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.
I wanna take umbrage with this example specifically because it uses a PL+2 monster, when a PL+2 solo monster is listed as "a moderate- or severe-threat boss" under the "Choosing Creatures" table for XP Budget. Just the page before, Moderate and Severe threat encounters (what an encounter would be labelled as with one PL+2 creature) are defined as:
Moderate-threat encounters are a serious challenge to the characters, though unlikely to overpower them completely. Characters usually need to use sound tactics and manage their resources wisely to come out of a moderate-threat encounter ready to continue on and face a harder challenge without resting.
Severe-threat encounters are the hardest encounters most groups of characters have a good chance to defeat. These encounters are appropriate for important moments in your story, such as confronting a final boss. Use severe encounters carefully—there's a good chance a character could die, and a small chance the whole group could. Bad luck, poor tactics, or a lack of resources can easily turn a severe-threat encounter against the characters, and a wise group keeps the option to disengage open.
Bad luck is explicitly used as a warning against Severe threat encounters - which, I will stress again, PL+2 solo encounters lean towards more than Moderate. PL+2 encounters are ALWAYS going to be swingy simply due to the nature of "action economy versus relative stat difference." This does not change at higher levels - there are level ranges with which you are less likely to be knocked down immediately by bad luck, but the threat with PL+2 is almost always there. We have been knocked down by a bad crit plus a hit from PL+1 creatures at level 12 before. This specific example is an encounter-building problem.
Unless you want your level 1 characters to have a REAL chance of dying, you should NOT be pitting them against a PL+2 creature with High Strike Attack Bonus and only 1 less than High Strike Attack Damage (via the Building Creatures rules). And, in this one instance, I can say that the books ARE forthright about this. Their only sin here is having to demarcate the Moderate part of the scale at a clean 80 XP and then also putting PL+2 monsters at 80 to make the math as clean as it could be, meaning it's easy to look at a single PL+2 creature and go "that's my Moderate encounter!" when in reality the party is more likely to be walking into something closer to Severe 80% of the time.
It's a poor "concrete level 1 example" to use a Severe boss battle (Likely wouldn't even be a very fun one, being effectively a boring stat-stick without Pack Attack, but that's an unrelated tangent) where characters are expected to die to argue that they're gonna die easy.
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.Can you name a bunch of low level APs that you think get the balance right? Witch mentioned Season of Ghosts, so that's one I guess.
I have unfortunately played more early APs and adventures than later ones. But I clearly remember Plaguestone to be an absolute grind fest (we got 4 deaths in 3 levels :D). Age of Ashes has really tough moments at rather early level, Extinction Curse book 1 is also awful. I've found Abomination Vaults to still be tough but more balanced between levels (it's overall rather tough). Lately, I've played Sky King's Tomb and the early levels are trivial with more difficulty once you get to book 2.
I have a better vision of PFS as I've played nearly all adventures and this trend is very clear in its case: Earlier adventures are sometimes deadly when later ones are nearly all easy.
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Nice try characterizing anybody who likes a deadliest more realistic game as 14-year-old edgelords who likes Berserk. I like realism because it adds stakes and takes you out of the gamified, every combat is a puzzle, mindset people fall into. It's more interesting to play in a world where the best solution makes logical sense rather than existing solely because players like swords and want to hit stuff with them.
It's not nice or fair to mischaracterize or malign someone for their gaming preferences, whether that be for "hard Dark Souls like" experiences or "easy beer and pretzel" style games. All styles are valid, and it's about whatever each individual/group enjoys playing and running. The person you were responding to shouldn't do that, but I think I recall statement from yourself that weren't so far from that either.
Anyways, I don't know why people are so fixated on this point, PLEASE STOP with this. Whether the game is hard or easy and what we all prefer isn't important.
What's important is to recognize the incongruity in the challenge at levels 1 and 2, versus the rest of the game.
As I said before, the creatures that level 1 and 2 characters are expected to fight need to have their CRs reexamined and modified, and possibly modifying the expected damage (and abilities) of those creatures, and may even require writing new monsters better designed for low levels.
