conceptual nature of "loss" should be fused into the concept of a "mistake."
However, a game with "perfect fairness" should be one where perfect play is beyond human expectation, so it'll still be normal for parties to loose due to expected errors/misplays.
The way that works in a ttrpg like pf2 is that of lack of knowledge and hyper contextuality. As much as I have "done the math" and figured out (some of) what good choices are and are not, I will often kick myself half a round later for my "good turn" now being "a mistake" once I remembered that missing bit of contextual info. That dynamic is what makes for a tactically engaging game.
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Basically, the above is another way of saying that "full-->downs delete tactical nuance and fun from the gameplay."
Because pf2 is a d20 game, and one with multiple attacks per foe turn, it makes a huge difference if PCs can or can not count on surviving until the next turn when at maximum HP.
I honestly think there is a very substantial and significantly ~hidden problem with the current HP math that is presently being hidden / band-aided by GMs and how they pilot foes /situations.
That AP run by the 1/3 GMs I mentioned, who was a "yes, and" style who tried to let consequences happen raw, and who slowed down the open rolls when things got dangerous, had *a lot* of deaths.
Every player had a PC die at least once, and the Monk's lava death meant swapping to a Sorc/Kin, while the other deaths typically meant some Timeless Salts and a trip to Abasalom for a resurrection (and a painful gp penalty).
What I did not mention/emphasize was that this was a full dual class game. Most of the surface had 3 PCs, but a Champion/Cleric joined to make it a party of 4/4 DUAL CLASS player characters.
The GM noticeably pulled his punches a *little* bit once or twice via lobotomy, and had foes prioritize dropping the whole party instead of securing kills. Aside from that, the GM "cheating" was only in the rare improvised actions or reasonable things we could/should be able to attempt outside of encounter mode.
Just that GM's desire to not cheat in the PCs favor made that AP incredibly lethal, even for an objectively overpowered as hell party of PCs. 5 total PCs deaths before Belcora was slain. These were actual, "did happen" deaths. Not counting the interventions like Wrin poofing in to save the TPK vs the corpselights.
Another was the GM improvised ability for the Magus/Rogue to do some mushroom parkour to reach the spider that ganked, paralyzed, and abducted my PC in the vertical direction.
That Magus vert gain for a slash on the silk is an example of a GM "anti-BS cheat" done *against* the system's rules for the sake of prevent my PC's BS death.
(who's only "mistake" was getting paralyzed on the ambush hit)
As I can at least count those, plus the aborted froghemoth on the water roll, the current total would've been 13 PC deaths, without counting other GM intervention I missed/don't remember.
The other 3 APs I've played thus far have had a total of... zero PC deaths. Quite a lot fewer than 5 13, lol.
Because even when the system math is crazy lethal, GMs are incredibly predisposed to intervene to prevent those deaths.
That degree of "GM hidden lethality" is why I'm banging this drum in the first place. Because the problem and fix are obvious, but only if you can see through the GM smokescreen.
The issue of the "bad low level math" can be outright invisible to most players when they are inside the GM's "anti-BS bubble," so the idea of a community band-aid like +20 starting HP for all PCs is not going to get off the ground unless more people understand that it both is a real problem, and that the change does much more good than harm to the gameplay.
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It's a hard balance to be sure. I do think that the threat of death really needs to be there, meaning PCs "should" drop dying every now and again. But, it's also true that PCs "should" be making big mistakes in combat, and that downs really need to be resultant of mistakes as much as possible.
One design rule I've come to learn is that a "theoretically perfect-play" party *should* win every (winnable) fight. The conceptual nature of "loss" should be fused into the concept of a "mistake."
However, a game with "perfect fairness" should be one where perfect play is beyond human expectation, so it'll still be normal for parties to loose due to expected errors/misplays.
I agree with this, that death needs to be a threat for it to feel like there are real stakes. But also that it should come from poor choices under the players control.
If the enemy goes first, moves into range and hits the PC and knocks them to dying 2 before they can even do anything....the player character had no opportunity to do anything wrong other than existing.
Even if the player goes first and moves into melee range to make an attack, but the enemy turn knocks them out on the first hit there's still not much (at low levels) you could expect a PC to do differently.
And that's why it's a problem at low levels. You don't even have an opportunity to assess "Okay I've been hit, I'm substantially damaged, I need to retreat and plan on how to mitigate this damage I've taken".
You just go from full health to dying.
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Most of the time, if a crit can take out a PC, so can a MAP strike + a MAP -5 strike. (The exception is for things with deadly, fatal, etc.) That's still pretty unstable.Yup!
To give a concrete lvl 1 example:
Dire Wolf. Has +12 to hit, D10+5 damage.
A PC on the AC cap has 18 AC, DW has a 25% crit-rate and that crit does on average 21 damage, enough to take down most PC's.
In case it's not a crit, there is still a 50% chance it was a regular hit and a second strike with 50% to land, to get to that average of 21 damage.
In short, every round it gets 2 strikes against AC 18 the Direwolf has about 50% chance to do an average of 21 damage. Obviously not a guaranteed takedown, no, but imho still firmly in the realm of rocket tag play.
Obviously AC could be lower or higher. Probably lower, to be honest. It could target a clothy with AC 16, the wolf could get frightened, or shields could be raised, but it can also easily trip or grab to make it's target off-guard, etc.
