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So I am running Strength of Thousands, Kingmaker 2e, and working through the PFS module content starting at Season 1. One reoccurring theme I see is players feeling ineffective, especially in party vs single monster combat. Even when a combat is considered low or moderate it tends to either feel like it's dragging on because the players cannot hit AC and/or Saves are crushed by the mob, or because they are getting dropped in a round by a crit.
Generally I have 5 or 6 players, and I try to keep encounters pretty close to what's written in the modules, which from what I understand should be geared for 4 players of an appropriate level.
One thing I can't really change is I tend to roll pretty well (especially when GMing). Just to be sure, I've started tracking dice rolls, and while I do tend to roll slightly above average, and some of the players roll slightly under, my hit percentage is right around 60% while they are sitting at around 30%, and my damage is often much higher even normal attacks.
Should I start throwing weak on creatures, and is this a trend I can expect to continue through higher levels?
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How is the party's teamwork and tactics? Describe what they do to help each other succeed.
Because that is my first thought on this. It is a common problem especially for people coming from PF1: thinking that they are going to fight solo rather than in a group, or thinking that standing toe-to-toe and throwing out as many attacks as possible is the best strategy.
PFS modules are known for being a bit on the easy side. The two APs that you mention are not the early two or three that were tuned to be too difficult. So I don't expect that the problem is actually with the encounter math. Though that is possible.
The only other thing that stands out is the 30% hit success rate for the player's attacks. That should also be closer to 60%. That might indicate a character sheet calculation error such as forgetting to add the character's level to attack bonus.
My wife is a probabilty anomaly, too, but she tends toward weird luck rather than good or bad luck. It runs in her family, too, so card games with them are strange. Nevertheless, slightly above average versus slightly below average won't break Pathfinder games. Never rolling a critical success, on the other hand, would reduce the fun.
Creatures higher level than the party will hit them more often than each party member hits them. That is part of what higher level means. In addition, most monsters are built like fighters, with high bonuses to attack rolls. Their compensating weakness is that they are good at only one combat style, so the party should try to get them to use another, such as attacking a melee monster from range or a ranged monster in melee.
One reoccurring theme I see is players feeling ineffective, especially in party vs single monster combat. Even when a combat is considered low or moderate it tends to either feel like it's dragging on because the players cannot hit AC and/or Saves are crushed by the mob, or because they are getting dropped in a round by a crit.
How much is the party debuffing enemy AC by off-guard and frightened conditions. Debuffing usually makes single-opponent encounters run smoother, and the action economy gives the PCs enough action advantage to spend time on debuffing.
As for the actual adventure paths, I am currently running Strength of Thousands with seven players. We are partway through Spoken on the Song Wind, though I scrambled the order of events due to the Runesmith playtest, Virgil Tibbs, Playtest Rune Smith. In the game session upcoming for this evening, they will finish up Carving Trouble and start The Flooded Mansion. They are only 6th level, one level lower than expected for The Flooded Mansion, but the oversized party will be aided by 6th-level Chime-Ringer Virgil Tibbs and 14th-level teacher Izem Mezitani.
My players have been recruiting help in Strength of Thousands, as I discussed in Common Sense Versus The Plot. Since they are roleplaying students, asking more experienced people for assistance seemed natural. In addition, I have added class field trips to the module's encounters, to help them gain more experience points. Sometimes I increase the difficulty of encounters to match the size of the party, for example, I changed the griffons, creature 4, in Anadi Arrival into wyverns, creature 6, but most encounters I leave as written. The size of the party dilutes the XP, so I add encounters. The teacher-supervised field trips got them accustomed to fighting alongside a teacher giving advice and occasional aid.
To me, the encounters in the 1st module, Kindled Magic, felt softballed, except for the Infested Caverns. However, talking with Trip.H. in Common Sense Versus The Plot revealed that his GM made the encounters more brutal, as if the Magaambya Academy were a death school in which survival was graduation. Where is CriticalFumbleJunk's party in Strength of Thousands?
Should I start throwing weak on creatures, and is this a trend I can expect to continue through higher levels?