And obviously if you wanted a harder experience, you would simply build encounters with higher level enemies.
Right now the issue is the encounter building rules don't really work at level 1 and 2 because the monsters are too strong (have too much damage output relative to player HP) when compared specifically to say level 5 encounters of same theoretical difficulty (moderate to moderate).
That's a GM problem, not a game design problem. We've had plenty of times when a GM miscalculated and wasted us....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.
Agreed. That was exactly where I was going with that.
I wanted to give Trip H one thing, the situation was terrible, but to attribute the problem where it it actually is, the GM not the math.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Just want to point out for those calling the game heroic fantasy as a way to argue level 1 should be heroic.
How many level 1 characters can cloud jump? how many have flaming swords and magic armor?
No at level 1 your the hero that kills rats in a cellar not the hero slaying fantastic dragons.
Now you and Trip H are saying that you have an easy time at high levels, but it's too swingy and dangerous at 1 to 4. So how do you interpret that? It's creampuff later on and you want what? Creampuff at level 1 to 4.
As with many of your other claims, I've never said this. You need to check yourself, as you are arguing against people that do not exist. My party "sleepwalking through Stolen Fate" has less to do with the HP math being "too easy" and more to do with us being "forged in bullshit" as this is a sequel to Gatewalkers, and the PCs are now over-prepared. This is an outcome caused by the perception of, and existence of a reverse difficulty curve. If the game is genuinely "most difficult" at Level 1, that's "bad game design" because it causes these "sleepwalking" outcomes.
Even though I've not been tactically stimulated much in Stolen Fate, the math is still *plenty* lethal at high level. My poor familiar keeps getting one-shot via incidental AoE, and they are built to take it. Last session, said AoE had the death tag, and almost outright killed the familiar. A hero point got them onto the exact roll needed to not die outright. Oneshots like that are not fun, nor is it really "difficult" to deal with.
Again, I have made my PCs "too powerful" in large part as a direct response to the over-lethality of the system, felt the most at lower levels. My perception of a "sleepwalk" is a symptom caused by the system's design.
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All I *have* argued is that the HP & dmg math at low level has a very (absurdly) high chance to create full-->downs, with 0 player opportunity to act in reaction to prevent the down. And I've stated that this math changes dramatically as levels go up.
At level 1, an example trap was a guaranteed one-shot (with a chance to just roll high enough to invoke the double-HP insta-kill clause, no crit needed!),
while at L12, a crit fail on a ~guaranteed spell needed a crit fail and a 5% damage roll to outright oneshot my PC into the dying state.
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As I have said before, I enjoy games that are difficult and punishing, so long as they are still fair. Even better if it's mirrored and usable against foes, a la immersive sims.
If you repeat your false claim that I want "creampuff" at any level, when my stance is the opposite, we all will know that you're not worth listening to on this topic.
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I understand that you are not used to this idea, but I'll repeat my claim that a game design built to minimize the chance of full-->downs enables designers to *increase* the "real" difficulty.
This might blow some minds, but this is why it's actually not an automatic "design error" to write an encounter where the foes auto-succeed at their ambush / sneak and get the first hit.
The reason is that to do otherwise would give the PCs a chance to hear them picking a lock, then take the initiative and go first.
But, the designer *always* has to accommodate the entire spread of possibilities. That encounter needs to be "valid" in both scenarios where the PCs either fail or succeed their roll to change the initialization of the fight. That's an outright impossible task much of the time for a system like pf2.
By starting from the scripted unaware ambush, it means the designer (in theory) has a better idea of how the fight will play out, and can tune parameters up/down with more confidence in the play outcome.
Again, if run "legit," that specific SoT ambush is as close to an auto-tpk as I've seen, because in that specific case the designer failed their task. Yet, like with high lethality/consequence games, the tools themselves are neutral and can be used correctly.
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Deriven, I will now prompt you directly. You agree that the low level full-->down math equation is there, you do not dispute its existence.
What reasons do you have to say that math makes for a better gameplay experience? All you have done is bleat about the others being wrong to want change, and using your personal preference to shut down conversation.