I think there are some factors lost in this example. Its really not as simple as this.
At level 1 a fight against a +2 foe is a boss fight possibly along with one normal wolf to make it severe. Likely this fight comes after all the things the pcs did to basically get to level 2 but have to get through this fight first for the last amount of xp. They should have some treasure rewards, maybe one of the level 2 permanent items and probably moat of the consumables. Hopefully by this point the GM has trained the players on basic gameplay. If not dont throw a +2 creature at them.For the experienced players here i give you a party of four, make whatever for this example. Your now on the hunt for a direwolf that moved into the nearby forest recently and has placed this village and travelers in danger as of late. The party so far has taken on some wolves and other lesser creatures as they traveled here, and helped the locals with other problems. Youve found information that would lead you to other places but because of the heroes you are and due to your own desire to travel without being assailed you are preparing to deal with the direwolf before you leave town. What does this party do to make this fight against a 1 dire wolf and 1 wolf a fair fight?
If your party is clever the work to win this fight starts before you ever set out to fight.
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And this is a very challenging encounter for a level 1 party. If I was running an adventure that had this as an encounter to close out level 1 I would gauge my party at this point and recal knowledge on our session 0 conversations.
From session zero did we agree this would be a lethal game? Or did they want to just have a good time smashing monsters without the threat of death?
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Most of the time, if a crit can take out a PC, so can a MAP strike + a MAP -5 strike. (The exception is for things with deadly, fatal, etc.) That's still pretty unstable.Yup!
To give a concrete lvl 1 example:
Dire Wolf. Has +12 to hit, D10+5 damage.
A PC on the AC cap has 18 AC, DW has a 25% crit-rate and that crit does on average 21 damage, enough to take down most PC's.
In case it's not a crit, there is still a 50% chance it was a regular hit and a second strike with 50% to land, to get to that average of 21 damage.
In short, every round it gets 2 strikes against AC 18 the Direwolf has about 50% chance to do an average of 21 damage. Obviously not a guaranteed takedown, no, but imho still firmly in the realm of rocket tag play.
Obviously AC could be lower or higher. Probably lower, to be honest. It could target a clothy with AC 16, the wolf could get frightened, or shields could be raised, but it can also easily trip or grab to make it's target off-guard, etc.
I think there are some factors lost in this example. Its really not as simple as this.
At level 1 a fight against a +2 foe is a boss fight possibly along with one normal wolf to make it severe. Likely this fight comes after all the things the pcs did to basically get to level 2 but have to get through this fight first for the last amount of xp. They should have some treasure rewards, maybe one of the level 2 permanent items and probably moat of the consumables. Hopefully by this point the GM has trained the players on basic gameplay. If not dont throw a +2 creature at them.
For the experienced players here i give you a party of four, make whatever for this example. Your now on the hunt for a direwolf that moved into the nearby forest recently and has placed this village and travelers in danger as of late. The party so far has taken on some wolves and other lesser creatures as they traveled here, and helped the locals with other problems. Youve found...
One of the things about a direwolf is that it will not try to fight you fairly. It wants to use stealth to stalk, and strike when it sees a weakness, when it has numbers on you. A direwolf does’t want a fair fight.
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They should have some treasure rewards, maybe one of the level 2 permanent items and probably moat of the consumables. Hopefully by this point the GM has trained the players on basic gameplay. If not dont throw a +2 creature at them.So again, for me this comes back to core design. Should an AP be written to expect the GM has done all that? If so, then advanced players will be pleased with that AP as written and beginner players and GMs who don't do all that may get their clocks cleaned (unless the GM cheats in the players' favor). OTOH, let's say the AP is written with an easier "last encounter before L2" or more loot in a box right before it etc. etc., because it doesn't assume the GM will make all those "should"s happen unless the written text practically forces it. In that case, the beginner players and GM will enjoy it, while the advanced players and GM will think it's too easy...unless they upgrade it.
The difference, however, is that the advanced table is much better at doing upgrades than the beginner table is at doing downgrades. Right? So what should the written text of the AP be geared towards, and which GM and player group should be given the 'job' of modifying it to fit their table? Remember, we are talking about an AP that is covering the advancement of Level 1 to Level 2 here. If your answer would be completely different for an AP written for Levels 11-15, that's totally okay by me.
It reminds me of the Sega Genesis game Altered Beast.
The game doesnt let you fight the boss the first time you get to him unless you actually picked up the power ups to transform. It just extends the stage and throws more chances to power up at you. I think the second or third time you reach the boss on that stage it lets you fight at whatever power up phase you are at.AP design isnt really something I am best to speak to. I have just used the GM core monster core and now npc core to make encounters and doing so even at low levels has workout really well even though my group is 7 players.
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THIS IS A PROBLEM.
THIS IS A FEATURE.
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I agree...that death needs to be a threat for it to feel like there are real stakes. But also that it should come from poor choices under the players control.
If the enemy goes first, moves into range and hits the PC and knocks them to dying 2 before they can even do anything....the player character had no opportunity to do anything wrong other than existing.
Even if the player goes first and moves into melee range to make an attack, but the enemy turn knocks them out on the first hit there's still not much (at low levels) you could expect a PC to do differently.
And that's why it's a problem at low levels. You don't even have an opportunity to assess "Okay I've been hit, I'm substantially damaged, I need to retreat and plan on how to mitigate this damage I've taken".
