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1) What's getting them ko'd? Just crits, standing around to get hit over and over, or something else?
2) Sure, but why aren't your casters doing the same to the boss? Occult witch (please be resentment) should be taking 1 round debuffs cast by themselves and the wizard and extending them the whole fight.
3) classic speed tuning issue. A result of not having wands of tailwind on everyone, not having fleet and not being elves. Casters need to slow the enemy down with action denial and illusions until walls come online. Pity there's no str martial to properly trip them or fighter to slam down.
4) nothing for this but to get better at tracking things. Purely a player issue.
5) yeah, that's gonna happen. Is it actually happening often or do they only remember the crit successes and not the regular successes?
If you're only using +/-2 then something is wrong. A +2 enemy shouldn't be much of an issue at all and shouldn't be critically succeeding that often outside of lucky rolls or unless the casters decided they were too cool to cap their casting stat.
6) this is sort of the whole point of resistances and immunities. To force the players to work around our through them. However, your party is severely lacking damage which is going to make that sort of resistance painful. You are the gm though, you could tailor your enemy selection to cater to your party by avoiding the things they're bad at fighting.
My own assessment is that your party is probably a bunch of unoptimized characters that are also not playing particularly well. Nothing for it but to adjust down to their level if they're not capable of fixing their characters or playstyle.
What kind of actions are your martials using to not go down? Are they standing next to the enemy and just swinging 3 times? That is going to get you killed.
A level 7 PC should have an AC of 25 at least, with a to hit of +16. A level 9 creature should have an AC of 28 and a to hit of +21. For the creature, they are going to hit on a 4, 9, and 14 for their 3 respective attacks, while critting on a 14, 19 and 20 or better, respectively.
On the flip side, your PC is hitting on the first attack on a 12 or better. But the second/third attacks are only hitting on a 17/20. So your likelihood of hitting on the third attack is the same chance of the opponent critting.
Your martials need to reduce the number of attack they are taking. Every swing by a L+2 foe is risking a knockout. Step on your third action instead of taking a third swing. By forcing the enemy to step up to you before they can swing, cuts the possible damage by 1/3 with nothing else.
Raising a shield also make a difference. It reduces the likelihood of getting hit by 10% and allows a chance to shield block, thus reducing damage. Pair that with a protection or benediction spell and now your AC is on par with the opponent. Meaning they're only hitting on a 7/12/17. A crit on the first attack is on a 17 and the second and third is on a 20 only.
Other options your PCs can use are simple action denial or debuff spells. Slow even on a success still takes away one action. Paired with stepping away and now the opponent can only swing once or can't use its multiple action abilities.
Also, the warpriest is not a caster, they are a melee PC with spells to boost their attacks. Fly, Unfettered Movement, Heroism, Bless, Protection, Benediction are all good spells that will boost the warpriest and/or party members. Heal and vital beacon help to keep the warpriest and companions in a fight.
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To explain how I balance my encounters; I tend to only use creatures and hazards in the range of PL+2 to PL-2 when possible. The party have only ever faced Extreme encounters twice, both of which they went into with an in-game day of preparation and knowledge gathering in advance, and both of which they were allowed to prebuff as much as they wanted before the fight commenced. Every other combat encounter I have ever run has been Severe at worst, and never more difficult than Moderate if the fight was against things with a lot of resistances and/or immunities.
No, that is pretty much right. That is what I would recommend for encounter design.
Three full casters, a Rogue, and a gish Kineticist is an interesting choice for a party. I'm with cavernshark on this one - this is a skirmisher party. They aren't going to like fights that force the toe-to-toe combat style.
So I'm thinking that this is a case where the play experience would be improved with changes to party tactics and maybe encounter setup (rather than encounter math balance).
Characters should be leaning into ranged damage options, mobility and movement types, and evasive/defensive abilities. Battles should feature varied terrain and options for mobile characters to get good defensive positions.
The difficulty settings of PF2 can take a while to dial in for your party and they tend to be more difficult than a lot of players expect. 1 equal level enemy should have a 50% chance of taking down a PC. Level +2 is approximately twice as hard, which can easily mean dropping one PC with a single lucky round of actions. Level -2 is about twice as easy, but that still actually means a level -2 creature has a 25% chance of beating the higher level creature by themselves. It doesn’t exactly work out this way precisely with every creature, but luck really matters and characters going down in encounters is pretty essential to victory. For example, a party that tries to spread their damage around equally to every monster is going to make fights much harder for themselves and take much longer. In reverse, this means that combats have to pretty much be limited to moderate or less if the party expects no player character to ever go down. It is nearly impossible for encounters to be challenging and not have at least 1 of 5 PCs drop, because the shift in action economy advantage is what flips the encounter balance and can be why parties struggle against solo monsters if they aren’t good at action denial.