If you have any such arguments as to gameplay pros, I am directly prompting you to share them.
Rephrased: What resultant effects caused by the full-->down HP math do you see as improvements to the gameplay experience?
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I, myself, can claim that many undesirable knock-on effects are created/enhanced by this full-->down math, and are therefore able to be addressed by altering that math.
The existence of math of full-->downs in a systems's design causes/contributes toward the following:
* Low strategy play: Inability to reliably survive a turn diminishes one's ability to form & execute plans involving the next turn.
* Fuzzy feedback(the OP topic): When raw luck during initiative can determine which side experiences a full-->down event, the ability to perceive strategic info is diminished. This is the "good tactics become indistinguishable from good luck, and bad tactics become indistinguishable from bad luck" issue.
* GM player-favored "cheating": GMs who do not desire to kill a PC in that moment will be incentivized, conditioned, and "taught to" find opportunities to twist events to prevent this mathematic over-lethality from killing PCs. Rephrased: GMs are taught by this math to protect the players from the system's consequences.
* Power gaming: After witnessing full-->downs, players are *much* more likely to power game in response. This means things like neglecting "fun" feats & archetypes and more prioritizing those they see as numerically powerful.
* Damage-focused play: High %HP damage means that all forms of non-damage effects struggle to be relevant.
* Degenerate strategies: After witnessing full-->downs, players are much more likely to use exploitative tactics the system was not designed to tolerate. Such as an Alchemist feeding the whole party a Numbing Tonic before the door kick, or PCs getting TMItem for similar maximal prebuff purposes.
* Narrative & play derailment: When PCs die, the whole narrative jerks to a halt to address this. Either the party will need to abandon their current objective to sell items and get a resurrection, or the session continues while a player is outright sidelined from playing and creating a new PC. This also can cause severe issues with time-sensitive AP/campaign considerations. A dead PC & party retreat during a hostage rescue means that said hostages likely "should" perish, even if one was plot-critical.
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I agree with RPG-Geek, the low level experience in PF2 can nearly be considered a feature.
You are supposed to play inexperienced adventurers at level 1, not heroes. The high casualty rate and how swingy it is actually convey rather well this feeling.
I have played games where right at level 1 characters can feel fully fleshed out and effective and I must admit it doesn't carry the charm of carefully levelling your wannabee hero.
If the game is genuinely "most difficult" at Level 1, that's "bad game design."Many games follow this exact curve. Including many of the most successful games of all time and the games that have lead us to PF2 existing at all.
They really, really, do not. It may feel that way to noobies, especially those new to the genre, but games with actual in-the-math reverse difficulty curves are absurdly rare because of how much of a fun-killer they can be.
They essentially train up the player and force them to a certain skill level to progress, then whoops, the rest of the game is snoozefest because they are already above the demanded skill for the rest of the game.
They really, really, do not. It may feel that way to noobies, especially those new to the genre, but games with actual in-the-math reverse difficulty curves are absurdly rare because of how much of a fun-killer they can be.
That's not my experience.
I can name a ton of games where the early experience is actually harder than the later one. There is definitely the fact that the user lacks experience in the game and as such makes mistakes, but it's not the only reason.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If the game is genuinely "most difficult" at Level 1, that's "bad game design."Many games follow this exact curve. Including many of the most successful games of all time and the games that have lead us to PF2 existing at all.
They really, really, do not. It may feel that way to noobies, especially those new to the genre, but games with actual in-the-math reverse difficulty curves are absurdly rare because of how much of a fun-killer they can be.
They essentially train up the player and force them to a certain skill level to progress, then whoops, the rest of the game is snoozefest because they are already above the demanded skill for the rest of the game.
This idea that something is hard or not is subjective to the game set up for you by the GM.
Level 1 is only as challenging or hard or impossible as the GM sets it up to be.And this is true of every level there after. GMs can just as easily overwhelm a party at higher levels.
I feel like the notion that a player character should never go from 100 to 0 is completely absurd in a TTRPG.