You just go from full health to dying.
Once again, I think this is less an issue with problematic math than it is encounter design.
If it's an ambush, then it should be as nasty as you describe. If it's not an ambush, then the two parties should probably be more spread out.
The issue with a PC dropping in round 1 before they can act isn't the math, it's with the itty-bitty battle maps. If the enemy starts farther away, PCs will have more time to ready themselves, create more distance, set up impediments, or maybe even take out an enemy with a lucky crit or party focus fire.
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You're right in the sense that overall encounter design is part of the problem, but it will shift the problem rather than mitigate it.
APs do tend to have encounters start at relatively close range. In part because of playability of encounters when using a physical battle map. In part because it can be quite lopsided in terms of encounters depending on the options each side has (ranged vs melee) and abilities that allow them to entrench of prepare against an approaching enemy, and part putting melee and ranged/spell casters on relatively equal footing. A melee focused character really hates life when the enemy is 500 ft away and is going to spend the next 10 rounds moving into position while dodging enemy ranged attacks.
A party (or enemy) with an Instant Fortress is in a very different position when the fight starts at 1000ft away vs 50 ft.
But if you think fixing the math of low level enemies isn't the solution, I feel like writing a in depth treaties on overall encounter design including physical space of the combat, distance between parties, etc is going to be way harder/more difficult than fixing the math part of enemies. You're not wrong that there is a lot more to it than math....but those other bits are A LOT more difficult to get right because there are so many variables.
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It's a hard balance to be sure. I do think that the threat of death really needs to be there, meaning PCs "should" drop dying every now and again. But, it's also true that PCs "should" be making big mistakes in combat, and that downs really need to be resultant of mistakes as much as possible.
My players are also boardgamers. We own and play two dozen Eurogames, such as Settlers of Catan and Thurn and Taxis, a style of game popular in Germany in which players win by earning points through clever resource management, unlike classic American games such as Monopoly and Risk, in which losing players are eliminated from the game and the winner is the last person standing. This illustrates that our sense of victory is strategic achievement rather than survival in the face of danger.
One design rule I've come to learn is that a "theoretically perfect-play" party *should* win every (winnable) fight. The conceptual nature of "loss" should be fused into the concept of a "mistake."
However, a game with "perfect fairness" should be one where perfect play is beyond human expectation, so it'll still be normal for parties to loose due to expected errors/misplays.The way that works in a ttrpg like pf2 is that of lack of knowledge and hyper contextuality. As much as I have "done the math" and figured out (some of) what good choices are and are not, I will often kick myself half a round later for my "good turn" now being "a mistake" once I remembered that missing bit of contextual info. That dynamic is what makes for a tactically engaging game.
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Basically, the above is another way of saying that "full-->downs delete tactical nuance and fun from the gameplay."
The hit point system makes Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder combat into a game of attrition. Each side gradually loses hit points and other resources, such as spell slots and focus points, until one side is eliminated. In general, the side with the most resources almost always wins, where resources can be estimated through total XP. Thus, the planned scenarios pit the party against 40-xp Trivial Threat, 60-xp Low Threat, 80-xp Moderate Threat, and 120-xp Severe Threat encounters in which they are the high-resource side (a 4-member party counts as 160 xp).
But with the ability to take down a character at full hit points in one round, the game of attrition is disrupted. One lucky crit suddenly robs the party of a quarter of its resources. The party has less resources, so the probability of them winning drops.
Tactics can change the attrition equation, and the PCs are designed with more tactics than the creatures.
I have an example of gameplay in which tactics became more important than resources. In my PF2-converted [b[Ironfang Invasion[/b] campaign at 3rd level, the 5-member party was clearing a cave system of murderous xulgath cultists, mostly 1st-level Xulgath Warriors, but also a 2nd-level Xulgath Skulker, two 2nd-level xulgath sorcerers, a 4th-level xulgath barbarian, a 4th-level xulgath cleric, and some creatures of other species. After watching the party defeat the xulgath barbarian, the skulker retreated with the remaining warriors to rally around the cleric, in what I expected to be an epic Severe-Threat battle.
But the party encountered a Gelatinous Cube first and did not know how to handle it. They lost half their hit points before the ranger ruptured it from inside. The xulgath were listening at the door of the next room, ready to rush in and take down the party after the cube was dead, but they delayed. The rogue/sorcerer who fortunately understood Draconic language listened from the party's side of the door and heard the xulgath say, "Let's wait half a minute and then rush in." That was my GM intervention: I let them know that they had best run and was giving them time to run.
Note: listening at doors is another tactic to teach.
Retreating meant climbing up a 30-foot ladder to the upper level. One party member was still on the ladder when the xulgath rushed into the room below. The xulgath warriors threw javelins at him.
Javelins. Suddenly the party's attitude changed from caution to confidence. The xulgath had javelins, but the PCs had bows and ranged spells. The PCs could win this fight despite their injuries because of a tactical advantage that they were built for range while the xulgath were built for melee. The party attacked from the ledge above. At range they could deal twice the damage per round as the xulgath. The Xulgath Skulker tried climbing up the ladder. Focused fire killed her before she reached the top. When the xulgath cleric dropped, the last two surviving xulgath warriors fled the room. The party climbed back down and hunted them down without stopping for Treat Wounds.