In Strength of Thousands, if the players are not debuffing opponents, then throw in a teacher or fellow student who specialized in debuffing to teach them that tactic. In Kindled Magic their dorm mates Anchor Root and Mariama Keitana are witches, and that class is good at debuffing.
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Three things sticking out to me here!
The first is that a consistent 30% hit success rate feels very off, but I'm not sure why. Finoan is right that there needs to be some investigation there. That should just kind of never be the case? But, it's also usually something easy to solve, like a rule being forgotten or a number not being written down. I ran into this issue once personally as well, and it helped me discover that the floor of that apartment was not level, which meant our table wasn't level, which meant we were rolling against gravity. Weird, I know.
Secondly, my favorite phrase when playing team games of any kind is "Teamwork is OP." Any time I play a game where someone tries to play the hero, everything falls apart, someone dies, never really fun for anyone except them, whether they fail or succeed. Definitely talk to them about emphasizing combinations of attacks/turns rather than viewing each turn as a singular combat event. They have to think about the microplay about what they're going to do as well as the macroplay of how what they're going to do affects what everyone else is going to do.
Third, communication in general! Have you discussed this win/loss rate with them as well? I'd like to clarify, when you say "players feeling ineffective," do you mean they have literally expressed that they feel ineffective to you? Have they expressed dissatisfaction with the campaign? Before making any big changes to the campaign, gauge how your players are feeling about its current state very clearly. I could also be asking this just because I'm autistic and see too many possible options sometimes, so please disregard point three if it's irrelevant.
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Like Maya says: Before even getting into tactical considerations, are the numbers right?
I'd spend some time checking the character sheets to see if an issue has been overlooked here. For example, not adding level to proficiency bonus, something like that may cripple your chances to hit.
Second, I'll also check basic character optimization, mainly their attack stat, is it maxed out? If not, there's an issue. Having an 18 in Strength for a Barbarian, Dexterity for a Rogue and Intelligence for a Wizard is a system expectation. 16 works but it's a significant downgrade (some classes don't use their key attribute as attack stat so you can't go beyond 16 at level 1), 14 is a massive failure of a build.
After that, it's just a question of learning the system. Many players struggle at first but slowly get used to the system. It's especially true for players coming from other systems like D&D5 and PF1. So it should smoothen out slowly.
The first is that a consistent 30% hit success rate feels very off, but I'm not sure why. Finoan is right that there needs to be some investigation there. That should just kind of never be the case?
The other thing I can think of for that is if it is the overall hit rate for making 3 attacks per round. The first at 60% success rate, the second at MAP stage 1 at 35% success rate, and the third at MAP stage 2 at 10% success rate. Overall, that may be about a 30% success rate.
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If it's early levels, you'll do much better to have fights with more creatures that are weaker than the players. The math is especially brutal early on for fighting against fewer enemies of a higher level. At low levels, a """moderate""" encounter of a single APL+2 enemy can feel like a brick wall. A moderate encounter with 4 APL-2 enemies or 5 or 6 APL-3 enemies is disproportionately easier, despite what the encounter builder tells you.
If you're running PF2E content made early in its lifecycle, especially, I'd recommend putting weak templates on enemies above the party's level and putting in weak adds (or hazards!) to push the difficulty more in line with what was intended. I'd also never throw an extreme fight at a party below level 5 unless they know exactly what they're doing and what they signed up for.
Once the party hits level 5, things begin to work more as advertised, and you can run encounters more as-is—though single enemy encounters remain disproportionately difficult if the party has weak teamwork. (They'll be normal if the teamwork is fine.) You should also watch for a few especially lethal things like persistent damage, or enemies your team is poorly equipped to handle (e.g. something immune to precision in a group with a lot of precision damage).
I agree there's something wrong with the OP numbers. 30% is a hit rate of a high AC (like heavy armored rising a shield) enemy many levels higher than party not a default hit-rate of a low/moderate encounter.