Then it's a good thing no one has argued that.
Game devs will literally put cameras on a 0 experience newbie, hand them the game, and study the play session with a notepad.
While every full-->down incident absolutely would make it into the notes with a timestamp, not every occurrence would be seen as resultant of a problem in need of fixing during review.
It's up to the devs watching and reviewing to see if those full-->downs were "legit" and "fair" in context, of if they were "BS" and not fair/fun. And game devs can and do argue about this stuff, where those lines are, quite a lot.
In a ttrpg game like pf2, it's actually kinda hard to make a one-shot contextually fair / "good" design. The system is just too crazy open ended for all kinds of scenarios, so being expected to survive *one* turn of foe max-aggression when full is kinda essential to keep things fair.
A single-foe boss getting into range of a squishy, and rolling a 20? That full-->down *could* be fair, but even that still is contextual.
A -below base speed- creature Striding then 2A power attacking a squishy? Sure, that full-->down is likely "legit." Because that is only possible when within 1A stride distance, it *becomes* more fair to give it a more-dangerous 2A attack.
If that boss was a ghost rising out of the floor to one-shot the squishy, that's bullshit.
This idea that something is hard or not is subjective to the game set up for you by the GM.
Level 1 is only as challenging or hard or impossible as the GM sets it up to be.
And this is true of every level there after. GMs can just as easily overwhelm a party at higher levels.
Then you have reduced the usefulness of your claim to meaninglessness.
Even the most broken-math system can have a GM use scalpel precision to design fair encounters.
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Again, the #1 problem with the math is that it is *inconsistent* and that the "total difficulty" changes based on PC level, exactly *because* low level has so much "bullshit difficulty" included in that "total difficulty" that high level lacks.
This idea that something is hard or not is subjective to the game set up for you by the GM.
Level 1 is only as challenging or hard or impossible as the GM sets it up to be.
And this is true of every level there after. GMs can just as easily overwhelm a party at higher levels.Then you have reduced the usefulness of your claim to meaninglessness.
Even the most broken-math system can have a GM use scalpel precision to design fair encounters.
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Again, the #1 problem with the math is that it is *inconsistent* and that the "total difficulty" changes based on PC level, exactly *because* low level has so much "b!+!*&!& difficulty" included in that "total difficulty" that high level lacks.
It would be if the baseline for the game by following the actual guidelines in the GM Core did not result in getting you the outcome you were aiming at.
If you want fights like the kind you have been asking for they should not go past moderate encounters. Thats what moderate means, there is a threat of a party member dropping but its not an inevitability with teamwork and smart play.
the higher you go from there more evenly matched the encounter is to the party and the more likely PCs will drop and possibly die.
And consider for a sec what evenly matched implies. If perfectly even between a single boss encounter and a party of 4, then 3 players dropping is equivilant to taking 75% of the bosses health. Thats not tenable if yo want to win so you need to gain advantages to win that fight, not take chances that would likely result in losing a pc.
Dont throw an evenly matched single foe at a party unless they have the breath of options and game understanding to gain the needed advantages.
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At this stage I get the feeling most of the issues in this thread are a blend of GM and adventure writer issues rather than a system level issue. So the most reasonable takeaway for me is there should be a small amount of extra guidance in the encounter guidelines for lower levels and/or new players.
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At this stage I get the feeling most of the issues in this thread are a blend of GM and adventure writer issues rather than a system level issue. So the most reasonable takeaway for me is there should be a small amount of extra guidance in the encounter guidelines for lower levels and/or new players.
People should read the GM core section on TPKs and the section on combat threats.
They explain what to do to give your players the difficulty and experience the table is going for.
They really, really, do not. It may feel that way to noobies, especially those new to the genre, but games with actual in-the-math reverse difficulty curves are absurdly rare because of how much of a fun-killer they can be.That's not my experience.
I can name a ton of games where the early experience is actually harder than the later one. There is definitely the fact that the user lacks experience in the game and as such makes mistakes, but it's not the only reason.