Winning through tactics rather than through attrition is great fun. Unfortunately, taking a PC down also reduces options for tactics. In many cases, one PC has a great tactic against the enemy and the other PCs support that character. For example, the sniper rogue with Precise Debilitations made enemies off-guard to everyone provided that the party kept the enemies away from her so that she could Hide. If that particular PC goes down, then that tactic is lost.
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The issue with a PC dropping in round 1 before they can act isn't the math, it's with the itty-bitty battle maps. If the enemy starts farther away, PCs will have more time to ready themselves, create more distance, set up impediments, or maybe even take out an enemy with a lucky crit or party focus fire.
It 100% is a math problem, and I'm happy to stake my flag on that claim.
Factors like distance and reach exist, but are wholly separate from the simple issue of:"how many hits is it mathematically expected to take before the PC drops?"
At low level, 2 hits/ 1 crit is all too often enough to outright one-shot, and that answer *is* the problem math most core to the combat system. Other real factors like map size doesn't change that core HP math. Other loopholes and strats to avoid foe Strikes being rolled do not fix or delete that problem.
That's why I keep saying "full-->downs" and rocket tag. The math pf2 presents in the books, and the encounter building guides, is "mathematically a problem" at low level because of this HP fragility.
The book's own written PC health pools are far too small compared to enemy damage for it's own written encounter guides.
For only low level play. Once the PC level gets high enough, the encounter guidelines begin to "work" with valid damage:HP math.
And again, if you are at max HP and still need to avoid the very chance of taking a hit to play the game's combat (because of the full-->down issue), then that combat's gameplay sucks ass.
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It's also just a non-defense to say the encounter design is the problem when we are talking about official content. Those are all "canon" and official encounters. Saying their math is bad, is an admission of there being a problem in their math.
And their math *is* busted.
Because of the mathematical expectation for full-->downs to happen.
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Leading to conclusions like:
"if we add +20 HP to every L1 PC, that could make the game more tactical, fun, etc. If the risk of full-->downs is addressed, that could even open the door for the GM to make encounters more difficult while being fun and rewarding to play."
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The issue with a PC dropping in round 1 before they can act isn't the math, it's with the itty-bitty battle maps. If the enemy starts farther away, PCs will have more time to ready themselves, create more distance, set up impediments, or maybe even take out an enemy with a lucky crit or party focus fire.It 100% is a math problem, and I'm happy to stake my flag on that claim.
Factors like distance and reach exist, but are wholly separate from the simple issue of:"how many hits is it mathematically expected to take before the PC drops?"
At low level, 2 hits/ 1 crit is all too often enough to outright one-shot, and that answer *is* the problem math most core to the combat system. Other real factors like map size doesn't change that core HP math. Other loopholes and strats to avoid foe Strikes being rolled do not fix or delete that problem.
That's why I keep saying "full-->downs" and rocket tag. The math pf2 presents in the books, and the encounter building guides, is "mathematically a problem" at low level because of this HP fragility.
The book's own written PC health pools are far too small compared to enemy damage for it's own written encounter guides.For only low level play. Once the PC level gets high enough, the encounter guidelines begin to "work" with valid damage:HP math.
And again, if you are at max HP and still need to avoid the very chance of taking a hit to play the game's combat (because of the full-->down issue), then that combat's gameplay sucks ass.
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It's also just a non-defense to say the encounter design is the problem when we are talking about official content. Those are all "canon" and official encounters. Saying their math is bad, is an admission of there being a problem in their math.
And their math *is* busted.
Because of the mathematical expectation for full-->downs to happen.
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Leading to conclusions like:
"if we add +20 HP to every L1 PC, that could make the game more tactical, fun, etc. If the risk of...
I don't agree with adding 20 HP to level 1 characters. They already have a buffer of HP that ancestry HP introduced and they get flat amounts that used to be a die roll in the past each class level.
The extra added 20 would actually mean GMs couldn't challenge level 1 parties without using higher level monsters or many more monsters to encounters.And you can forget about tanky level 1 PCs ever sweating it out in a fight. With a shield up 22 AC (benediction/or other status bonus and full plate they would have up by the time they face a boss level threat in the campaign) and upwards of 45HP. And not only that the weakest members like an elf wizard with no con investment would have 31 HP, which is more than the tankiest characters had before the extra 20.
This means everyone has a ballooned hp pool to force their way through any low level encounter without having to be smart about how they fight.
The current set up is not a problem and actually does encourage tactical play. Its not tactical play to not care if you get hit cause youll live no matter how you invested in your character. That extra HP encourages reckless offensive play because it would be a waste of time to do defensive things.
In actual play the guidelines actually work though. You just don't like how they work. Others do.
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Damn, thanks for bringing the math. That shows that even I was underestimating how long this one-shot potential lingers.
A PL -1 caster (solo!) still being able to one-shot the squishes at L 12 was outside of my expectation. I had presumed that a L12 one-shot would require something like a PL +1 caster w/ Never Mind or other non-damaging incap spell to bypass HP.
Considering that said NPC caster could /"should" have feats like Quickened Casting to open with yet more damage, yeah, I'm surprised and saddened to agree that the example I went to explicitly compare against low level rocket tag, itself definitely still qualifies as rocket tag (that the player can never shoot first in). Ooooof.
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Honestly surprised to learn that there was outright one-shot potential on a high rolled crit fail, even my PC w/ 138 was not outside that danger.
Looks like a ~5% chance on crit to reach 138 & outright oneshot.