For a lvl 1 martial (ignoring fighter) to have 30% of hit-rate that usually is +7 (1 (lvl) +2 (trained) +4 (attribute)) and enemy need to have 21 AC. The first non-uniq monster to have such AC are Fading Foxes that are the only level 2 monsters to have such AC but the majorit all other lvl 2 monsters usually have around 17-18 AC what means 45-50% of hit-rate (PF2e the avg hit-rate is around 50%).
It's not like doesn't exists such cases but they are pretty rare and usually compensated by other monster weaknesses.
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I agree there's something wrong with the OP numbers. 30% is a hit rate of a high AC (like heavy armored rising a shield) enemy many levels higher than party not a default hit-rate of a low/moderate encounter.
For a lvl 1 martial (ignoring fighter) to have 30% of hit-rate that usually is +7 (1 (lvl) +2 (trained) +4 (attribute)) and enemy need to have 21 AC. The first non-uniq monster to have such AC are Fading Foxes that are the only level 2 monsters to have such AC but the majorit all other lvl 2 monsters usually have around 17-18 AC what means 45-50% of hit-rate (PF2e the avg hit-rate is around 50%).
It's not like doesn't exists such cases but they are pretty rare and usually compensated by other monster weaknesses.
It's possible some of the players made their characters in a way that allocated stats for flavor over mechanics, which could be a pretty big problem.
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I appreciate all of the feedback. I have a lot to digest. I have combed through their sheets, and at least all bonuses are accounted for. Teamwork might be a bit lacking, they do try for flanking and such. Some of the characters have made choices more for story vs mechanical benefit, but not really anything game breaking. Both AP parties are around level 4 or 5. In Kingmaker we’re taking a look at gear to see if that’s a problem too.
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Something important that I often see groups who come into PF2 neglect is penalties being applied correctly. I’ve had groups that would frighten or sicken a target, but still have trouble hitting it when it turned out that the GM wasn’t applying the penalty to the target’s AC (or their spell DCs). Don’t forget that AC is a Difficulty Class, too!
Beyond that APL+1 or APL +2 opponents do tend to edge out the party in terms of mechanical numbers, but that tends to be overcome on the tactics side of things. Playing against a creature’s strengths doesn’t benefit the party - like standing in melee range with a more powerful opponent or remaining out in the open against an archer. To steal a quote from myself…
Against level 1 PCs, an ogre warrior can actually be an amazing encounter. Its got low Perception, meaning it's quite easy to Hide and Sneak around (heck, an entire party could Avoid Notice and skip the encounter entirely). Its Reflex and Will are lagging, making them susceptible to being Tripped and Demoralized. However, the ogre's damage output is insane and can easily take out a PC without doing anything special. This means a group that's paying attention would need to actively keep the ogre from getting to them through movement and debuffs. This will also quickly dissuade groups from the "tank and spank" strategy as even a shield-focused champion is going to eventually take a crit that blows through their shield and sends them to dying. All this while the massive HP pool of the ogre keeps them up a bit longer to acts as their combat teacher (and that 17 AC prevents any non-20 crits unless the PCs actually start inflicting conditions on it).
I can’t be certain, but my guess is that there are some tactical expectations that aren’t being met or that some numbers are being forgotten. Both pretty common problems, actually!
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Also how often are the PCs doing attacks with high MAP? If NPCs are attacking and then doing something else and the PCs are just attacking with all three actions I could see that creating a lower chance to hit overall for them.
Imo, PF2 really shows how swingy d20 systems can be. If you have hot dice and the players don't, combats can definitely feel unfair, especially at early levels when your barbarian can completely obliterate a boss on a critical hit, or miss three times and do nothing.
Player to hit has already been discussed, so I'd like to focus on something else:
One thing I can't really change is I tend to roll pretty well (especially when GMing). Just to be sure, I've started tracking dice rolls, and while I do tend to roll slightly above average, and some of the players roll slightly under, my hit percentage is right around 60% while they are sitting at around 30%, and my damage is often much higher even normal attacks.
