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Hey Alenvire, I just wanted to say that it's not weird to feel entirely out of your depth when stepping into a new game, regardless of how much experience you have with titterpigs in general. Not too long ago, I tried to run Blades in the Dark with friends, and despite being a fairly seasoned GM, I just couldn't grok the damn thing. And that was really frustrating, because I kept hearing about what a good game it was!
I think it can really compound your frustration when that new game is a new edition of something you already like, because you have very strong expectations of how the game's supposed to feel, based on years and years of playing the old version. So, in addition to the embarassment of being a novice again, you also have to contend with this uncanny valley feeling of being just slightly different from how you remember it. So, don't feel bad for feeling bad, you know?
Anyway, what I like about PF2 is that it shifts the strategic focus of play away from character building and onto moment-to-moment decisions. PF1 chargen is fun, but it kind of feels like hunting around for ways to make the biggest, flashiest, most unstoppable hammer possible: whatever problems come your way, you are going to solve them with your ultimate hammer, and the player with the coolest and most universally effective hammer wins.
PF2, meanwhile, has you choose a collection of smaller, less impressive tools and then challenges you to figure out how best to use them in collaboration with everyone else. You don't get the luxury of solving all your problems in advance, and instead have to pay attention to the situation as it evolves. Your character--assuming you optimized equally well in both editions--is weaker on purpose, and that is because the game wants you to think tactically and work with your teammates. I prefer that as both a player and a GM because it forces everyone to be more present at the table. No more win buttons--you have to think.
Also, I have a dirty secret: I'm not a character creation guy. I've always felt like chargen was homework I had to do before actually getting to play the game, so in every system that let me get away with it, I rolled randomly (and in the ones that didn't, I picked last so that I could use other people's choices to narrow down my own). It's not that I hate making up funny little guys or anything--I love roleplay and self-expression as much as the next recovering theater kid--I'm just not excited by power fantasies and prefer the game when it's actually in motion. PF2's balancing means I'm mostly okay if I don't think too hard about my choices or scour every single sourcebook for the perfect feat, and the teamwork emphasis gives me purpose and direction when choosing (I care more about covering for my teammates than I do about being the most specialist, most powerful boy).
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So it feels to me like we are mostly in agreement on that. PF2 could potentially be played in a way where noncombat focused characters would be fun to play even though they are not very useful in combat. But that isn't how this game is normallyI think PF2 isn't well designed for a campaign focused on things other than combat. It doesn't have great rules for long stretches of play where combat doesn't happen, and spends so much page count on things only useful in combat that it doesn't sell itself to RP-focused groups the way other systems might.Well maybe people could use the mechanics laid out for exploration mode (Player Core, GM Core) and downtime mode (Player Core, GM Core) if they don't want to rely on pure rolelay...
Or maybe even use encounter mode for things other than combat (such as "a race to disarm a doomsday device before it detonates, or even an impassioned negotiation with the queen"). GM Core even provides specific structure for social encounters...
Are the social encounter rules as detailed as the combat rules? No. But they don't need to be, as you don't have to account for all of the different spells and weapons, positioning, maneuvers, conditions, etc.
They would need to be more fleshed out than they are if the game wanted to be primarily a social or otherwise "combat is a last resort game." PF2 isn't that and doesn't pretend to be: it's a combat focused game that gives you generally workable rules for other modes of play.
That's not a bad thing, and it's not a flaw in the system. That's just it's identity. If you want a campaign where combat is a standard go-to but also other things are happening, PF2 does it well and will generally have you covered.
If you want a game where things like Intrigue are the main focus and actually coming to physical blows is a rarity, PF2 is really not the system for that (neither was PF1). It invests far too much page count and emphasis on things that aren't the focus and doesn't have as much depth on the areas that are the focus.
Can you do it anyway? Absolutely. But you're not using the best system for the job in that case. Like a comparison here would be with Vampire: The Masquerade back when I played it (which was a long time ago, I don't know what its like today). That was primarily a social encounter game where combat might happen sometimes, but it was entirely normal to go multiple game nights without ever having a combat (bodies being racked up is risking being exposed). That is definitely abnormal in a PF2 campaign.
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So it feels to me like we are mostly in agreement on that. PF2 could potentially be played in a way where noncombat focused characters would be fun to play even though they are not very useful in combat. But that isn't how this game is normallyI think PF2 isn't well designed for a campaign focused on things other than combat. It doesn't have great rules for long stretches of play where combat doesn't happen, and spends so much page count on things only useful in combat that it doesn't sell itself to RP-focused groups the way other systems might.Well maybe people could use the mechanics laid out for exploration mode (Player Core, GM Core) and downtime mode (Player Core, GM Core) if they don't want to rely on pure rolelay...
Or maybe even use encounter mode for things other than combat (such as "a race to disarm a doomsday device before it detonates, or even an impassioned negotiation with the queen"). GM Core even provides specific structure for social encounters...
Are the social encounter rules as detailed as the combat rules? No. But they don't need to be, as you don't have to account for all of the different spells and weapons, positioning, maneuvers, conditions, etc.
They would need to be more fleshed out than they are if the game wanted to be primarily a social or otherwise "combat is a last resort game." PF2 isn't that and doesn't pretend to be: it's a combat focused game that gives you generally workable rules for other modes of play.
That's not a bad thing, and it's not a flaw in the system. That's just it's...
Actually, if I want to run one of those games I DON’T want a system that has strict rules for ‘social combat’. I want “generally workable’ but simple rules instead, every time. Social parts of the game constrained by a high level of rules would sap the fun right out of it.
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I think its more of an issue with the value of traits.
Most don't mind losing a die size to gain reach for example but not all traits are as much of a gamechanger as reach. maybe reach is undervalued in terms of die steps to get it?
Definitely under values on some weapons.
IIRC, that's one of the reasons they changed the Gnome Flickmace from 1d8 weapon, to a 1d6 weapon (I really hope I'm recalling that correctly) because a one handed reach weapon with a d8 was really quite good.
You compare to the typical 2 handed 1d10 reach weapon and it was probably too good, even as an advanced weapon. We saw a lot of fighters adopted by gnomes.
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Actually, if I want to run one of those games I DON’T want a system that has strict rules for ‘social combat’. I want “generally workable’ but simple rules instead, every time. Social parts of the game constrained by a high level of rules would sap the fun right out of it.
There's a fine line between not enough rules and too many. Cyberpunk deals with this by always putting theme first, emphasising high tech, low life and that it's more important to look good doing something than to do something well. You're always trying to build up your reputation with some crowds while avoiding the notice of others until your rep is so big it scares off the small fries on its own, but starts attracting the bigger fish who might want a favour or just want you dead.
The rules text opens with 3 concepts to understand to get the game:
1. Style over Substance.
2. Attitude is Everything.
3. Live on the Edge.
Only then does it share some basic rules about what each Role, read class, but also not really, has as a special ability.
When you first see a breakdown of the game's Roles beyond these special abilities, you don't get any rules, just pictures, a description and a quote from a famous character of that class from within the world. Only after this are you given rules to build your 'punk, and these are also peppered with sidebars filled with in-game lore, quotes, and other fluff. Even the lifepath section, where you can roll or choose your character's background, opens with an in-universe quote, explains in-game slang, and then lets you start seeing what makes your 'punk unique.
It suggests playing the game in a dimly lit room, with a bit of haze for effect, and mirrorshades on to get into the mood. Few games have ever aimed to put the world and the mindset so first and foremost, the way Cyberpunk does.
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Definitely under values on some weapons.
IIRC, that's one of the reasons they changed the Gnome Flickmace from 1d8 weapon, to a 1d6 weapon (I really hope I'm recalling that correctly) because a one handed reach weapon with a d8 was really quite good.
You compare to the typical 2 handed 1d10 reach weapon and it was probably too good, even as an advanced weapon. We saw a lot of fighters adopted by gnomes.
You're remembering correctly. They also added a save to the Flail critical specialization effect, which it didn't have originally. The fact that Flickmaces are still good even with two nerfs shows just how good it was originally!
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Definitely under values on some weapons.
IIRC, that's one of the reasons they changed the Gnome Flickmace from 1d8 weapon, to a 1d6 weapon (I really hope I'm recalling that correctly) because a one handed reach weapon with a d8 was really quite good.
You compare to the typical 2 handed 1d10 reach weapon and it was probably too good, even as an advanced weapon. We saw a lot of fighters adopted by gnomes.
You're remembering correctly. They also added a save to the Flail critical specialization effect, which it didn't have originally. The fact that Flickmaces are still good even with two nerfs shows just how good it was originally!
I hadn't caught that, but yeah. The flickmace is still good, although at this point I would be more likely to build with a Guisarme for 1d10 + reach + trip. But if I was doing a weapon and shield build, the flickmace is still a strong contender.
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IMO, the horsechopper is often tempting for a two-handed reach weapon; especially with the Haft Striker Stance feat (one weapon with all three damage modes). Unless for a Dex-focused character, which would incline toward a dancer's spear.
For one-handed reach weapons, breaching pike (Clumsy 1 with critical specialization) and chain sword (Finesse) are also contenders IMO.
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I don't personally highly value being able to do all 3 kinds of physical damage with one weapon, but I will admit if you run into something that's resistant to just your damage type specifically it is unfun. So maybe I should look at that more.
On the horsechopper specifically, at high levels (highest level runes) the damage difference between it and the guisarme is only 3 points of damage on average. So maybe it is something to consider. Or maybe a shifting rune.
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...So it feels to me like we are mostly in agreement on that. PF2 could potentially be played in a way where noncombat focused characters would be fun to play even though they are not very useful in combat. But that isn't how this game is normallyI think PF2 isn't well designed for a campaign focused on things other than combat. It doesn't have great rules for long stretches of play where combat doesn't happen, and spends so much page count on things only useful in combat that it doesn't sell itself to RP-focused groups the way other systems might.Well maybe people could use the mechanics laid out for exploration mode (Player Core, GM Core) and downtime mode (Player Core, GM Core) if they don't want to rely on pure rolelay...
Or maybe even use encounter mode for things other than combat (such as "a race to disarm a doomsday device before it detonates, or even an impassioned negotiation with the queen"). GM Core even provides specific structure for social encounters...
Are the social encounter rules as detailed as the combat rules? No. But they don't need to be, as you don't have to account for all of the different spells and weapons, positioning, maneuvers, conditions, etc.