Comparing that 5% high roll to your average caster dropping to Dying 2 in their bed on a 56% likely dmg roll goes to show how quickly that oneshot danger vanishes with a small boost to HP though.The notion that it's still published content to have sleeping PCs be subject to one-shot magic as an opener is such indefensible math, idk what to even say. The -4 & -1 of being asleep & armorless makes it that much worse.
Smallest of silver linings is that saves are rolled by players, and subject to hero points.
Though, considering that a 2nd chain lighting can be thrown when PCs only have time to stand + grab (+ 1A interact to get free of the bedsheets if your GM is of that kind), goooood luck surviving that fight if run "legit."
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Oh, and I'm guessing the room is supposed to be fully dark as well. Thanks to Darkvision Elixirs being 24 hr, that was not a problem for us, but it would be yet another "holy s&@!, this is unwinnable" problem for some parties needing 2A to get some light while the foes are launching rockets.
What? It is perfectly ok to have an ambush that is actually trying to kill the PCs including using magic that can one shot a PC.
You and Claxon asking for an easier game but saying "It's not about easy or hard" is not tracking. You want an easier game. A safer game. A game where you don't have to worry about any extreme outcomes.
That's not the game I want at all. I want a PC rolling a bad save to be one-shottable all the way to 20. I want ambush magic to hammer them up to a one shot. I want this.
No one in a fantasy world with the possibility of attack should sleep comfortably.
Fantasy worlds with monsters should be dangerous, very, very dangerous.
I didn't even want to bring up that casters can one shot high level groups with magic and bad saves in PF2 because you and Claxon might ask for even more hit points to eliminate that possibility like when our level 11 group walked into a battle against a high level lich and found out the 4 levels of saves success and high level AOE magic is absolutely brutal and can waste an entire high level party if you roll the critical fail.
I guess that possibility should be removed too.
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Honestly, I feel like the line "you can't do tactics at level 1" is absolutely a lie. There's a level 1 fight in Blood Lords that's Level+2. My party, when going into it, took reasonable actions and ended up ending the encounter without taking any damage. (One of those, incidentally, ended up being my character dropping my weapon to keep Tripping the enemy, since it was a zombie and therefore permanently slowed 1, and also has an insanely low Ref DC.)
I also do know that this is an enemy that has been complained about, since people have mentioned that it's killed PCs.
So I will heavily push back against the suggestion that you can't use tactics at level 1 in APs.
(If it matters, the party was warpriest cleric, ranger, wizard, magus.)
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...Damn, thanks for bringing the math. That shows that even I was underestimating how long this one-shot potential lingers.
A PL -1 caster (solo!) still being able to one-shot the squishes at L 12 was outside of my expectation. I had presumed that a L12 one-shot would require something like a PL +1 caster w/ Never Mind or other non-damaging incap spell to bypass HP.
Considering that said NPC caster could /"should" have feats like Quickened Casting to open with yet more damage, yeah, I'm surprised and saddened to agree that the example I went to explicitly compare against low level rocket tag, itself definitely still qualifies as rocket tag (that the player can never shoot first in). Ooooof.
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Honestly surprised to learn that there was outright one-shot potential on a high rolled crit fail, even my PC w/ 138 was not outside that danger.
Looks like a ~5% chance on crit to reach 138 & outright oneshot.
Comparing that 5% high roll to your average caster dropping to Dying 2 in their bed on a 56% likely dmg roll goes to show how quickly that oneshot danger vanishes with a small boost to HP though.The notion that it's still published content to have sleeping PCs be subject to one-shot magic as an opener is such indefensible math, idk what to even say. The -4 & -1 of being asleep & armorless makes it that much worse.
Smallest of silver linings is that saves are rolled by players, and subject to hero points.
Though, considering that a 2nd chain lighting can be thrown when PCs only have time to stand + grab (+ 1A interact to get free of the bedsheets if your GM is of that kind), goooood luck surviving that fight if run "legit."
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Oh, and I'm guessing the room is supposed to be fully dark as well. Thanks to Darkvision Elixirs being 24 hr, that was not a problem for us, but it would be yet another "holy s!*~, this is unwinnable" problem for some parties needing 2A to get some light while the foes are
I want to make a correction, I never asked for more HP as a solution.
I acknowledged that there is a mathematical problem in that enemies can 1 shot level 1 characters under the right circumstances.
Adding HP is one way to resolve that.
It's not actually my preferred way.
My preferred way would be to adjust the CR of some creatures, also in combination with potentially adjusting the damage down of other creatuers.
It might mean that at level 1 and 2 you fight a lot of "weak" enemies if you want safe moderate encounters, but fighting other "people" would end up being mostly CR 2/3 enemies which would quickly get a fight into Severe and Extreme territory.
I don't actually want HP to change, and I don't think I've said such at all. So please don't misrepresent me.
Also I don't necessarily want an easy game.
I want a consistent game.
Generally speaking a moderate encounter should have the same feel in terms of "how dangerous" it is at all levels. That's my issue. Because currently it does. The game feels much more deadly at level 1 and 2 because 1 wrong move or even none (but bad luck) can result in your character dying.
It is true that I prefer a more beer and pretzels hack and slash feelings of grandeur kind of game. But that's not what I actually care about in this discussion.