PCs and NPCs aren't built the same. NPCs of the same level typically have higher, well, everything (to hit, AC, damage, saves, etc). If you take a look at random monsters or NPCs, you'll see that they have higher AC, to hit, and/or HP than most player characters of the same level. The most balancedfirst-level enemy I can find at a quick search is the Giant Gecko as an AC of 16, 20 HP, to hit of +8, but a Reflex of +10. That's mostly on par with what a first-level Fighter would have, except its saves. A Reefclaw has an AC of 20, and a Reflex and to hit of +9, while most players's best scores are +7 and an AC of 17 (without shields). I can give countless examples. At first level, damage output is roughly the same, but as you go up in level, enemy damage goes up purely to keep up with Striking runes. It's not odd to see a +8 damage modifier at level 5 or so.
Point is, enemies just tend to be better at hitting than players. That's how they're designed. Don't compare their final results. It would be better to compare their raw dice rolls, which you already did. Some roll slightly under, meaning that on average, most people roll perfectly fine. That means, with a hit percentage of 30, they're skewing the odds by making more attacks at penalty when they shouldn't.
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One thing I've not seen mentioned yet, and might be extremely helpful to your players:
Do you know the rules for Aid, and are you using it? The Aid action/reaction pair is such an extremely helpful tool for parties to deal with creatures that have particularly hard-to-hit defenses.
Note that in "Choosing Creatures" (GM Core pg 76), a Party Level +2 enemy is considered a "Moderate- or severe-threat boss" despite its encounter XP being rated at only a Moderate encounter. These kinds of single monster encounters can be somewhat dubious at any level (but especially early levels), as one monster needs to have inflated stats (relative to the party) to even stand a chance against the quadruple-or-more action economies they typically face, and as such are WAY more susceptible to swingy dice rolls than Moderate encounters with at-level or lower enemies, especially if the party isn't using their tactical toolkit to its fullest benefit.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't run them, of course, but be wary when an encounter is a PL+2 single enemy and rated as "Moderate".
Bringing it back to Aid; it's a great action/reaction pair to use when you need to really pierce a tough enemy's defenses, either with skill checks or attack rolls - all it requires is some sly thinking on the players' parts and convincing you, the GM, that their actions would be suitable to Aid, and if they succeed at Aiding they give the other player a +1 (or scaling +2/3/4) circumstance bonus to their roll. I would clue your party in on this action and urge them to find ways to use it, because it not only encourages good tactical thinking, but also immersive roleplay while they try to find in-universe explanations for their actions. You can even use the suggested DC of 15 most of the time and only change it if they try to do something repeatedly or something a little outrageous.
Imo, PF2 really shows how swingy d20 systems can be. If you have hot dice and the players don't, combats can definitely feel unfair, especially at early levels when your barbarian can completely obliterate a boss on a critical hit, or miss three times and do nothing.
Few things feel as bad as rolling single digits all night. Then throw a 20 on a group check then a 1 on a death save later. Some people have those nights more often then others. When I get on a bad streak it disconnects me from the game and makes it hard to feel like your choices matter.
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The game difficulty becomes easier as you level up.
1-4 can seem difficult.
First power is level 5 when martials get expert proficiency in their weapons and casters get level 3 spells. And all classes get their first four ability boosts.
Next power up for casters is level 7 when they get expert casting. Martials get weapon spec.
Next power up level 10 when they get next ability boosts and usually access to some very good class feats.
Level 11 for casters is nice as level 6 spells open up some great spells.
Level 13 is the next one when you get Master weapon proficiency for martials.
Level 15 when casters get master casting. Martials get greater weapon specialization.
Level 17 when you often get some boost to really good abilities and level 9 spells. Apex items as well.
Level 19 is when you get Legendary casting and usually some keystone for a martial if you didn't get it at at level 10. You also get level 10 spells.
Then level 20 you'll get some amazing feats. Your final ability boosts to 22 main stat, 24 with Apex item. Play the level for about a chapter or a handful of encounters where you will likely waste everything in your path.
Make sure at least the martials are getting their fundamental runes at the appropriate levels.
Then as long as they don't play really badly such as rushing into battles where they can be flanked and triple attacked or casters running into melee range while casting, your group should do well.