They would need to be more fleshed out than they are if the game wanted to be primarily a social or otherwise "combat is a last resort game." PF2 isn't that and doesn't pretend to be: it's a combat focused game that gives you generally workable rules for other modes of play.
That's not a bad thing, and it's not a flaw in the
All this reminds of that time years ago where I considered using the 3.5 combat system to simulate Bene Gesserit's style debates.
Just using STR for conviction, DEX for subtlety, CON for mental resilience...
A funny exercise but fruitless all things said and done.
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Hi Alenvire,
At this point you've got a lot of responses by individuals that enjoy this system, but in all the discussion there are a couple points that have been missed that likely factored in to why you originally dropped pf2e, including a couple genuine design failures that are worth openly and frankly acknowledging to a potential pf2e GM.
The biggest issue is that extreme low level play (levels 1-2 primarily) is fundamentally badly designed, so if you pick this system up again start play at level 3 and give everyone one guaranteed free rebuild of their character instead.
There are a few reasons that factor into this, but the biggest is that damage scaling vs hp totals is completely out of wack at those levels. At that level range a fighter is capable of 1-shotting 2 chump foes per turn with relatively little high rolling needed while a mage using cantrips takes an average of 2 turns to kill 1 such foe, meaning that even if the casters use their class features to either provide +1 / -1 adjustments or use a slotted damage spell to kill 1 foe in a round 2-3 times total per day, it's obvious that you could have just not shown up that day and it likely wouldn't have made much of a difference. This quickly stops being true (starting at lv.3 and becoming very clear by lv.5), but it IS true no matter how many posters you can find on reddit, or even in these forums, saying that it isn't. One of the single greatest design failures of pf2e is that levels 1-2 strongly imply that the game functions a certain way, with damage reigning king and utility being something of an embarrassment, simply due to everyone being complete glass cannons.
The next issue (connected to the hp issue but not solely caused by it) is that the encounter guidelines don't function as smoothly as you have likely heard people insist they do across all level ranges (as you could likely infer from the previous paragraph). For example, a party "should" be capable of facing a level+4 foe (severe encounter) and winning (with great difficulty) if they both play it out well and the dice favors them a little. In reality a party of level 1 characters are getting murdered by a single level 5 foe 99/100 times and a level 15 party is likely stomping the face in of a level 19 foe. Meanwhile said level 1 party can consistently fight an equal difficultly (severe encounter) made up of 8 level-2 foes (with some variance) simply because many such foes will likely die in one melee attack or a high-rolled cantrip, meanwhile a GM running eight level-2 creatures at 15 could pulp the party if they aren't purposefully pulling their punches when it comes to enemy team composition and tactics used (also because between these two they went from a hp total across all foes of around 50hp combined to 1900hp while baseline martial weapon damage went from 1dX+4 to 3dX+5). In reality pf2e suffers from the same fundamental design issue that pf1e and 5e suffer from, that of having a "functional" level range where the recommended rules work as advertised, only while pf1e stretched (arguably) from 1-11ish(9-13 at the top depending on team comp) in pf2e it is stretched from level 3 (arguably 5) to somewhere from level 14-18(depending on team comp). Just like in pf1e you *can* run successful well balanced combats outside of these level ranges with extra GM effort, but it requires familiarity with the system's shortcomings.
The final category I will mention is somewhat less mechanical, but if you were to make a sliding scale that goes from simulationist (rules serve as an intermediary to a living world, placing rules second to fidelity) to gamist (rules serve game balance first, fidelity of concept is sacrificed for this goal) then pf2e is way WAY further across the scale towards gamist. There are a million little ways this is expressed, such as: minions of all types (undead, animal companion, etc) require sacrificing player actions for their own actions regardless of intelligence (they just stand around like morons if you don't micromanage them) nor can they use items that aren't "specifically" keyed for minion use (npcs that have minions, however, get to break both these limitations as much as they want), the Aid action specifically only exists while in combat and cannot be used outside of combat (RAW), many many features and spells that used to have durations of minutes/level were reduced to lasting a single minute (shapechange, once one of the coolest spells around, is absolutely heartbreaking now), and on you can go down the list. Because of this the GM either has to play up certain things as threats even when they aren't or give monsters abilities that are arbitrarily more potent than players.
For example, in pf1e a single high level caster could easily terrorize a city and eventually destroy it in a single day if not stopped by using a combination of long lasting effects and certain summon options, meanwhile in pf2e the wizard would be out of slots before even 1/10 of the surface area of the city was razed because things like aoe size and effect duration (even for 9th and 10th level spells) are heavily balanced around single-instance combats occurring on a single small-to-medium sized map. Therefore the narrative can "say" that the BBEG wizard destroyed the city in a single day but everyone then has to either ignore during the actual showdown that he doesn't have anything close to that capacity or the GM has to invent a McGuffin that he used to do it instead of his own capabilities. An extension of this is that players don't get the experience of seeing a high level NPC do something and thinking "I can't wait until I get to do that" because they either never get to do that or they do but it's HEAVILY nerfed.
An extension of that point is that many spells claim to do something extremely impressive, like the 10th level "Summon Kaiju" spell (level 19-20 character feature) "You briefly conjure a kaiju, a massive, rampaging monster with a unique name and legendary reputation.", when in actuality it's just two different aoe-spells stapled together that occur over two turns, being either one effect that doesn't deal enough damage to 1-shot a level 9 foe on an average roll and either another such effect or an aoe debuff. Still useful, sure, but not anywhere CLOSE to the concept of what anyone would consider when stating that they are going to "summon a kaiju". This is a case of the "concept" of X (simulationist) being sacrificed for the sake of the careful balance of X (gamist). Paizo is often critiqued on this point, I believe quite fairly, for trying to have their cake and eat it by pairing flavor descriptions that, as you reach higher levels, rapidly fall out of line with the actual effects taking place to an eventually absurd degree.
As a final item to mention, one more expression of this design choice is the +4/-4 level band. In pf1e you could get away with characters coming across and having meaningful competitions with, be it in a combat capacity or socially, creatures from a wide range of CRs/levels, but in pf2e the adding of level to AC, trained+ skills, weapon hit chance, effect DCs, etc, makes almost all interactions with creatures below -4 trivial and inversely nearly impossible above the +4 mark. The extreme nature of this range has very strange implications for the nature of the world (for example, a level 10 grunt minion at the very bottom of the level 18 BBEG's organizational hierarchy could conquer a substantial portion of the world and live like a king as long as they only attacked parts of the world that are in "low level zones", so why are they putting up with their current situation?), an implication which the APs and general pf2e lore never ever ever investigates or addresses because the rules don't exist to enable the narrative of the world first, but the rules exist for and foremost to enable balanced gameplay and the world has to fit into whatever gaps remain afterwards.
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I agree with the above post. I think I have a few nitpicks about how it's worded, but I've started to type up a post addressing the same issues and decided against it multiple times.
At bottom, PF2E is a substantially different play experience from PF1E if your group played in a more narratively-focused manner. A lot of the rules and flavor that were "common sense" narrative inclusions, like coup de grace, are changed to be fundamentally more restricted or impossible. (And nowhere is this more obvious than the experience of a spellcaster, whose narrative power is close to universally pushed back a spell rank and also made uncommon, making it so you both get it later and require GM permission to take it.) The game is clearly focused on being a balanced game, focused on making a fair sort of "combat as sport" game instead of the "combat as war" more narratively focused PF1E tables were used to. Something that sounds like it should be debilitating to an enemy is often just a -2; most fantastic-sounding flavor produces rather unspectacular effects. The game tries to sort of split the difference between being PF1E and being a board game—or even just between PF1E and DnD 4e. This system is, frankly, 4e with a coat of paint and some changes meant to make it more appealing to the old 1E crowd.
The game is a success at being easier to run (in most cases—I still find everything surrounding invisibility and stealth a headache, as have all my players) and it is a success at being balanced (for most of its run—as the above poster noted, it's only really 5-14 or 18 that things truly work as advertised, but it working as advertised at any level range is an achievement for a DnD-lineage game, let alone for that large of one). I think it's an utter failure at making players feel like the gameplay is having them do the things the narrative is telling them they're doing, and I personally consider that a cardinal sin in TTRPG design; and I think the level 1 and level 2 experience is awful, and that's also a cardinal sin. I run it anyways because it's well-supported and the people I run the game for are more mechanically inclined.
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I would also note, as a quick correction: you -can- aid out of combat. Encounter mode actions are usable in exploration mode unless the action or its traits say otherwise. (The main example, here, is stances.)
for example, a level 10 grunt minion at the very bottom of the level 18 BBEG's organizational hierarchy could conquer a substantial portion of the world and live like a king as long as they only attacked parts of the world that are in "low level zones", so why are they putting up with their current situation?
I don't get this at all.
Why would a grunt minion be able to conquer anything? He's a grunt minion, he's not a king of anything. You said it right there -- Grunt Minion. Why would you expect him to be able to conquer things? He can't.| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
for example, a level 10 grunt minion at the very bottom of the level 18 BBEG's organizational hierarchy could conquer a substantial portion of the world and live like a king as long as they only attacked parts of the world that are in "low level zones", so why are they putting up with their current situation?I don't get this at all.
Why would a grunt minion be able to conquer anything? He's a grunt minion, he's not a king of anything. You said it right there -- Grunt Minion. Why would you expect him to be able to conquer things? He can't.
Relative to the level 18 party, a level 14 grunt minion is, well, a grunt.
Relative to a town of peasants and guards not exceeding level 5, the level 14 grunt minion is deific.
This is just how the game math works.
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for example, a level 10 grunt minion at the very bottom of the level 18 BBEG's organizational hierarchy could conquer a substantial portion of the world and live like a king as long as they only attacked parts of the world that are in "low level zones", so why are they putting up with their current situation?I don't get this at all.
Why would a grunt minion be able to conquer anything? He's a grunt minion, he's not a king of anything. You said it right there -- Grunt Minion. Why would you expect him to be able to conquer things? He can't.
Because if that grunt got separated from their army in a kingdom where nobody is above 5th level, they would run the place very quickly if they wanted to. They don't just level down to become grunt tier just because they moved to a new zone.
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How is this different from PF1 again?
Because hey, remember all of those we saw?