Again, the gameplay experience is a completely different thing than the actual under the hood math. Player skill growth can easily outpace dev expectation and their cranking of the "math difficulty" to result in the *perception* of a reverse difficulty curve.
This causes a lot of issues where the devs "know" their game has a significant difficulty curve in the math, but because the player perception is of a reverse curve, the devs now have a much harder time ramping the challenge without being able to trust their previous math to know what is "too much".
Very common when rpgs keep unlocking new mechanics late into the game, like the party gaining an "overdrive mode" after boss #3. That can cause too many knock on effects and be too much of a multiplier to easily factor into the scaling math.
(This is why kleenex testing is so required in game dev. The play perception is what matters; the "but the math says it should be harder" doesn't matter.
And because you're only a newbie once, game devs go through a lot of testers, and that one-time-use is where the term comes from)
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Also, more and more games these days have their opening chapter itself have a full curve and climax, with an intended lull after that first boss. That's also not the reverse difficulty curve I'm talking about.
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And consider for a sec what evenly matched implies. If perfectly even between a single boss encounter and a party of 4, then 3 players dropping is equivilant to taking 75% of the bosses health. Thats not tenable if yo want to win so you need to gain advantages to win that fight, not take chances that would likely result in losing a pc.
Dont throw an evenly matched single foe at a party unless they have the breath of options and game understanding to gain the needed advantages.
This is way too over simplified, dropping 3/4 PCs is nowhere equivalent to a 1-foe fight being reduced to 25%
You have other considerations, like the party loosing 3/4 of their actions while the foe has 100%, etc, etc..
Again, difficulty is about challenge, not lethality. It's not even about killing foes. Difficulty is about being prompted with a challenge, and how painfully the system punishes those failures. If you can only afford a single mistake and stay standing, that is "very difficult."
If it takes 4 mistakes to endanger you, that's "very easy."
Making 0 mistakes and getting full-->downed is off the scale, divide by zero, value N/A.
It's *the* sign that the system needs dev intervention.
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Alternate win (and loss) conditions is one quick thought experiment to help get to the heart of this.
A pretty easy to write combat encounter would be a "stall fight" where the foes are seeking to destroy some charging mcGuffin and the PCs want to keep it alive. They could be presented with an exact fixed turn count before victory, or there could be a penalty system where crystal hits add turns, etc.
This concept naturally encourages PCs to strategize pre-fight, and manipulate the map.
It marries the combat and dmg system to the objective via object HP, while not deleting the normal combat interactions and HP worries of the PCs.
Because of the advantages of the defenders, and the non-PC-killing goal of the attackers, the GM is free to ramp up the challenge considerably.
The scenario could even be altered to where the foes are outright incapable of attacking the PCs, and exist as some form of ghosts, prompting a *challenge* for the PCs to maximize their DPS.
All of these variants could be super easy, or super difficult. Thinking about what would make such an alternate combat "difficult" is a good way to get to the heart of what that term means.
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At this stage I get the feeling most of the issues in this thread are a blend of GM and adventure writer issues rather than a system level issue. So the most reasonable takeaway for me is there should be a small amount of extra guidance in the encounter guidelines for lower levels and/or new players.I'd like to see the system allow for newbie groups and GMs to run APs "as written" with low chance of dying at early levels. There are multiple different ways to fix this - some system ways, some AP ways - but I think putting it on GMs to ensure it doesn't happen is the wrong fix, because GMs should be assumed to be on a learning curve too. That's like saying an encounter will is easy as long as the players simply remember this special specific rule on p39 of the third supplement to the umpty ump book; sure, that could work. But it's really a fix intended to serve the advanced player community, not the new player community.
APs are written by various people who are all humans and will build their encounters differently or even make mistakes. I'm saying that they *should* have included extra guidance for low level or new players including GMs. So what are you talking about on that last part?
All of this "no, it's the GM's fault" is still playing "dodge the real question : answer"
"Mathematically speaking, how many hits does it take to full-->down a PC?"