Imo, PF2 really shows how swingy d20 systems can be. If you have hot dice and the players don't, combats can definitely feel unfair, especially at early levels when your barbarian can completely obliterate a boss on a critical hit, or miss three times and do nothing.Few things feel as bad as rolling single digits all night. Then throw a 20 on a group check then a 1 on a death save later. Some people have those nights more often then others. When I get on a bad streak it disconnects me from the game and makes it hard to feel like your choices matter.
That's why I'm very generous with hero points and I use a house rule in my games where I allow my players to use their hero points to ask an enemy's re-roll too (adding misfortune trait to that roll or forbidding if the roll already have this trait).
This can make the things a bit easier but most importantly, it leaves them much less prone to bad luck and makes the hero points usage fair between martials and casters (casters have a disadvantage due most of their spells are saves and this prevents them to use their hero points most of the time so to allow them to choose an enemy check to re-roll puts that things way more fair).
I still don't allow hero points share (they can only use it to re-roll a check that is effecting their own PC) because this makes the thing too much easier.
I've allowed forcing enemies to reroll saves during Abomination Vault, mostly because the campaign is a low level one and casters don't compete with martials at low level. But I'd never allow it otherwise, being able to force a save reroll is atrocious as you will use it for your best spells, creating a massive on demand power spike.
But I agree there's a difference in Hero Point usage between martials and casters. Casters will use them mostly for out of combat stuff, skills, and martials for in combat stuff, saves and attacks.
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I've allowed forcing enemies to reroll saves during Abomination Vault, mostly because the campaign is a low level one and casters don't compete with martials at low level. But I'd never allow it otherwise, being able to force a save reroll is atrocious as you will use it for your best spells, creating a massive on demand power spike.
But I agree there's a difference in Hero Point usage between martials and casters. Casters will use them mostly for out of combat stuff, skills, and martials for in combat stuff, saves and attacks.
It would be nice if hero points were better for casters. They don't stack with Sure Strike. Casters mostly use them for saves in my group.
I sometimes allow casters to reroll a damage roll for a spell for a hero point.
That's why I'm very generous with hero points and I use a house rule in my games where I allow my players to use their hero points to ask an enemy's re-roll too (adding misfortune trait to that roll or forbidding if the roll already have this trait).
I've found hero points don't help when your on a bad streak, you'll just roll the same number or worse. Rolling a crit fail from a fail is one of the worst feelings. A friend of mine almost quit after 6 sessions of rolling a 5 about 20% of the time, streaks of 3-4 5s in a row and every other number being a 5, it was rough to see, even our GM was like "I feel bad but I don't know how to make this fun." It happens but there isn't much you can do about terrible luck.
In my last group the GM adopted my idea to allow hero points to give +10 instead of a reroll if desired. It gives players the option to know when they use the point it will have an effect, and that feels great. Just need to be prepared for auto crits, you could add in a limiter on damage for them and I think it would be fine.Caster save rerolls should be a thing, it's rather bad that only martials can better their offensive chances with hero points.
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That's why I'm very generous with hero points and I use a house rule in my games where I allow my players to use their hero points to ask an enemy's re-roll too (adding misfortune trait to that roll or forbidding if the roll already have this trait).I've found hero points don't help when your on a bad streak, you'll just roll the same number or worse. Rolling a crit fail from a fail is one of the worst feelings. A friend of mine almost quit after 6 sessions of rolling a 5 about 20% of the time, streaks of 3-4 5s in a row and every other number being a 5, it was rough to see, even our GM was like "I feel bad but I don't know how to make this fun." It happens but there isn't much you can do about terrible luck.
In my last group the GM adopted my idea to allow hero points to give +10 instead of a reroll if desired. It gives players the option to know when they use the point it will have an effect, and that feels great. Just need to be prepared for auto crits, you could add in a limiter on damage for them and I think it would be fine.
Caster save rerolls should be a thing, it's rather bad that only martials can better their offensive chances with hero points.
Lol you could have players play I rolled low again bingo.
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I have also found that, by RAW, hero points are both lackluster and unintuitive—it's better to reroll things you're good at and failed, even if it feels unimportant, than it is to spend them important-feeling rolls that you're bad at. MAP-0 strikes are a better candidate for a hero point reroll than failing at your worst save. I personally don't like this, since it makes them worse at being a player-side fudge factor.