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How is this different from PF1 again?
Because hey, remember all of those we saw?
Nope. It isn't. It's just the usual of someone trying to use reality to look at the rules and acting like that's how it works when it isn't how it works.
A level 10 grunt minion is a level 10 grunt minion because the story wants the grunt minion to be a challenge to level 14 characters. Once that grunt minion enters a low level zone with level 1 characters, it becomes level a level-1 grunt minion rather than being able to conquer the area. Because grunt minions are built to represent a challenge to a particular level of PC, not in any way intended to mirror any type of reality.
Just like PF1 or PF2 or D&D or any game that creates enemies to be a challenge to a particularly advanced PC. This is all the nuts and bolts of game design and is in no way supposed to mirror any kind of real world analogue.
It's the fictional analogue of Joe the Grunt minion being a problem to the hero regardless of level.
Levels are a DM tool to use to make challenges and a player tool to show progression. They in no way should be viewed as simulationist or analogous to the real world.
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Levels aren't simulationist in and of themselves, no. They're obviously the opposite of simulationist. But it's clear they're supposed to represent something, at the least.
Certain kinds of mathematical level gaps can cause more issues for suspension of disbelief than others. PF2E's math (which I believe makes you about 1.5x stronger every two levels?) has such fast scaling that it's difficult to avoid the issues, and much of the scaling is innate to leveling. A lot of PF1E's scaling is in gear, buffs, and spell power instead.
There's a huge difference between a game where level is added to AC and saves and one where level isn't directly added to AC and saves, in particular. Combine that with DC+/-10 and the greater HP scaling, and it becomes difficult to even look for excuses.
A level 10 grunt minion is a level 10 grunt minion because the story wants the grunt minion to be a challenge to level 14 characters. Once that grunt minion enters a low level zone with level 1 characters, it becomes level a level-1 grunt minion rather than being able to conquer the area. Because grunt minions are built to represent a challenge to a particular level of PC, not in any way intended to mirror any type of reality.
I feel like this is confusing design and narrative/diegetics. Like, yes, when you design an encounter for level 1 characters you're not putting in a level 10 monster. But diegetically, John Minionguy at Big Evilguy's castle isn't just going to become weaker the second he comes in the vicinity of the party. John Minionguy just won't interact with the party until it's "safe" from a design perspective. It's not like the party has a reality warping field.
In any game, there's always the question, "why can't the heroes just be dispatched by the BBEG if he's so strong?" We answer this in many ways—some convoluted, some not. But it is always a question. PF2E just makes that question more pointed than ever, considering how much more powerful even John Minionguy's own minions might be when compared to the party at certain points. It's not so much a difference in kind as a difference in degree. PF2E just makes the artifice that much more difficult to ignore, because the gap widens so much faster.
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If you actually pick an actual creature to talk about the concepts they start to make more sense then thinking about this idea of a high level grunt in a low level area in a vacuum.
If a troll warleader goes off and leads some trolls to attack a small village with no real protectors yeah they will steam roll the villagers and it wouldnt make much sense if they dont.
That same troll warleader might be considered one of several lackies for a dragon thats forcing them into its service.
The troll wouldnt be a lacky for the dragon if it had much choice of its own. If some party of adventurers does come by and slay the dragon and this troll warleader happens to survive maybe it will gather some other regular trolls and go around raiding small villages.
And that could attract local authorities to either intervene sending some appropriate leveled forces or hire adventurers to step in.
The thing anyone making the comment in the first place is forgetting is that we are telling interactive gamified stories meant to give players a certain experience here.
The GM is deciding when to use that level 10 creature and under what circumstances. When we put it into that perspective you can totally make a game where the setting is exactly one where a high level grunt came into the party's home town and took everyone out with the party surviving somehow and building themselves up to avenge their village.
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... many many features and spells that used to have durations of minutes/level were reduced to lasting a single minute (shapechange, once one of the coolest spells around, is absolutely heartbreaking now)...How is this an indicator of PF2E being more gamist than simulationist or sacrificing a "living world" for game balance or what have you? I'm not contending that PF2E doesn't lean more to gamism, it's something I like very much about the system, but magic spell durations are an odd metric to use given that magic doesn't exist. I'm genuinely asking for some clarification here.
It reduces spells that used to have broad applications to just being a thing you use in combat, and then you drop them the second the fight is over. I all but shouts at you, "This magic is for combat only, we haven't made any high level spells that aren't balanced around their application for killing stuff."
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Levels aren't simulationist in and of themselves, no. They're obviously the opposite of simulationist. But it's clear they're supposed to represent something, at the least.
Certain kinds of mathematical level gaps can cause more issues for suspension of disbelief than others. PF2E's math (which I believe makes you about 1.5x stronger every two levels?) has such fast scaling that it's difficult to avoid the issues, and much of the scaling is innate to leveling. A lot of PF1E's scaling is in gear, buffs, and spell power instead.
There's a huge difference between a game where level is added to AC and saves and one where level isn't directly added to AC and saves, in particular. Combine that with DC+/-10 and the greater HP scaling, and it becomes difficult to even look for excuses.
A level 10 grunt minion is a level 10 grunt minion because the story wants the grunt minion to be a challenge to level 14 characters. Once that grunt minion enters a low level zone with level 1 characters, it becomes level a level-1 grunt minion rather than being able to conquer the area. Because grunt minions are built to represent a challenge to a particular level of PC, not in any way intended to mirror any type of reality.I feel like this is confusing design and narrative/diegetics. Like, yes, when you design an encounter for level 1 characters you're not putting in a level 10 monster. But diegetically, John Minionguy at Big Evilguy's castle isn't just going to become weaker the second he comes in the vicinity of the party. John Minionguy just won't interact with the party until it's "safe" from a design perspective. It's not like the party has a reality warping field.
In any game, there's always the question, "why can't the heroes just be dispatched by the BBEG if he's so strong?" We answer this in many ways—some convoluted, some not. But it is always a question. PF2E just makes that question more pointed than ever, considering how much more powerful even John Minionguy's own...
Yes he is. Because Joe the Grunt Minion doesn't exist outside the narrative. Acting as though any of these things exist outside the narrative isn't at all how the game works. These things exist only as challenges against a party with clear guidelines for how to use them.
So when Joe the Grunt minion is going against a level 14 party, he is a level 10 challenge. When Joe the Grunt Minion goes against a level 1 party, he is Level-1.
Neither exists outside the purview of the PCs and takes no actions and poses no threat.
It's always been that way and always will be for a variety of narrative and mechanical reasons. Not sure why some try to make it seem like any of this exists outside the needs of the narrative.
Why does level 10 Joe the Grunt minion not conquer the level 1 village? Because he doesn't exist save as a creation to challenge a specific level of characters.
Same as D&D basic to 1st, 2nd, 3rd, PF1, and now PF2. It's not unique to PF2. Adding level has always been done in some way with some progression that would have let a high level minion that shows up in a module able to take over a newbie area.
I don't even know why someone would bring this up to make it seem like PF2 is the only game using it when it's been in every edition of D&D/PF ever made.
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It reduces spells that used to have broad applications to just being a thing you use in combat, and then you drop them the second the fight is over. I all but shouts at you, "This magic is for combat only, we haven't made any high level spells that aren't balanced around their application for killing stuff."... many many features and spells that used to have durations of minutes/level were reduced to lasting a single minute (shapechange, once one of the coolest spells around, is absolutely heartbreaking now)...How is this an indicator of PF2E being more gamist than simulationist or sacrificing a "living world" for game balance or what have you? I'm not contending that PF2E doesn't lean more to gamism, it's something I like very much about the system, but magic spell durations are an odd metric to use given that magic doesn't exist. I'm genuinely asking for some clarification here.
The durations were massively out of hand and needed to be dropped. It was massively annoying to have casters walking around all day buffed up and waiting for them to put every buff on every PC and ally. I'm so glad that's gone.
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It reduces spells that used to have broad applications to just being a thing you use in combat, and then you drop them the second the fight is over. I all but shouts at you, "This magic is for combat only, we haven't made any high level spells that aren't balanced around their application for killing stuff."... many many features and spells that used to have durations of minutes/level were reduced to lasting a single minute (shapechange, once one of the coolest spells around, is absolutely heartbreaking now)...How is this an indicator of PF2E being more gamist than simulationist or sacrificing a "living world" for game balance or what have you? I'm not contending that PF2E doesn't lean more to gamism, it's something I like very much about the system, but magic spell durations are an odd metric to use given that magic doesn't exist. I'm genuinely asking for some clarification here.
Missing the forest for the trees, here.
In PF2, long-term magical effects are almost entirely provided by rituals instead of spells cast from slots.
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Yes he is. Because Joe the Grunt Minion doesn't exist outside the narrative. Acting as though any of these things exist outside the narrative isn't at all how the game works. These things exist only as challenges against a party with clear guidelines for how to use them.
I don't really know what to say other than I disagree. I'll certainly try to design things so that John Minionguy won't come into play until the party can handle him, but John Minionguy is just John Minionguy.
Like, I've had plot-critical high level NPCs show up just in the background early in campaigns. I will put them in places where it makes sense and the party isn't fighting them, yes, but they're still high level. Like, let's say Aria, the most renowned performer on the continent, is putting on a show; the party is second level and watching them. I'm not going to make this level 17 bard level 4 just because the party is nearby and some murderhobo might try to attack them, and then make the bard level 17 again when the party leaves. That's just awful. I want some semblance of coherence here.
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Certain kinds of mathematical level gaps can cause more issues for suspension of disbelief than others. PF2E's math (which I believe makes you about 1.5x stronger every two levels?) has such fast scaling that it's difficult to avoid the issues, and much of the scaling is innate to leveling. A lot of PF1E's scaling is in gear, buffs, and spell power instead.
The mathematical progression is that a level N+2 character is as powerful as 2 level N characters. The per-level increase in power has a multiplication by 1.414, the square root of 2. Since the square root of 2 is not a round number, Pathfinder usually alternates 4/3 = 1.333 and 3/2 = 1.5 to average to that value.
However, on that scale, a 10th-level character is only 2^(4.5) = 22.6 times as powerful as a 1st-level character and only 2^4 = 16 times as powerful as a 2nd-level character. Technically, this scale breaks down past a difference of 4 levels in actual Pathfinder gameplay, but pretending that it keeps accurate, a home defense of 50 1st-level villagers or a town militia of 20 2nd-level soldiers would be able to overwhelm a 10th-level grunt who went independent.