What I care about is that the game is inconsistently difficult between levels. And I really don't care for your misrepresentation of that. Or the insinuations that I'm somehow less for preferring an "easy fun game" rather than a Dark Souls like experience. Both are valid, depending on what any given group likes.
The problem is that people looking for an easy game at level 1 easily end up with a Dark Souls experience if the GM doesn't know how to (or that they should) change things.
Honestly, I really feel like you're arguing in bad faith. And I'm kind of upset about it.
So I'm not going to go any further on this post, because I'll likely say things in anger I regret. So I'm just going to stop for now.
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I do feel like there are genuinely problems with enemy HP at level 1, as well; it's not just a playerside issue. Casters look weak partially because a lot of martials (especially, say, magi) are capable of oneshotting enemies below party level. This means debuffs and buffs aren't as valuable, and AoE damage isn't really "softening" enemies in multitarget fights or meaningfully reducing the amount of hits it takes to kill them in the way it does in later play.
It's also part of why I feel there's not a ton of daylight between boring and lethal encounters at low level—and at low level, the same encounter is unusually capable of being both boring and lethal, dependent on dicerolls. You're sort of mixing and matching enemies that drop like flies, and enemies that can drop players like they're flies.
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What? It is perfectly ok to have an ambush that is actually trying to kill the PCs including using magic that can one shot a PC.
Yes, it is valid to have a real threat of death.
No, it is not valid to have your first bit of player agency during the session to be waking up to a save roll, and then f&$@ing die.
That's just a terrible game.
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You really need a reality check here, idk what's going on with you. You don't seem to understand that someone can enjoy difficult games, but dislike b%~!+&&# *artificial* difficulty. Again, I enjoy playing F&H2, the difficulty is not the issue.
A PC dying does not even mean that the game is difficult.
Difficulty *requires* challenge. Simply failing a "wake up and save" roll is NOT difficulty, because there was no challenge in that gameplay. It's just the game killing a PC.
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Altering the PC HP is one possible way of addressing the full-->down issue. There are others, but all would be more difficult to implement and have far more knock on effects in the wider system.
Any GM can easily have whatever bonus starting HP they wish, and even have it decay as the levels go up if they so choose.
Paizo themselves added the belts of good health to up max HP, that method is not some crazy idea, it is the one that makes the most sense.
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And once more for those in the back; upping the max player HP allows for the increasing of difficulty.
This is because if you can count on no BS downs, then that means you don't need always allow for the party to loose 7 combat actions recovering from the down to get back on their feet.
BS downs means that the GM *has to* pull punches, or else it'll death spiral.
If they can trust in no full-->downs, then the GM is free to really attack the party.
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What? It is perfectly ok to have an ambush that is actually trying to kill the PCs including using magic that can one shot a PC.Yes, it is valid to have a real threat of death.
No, it is not valid to have your first bit of player agency during the session to be waking up to a save roll, and then f$#$ing die.
That's just a terrible game.
I agree this is terrible. If you have no agency, the GM says you wake up roll a save and that save determines if your pc lives or dies.
That is a terrible game.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Although I'm ambivalent towards it, Deriven is right that these games have always had a good chance, over the whole run, of "you die with no agency." The run of Rise of the Runelords I GM'd would've tpk'd within the first book without hero points.
In book six, I also had a literally instant character death as a player:
And in 1E, there are just plenty of spells that can hit the party that're effectively party wipes. (Prismatic Spray has had devastating impacts on most of the parties I've seen targeted by it.) This potential even exists in 2E, provided the enemy caster is high enough level to bypass the incap trait or similar restrictions, or you roll poorly enough! Massacre just outright kills lower level PCs on a crit fail, for instance.
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Oof. Deaths with no agency / mistake always suck, there's no other way about it.
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Apples to oranges, but in F&H2, if (when) you are walking around the overworld, you can take a wrong step and instantly die.
Literally, walk on the wrong tile, and you explode for a game over. That could have been a hour or two of hard won progress, gone in a single wrong tap of the arrow keys.
But, even though the game is incredibly harsh and lethal, the game is still fair. Every landmine is completely visible; there's no BS spite stuff going on to obscure them.
You have to genuinely get careless, and literally step on a landmine for it to kill you. Seems like you'd have to be a complete moron, yet, it *absolutely* will still happen to you, lol.
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What? It is perfectly ok to have an ambush that is actually trying to kill the PCs including using magic that can one shot a PC.Yes, it is valid to have a real threat of death.
No, it is not valid to have your first bit of player agency during the session to be waking up to a save roll, and then f$#$ing die.
That's just a terrible game.
I agree this is terrible. If you have no agency, the GM says you wake up roll a save and that save determines if your pc lives or dies.
That is a terrible game.
Here is what the ambush encounter says:
The 12th-level party has been included in a Magaambyan diplomatic delegation to Mzali, a city and its surroundings ruled by the god-king Walkena. Due to diplomatic preparations the city welcomed them and they were housed in the Golden Mouse inn.
WELCOME GIFT MODERATE 12
On the first night the delegation stays in Mzali, Walkena sends a number of his followers to test the new arrivals. If they can’t survive a straightforward ambush, he figures, there’s not much use in wasting time on them.
This encounter uses the map ...
The party is assigned a large circular room, 70 feet in diameter, of their own. Further paragraphs describe the Reborn, devoted servants who reanimated after death to serve Walkena again as undead. Then it continues with the encounter.