When the answer is 1-2, that results in a lot of negative consequences to gameplay, listed out in that big post above. One of which is the OP of this thread, that low level players have no idea what good or bad tactics are because combat outcomes appear so absurdly ruled by RNG and not player agency.
And again, we know that above answer changes based on the creature/PC level.
Which is because the math for HP growth across levels is f%~+ed, varying by a 7x multiplier based on which level up it is, from 35% at L1 to 5% at L19.
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Again, the gameplay experience is a completely different thing than the actual under the hood math. Player skill growth can easily outpace dev expectation and the cranking of the "math difficulty" to provide the perception of easy.
I remember of Bard's Tales where all encounters were fully random, with low level groups having a 20-30% chance of gaining a fight because of that. That was literal reverse difficulty curve. And it's been, at that time, a great hit.
Now, I don't advocate for reverse difficulty curve as that's ridiculous. But many games have exceptionally hard moments during low levels, a tendency to get rather easy at mid levels and then a tough endgame experience. Which is PF2 difficulty curve and why I'm not surprised it is that way.
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This is not some lazy isikai anime in which the party is overpowered and invincible right out of the gate. This is a tabletop roleplaying game, possibly the finest there has ever been. To insinuate that the math is badwrongfun is an insult to the developers that spent countless hours getting the math exactly right for the type of game they wanted.
This isn't about game design, but about heehawing one's personal preferences as the only correct way. Anyone who reads this thread and says otherwise are the ones being disingenuous.
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All of this "no, it's the GM's fault" is still playing "dodge the real question : answer"
"Mathematically speaking, how many hits does it take to full-->down a PC?"
When the answer is 1-2, that results in a lot of negative consequences to gameplay, listed out in that big post above. One of which is the OP of this thread, that low level players have no idea what good or bad tactics are because combat outcomes appear so absurdly ruled by RNG and not player agency.
And again, we know that above answer changes based on the creature/PC level.
Which is because the math for HP growth across levels is f+*@ed, varying by a 7x multiplier based on which level up it is, from 35% at L1 to 5% at L19.
The answer is "Varies by many factors" as is normal for a TTRPG with many options to customize gameplay.
enemies can do 1d4+0 all the way to 1d12+6 against a level 1 party.The Gm has to decide what to throw at the party.
Why is fairness the goal? If your character trades off toughness for something else and gets one-tapped, that's entirely fair. You chose to play that type of character and didn't play well enough to avoid the downsides of your choice.
I think it's more accurate to describe fairness as a prerequisite, not a goal.
(it's also crazy that you still refuse to engage with what we are talking about here. Your scenario still has meaningful player agency as the line btwn staying up or getting full-->downed. Delete that agency from your consideration. PC was lower in turn order, and is dying before their first turn. That kind of scenario.)
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Anti-fairness, aka bullsh.t, is *the* ingredient that'll make players pissed and loose interest/investment in the gameplay.
For a solo computer game with savepoints, it can be crazy bad. Part of the reason those F&H games *need* to be so carefully "brutal but fair" is because of the loooong gaps between saves.
For a ttrpg like pf2, this "need for fairness" is even more dire, as players can be rightfully invested in their year-long time with a PC.
Loosing that PC to an incident of BS is a danger/hazard that's completely outside the realm of possibility to other kinds of game dev.
A Diablo permadeath character kind of comes close.
Or that incident where a permadeath WoW server had a DDoS attack timed to kill a guild mid-raid.
Players were rightfully realizing that without dev server rollback to reverse those deaths, the entire appeal of the play mode would be irreversibly damaged.
The threat of being in combat when a DDoS attack hit and loosing the PC forever was/is that serious of a fun-killing disaster.
"The finest there has ever been"
LOL! Pathfinder 2e is the best d20 TTRPG ever that's for sure, but it's so far from the best TTRPG ever, it's actually exhilarating that a system so convoluted and messy can be defined as the "finest."
As I have limited experience outside of d20 systems, I'll concede that point.
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When people come to the conversation armed with actual mathematic explanations, digging in your heels and insisting there's nothing to see here, when PCs are getting one-shot all the damn time, is NOT a good look, lol.