A level 10 grunt minion is a level 10 grunt minion because the story wants the grunt minion to be a challenge to level 14 characters. Once that grunt minion enters a low level zone with level 1 characters, it becomes level a level-1 grunt minion rather than being able to conquer the area. Because grunt minions are built to represent a challenge to a particular level of PC, not in any way intended to mirror any type of reality.I feel like this is confusing design and narrative/diegetics. Like, yes, when you design an encounter for level 1 characters you're not putting in a level 10 monster. But diegetically, John Minionguy at Big Evilguy's castle isn't just going to become weaker the second he comes in the vicinity of the party. John Minionguy just won't interact with the party until it's "safe" from a design perspective. It's not like the party has a reality warping field.
In any game, there's always the question, "why can't the heroes just be dispatched by the BBEG if he's so strong?" We answer this in many ways—some convoluted, some not. But it is always a question. PF2E just makes that question more pointed than ever, considering how much more powerful even John Minionguy's own...
There is historic precedent in literature. The minor character Aeneas in Homer's Illiad became the main character in Virgil's Aeneid. Aeneas would count as high level in the Illiad, as the son of a prince and a goddess and a leader of a company of Trojan soliders in the Trojan War, but compared to the great Greek heroes such as Achilles and Ulysses and to King Priam of Troy, he was a minion. Yet centuries later, the Romans proudly claim Aeneas and his soldiers as their ancestors.
Note that Aeneas was not a lone minion. He had his own small army, and that let him conquer a region in Italy.
Furthermore, in Paizo adventure paths some bosses of the earlier modules are serving under the final boss of the last module. That makes them minions in a sense. It can even be a chain of command. For example, in Rise of the Runelords the sorceress Xanesha in the 2nd module, The Skinsaw Murders, worked for the wizard Mokmurian in the 4th module, Fortress of the Stone Giant, who worked for the final boss Karzoug the Claimer of the 6th module, Spires of Xin-Shalast.
I was bothered by the level scaling in Iron Gods' 5th module, Palace of Fallen Stars. Since that is a module for 13th-level player characters, the module declared that the ordinary city gate guards were assigned CR 10 Gearsman Battleguards to aid them. The random encounters for walking down the streets of Starfall ranged from CR 12 (1d4 bogeymen) to CR 14 (1d8 sacristan kytons), so I could not understand how the regular residents of Starfall survived. "During the course of the adventure, the PCs have a 35% chance of a random encounter every hour they spend in the city, but should face no more than four random encounters per day."
I am currently running the PF2 adventure path Strength of Thousands and it keeps the scaling more believable. The 1st module, Kindled Magic, is on the mostly safe campus of the Magaambya Academy; the 2nd module, Spoken on the Song Wind, expands out to the entire city of Nantambu and its most dangerous criminals; the 3rd module, Hurricane's Howl, is a field expedition to a ruin; the 4th module, Secrets of the Temple-City, is a diplomatic and archaeological expedition to a hostile city; the 5th module, Doorway to the Red Star, goes to another planet; and the 6th module, Shadows of the Ancients, battles an ancient enemy out to destroy the Magaambya Academy.
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Like, I've had plot-critical high level NPCs show up just in the background early in campaigns. I will put them in places where it makes sense and the party isn't fighting them, yes, but they're still high level. Like, let's say Aria, the most renowned performer on the continent, is putting on a show; the party is second level and watching them. I'm not going to make this level 17 bard level 4 just because the party is nearby and some murderhobo might try to attack them, and then make the bard level 17 again when the party leaves. That's just awful. I want some semblance of coherence here.
That reminds me of an amusing second encounter in Ironfang Invasion. At 3rd level, the party encounters a friendly traveling Darklands merchant Novvi (N female svirfneblin rogue 2/expert 4). They meet Novvi again at 12th level, 3 modules later, as a female svirfneblin expert 4/rogue 5. The module takes a moment to explain that she had leveled up, "Like the PCs, Novvi has not rested on her laurels, and she has honed her skills as a spy and scout while growing her trading empire amid the fighting between the dark folk and fey." She gained only 3 levels while the party gained 9 levels. The module wrote the 2nd encounter as random chance in meeting Novvi again, but my players, planning on going down into the Darklands, contacted Novvi beforehand via Sending to ask for her guidance. She responded that she would meet them at a certain location--the location in the module.
In Strength of Thousands the teachers at the Magaambya roughly scale up with the modules. Their point of contact in the 1st module, teacher Takulu Ot, was only 4th level (my players insisted that I rewrite him as 6th level). They also meet teacher Zuma (CN male half-orc conspiracy theorist) and teacher Koride Ulawa (CN female human naturalist) without the players nor the GM learning their levels. In the 2nd module, teacher Janatimo (CG male half-elf storyteller 12), replaces Ot as their main quest-giver. They also are assigned a mission by teacher Lesedi (CG female elf summoner 13). In the 3rd module, the 8th-level PCs have become teachers themselves, but they go to Nhyira (NG genderfluid elf historian) for advice. The module avoids giving Nhyira a level. The 4th module also avoids mentioning the teachers' levels.
The 5th module lets slip that teacher Zuma is CN male half-orc conspiracy theorist 9, teacher Nhyira is NG genderfluid elf historian 11, teacher Tahenkot is NG female human defender 11, teacher Ahassunu is N female iruxi diplomat 12, teacher Lesedi is CG female elf summoner 13, teacher Izem Mezitani is NG male aasimar human archaeologist 14, teacher Koride Ulawa is CN female human naturalist 16, and teacher Mafika Ayuwari is NG male human martial artist 17. The PCs are 15th level at this time. Takulu Ot has not leveled up and is still LG male human teacher 4.
I wanted more faculty interaction in my campaign, so all these teachers were friendly to the party in the 1st module. Then I ran into the problem that the PCs would go to a high-level teacher such as Lesedi (13) or Izem Mezitani (14) for aid. See my thread Common Sense versus The Plot. Later I had to pull out my mathematics to figure out how to assign experience points after a Moderate 7 encounter in which Izem Mezitani tagged along to give healing and advice but not to fight.
These level-scaling problems are as much PF1 problems as they are PF2 problems. Both systems have the same power progression. But the calculated flexibility of PF2 makes me as a GM more likely to put helpful NPCs of different levels alongside the party.
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In any game, there's always the question, "why can't the heroes just be dispatched by the BBEG if he's so strong?" We answer this in many ways—some convoluted, some not. But it is always a question. PF2E just makes that question more pointed than ever, considering how much more powerful even John Minionguy's own minions might be when compared to the party at certain points. It's not so much a difference in kind as a difference in degree. PF2E just makes the artifice that much more difficult to ignore, because the gap widens so much faster.
I really don't think PF2 makes this any different than PF1. The first PF1 AP I played was Rise of the Runelords. The BBEG of that is such a high level Wizard that he's fully capable of killing us at basically any time once he knows we exist. If he was allowed to use his spells, we wouldn't even know we were being attacked until after we're dead since until the very end of the AP you're not surviving what he can throw down (as it was he nearly killed me with a save or die in the first round of the final battle). The AP has to create a reason why he can't do that because otherwise Scry & Fry ends this real fast.
Considering how game breaking high level PF1 spells get, they're actually worse about this than PF2 ones (where pretty much all of those things were reined in).
The minions in the end area of the AP are also mostly capable of flattening the PCs (and large chunks of Varisia) if they show up earlier in the adventure or leave, and they also don't. In general this problem isn't really that much different in PF1 vs PF2, except in PF2 it's directly from the math and in PF1 it's more from just how spell power and other stats go up on creatures. You can fix it in PF2 with Proficiency Without Level if it's an issue for you.
But in general, yeah a level 10 creature could wander into a level 5 area and wreak havok. We see that happen sometimes in published material: that tends to draw adventurers to come fix it.
Yes he is. Because Joe the Grunt Minion doesn't exist outside the narrative. Acting as though any of these things exist outside the narrative isn't at all how the game works. These things exist only as challenges against a party with clear guidelines for how to use them.
Technically, this scale breaks down past a difference of 4 levels in actual Pathfinder gameplay, but pretending that it keeps accurate, a home defense of 50 1st-level villagers or a town militia of 20 2nd-level soldiers would be able to overwhelm a 10th-level grunt who went independent.
This is why I referred to the rules of pf1e as enabling/supporting the tabletop simulation of a living world, in that game these things 100% existed "outside the narrative" and it made the world so much more vivid and engaging. In pf2e the scale breaks down past 4 levels of difference to the point that those 50 1st level villagers/militia don't have a prayer (I strongly dislike pretending that they do for the sake of narrative), but in pf1e such a defensive force has a credible chance of throwing back or killing such a high level creature (even if only armed with items available to creatures of that level), and the stories of pf1e work this narrative into their structure.
For example, the Wrath of the Righteous campaign includes demons invading a city and features street to street fighting of low level paladins and guards against demons of various levels. In pf2e this narrative is a complete farce, the lowliest of demon hangers-on to Khorramzadeh would be capable of wiping out the city with ease. In pf1e, however, a group of well-built level 1-2 paladins and a bunch of level 1 volunteers, between the benefits of smite and the less extreme AC ranges of pf1e, can absolutely win against demons in the CR 7-10 range, even if doing so has a terrible cost. Even a group of basic guards can consistently and meaningfully contribute with cold-iron weapons and the basic consumables available to level 1-2 creatures. The result is that the narrative of the city of Kenabres recruiting every able bodied citizen into the crusade to push out the fell forces after the initial defeat of their defenders, forces that were brought there in the same army that featured Khorramzadeh, but with such a steep cost to the population that it could be used as the reference image for the wiki entry for "Pyrrhic Victory", is a narrative that is fully supported and in-line with what is possible on tabletop. This is an inherent part of what I love about pf1e, I find that it encourages the creation of compelling narratives via the consideration and application of the system's inherent tools to said narrative, while in pf2e the game actively asks you to not think about how the rules interact with the narrative because it causes nothing but problems.
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for example, a level 10 grunt minion at the very bottom of the level 18 BBEG's organizational hierarchy could conquer a substantial portion of the world and live like a king as long as they only attacked parts of the world that are in "low level zones", so why are they putting up with their current situation?I don't get this at all.