I've also found 1 per person per hour is more tolerable than the suggested 1 per hour across the whole table, particularly at lower levels.
It's ultimately a mechanic that needs houserules, I feel, but what houserules you prefer will vary strongly from table to table. I've seen "if it's lower than 10, add 10." I've seen "add 2 on the reroll." I've seen "reroll with advantage and add 2" at low levels. I've seen "hero point rerolls floor your check result at failure." I've seen tables use hero point decks, which give you additional ways to spend hero points beyond the norm, and which I honestly like a lot more than I'd have expected to. However, I've not had a single home table that played them RAW.
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it's better to reroll things you're good at and failed, even if it feels unimportant, than it is to spend them important-feeling rolls that you're bad at. MAP-0 strikes are a better candidate for a hero point reroll than failing at your worst save. I personally don't like this, since it makes them worse at being a player-side fudge factor.
I agree with the probability and cost vs benefit analysis. But I also think that is intended, not a flaw in the game that needs houseruled.
One of the complaints about PF2 vs PF1 is that it is harder to build a character that is actually good at anything - meaning that the character rarely or never fails at their one or two niche things.
Hero Points are intended to smooth that out. To make it so that if you are Expert at a skill and so have a +11 bonus and the DC is only 15, but the dice god gives you a 2, you don't have to have your character feel like they failed at what they are supposed to be good at.
Using Hero Points to go crit fishing feels counter-intuitive to me.
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I house ruled hero points to guarantee a 10 on the reroll because they were too often disappointing in a game set at this difficulty level with rerolls often failing. My players were severely disappointed by hero points. But I did reduce how often they obtain hero points since I made them extremely impactful and useful.
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Lol you could have players play I rolled low again bingo.
If they fill out their bingo card they get a 20 on their next roll.
I run a game for teenagers. I will be adopting this idea for my table. The kiddos will love it. Haha
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Yes. Hero Points are for rewriting disasters such as crit failed saves or fails on important things that you are supposed to be good at. They don't do well at letting you do well on things that you aren't built for doing well at.
I'm not sure what kind of mechanic would be better on a roll you genuinely suck at rather than a roll you're good at but rolled bad, and I'm not sure we'd want one because the point is... you are bad at those rolls.
That's Assurance, or other skill feats that remove rolling entirely.
Those let you be decent or even good at things that you aren't statted for rolling for.
They cost you in other ways to get access to though. You only get a few of them, and you still have to spend the proficiency for the skills to qualify for the feats.
Yes. Hero Points are for rewriting disasters such as crit failed saves or fails on important things that you are supposed to be good at. They don't do well at letting you do well on things that you aren't built for doing well at.
Exactly!
The idea is not to reroll a bad save on a spell that you failed. The idea is to reroll a bad save on a spell that you critically failed, especially the incapacitating ones.
Rerolling something that you are already bad at doing is throwing away hero points, and even rerolling something that you are good at just because you failed is also usually not worth it (unless it is the end of the session) because the chance of failing again is still high.
In other words, it is to try to save yourself from that will roll to resist a paralyze that you rolled a critical failure, where the chance of critically failing again is very low and even if you only roll a failure it will still be way better.
Lol you could have players play I rolled low again bingo.
If they fill out their bingo card they get a 20 on their next roll.
A game within a game.
Rerolling a crit fail into a fail still feels terrible. Hero points should be a meta currency for enabling something you want to happen, to take some of the chance out of the game. However you can make that possible, it should be there to help players.
I do sort of like the idea of villain points though, as Bulmahn and some other GMs have done on streams, perhaps getting one when ever someone gets a crit off a hero point or something.
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Lol you could have players play I rolled low again bingo.
If they fill out their bingo card they get a 20 on their next roll.
This especially at least feels like a good thing to do in the mean time until the source of the problem is figured out. This is positive by the way. I'm still genuinely curious as to what is causing a consistent hit success rate of only 30%. It's boggling my brain over here.
Lol you could have players play I rolled low again bingo.