Except they're not getting one-shot all the time.
They're getting one-shot (occasionally) in tight quarters, in ambushes, against more powerful enemies--situations that are generally not considered the norm.
Is there a learning curve for new players? Of course there is. Are their characters more vulnerable as a result? Generally, yes.
Is that an indicator that the game is difficult to learn or that the underlying math is in dire need of adjustment? No, not really.
Except they're not getting one-shot all the time.
They're getting one-shot (occasionally) in tight quarters, in ambushes, against more powerful enemies--situations that are generally not considered the norm.
Is there a learning curve for new players? Of course there is. Are their characters more vulnerable as a result? Generally, yes.
Is that an indicator that the game is difficult to learn or that the underlying math is in dire need of adjustment? No, not really.
No dude, you are simply not correct.
The system math *very* often has L1 PCs being one-shot by crits or 2 hit turns. Still much too common for L2 PCs, less common again for L3s, etc.
Most people, even Deriven, are able to admit the math at low level is *very* different from mid and up levels.
Again, we are talking about traps on reg fail that auto-oneshot, with real chance to invoke the double-HP insta death rule. On regular save fail, not crit fail.
PCs are abnormally made of paper at low level.
I'm honestly surprised to realize that you are still in denial about this math.
As such, I don't expect there's a real reason to take the next step w/ you and discuss why it would be a better game if that fragility issue were changed.
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Wow, I read Bluemagetim's comment #237 last night, considered replying, went to bed instead, and found 27 more comments this morning.
Now you [Fabios] and Trip H are saying that you have an easy time at high levels, but it's too swingy and dangerous at 1 to 4. So how do you interpret that? It's creampuff later on and you want what? Creampuff at level 1 to 4.
If we were talking game design, you'd be mentioning how PF2 advances as whole. Not just focused on 1 to 4.
Throw me into the same camp as Fabios and Trip.H. The hit point math starts with a ratio of total hit points are around twice Strike damage and asymptotically goes to a ratio of total hit points are around four times Strike damage. The game would be more teachable if the ratio stayed constant, for example, it could be a fixed ratio of 1 to 3.
This is an issue from original edition Dungeons & Dragons where the ratio for low-hit-point characters was often 1 to 1. Hit the wizard and he goes down. Paizo tried fixing it in Pathfinder 1st Edition by declaring that the 1st-level hit die was not rolled; instead, all characters received the maximum value from the die. They were more elegant in Pathfinder 2nd Edition, which dropped hit dice. Instead, the characters received one-time hit points from their ancestry in addition to their hit points per level from their class. Paizo has been trying to fix the bad ratio at low levels, but their fix was not big enough.
Back in 2020 AD when some players complained that PF2 characters did not feel heroic enough when the same-level creatures were just as tough as the PCs, the forum gave the simple suggestion of giving the PCs an extra level if the players wanted the PCs to be stronger. Likewise, for those players how want Old School difficulty, I give the same suggestion in reverse. Select creatures one level higher to challenge the PCs with grueling combat. But hiding a mathematical curve of inaccurate encounter difficulty at levels 1 and 2 is a disservice to GMs who care about encounter difficulty.
Back to Bluemagetim's comment yesterday, but first let me quote Easl.
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.Can you name a bunch of low level APs that you think get the balance right? Witch mentioned Season of Ghosts, so that's one I guess.
Strength of Thousands is one of the more balanced adventure paths for low levels. It minimizes combat and often softballs it. The 1st module Kindled Magic gives the PCs most of their experience points through non-combat service projects.
Trip.H and I have discussed Strength of Thousands before when he warned me about a theme-breaking encounter in the 2nd module, Spoken on the Song Wind. Ironically, I had recently run that encounter, had increased the difficulty a little due to my oversized party, and managed to stay on theme. My impression of Trip.H's GM is that the GM is treating Strength of Thousands as a series of isolated encounters and dropping the social interaction that explains those encounters.