Why would a grunt minion be able to conquer anything? He's a grunt minion, he's not a king of anything. You said it right there -- Grunt Minion. Why would you expect him to be able to conquer things? He can't.Relative to the level 18 party, a level 14 grunt minion is, well, a grunt.
Relative to a town of peasants and guards not exceeding level 5, the level 14 grunt minion is deific.
This is just how the game math works.
It's just strange to call it out in a discussion of the differences between PF1 and PF2 to me - sure, if you weren't doing any optimization in PF1, you might not have a +1/level scaling on some things (mostly saves and spell DCs), but most numbers had something close to that built in (max-ranking a skill gave you +1/level, full-bab classes got +1 to hit/level, etc). On top of that, PF1 just obviously had high level characters being more dominant. You could have mook casters at level 13-14 by the end of APs quite easily (would be higher if APs regularly went to 20 instead of stopping at 16-17), and a 14th level caster in PF1 would absolutely be able to rule an area of max 5th level people with an iron fist if they wanted to, especially with the broken things you can do in PF1. Outside of the fact that the gap between well-built and badly-built humanoids being much, much bigger in PF1 making it less obvious by blurring the directness of the relationship between level and power, I don't see a reason to say that a 10th level grunt is more powerful compared to the low-level zones in PF2 than PF1, unless we assume a significant difference in optimization of the grunt and the creatures in the low-level zone.
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For example, the Wrath of the Righteous campaign includes demons invading a city and features street to street fighting of low level paladins and guards against demons of various levels. In pf2e this narrative is a complete farce, the lowliest of demon hangers-on to Khorramzadeh would be capable of wiping out the city with ease. In pf1e, however, a group of well-built level 1-2 paladins and a bunch of level 1 volunteers, between the benefits of smite and the less extreme AC ranges of pf1e, can absolutely win against demons in the CR 7-10 range, even if doing so has a terrible cost. Even a group of basic guards can consistently and meaningfully contribute with cold-iron weapons and the basic consumables available to level 1-2 creatures.
This is literally just turning the bad balance of PF1 into a point in its favor somehow because level 1-2 characters can take on level 7-10 threats if well built. If we look at level 1-2 PCs built by the same people who made the demon stat blocks, it is plainly obvious that the intent of the story is that they cannot defeat those creatures. If I pick a low CR you listed, 8, and take the Nabasu, and then compare its stats to a party of 4 Honorable Outcasts, the level 2 paladin from the NPC Codex, we can see:
- Attack with smite: +6 for 1d12+5/x3, or +5 for 1d12+8/x3 (power attack); the nabasu's AC is 22 with 103 HP; the demon's DR is bypassed by the smite. They will need ~30.9 attack rolls to take down the nabasu on average, or 8 turns.- AC with smite: 17 and 23 HP; the nabasu's attack routine of +12(1d6+12), +12(1d6+12), +12(1d8+12), potentially with +2d6 sneak attack on all of those, will finish the paladins off very quickly. Without sneak attack, it'll take 2 attacks to down a PC, with sneak attack it's the same but with a meaningful chance of them going down in one attack. That means by the end of the second round, it is very likely the PCs are all dead, as they rely on melee attacks against the nabasu.
- The nabasu could also activate their free-action negative level aura to grant 2 (on average) of the paladins a negative level, reducing them down to one-shot level, and lowering their offences even further
- The nabasu can probably just call Mass Hold Person to paralyze half of them on average anyway
This is not even close to a fight these paladins are supposed to be able to win. What you are describing is not PF1 enabling a tabletop simulation of a living world, you are describing the ability for broken characters to perform feats the game did not intend them to be able to do. If it weren't for the fact it would ruin everyone's night, you could absolutely do the same thing as a GM and optimize the enemies much more than the PCs, and you could cause a TPK with underleveled enemies - hell, I've nearly done it in a PFS scenario just because many incorporeal creatures can take down characters with min-maxed ability scores very easily. This sort of "level 2 characters killing a level 8 character" narrative is also not included in the stories being told in pre-published content; to use your own Wrath of the Righteous example, the only time the story expects you to face a CR 6 encounter is when you're already level 4. Stories about 50 1st level militia holding off a bunch of demons when prepared with anti-demon weapons is also easier to tell in PF2 than in PF1; in PF1 you're hoping that you can confirm a bunch of crits to do enough damage from the massed attacks, in PF2 they can all just throw some vials of holy water, trigger the weakness even on a miss, and that'll be a very credible threat to a massed demon attack.
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I just want to chime in to add:
1. Many PF1 enjoyers will prefer a Free Archetype game, because the additional feats provide more flexibility and can unlock builds earlier, like you could do with judicious use of archetypes and build planning in PF1. It's more meat on the character gen bone.
2. PF2 combat is a LOT more fun than PF1. On both sides of the GM screen. It flows so smooth, and the tactics matter so much more.
3. Noncombat encounters are vastly underestimated in this system. The consistent math makes it very easy to adjudicate, and create things on the fly. The skill system in PF2 is a lot more reliable, and well supported with feats and things like Follow the Expert. I've had sessions go by with no combat and we never noticed.
4. Ancestries in PF2 make PF1 ancestries look like a joke.
Yes he is. Because Joe the Grunt Minion doesn't exist outside the narrative. Acting as though any of these things exist outside the narrative isn't at all how the game works. These things exist only as challenges against a party with clear guidelines for how to use them.I don't really know what to say other than I disagree. I'll certainly try to design things so that John Minionguy won't come into play until the party can handle him, but John Minionguy is just John Minionguy.
Like, I've had plot-critical high level NPCs show up just in the background early in campaigns. I will put them in places where it makes sense and the party isn't fighting them, yes, but they're still high level. Like, let's say Aria, the most renowned performer on the continent, is putting on a show; the party is second level and watching them. I'm not going to make this level 17 bard level 4 just because the party is nearby and some murderhobo might try to attack them, and then make the bard level 17 again when the party leaves. That's just awful. I want some semblance of coherence here.
That's using it for story, not writing stories about John MinionGuy and his Minionguy buddies going, "We're level 10 regardless of the needs of the story, so let's all go conquer level 1 peasant towns so we can live well."
It doesn't matter what level the bard is does it? To be a renowned performer doesn't require they be a level 17 bard or the PCs even know that. If I'm DMing the same situation and the party tries to murderhobo the bard, I kill them. I don't roll it out or write up a level 17 bard...I finish them.
They really shouldn't be acting that way to start with, but if they do I'm not wasting my time fleshing out a level 17 bard because the PCs want to watch a performance or I as a DM want them to see a performance form a high level bard.
I create challenges that will be fought. Not generate unnecessary levels for characters that are serving a story purpose that no one would really know their level.
Why would a PC need you to tell them, "This world famous bard is putting on a performance at a theater. You guess they just be level 17."
Yes he is. Because Joe the Grunt Minion doesn't exist outside the narrative. Acting as though any of these things exist outside the narrative isn't at all how the game works. These things exist only as challenges against a party with clear guidelines for how to use them.Technically, this scale breaks down past a difference of 4 levels in actual Pathfinder gameplay, but pretending that it keeps accurate, a home defense of 50 1st-level villagers or a town militia of 20 2nd-level soldiers would be able to overwhelm a 10th-level grunt who went independent.This is why I referred to the rules of pf1e as enabling/supporting the tabletop simulation of a living world, in that game these things 100% existed "outside the narrative" and it made the world so much more vivid and engaging. In pf2e the scale breaks down past 4 levels of difference to the point that those 50 1st level villagers/militia don't have a prayer (I strongly dislike pretending that they do for the sake of narrative), but in pf1e such a defensive force has a credible chance of throwing back or killing such a high level creature (even if only armed with items available to creatures of that level), and the stories of pf1e work this narrative into their structure.
For example, the Wrath of the Righteous campaign includes demons invading a city and features street to street fighting of low level paladins and guards against demons of various levels. In pf2e this narrative is a complete farce, the lowliest of demon hangers-on to Khorramzadeh would be capable of wiping out the city with ease. In pf1e, however, a group of well-built level 1-2 paladins and a bunch of level 1 volunteers, between the benefits of smite and the less extreme AC ranges of pf1e, can absolutely win against demons in the CR 7-10 range, even if doing so has a terrible cost. Even a group of basic guards can consistently and meaningfully contribute with cold-iron weapons and the basic consumables available to level...
Explain how it made the world more vivid and engaging? Why this can't be done as well in PF2?
This is pure make believe. A level 1 or 2 character no matter how well built could not beat a level 10 or 12 monster, especially if they have any AOE capability. Why are you making stuff up that you prefer that is no way some universal idea that we all just understand.
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I really don't think PF2 makes this any different than PF1. The first PF1 AP I played was Rise of the Runelords. The BBEG of that is such a high level Wizard that he's fully capable of killing us at basically any time once he knows we exist. If he was allowed to use his spells, we wouldn't even know we were being attacked until after we're dead since until the very end of the AP you're not surviving what he can throw down (as it was he nearly killed me with a save or die in the first round of the final battle). The AP has to create a reason why he can't do that because otherwise Scry & Fry ends this real fast.
Considering how game breaking high level PF1 spells get, they're actually worse about this than PF2 ones (where pretty much all of those things were reined in).
The statement about this being a difference in degree and not kind is important, here. Someone like Nualia would be a nightmare for first or second level PCs if she were directly translated to pf2e. You can say that Nualia would probably been designed differently if Rise were built from the ground up for PF2E, and that's true. But I don't really consider it positive that you need to weaken the main enemy of the first book in such a direct manner to prevent the question, "why isn't the current arc villain just killing us?" from popping up. She's still quite scary in 1E, but not to the same degree. (And god, I don't even want to imagine that stupid Barghest fight in PF2E. That's an encounter that simply would not exist. Shouldn't exist in PF1E either, to be fair.)
The thing that bothers me is how consistently the problem shows up. 3-4 levels is very normal arc length; that's about one book of an AP and about the length of the module. Given that an enemy that's a moderate encounter at the end of the arc is going to be APL+5 or APL+6 at the start of it, why /don't/ they just solo the party early on? They have an exceptionally good shot at doing so. If they take even two lackeys, it's beyond an extreme encounter. Why don't they do that, even? This isn't even some wizard doing a scry and fry. This is literally Jim Sword-and-board ambushing and soloing four people.