If they fill out their bingo card they get a 20 on their next roll.A game within a game.
Rerolling a crit fail into a fail still feels terrible. Hero points should be a meta currency for enabling something you want to happen, to take some of the chance out of the game. However you can make that possible, it should be there to help players.
I do sort of like the idea of villain points though, as Bulmahn and some other GMs have done on streams, perhaps getting one when ever someone gets a crit off a hero point or something.
Rerolling a crit failure into a failure often has a very big impact on the outcome, including going from "you died" to "you didn't die". It's not as impressive as simply shrugging something off entirely, but it is a substantial swing in outcomes.
One house rule we run locally is that if you reroll a fail/crit fail with a hero point and the outcome isn't better, you keep the hero point. Spending it for no effect sucks so its a simple "you don't actually spend it until it makes a difference" change.
That said I've always liked meta currencies like Fate points and if players wanted to beef up hero points in terms of "I spend this to succeed" I'd consider it on a basis like that, where the points don't really "go away" but move around the table, which means the GM can acquire and use them in this situation too.
If all you do is use hero points for saves, then sure. My experience is most hero points are used for attacks or skills, so going from crit fail to fail is still you fail.
So if the OP can't find a mechanical reason why things are turning out this way, then please try some of the hero point methods suggested here. If it's all bad luck, and I've seen such before, think about giving hero points a boost and hand them out more to help players feel more empowered. Or if it's all the players and you just have magic hands, think about putting the players a level ahead of things to help soften that edge.
I've allowed forcing enemies to reroll saves during Abomination Vault, mostly because the campaign is a low level one and casters don't compete with martials at low level. But I'd never allow it otherwise, being able to force a save reroll is atrocious as you will use it for your best spells, creating a massive on demand power spike.
But I agree there's a difference in Hero Point usage between martials and casters. Casters will use them mostly for out of combat stuff, skills, and martials for in combat stuff, saves and attacks.
I play a wizard in PFS. About half the time when I cast slow, the enemy crit fails. That's probably why we can't use Hero Points to force rerolls.
I play a wizard in PFS. About half the time when I cast slow, the enemy crit fails. That's probably why we can't use Hero Points to force rerolls.
Do you think the opposite might be true as well?
My previous group I was in did 4 APs, 2 1-20 and 2 1-10. With a steady group of four and an extra that would change often. As a whole we came to generally dislike casters as generally enemies got a success the vast majority of the time, crit success fairly often, failed once or twice per session and only crit failed on a 1.It was disheartening, especially at lower levels before you get many options to debuff.
I play a wizard in PFS. About half the time when I cast slow, the enemy crit fails. That's probably why we can't use Hero Points to force rerolls.
The math flatly says that's a ridiculous outlier, even if you're choosing to target a ton of far-below-party-level enemies with bad fort saves—and that's not exactly the most ideal or efficient usecase for single-target slow. APL-3 enemies usually won't crit fail more than 15%-30% of the time, if I'm remembering right. You're claiming a rate in excess of double that. And a more typical slow target (single target boss) will only crit fail on a natural 1.
If we're talking rank 6 slow against a lot of below-level enemies, though, this is more in line with what you'd expect—seeing at least one crit fail in a group of 6 APL-3 enemies would happen over half the time.
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If all you do is use hero points for saves, then sure. My experience is most hero points are used for attacks or skills, so going from crit fail to fail is still you fail.
Climb definitely has a drastic difference between critically failing and failing. I don't think it is the only one either.
The biggest problem is when new players want to Hero Point the miss on a MAP-3 attack and afterwards feel that spending Hero Points are useless.
Climb definitely has a drastic difference between critically failing and failing. I don't think it is the only one either.The biggest problem is when new players want to Hero Point the miss on a MAP-3 attack and afterwards feel that spending Hero Points are useless.
Even climbs crit fail could mean nothing though if it's your first roll while standing on the ground. Having done 8 campaigns, most of them APs we finished I don't think I've ever climbed anything where there was any serious risk, so that's a big your mileage may very sort of thing. You should always keep a hero point in the tank for saving your life, but from my experience you can't rely on them for anything other then auto stabilizing.