Walkena keeps a few of his reborn on hand for special missions where overwhelming power and the ability to leave little trace behind is an asset—such as an attack on the Magaambyan delegation in the dead of night. Four groups of reborn attack the Golden Mouse, scaling the walls and creeping through its courtyard to strike the delegation all at once. The other members of the delegation struggle with their own attackers, but the heroes must face a trio of Walkena’s reborn on their own. The hunter and warrior try to attack the most physically imposing heroes first, flanking when they can, while the mage throws spells from a distance.
The rest of the delegation fares as well as the heroes do; if they’re hard-pressed by the reborn, so are the other delegation members. When the heroes finally overcome these three reborn, the rest of the delegation has just run off their own attackers.
The rest of the section is the stat blocks for the 11th-level trio of Reborn Sun Hunter, Reborn Sun Mage, and Reborn Sun Warrior. And that's it. The next paragraph begins, "NEGOTIATIONS. The next morning, a squad of Jackal Guards arrives to escort the delegation to the Temple of the Deathless Child in the center of the city. If the heroes bring up last night’s attack, the Jackal Guards remain silent about the matter. ..."
This attack made no plotwise sense, and it is described poorly. How do the reborn enter the room? Did they wait until the party was asleep? Does the party have any rolls to wake up before they attack? Trip.H's GM decided that they simply appeared in the room without warning and took their actions while the party is asleep.
The sticky thread 4 - Secrets of the Temple-City (GM Reference) has no GM mentioning this ambush. Perhaps they had the ambush while the party was still awake and armed.
In 8 months my party will face this scenario in Secrets of the Temple-City. I am going to rewrite it a bit. My party will have spent their day proving their worth to prominent officials of Mzali before they bed down. As experienced players they will notice that the city views them as intruders despite their diplomatic status, so they will set up a watch for the night. The reborn will unlock their room's door with a key forced from the innkeeper. The first reborn in initative will spend an action to announce that the party must prove their worth to the reborn in combat and that the reborn will accept death in this trial. This speech lets the sleeping PCs wake up, but they still will be without armor (some will sleep in comfort-armor pajamas) and need an Interact action to grab weapons. My martial PCs are pretty good at unarmed combat.
The scene is not a standard ambush of bandits rushing the road from the forest. Trip.H's GM interpreted it as a scry-and-fry, a Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition trick in which the party scries their enemy's bedroom and teleports the party in to attack that enemy in their sleep.
The Player Cores and the GM Core do not merely fail to teach the players. They also fail to teach the GM that balanced combat is about more than the Encounter XP Budget. PF2's enounter budget is a great tool, but it does not cover everything. Details such as terrain and surprise can change the threat level of an encounter.
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Just saying, this is not the system at all, an encounter where the party has every reason to believe they are sleeping in safety but are caught sleeping by a group of assassins why even have rolls.
That scenario sounds like the players just lost by GM fiat or AP fiat maybe. Theres no encounter to run its just rocks fall everyone dies.
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What? It is perfectly ok to have an ambush that is actually trying to kill the PCs including using magic that can one shot a PC.Yes, it is valid to have a real threat of death.
No, it is not valid to have your first bit of player agency during the session to be waking up to a save roll, and then f$#$ing die.
That's just a terrible game.
I agree this is terrible. If you have no agency, the GM says you wake up roll a save and that save determines if your pc lives or dies.
That is a terrible game.
Welcome to games where you roll dice to determine outcomes.
You're saying you shouldn't be playing dice based games because you have a chance to fail.
They have those types of narrative based games where you have zero chance of failure due to random dice rolls.
I'm thinking most of us that play dice based games enjoy the probability of failure because it mirrors the chance of losing. There isn't much joy in victory if you can't lose.
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What? It is perfectly ok to have an ambush that is actually trying to kill the PCs including using magic that can one shot a PC.Yes, it is valid to have a real threat of death.
No, it is not valid to have your first bit of player agency during the session to be waking up to a save roll, and then f$#$ing die.
That's just a terrible game.
I agree this is terrible. If you have no agency, the GM says you wake up roll a save and that save determines if your pc lives or dies.
That is a terrible game.Welcome to games where you roll dice to determine outcomes.
You're saying you shouldn't be playing dice based games because you have a chance to fail.
They have those types of narrative based games where you have zero chance of failure due to random dice rolls.
I'm thinking most of us that play dice based games enjoy the probability of failure because it mirrors the chance of losing. There isn't much joy in victory if you can't lose.
You missed the point of me saying that. Edit: or rather I wasnt clear in trying to make my point.
When a GM has railroaded the game to you wake up roll a save and that save can just wipe the party thats not much of a game.Take it back a step, should the party have felt something is off staying there? did they decide to take turns keeping watch or set up some spell to give them warning?
My point is if the GM took away all options to prepare/react using GM control over the scene and gave no conception that the party should be wary at all then yes its a bad way to run a game.
Not to mention the narrative position the GM put those assassins in. the GM has not allowed any rolls to notice them coming in, might as well use narrative to tell the party they were all killed in their sleep.
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I agree with this, that death needs to be a threat for it to feel like there are real stakes. But also that it should come from poor choices under the players control.
If the enemy goes first, moves into range and hits the PC and knocks them to dying 2 before they can even do anything....the player character had no opportunity to do anything wrong other than existing.