The first response is weakening the villain to solve the problem. But this makes the villain less imposing and interesting, mechanically. And it makes the villain such that they're probably going to end up on level with the party—if not lower—when they're actually fought in ~3 levels. After all, if they can't solo the party at the outset of their arc, they're only APL+2 or 3 at the start of the arc. That means that the eventual fight against them will have them be an APL+0 or APL-1 creature, which I would describe as anticlimactic. If designed so they alone will be a good challenge for the party in three levels, or at least will be a significant part of a severe challenge or extreme challenge, that means they start their arc at like APL+5-7. But again, even the most boring APL+6 fighter-type enemy could probably wipe a party with strike, raise a shield, reactive strike, and nothing else. The math is just that disadvantageous. This feels exceedingly bad.
I did say this is always a question you have to try to jump through some hoops to answer; that was sincere, not a throwaway. To me the problem is that the question just comes up so much more readily. It's one thing to ask why the level 20 wizard doesn't scry and fry. It's another to ask why the cr5 or cr6 fighterguy doesn't just massacre the party at the first sign they're causing trouble.
This is literally just turning the bad balance of PF1 into a point in its favor somehow because level 1-2 characters can take on level 7-10 threats if well built. If we look at level 1-2 PCs built by the same people who made the demon stat blocks, it is plainly obvious that the intent of the story is that they cannot defeat those creatures.
In this context, I would note that it's not solely a downside. One of the design intentions of 5e with bounded accuracy was to enable a wider variety of monsters to be usable as challenges at the same level.
Having a very tight and narrowly bound range of allowable challenges where 90% of them function more or less as expected is not inherently better than having a wider range of possible encounters that need more GM experience and know-how to balance. This is a tradeoff between options and ease of use. It is also a tradeoff between having One Designed Powerlevel and a variety of possible powerlevels that can be played at. Neither is strictly superior, and it's clear from the history of TTRPGs in general that "combat balanced to the degree of PF2E" is not necessary to have an enjoyable or successful game. I know several people who outright consider it a detriment. Those people don't really post here because the game isn't for them on any count.
It doesn't matter what level the bard is does it? To be a renowned performer doesn't require they be a level 17 bard or the PCs even know that. If I'm DMing the same situation and the party tries to murderhobo the bard, I kill them. I don't roll it out or write up a level 17 bard...I finish them.
When the bard is using advanced magics as part of their performance, it matters. When the bard is someone the party might fight much later on in the campaign, it matters. There's a whole lot going on with that bard.
In general, you can use the Bard's mechanics as part of the performance to impress on the party just how strong they are. And that is something I would be doing even if the party doesn't interact with them directly at all.
I'm confused; this sounds like more of an issue with the party than with the system. If your level 4 party starts picking a fight with a level 17 character ... let them? At that point it's more coherent to let the chips fall where they may, and the party along with them.
If the issue is that the party would be too easily wiped out by this high-level threat, then why not try something like Proficiency Without Level?
I used that as the easiest example of a way the level gap could immediately become relevant. It could be just as easily relevant if they tried to lie to get into her graces, or interact with her in any number of other ways.
This isn't hypothetical, for what it's worth. I've done this sort of scenario in a 1E game. The bard is a relevant piece of worldbuilding for down the line. The party did choose to just enjoy her performance, but I wouldn't have underplayed her strength if the party did attempt to interact with her.
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Like, I've had plot-critical high level NPCs show up just in the background early in campaigns. I will put them in places where it makes sense and the party isn't fighting them, yes, but they're still high level. Like, let's say Aria, the most renowned performer on the continent, is putting on a show; the party is second level and watching them. I'm not going to make this level 17 bard level 4 just because the party is nearby and some murderhobo might try to attack them, and then make the bard level 17 again when the party leaves. That's just awful. I want some semblance of coherence here.
I'm confused; this sounds like more of an issue with the party than with the system. If your level 4 party starts picking a fight with a level 17 character ... let them? At that point it's more coherent to let the chips fall where they may, and the party along with them.
If the issue is that the party would be too easily wiped out by this high-level threat, then why not try something like Proficiency Without Level?
The situation with Aria, bard 17, would more likely be the opposite. Aria could be performing on stage when an assassin stabs the duke's son in the audience. The party rushes in to help and then suddenly Aria traps the assassin in a Qunadary spell. Next turn she casts Soothe to heal the son. The party has nothing to do.
Thus, the GM has to avoid that outcome. A solution of moving the assassination attempt elsewhere would be troublesome if the plot requires that the party publicly rescue the son. A 2nd solution of Aria ignoring the action would be a black mark on her character and might inhibit future interactions with Aria when the party matches her level. A 3rd solution of giving Aria almost no combat skills, despite having a very high Performance skill, is more typical for NPCs. She would have legendary Performance +30 but otherwise count as a 4th-level bard. A 4th solution would be Aria aiding the party rather than acting directly. She could cast 7th-level Haste on the party and then start Courageous Anthem. Her excuse for such a half-hearted effort would be keeping her strongest spells in reserve in case the assassination attempt was a diversion. I prefer the 4th solution.
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The statement about this being a difference in degree and not kind is important, here. Someone like Nualia would be a nightmare for first or second level PCs if she were directly translated to pf2e. You can say that Nualia would probably been designed differently if Rise were built from the ground up for PF2E, and that's true. But I don't really consider it positive that you need to weaken the main enemy of the first book in such a direct manner to prevent the question, "why isn't the current arc villain just killing us?" from popping up. She's still quite scary in 1E, but not to the same degree. (And god, I don't even want to imagine that stupid Barghest fight in PF2E. That's an encounter that simply would not exist. Shouldn't exist in PF1E either, to be fair.)
In my wife's D&D 3rd Edition copy of Burnt Offerings Nualla is female aasimar fighter 2/cleric 3 (Lamashtu). That would have to be changed for PF2, since multiclassing works differently. Maybe warpriest cleric 5.
As for the barghest, I was a player in that part of the campaign, and we players simply decided to not open the sealed door that led to the greater barghest.
Nualla was holed up in Thistletop and never directly met the party. She was probably more worried about the professional soldiers that Sheriff Hemlock was recruiting from Magnimar rather than the amateur mercenaries that he left behind. The villain Tsuto did encounter the party directly, but he was only CR 3 and was killed or captured with no chance to report back to Nualla.
The thing that bothers me is how consistently the problem shows up. 3-4 levels is very normal arc length; that's about one book of an AP and about the length of the module. Given that an enemy that's a moderate encounter at the end of the arc is going to be APL+5 or APL+6 at the start of it, why /don't/ they just solo the party early on? They have an exceptionally good shot at doing so. If they take even two lackeys, it's beyond an extreme encounter. Why don't they do that, even? This isn't even some wizard doing a scry and fry. This is literally Jim Sword-and-board ambushing and soloing four people.
A more relevant example is Jade Regent. The backstory is that the Five Storms carefully wiped out the royal families of Minkai so that they could rule through their lackey the Jade Regent. When they discovered a surviving branch in Varisia, they sent ninjas to wipe them out. They unluckily missed Lonjiku Kaijitsu, whom they assumed drowned at sea but had survived. Lonjiku's daughter Ameiko was a surviving heir to the Jade Throne a generation later. If the Five Storms ever learned about Ameiko's heritage, they would have sent CR 9 Kimandatsu and her Frozen Shadow ninjas to eliminate her. If she survived and made it to Minkai in the 5th module, Tide of Honor, then killing her would have been their highest priority. Instead, they sent the 2nd weakest of the Five Storms oni and lost interest after he was defeated. My party (Amaya of Westcrown) in contrast managed to keep the heritage of Ameiko and her sister Amaya secret until the very end. The original players did not let two new players into the secret, though those new players guessed that something was important about those two NPCs. Because the Five Storms never learned about the heirs, they did not make any special effort to wipe out a bunch of well-armed folk heroes.
My players love keeping their characters incognito. In Iron Gods (Iron Gods among Scientists) the party was known in the town of Torch as the young friends of Val Baine who had rescued Val's father from a failed cave expedition, but outside of Torch they changed their names to Gremlinsbane, Nightingale, Lifestealer, Cold Iron, and Jolt. The evil Technic League offered rewards for those illegal adventurers under those false names. For safe downtime to craft, the party simply went back home to their true identities in Torch. When they went to the capital city Starfall, home of Technic League headquarters, they entered under their real names totally under the radar of the Technic League (Inconspicuous PCs Unmotivated in Palace of Fallen Stars).
In Ironfang Invasion the plot of Trail of the Hunted had the party already hiding from Ironfang patrols trying to capture them. In the next module, they were too mobile for the Ironfang Legion to track down. When they finally settled down in the city Longshadow in Assault on Longshadaw the party killed several assassins sent to deal with them. Then the party vanished from the Ironfang Legion's view in two secret missions in the next two modules. The Ironfang Legion headquarters had a crystal ball in the Vault of the Onyx Citadel in the Elemental Plane of Earth to scry the party and send troops with sub-boss commanders to kill the party, but the party was strong enough to defeat the troops. The Ironfang Legion didn't realize that the once-weak party had grown unbelievably strong.
The secret BBEG of the 1st module in Strength of Thousands followed Witch of Miracles' plan. He wanted to murder some Magaambya students to emotionally harm the teachers of the Magaambya, and he developed a grudge against the PCs for foiling a minor plan at 1st level. He sent some gremlins to assasinate them, but my party had reached 2nd level before that attempt and won the battle (actually, they reached 2nd level early due to good roleplaying, so I leveled up the assassination attempt to more dangerous). The BBEG delayed a few weeks to conduct other sabotage and then it was too late as the 4th-level party caught up to him. They did find a plan to murder them asleep in their dormitory among his papers.
The villains do not expect an adventuring party to gain 2 or 3 levels in a few weeks, so they don't feel the need to hurry. Most people take at least a year to earn a new level.
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Firstly, thanks for answering my question; I appreciate it. Secondly ... does it? I'm still not seeing it. All that says to me is that the magic of this world is intended to fill a narrative role of quick problem-solver rather than all-day power spike. Spells are supposed to be deployed as tools for finding a solution to a problem which can be completed in a minute, or maybe ten, with things like rituals intended for longer-term solutions.