In line with what the OP describes, when your results suck for long periods of time, even hero points don't help, and they sure don't feel heroic. When your entire play session is fail or crit fail, it's extremely demoralizing. Figuring out options that can help without swinging in the opposite direction when your luck comes around is worth a GMs time IMO.
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Even climbs crit fail could mean nothing though if it's your first roll while standing on the ground. Having done 8 campaigns, most of them APs we finished I don't think I've ever climbed anything where there was any serious risk, so that's a big your mileage may very sort of thing.
Climb definitely has a drastic difference between critically failing and failing. I don't think it is the only one either.The biggest problem is when new players want to Hero Point the miss on a MAP-3 attack and afterwards feel that spending Hero Points are useless.
And like I said, it is hardly the only skill action that has a very detrimental critical failure result that you might want to Hero Point a reroll for.
Treat Wounds/Battle Medicine.
Balance.
Repair.
Make an Impression.
Track.
Disable a Device on a trap.
If you have built your character for Battle Medicine such that you succeed on a 3 and crit on a 13, but nat-1 the roll when you use it at a critical point in a boss fight, you might want to Hero Point that.
And the entire theme of my response on this thread is: Yes, Hero Points do not make you feel heroic. Hero Points make your hero not feel like a complete failure.
I'm still genuinely curious as to what is causing a consistent hit success rate of only 30%. It's boggling my brain over here.
Once the OP said that the party was 4th level, it made sense. At 4th, most characters to hit is +10 (+11 if they have a magic weapon which casters don’t). Level 6 enemies are expected to face characters who have expert proficiency which most 4th levels don’t. An ankylosaurus (level 6) has an AC of 26, which means martials hit on a 15, casters a 16. Even a cave bear is AC 24, not much better.
At level 4, if a party doesn’t have a bard, someone who casts bless every combat and no fighters, then a 30% hit rate is believable. If they are slightly unoptimized (say with only a +3 in their attack stat) it’s likely.
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At level 4, if a party doesn’t have a bard, someone who casts bless every combat and no fighters, then a 30% hit rate is believable. If they are slightly unoptimized (say with only a +3 in their attack stat) it’s likely.
Oh, crap. I missed that in all this somehow, and you're absolutely right. At the level they are, them's might just be the breaks for a bit if they're unoptimized. Maybe they can fix this over time, though, with the changes they make as they level!
The average AC of most lvl 6 monsters is about 23-24 what for a +11 martial (+13 fighter and casters are a different case due saves, usually a caster of this level could try to find the weakest save to exploit) is about 35% of hit rate but notice that even with these monsters being developed to face expert proficiency attacks, a +2 higher level monsters alone are moderate challenges so it's hard to hit then but at same time we have a 4 characters party fighting then, flanking (increasing the hit rate to 45%), buffing/debuffing (probably increasing the hit rate more 5%), doing a total of 12 actions and a sum of HP way higher than the monster. So have just 35% of hit rate without conditions is fine IMO to such encounter.
I remember someone in another thread complaining about the game is too easy because in a moderate encounter a dragon alone have difficult to deal with a full party.
I play a wizard in PFS. About half the time when I cast slow, the enemy crit fails. That's probably why we can't use Hero Points to force rerolls.
The math flatly says that's a ridiculous outlier, even if you're choosing to target a ton of far-below-party-level enemies with bad fort saves—and that's not exactly the most ideal or efficient usecase for single-target slow. APL-3 enemies usually won't crit fail more than 15%-30% of the time, if I'm remembering right. You're claiming a rate in excess of double that. And a more typical slow target (single target boss) will only crit fail on a natural 1.
If we're talking rank 6 slow against a lot of below-level enemies, though, this is more in line with what you'd expect—seeing at least one crit fail in a group of 6 APL-3 enemies would happen over half the time.
I'm not arguing about the probability. I have been strategic with who I target and extraordinarily lucky.
The point I meant to make is that a critical failure on a spell, even one without the incapacitation trait, is usually quite incapacitating, and giving spellcasters such an easy way of drastically boosting the chance is likely a recipe for disaster.