Tarondor in Tarondor’s 2025 Guide to Pathfinder Adventure Paths warns about Strength of Thousands: "The rails of this particular railroad aren’t camouflaged at all. Sometimes you get to choose the order in which you accomplish tasks, but that’s about it. Otherwise, the train goes from station to station and you have to hope the next station is somewhere good, because there’s no getting off." The service-project style of the AP makes the encounters seem random and connected only by social relationships with the people assigning the projects. My players asked that I emphasize those community relationships, so they are happy.
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.
The weird part is that neither the GM nor the AP writer intended the party to die. The AP writer labeled the encounter as Moderate Threat to "test the new arrivals" and Trip.H's GM read it as a deadly ambush in their sleep because the writer also called it "a straightforward ambush" and set it at their inn room at night. A writer would not label an unstoppable assassination in the night as Moderate Threat. The GM skipped the social interactions and explanations that the city of Mzali and its king were hostile to outsiders and even a secure room for diplomats was not safe. The inexperienced GM apparently skipped the courtesy of asking the players, "Do your characters want to do anything before going to sleep?" so that they could set up a watch or an Alarm spell.
Thus, we come back to the teaching topic. Despite the advice in the GM Core and the planned encounters laid out in adventure paths, inexperienced GMs could benefit from lessons in how to properly run Pathfinder. I regularly read these Paizo forums to learn.
Wow, 29 more comments have been posted while I wrote this.
For more info, I'm pretty sure my GM trusted the AP about that assassination being a moderate encounter, so he didn't read too closely before calling for rolls. Oh, and he did give a roll for perception. The catch being that the Kin woke up, but the assassin caster went first, so the PC was still in bed, lol.
3/3 players are very combat savvy, and while our fights can take a lot of turns, our natural tendency to build "anti-BS" PCs that work solo keeps us looking powerful from the GM's PoV. Like all other low level play, there were more than enough near-death experiences for us that we reacted in our builds/strats accordingly.
Wood Kin was still kinda a new thing, and we realized that Protector Tree is one of the only tools in the game that genuinely works at low level to mostly "solve" the full-->down issue, so it's not a surprise that it became our party's signature tool that our strats revolve around.
Every time we got comfortable and toned our power-gaming down, we keep hitting random jumps in BS, like when the normal human trident guys crit for 90+% of the Oracles HP, so we as players keep reverting into "nuclear turtle tree" mode.
Most of the time we are trying to roleplay going easy on our foes, though most honestly don't give us any reason to leave them alive...
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I'm like 95% sure the GM kinda auto-piloted up to the encounter, and only had a bit of an "oh sh.t" moment when he rolled that Chain Lighting damage.
Again, that "moderate" fight was so poorly written, that the assassin caster might be able to solo most parties if they follow the rules on armor, unconscious, light, etc.
As far as the story stuff, we did know that Mezali was a hermit city-state, only just now opening to outsider relationships. We also knew that it was ruled by a dictator, meaning that we would not be allowed inside if they didn't want us there. (and therefore we'd need to make some offense first to anger them) We even knew that there was an anti-Welk faction that would be looking to court us so again, zero reason to be attacked on our first night.
And that narrative insanity of said dictator declaring war on the Magambyaa by inviting in a delegation only to attempt to assassinate them, and that definitely contributed toward the GM being on a bit of "fast forward" and not offering any hooks for us to consider / declare sleep danger plans.
My own PC had just gotten a Ring of Sustenance, but because combat started so quickly, we didn't bother trying to figure if the detail of less sleep would have meant being awake, we just went with it.
I guess I'm making those excuses because I don't want there to be the impression that bad GMing was a significant factor. Though I would say that "Paizo-trusting GMing" was absolutely a factor, lol.
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The GM skipped the social interactions and explanations that the city of Mzali and its king were hostile to outsiders and even a secure room for diplomats was not safe. The inexperienced GM apparently skipped the courtesy of asking the players, "Do your characters want to do anything before going to sleep?" so that they could set up a watch or an Alarm spell.
I keep trying to convince people that there is a minimum level of metagaming among the players that is needed for the game to run smoothly - for all of the players to be playing together in the same story and the same plot.