Ostensibly, the version of Gloarion in which these spells can last an hour and the world where they last one a minute are the same world, so why has magic changed? So does it actually make sense that these spells are all quick problem solvers? Even if we do accept that these spells were always shorter, duration and different methods were used in PF1, PF2 is left feeling less like a living world because it lacks pages dedicated to longer-term uses of magic. There are hardly even guidelines for making new rituals, much less a tome of such spells.
I mean, you could make the same gamist world argument about PF1E's spells. I played enough high-level games to know the feeling of having to pace out encounters and exploration based on when buffs would expire. It forces the whole adventuring day into this strict schedule to maximize benefit, or requires the players to be aware of options from various sources to help extend and empower those buffs, neither of which ever made adventuring days feel especially organic or simulationist to me.
Imagine a world in which power armour that runs on batteries is needed to be a high-level combat threat. Your adventuring team would plan operations around the endurance of their armour. Take breaks to swap batteries, clean and reload weapons, patch wounds, etc. How is this realistic, but planning around well-understood magical buffs somehow not? The Wizard of PF1 understands that his world is ruled by 6 second periods, just as we understand ours is ruled by the Planck unit.
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The situation with Aria, bard 17, would more likely be the opposite. Aria could be performing on stage when an assassin stabs the duke's son in the audience. The party rushes in to help and then suddenly Aria traps the assassin in a Qunadary spell. Next turn she casts Soothe to heal the son. The party has nothing to do.
This suggests that the very idea of levelled worlds is problematic, and we should either make systems with far flatter growth or ditch levels altogether.
Or that the GM just needs to ensure that Aria has a reason not to prepare any spells not useful to her performance, perhaps a binding contract with the very Duke whose son now lies dead, forcing her to prepare or otherwise not use her potent magic to interact with anything beyond her stage. I would imagine cities and kingdoms hiring minor outsiders to create and enforce such contracts.
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I don’t really understand this talk about bosses and minionguys not going out of their way to kill the PCs while they’re low level. It’s the basics of almost all RPGs and, actually, most works of fiction.
Games, books and movies are supposed to be realistic enough so we can suspend our disbelief - they’re also supposed to twist the reality a little bit to fit the narrative.
It’s the same old James Bond trope; why do all the BBEG put Bond in a machine contraption and leave - giving Bond an escape chance - instead of shoot him in the head and call it a day.
Why do evil leaders in movies just wave their hand contemptuously and say « you’re beneath me, I’ll let my henchmen have some fun hahahha evil laugh » then leave ?
It’s not PF2, it’s every fantasy ever written - including most PF1 bits.
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The situation with Aria, bard 17, would more likely be the opposite. Aria could be performing on stage when an assassin stabs the duke's son in the audience. The party rushes in to help and then suddenly Aria traps the assassin in a Qunadary spell. Next turn she casts Soothe to heal the son. The party has nothing to do.This suggests that the very idea of levelled worlds is problematic, and we should either make systems with far flatter growth or ditch levels altogether.
I have played flatter-growth systems, such as Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game, 3rd Edition and 4th Edition. In a system like that, the PCs seldom can win alone. The bigger group wins, so the PCs are the spearpoint of a bigger group, such as scouts of an army or detectives in a police force.
Or that the GM just needs to ensure that Aria has a reason not to prepare any spells not useful to her performance, perhaps a binding contract with the very Duke whose son now lies dead, forcing her to prepare or otherwise not use her potent magic to interact with anything beyond her stage. I would imagine cities and kingdoms hiring minor outsiders to create and enforce such contracts.
Witch of Miracles said, "I used that as the easiest example of a way the level gap could immediately become relevant. It could be just as easily relevant if they tried to lie to get into her graces, or interact with her in any number of other ways." She simply wanted an example of why a high-level bard would interact with a low-level party on neutral ground. I presumed that this bard Aria would be significant in a later module in an imaginary adventure path, and the GM decided to squeeze in an early appearance by Aria to give the PCs a chance to met her. Sometimes NPCs pop up as the plot requires and the PCs have to immediately acknowledge them as friend or foe. That is an awkward situation, and I have added early appearances myself in order to avoid it. Totally rearranging the society of the city to add weird magically binding contracts is an even more awkward situation. Would the PCs themselves be willing to sign such contracts when they accept a mission from the duke?
I really don't think PF2 makes this any different than PF1. The first PF1 AP I played was Rise of the Runelords. The BBEG of that is such a high level Wizard that he's fully capable of killing us at basically any time once he knows we exist. If he was allowed to use his spells, we wouldn't even know we were being attacked until after we're dead since until the very end of the AP you're not surviving what he can throw down (as it was he nearly killed me with a save or die in the first round of the final battle). The AP has to create a reason why he can't do that because otherwise Scry & Fry ends this real fast.
Considering how game breaking high level PF1 spells get, they're actually worse about this than PF2 ones (where pretty much all of those things were reined in).
The statement about this being a difference in degree and not kind is important, here. Someone like Nualia would be a nightmare for first or second level PCs if she were directly translated to pf2e. You can say that Nualia would probably been designed differently if Rise were built from the ground up for PF2E, and that's true. But I don't really consider it positive that you need to weaken the main enemy of the first book in such a direct manner to prevent the question, "why isn't the current arc villain just killing us?" from popping up. She's still quite scary in 1E, but not to the same degree. (And god, I don't even want to imagine that stupid Barghest fight in PF2E. That's an encounter that simply would not exist. Shouldn't exist in PF1E either, to be fair.)
The thing that bothers me is how consistently the problem shows up. 3-4 levels is very normal arc length; that's about one book of an AP and about the length of the module. Given that an enemy that's a moderate encounter at the end of the arc is going to be APL+5 or APL+6 at the start of it, why /don't/ they just solo the party early on? They have an exceptionally good shot at doing so. If they take even two lackeys, it's beyond an extreme encounter. Why...
And I would not waste my time if the party did not interact with them and I guarantee that the players or anyone involved would not feel a less dynamic world or any less involved in a story for not having done so.
All these elements are only useful to know if you are using them for a story element. If you feel like wasting your time building a level 17 bard that will never participate in your story, have at it. I do not waste my time in this fashion and I have had a full table for over 40 years of gaming.
I focus on building challenges for PCs, not adding unnecessary work that doesn't do a thing for the story or the game world.
I have played flatter-growth systems, such as Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game, 3rd Edition and 4th Edition. In a system like that, the PCs seldom can win alone. The bigger group wins, so the PCs are the spearpoint of a bigger group, such as scouts of an army or detectives in a police force.
Those games tend to require less logic-bending to work.
Totally rearranging the society of the city to add weird magically binding contracts is an even more awkward situation. Would the PCs themselves be willing to sign such contracts when they accept a mission from the duke?
I would assume such contracts are for well-known and usually high-level entrants to the city. The PCs, being low-level, are likely beneath such notice as the game begins, but as they grow more infamous and powerful, it makes sense that ruling interests would want to have protection from them in case the political winds turn such powers against them. I'm surprised that this isn't explicitly a thing in more high fantasy settings.
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The bard was already made from another run of a similar campaign, in this case. It was no additional effort or wasted prep.
If I were running it without the benefit of previous work, I'd not have bothered preparing a statblock. I'd just have a few details like a ballpark number for her performance skill, a few spells she'd use, and so on. The point was just introducing the character since she probably be relevant later, and showing off some of the sorts of things the party themselves might be able to do one day. If other stuff came up I could fill in numbers as they became relevant.
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WRT fictional tropes: Yes, there are tropes like "the villain grossly miscalculates or underestimates the protagonist," "the villain thinks the party is beneath their notice," and all kinds of standard contrivances. I personally find that when the main ways the players interact with things are skill checks and fighting and tactics, and they're expected to earn progress mechanically, they are very aware of when punches are pulled or when it feels like the GM is giving them a bone. Such freebies tend to make the players feel like their agency doesn't really matter.
This is an oversimplification, but books and movies make you a passenger and a TTRPG made in the vein of DnD makes you a problem solver. When you're thrust into that problem-solving seat, it feels bad (at least to me and a lot of my tables) when how well you do isn't really relevant or the puzzle doesn't actually make sense to begin with. The interactive nature of the medium just has a tendency to amplify certain kinds of storytelling faults and bring them to the fore. You are helping write the story instead of just passively consuming it, so you don that authorial hat and become more likely to ask questions if things feel off. You're helping create the story, so you're more aware of the construction lines. I'm not sure I'm expressing this well, but I hope you can at least see what I'm getting at here.
I also think the default tone of these games doesn't match that trope space very well. I can think of many other games that emulate it more effectively, partially because those games set out to do so on purpose.
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This is an off-topic tangent, but it's something I enjoy talking about.
Firstly, thanks for answering my question; I appreciate it. Secondly ... does it? I'm still not seeing it. All that says to me is that the magic of this world is intended to fill a narrative role of quick problem-solver rather than all-day power spike. Spells are supposed to be deployed as tools for finding a solution to a problem which can be completed in a minute, or maybe ten, with things like rituals intended for longer-term solutions.Ostensibly, the version of Gloarion in which these spells can last an hour and the world where they last one a minute are the same world, so why has magic changed? So does it actually make sense that these spells are all quick problem solvers? Even if we do accept that these spells were always shorter, duration and different methods were used in PF1, PF2 is left feeling less like a living world because it lacks pages dedicated to longer-term uses of magic. There are hardly even guidelines for making new rituals, much less a tome of such spells.
Golarion isn't actually defined by the rules. "Ostensibly, the version of our universe in which electrons have orbits around a nucleus is the same as the one where they form a probability cloud around a nucleus"- both are models representing something for convenience. The change is not so much, "Unseen Servant went from lasting hours to only lasting ten minutes at most" as it is, "It's more balanced to represent the duration of Unseen Servant as shorter and requiring active focus". In Golarion-the-setting, mages direct invisible forces to do their bidding in a variety of ways. The old representation where mages could do so effortlessly for hours at a time with almost no expenditure of power was probably too much- we didn't get descriptions of every wizard going around attended by invisible helpers like we would expect the rules to lead to. It's possible that the current rules are overly harsh in their representation of how much effort is required, and that a momentary lapse of attention shouldn't require casting the spell again. Nothing in the setting itself changed, just the rules-lense through which the players experience it. If longer, effortless command of an invisible force is needed in PF2, there is still the Persistent Servant spell and the Phantasmal Custodians ritual.