Even if the player goes first and moves into melee range to make an attack, but the enemy turn knocks them out on the first hit there's still not much (at low levels) you could expect a PC to do differently.
And that's why it's a problem at low levels. You don't even have an opportunity to assess "Okay I've been hit, I'm substantially damaged, I need to retreat and plan on how to mitigate this damage I've taken".
You just go from full health to dying.
Hard disagree. In a game about combat and tactics, both the players and their foes should be doing everything in their power to make fights as unfair as possible. If a group that was hunting you sees the dying embers of your campfire and observes long enough to confirm that your watch is only 1 person and an animal companion, your chances of leaving that ambush alive should be low.
Sometimes you should just get unlucky and your character takes that arrow through the eyeslit in their armour and bleeds out before the low-level Cleric can do anything. If adventuring were just boffing away at fair fights with foam weapons, more people would do it.
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It 100% is a math problem, and I'm happy to stake my flag on that claim.
Factors like distance and reach exist, but are wholly separate from the simple issue of:"how many hits is it mathematically expected to take before the PC drops?"
You don't fight a bear by standing there and trading punches with it. If you expect that the enemy can maim you in an attack or two, it's on you not to let them attack. Switch to ranged attacks, have the person it's trying to attack spend three actions running while the rest of the team spreads out and peppers it at range. Get to a place where you have a terrain advantage and exploit any enemy that can't access places you can.
The idea that a good fight looks like a team of LARPers beating on a piñata is awful. Expecting to win every "fair" fight because of math and some extremely basic positioning is awful.
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THE PROBLEM IS THAT YOU CAN GET ONE-TURN DOWNED VERY EASILY AT LOW LEVEL, THEREFORE YOU CAN'T STRATEGIZE APPROPRIATELY BECAUSE YOU CAN'T STRATEGIZE AGAINTS BEING OTD IN A 30FT ROOM AND THEREFORE THE GAME DOESN'T DO A GOOD JOB AT TEACHING PLAYERS HOW TO PROPERLY PLAY THE GAME.
Don't fight the enemy in that 30-foot room. Have one person kick in the door while the rest of the party covers them, and if the person who kicked the door doesn't like what they see, back up and see if the enemy is stupid enough to walk into an ambush. Even better, if the room only has one entrance, nail the door shut and start filling the room with smoke. Come back a few minutes later, unseal the door, and collect your free loot.
Your characters don't and shouldn't know they're in a game and should treat combat and dungeon crawling as the life and death situation it is.
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Noticing that there's a HUGE crack in the system's math where 75% of the game has a peculiar High fantasy feel and the other 25% has a weird ass half old school half modern d20 system feel (read feel as: ratio between health and damage) Is not a personal opinion, Is a fact that we're Building an argument onto.
It's not 25% of the game.
It's mostly level 1 and 2.At level 1, a level +2 enemy does twice more damage than an at level enemy.
At level 2, a level +2 enemy does slightly more than 50% extra damage than an at level enemy.
At level 3, a level +2 enemy does 1/3rd extra damage compared to an at level enemy.
Level 3 is also an important moment as healing roughly doubles in effectiveness at that level. So while healing at level 1 and 2 may feel lackluster compared to the damage taken, it gives much more survivability at level 3.
Level 1 (especially) and 2 (slightly) are hard to play. It's not just about hp/damage ratio but also because a lot of builds lack an important item or feat (Paladins in medium armor have ridiculous AC, the first general feat at level 3 unlocks many builds, same goes for the first archetype feat at level 4, casters have a very steep progression at low levels, etc...). So I quite like that fights are so fast, as a lot of characters are not fleshed out enough to give nice sensations to those who like the tactical side of the game.
Early APs/adventures made the error of featuring tough early game but it's now over. As a GM, you should focus on a nice and fast early game, keeping the tough things for later.
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What? It is perfectly ok to have an ambush that is actually trying to kill the PCs including using magic that can one shot a PC.Yes, it is valid to have a real threat of death.
No, it is not valid to have your first bit of player agency during the session to be waking up to a save roll, and then f$#$ing die.
That's just a terrible game.
I agree this is terrible. If you have no agency, the GM says you wake up roll a save and that save determines if your pc lives or dies.
That is a terrible game.Welcome to games where you roll dice to determine outcomes.
You're saying you shouldn't be playing dice based games because you have a chance to fail.
They have those types of narrative based games where you have zero chance of failure due to random dice rolls.
I'm thinking most of us that play dice based games enjoy the probability of failure because it mirrors the chance of losing. There isn't much joy in victory if you can't lose.
You missed the point of me saying that. Edit: or rather I wasnt clear in trying to make my point.
When a GM has railroaded the game to you wake up roll a save and that save can just wipe the party thats not much of a game.
Take it back a step, should the party have felt something is off staying there? did they decide to take turns keeping watch or set up some spell to give them warning?
My point is if the GM took away all options to prepare/react using GM control over the scene and gave no conception that the party should be wary at all then yes its a bad way to run a game.
Not to mention the narrative position the GM put those assassins in. the GM has not allowed any rolls to notice them coming in, might as well use narrative to tell the party they were all killed in their sleep.
That's a GM problem, not a game design problem. We've had plenty of times when a GM miscalculated and wasted us. GMing isn't easy. Getting that sweet spot making something difficult without killing the PCs takes time to learn.
I don't know how you fix that other than gaining experience GMing.