... Out of curiosity, I looked up some discussion of good long-term buffs in PF1, and the list they came up with was: Hour/level: Mage Armor, Darkvision, Protection from Arrows, Greater Magic Weapon, Overland Flight, False Life, Greater False Life, Greater Darkvision, Water Breathing
10 mins/level: Heroism, Flame Arrow, See Invisibility, Magic circle vs. Evil, Resist Energy, Protection from Energy, Stoneskin, Keen Edge
Mystic Armor actually got its duration improved to "until next daily prep", False Vitality is eight hours, and Water Breathing is one hour, eight hours, or until next daily prep. Darkvision is an hour or heightened until next daily prep, and heightened Fly is one hour. For hour/level durations, that leaves Greater Magic Weapon (there's no long duration version of Runic Weapon) and Protection From Arrows (the spell no longer exists). All in all, pretty minimal changes to the hour-per-level category.
Heroism is ten minutes, See the Unseen is ten minutes with a heighten for eight hours, Circle of Protection is one minute but heightens to an hour, Resist Energy is ten minutes, and Mountain Resilience is twenty minutes. I couldn't find a good equivalent to Flame Arrow, and Keen Edge is effectively rolled into Heroism now, since an accuracy bonus of 1, 2, or 3 expands the crit range by 1, 2, and 3 respectively.
There's plenty of "hours to one hour" and "tens of minutes to ten minutes", but even then, there are a good number of spell heightens that increase the duration. In terms of narrative differences, a powerful mage can't just drop a high-level spell to replace a magic weapon for the day, there's no special magic to absorb damage from arrows specifically, and the flaming rune isn't something you can just cast on a weapon.
I mean, you could make the same gamist world argument about PF1E's spells. I played enough high-level games to know the feeling of having to pace out encounters and exploration based on when buffs would expire. It forces the whole adventuring day into this strict schedule to maximize benefit, or requires the players to be aware of options from various sources to help extend and empower those buffs, neither of which ever made adventuring days feel especially organic or simulationist to me.Imagine a world in which power armour that runs on batteries is needed to be a high-level combat threat. Your adventuring team would plan operations around the endurance of their armour. Take breaks to swap batteries, clean and reload weapons, patch wounds, etc. How is this realistic, but planning around well-understood magical buffs somehow not? The Wizard of PF1 understands that his world is ruled by 6 second periods, just as we understand ours is ruled by the Planck unit.
Spell durations are approximate values that codify the vagaries and eccentricities of magic into a convenient number. However, that doesn't mean you can set your watch by a spell with a 1-hour duration.
While it doesn't change your point that "casters wanting to hurry to get the most out of their spells feels realistic", it's worth mentioning that spells don't last precise six-second increments in the setting. There's a general tendency for how long the magic of a spell lasts, and for the convenience of the game, a lot of the uncertainty of magic-as-it-exists-in-the-setting is removed.
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I really don't think PF2 makes this any different than PF1. The first PF1 AP I played was Rise of the Runelords. The BBEG of that is such a high level Wizard that he's fully capable of killing us at basically any time once he knows we exist. If he was allowed to use his spells, we wouldn't even know we were being attacked until after we're dead since until the very end of the AP you're not surviving what he can throw down (as it was he nearly killed me with a save or die in the first round of the final battle). The AP has to create a reason why he can't do that because otherwise Scry & Fry ends this real fast.
Considering how game breaking high level PF1 spells get, they're actually worse about this than PF2 ones (where pretty much all of those things were reined in).
The statement about this being a difference in degree and not kind is important, here. Someone like Nualia would be a nightmare for first or second level PCs if she were directly translated to pf2e. You can say that Nualia would probably been designed differently if Rise were built from the ground up for PF2E, and that's true. But I don't really consider it positive that you need to weaken the main enemy of the first book in such a direct manner to prevent the question, "why isn't the current arc villain just killing us?" from popping up. She's still quite scary in 1E, but not to the same degree. (And god, I don't even want to imagine that stupid Barghest fight in PF2E. That's an encounter that simply would not exist. Shouldn't exist in PF1E either, to be fair.)
The thing that bothers me is how consistently the problem shows up. 3-4 levels is very normal arc length; that's about one book of an AP and about the length of the module. Given that an enemy that's a moderate encounter at the end of the arc is going to be APL+5 or APL+6 at the start of it, why /don't/ they just solo the party early on? They have an exceptionally good shot at doing so. If they take even two lackeys, it's beyond an extreme encounter. Why don't they do that, even? This isn't even some wizard doing a scry and fry. This is literally Jim Sword-and-board ambushing and soloing four people.
The first response is weakening the villain to solve the problem. But this makes the villain less imposing and interesting, mechanically. And it makes the villain such that they're probably going to end up on level with the party—if not lower—when they're actually fought in ~3 levels. After all, if they can't solo the party at the outset of their arc, they're only APL+2 or 3 at the start of the arc. That means that the eventual fight against them will have them be an APL+0 or APL-1 creature, which I would describe as anticlimactic. If designed so they alone will be a good challenge for the party in three levels, or at least will be a significant part of a severe challenge or extreme challenge, that means they start their arc at like APL+5-7. But again, even the most boring APL+6 fighter-type enemy could probably wipe a party with strike, raise a shield, reactive strike, and nothing else. The math is just that disadvantageous. This feels exceedingly bad.
I did say this is always a question you have to try to jump through some hoops to answer; that was sincere, not a throwaway. To me the problem is that the question just comes up so much more readily. It's one thing to ask why the level 20 wizard doesn't scry and fry. It's another to ask why the cr5 or cr6 fighterguy doesn't just massacre the party at the first sign they're causing trouble.
See, all of this is true... but it's also true in PF1. That's the thing, you said it's worse and it's not particularly worse. In PF1, a single Greater Shadow can wipe out an entire level 5 settlement: most of the people there don't have magic and are thus defenseless against it. It's killing them in ~2 hits, against touch AC (so it's very rarely missing), it can go through walls, and it can spawn more shadows to snowball the whole thing horrifically.
That's a CR 8, so it's not even that much higher than the settlement in question. Hell, a CR 3 Shadow is still a dire threat if it starts in a civilian's house instead of starting with the strongest people in the area, because there will be a LOT of them by time the guards realize anything is going on. So a GM has to keep these from doing that despite it by far being the most obvious thing for them to do.
Spellcasters have already been covered, but even a mid level PF1 spellcaster can dominate a low level area if they know what they're doing.
Theoretically a more martial enemy can be taken down with enough forces in PF1... but that's assuming they can't do anything else. Like sure, if a random Rune Giant shows up in town, throwing enough attacks at it will probably eventually chip it down. Assuming, of course, it doesn't spam its cone attack and be wiping out entire groups of defenders with that every 1d4 rounds or use it's mental magic to get some of those folks to its side... which it absolutely would. Actually using its full power, it's mowing down anything low level that gets sent against it without taking serious damage even if there's dozens of them.
PF2 didn't really make this problem that much worse: it just made it so it's more readily apparent. The only way to really not have this is to have a substantially flatter power curve, which is a very different game than Pathfinder (in any version).
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See, all of this is true... but it's also true in PF1. That's the thing, you said it's worse and it's not particularly worse. In PF1, a single Greater Shadow can wipe out an entire level 5 settlement: most of the people there don't have magic and are thus defenseless against it. It's killing them in ~2 hits, against touch AC (so it's very rarely missing), it can go through walls, and it can spawn more shadows to snowball the whole thing horrifically.
That's a CR 8, so it's not even that much higher than the settlement in question. Hell, a CR 3 Shadow is still a dire threat if it starts in a civilian's house instead of starting with the strongest people in the area, because there will be a LOT of them by time the guards realize anything is going on. So a GM has to keep these from doing that despite it by far being the most obvious thing for them to do.
Spellcasters have already been covered, but even a mid level PF1 spellcaster can dominate a low level area if they know what they're doing.
Theoretically a more martial enemy can be taken down with enough forces in PF1... but that's assuming they can't do anything else. Like sure, if a random Rune Giant shows up in town, throwing enough attacks at it will probably eventually chip it down. Assuming, of course, it doesn't spam its cone attack and be wiping out entire groups of defenders with that every 1d4 rounds or use it's mental magic to get some of those folks to its side... which it absolutely would. Actually using its full power, it's mowing down anything low level that gets sent against it without taking serious damage even if there's dozens of them.
PF2 didn't really make this problem that much worse: it just made it so it's more readily apparent. The only way to really not have this is to have a substantially flatter power curve, which is a very different game than Pathfinder (in any version).
My assertion basically boils down to, "before, some enemies were more dangerous, and others were less dangerous. The more dangerous ones, typically casters or enemies with high defenses and/or nasty gimmicks requiring very specific counters, were horrifying; the less dangerous ones, typically plain martial enemies, were less horrifying, though still strong. This gave you at least some wiggle room if you wanted to use less terrifying enemies, which was common. Now, essentially every enemy past a certain level gap is guaranteed to be horrifying."
To me, you went from having some wiggle room to almost none. I don't think it'd be wholly unfair to argue that some of the less scary enemies should've just had a lower CR, or perhaps that the scarier ones should have a higher CR, and that if that everything were rated correctly I'd be talking differently. But given how utterly inconsistent the scaling is in PF1E, and how diverse strengths and weaknesses can be for monsters and NPCs, my experience was that it was possible to find an enemy that was nominally strong and scary that the party could still handle if I were paying attention to the party. Now, I don't feel like it's really possible in the same way. I just feel like there was such a homogenization of difficulty levels (and perhaps also of ways something can be difficult, though I want to think about that a while before I commit to it) that it went from a hard-but-doable task to a task I cannot really do at all.
Perhaps the biggest difference that lets me feel that it was possible in PF1E is that PF1E still asks you to build non-monster enemies like PCs. Most PC-style enemies (or monsters with PC class levels) are weaker than their CR would indicate because the rules for evaluating the threat level of those enemies are so bad, and it's easy to mess around with their gear and so on and use that as a targeted difficulty lever. PF2E, they're just monsters built with the monster rules, and the difficulty is far more consistent. When you pull up the premade NPCs for 1E, you get such an absurd diversity of strengths at the same CR that it's kind of silly. 2E is intentionally the opposite.