I really think your party will enjoy significantly shifting down the level of enemies and increasing the number of them. With 3 casters and barely any Tanking ability they really don’t want to be stuck in close against anything that can crit regularly on a second attack. It might seem silly at first, but throw 8 level -4 enemies at them some time or 6 and 1 level -2 enemies and see if they have fun with the immediate sense of feeling overwhelmed shifts into feeling awesome when creatures fall quickly to big spells and crits.
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Just adding my 2 cp...
You should probably discuss with your group that PF2e uses a different paradigm than PF1e (or other games). PCs can't just overwhelm an equal level enemy one-on-one and toe-to-toe; let alone a level +2 boss. They need to use group tactics.
One of the biggest learning curves when first playing PF2e is the need to break certain habits. You can't "win" ("build" a juggernaut that is way above the power curve) during character creation (or by casting a single save-or-die/save-or-suck spell) and you can't succeed by spamming the same action over and over. Every party member should be involved in every round of combat.
As mentioned, it's usually counterproductive to make multiple attacks in the same round (barring some specific class feats to reduce the multiple attack penalty). Also, everyone should be using one of their actions each round to add a bonus to a party member, attempt an action (Demoralize, etc.) to cause a penalty on an/the enemy, Raise a Shield to increase AC, or Step or Stride to shift position (forcing the enemy to use their actions on something other than attacks).
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Regarding 3) Opening up the floor to some free retraining might also help. On the speed front it sounds like your party might benefit from tools that they don't have.
Also - what are they doing in combat? This sounds eerily like my first party which were consistently using -10 MAP attacks instead of moving or using skill actions. Even something as simple as walk to boss - hit - walk away from boss (Or step if reactive strike is involved) would quickly drain the action economy from the boss.
I agree that trying more enemies of lower level will help this party greatly.
You only have one single target damage dealer and they are squishy.
If the kin is earth then they can take some hits and athletics to control some but that's still a weak front line.
So making your bosses be minion masters who either send wave after wave of minions, create minions every round or somehow have a way to keep lots of -2 or -3 minions around would give your 4 AOE capable characters some juicy targets.
Otherwise, casters can often fit into the role of force multiplier, meaning that without a strong fighter/barbarian/etc to be the base force in your group, you aren't getting much out of your efforts.
Just to add to this, anyone playing a rogue should expect to go down more than the other classes. That has been my experience and talking to others they say the same thing. Rogues can hit hard and are great for skills, but they generally get knocked out more than the other classes.
Them not having a full martial (Fighter, Ranger, Champion, Barbarian, Swashbuckler) is going to make fights a little more difficult for them than if they had one. Experienced groups can work around this to an extent.
I would dial down the opponents a notch and maybe have some discussions about strategy.
If they are complaining about mobility, have any of them taken the Fleet General feat or ancestry feats to improve their speed? Have you considered dropping them a 2nd rank wand of Tailwind for the casters or Boots of Bounding for the martial characters?
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Like other people have said, it sounds like players are either a) unoptimised, b) used to bruteforcing things, or c) just not using the right mindset/tactics, or a combination thereof. Several of the party's gripes (resistances/immunities, bosses saving a lot, lots of debuffs, etc) are just inherent in the system, and players need to adapt to it, not the other way around.
Of course, you could "dumb down" the combats and remove the problematic elements. You're the one who runs the game, you get to say which enemies appear. Party doesn't like constructs? Don't have them! There's enough monster variety that you can probably find (or create) a replacement easily enough. Same with high mobility: just move them less or less far.
But, most of all, have a talk with your players! Sounds like you know what they like and don't like. Discuss with them what they'd like instead, and tell what you're willing to change (maybe you get your enjoyment out of throwing status conditions around, and you're not willing to compromise on that, that's fine!), and try to meet each other in the middle. It's not solely a "player problem" or a "GM problem," I think both parties need to compromise somewhat.
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three casters (warpriest, occult witch, wizard) a single full martial (scoundrel rogue) and a frontlines kineticist. They started at level 1, and they are just about to reach level 8 next session.
Gonna give you the honest truth:
1. There is no such thing as a frontline kineticist. 8 hit point classes that don't get Master Armor until level 19 will never be a frontline class unless you really weaken the encounters.
2. Warpriest is ok. Without a champion, fighter, barb, or true frontline 10 hit point class they can heal, they are going to get wasted a lot.
3. Two prepared 6 hit point casters in the group ain't great. Spontaneous is much stronger in PF2.
4. Scoundrel rogue is the worst rogue. Only the thief and ruffian are good. Scoundrel is played by those with system mastery that can manage a weak class for their own amusement.
Your group hamstrung themselves by starting out building a pretty weak party. At least in PF2 such a party can survive, but it's not going to feel great.
1. 8 hit point classes with weak armor classes don't stand up very well in PF2 against bosses. They get crit real easy.
Recommendation: I houseruled that a PC can pick up their weapon while standing up as part of the same move action. It feels terrible to require to two actions to stand up and pick up their weapon.
2. Your PCs should be looking to go first and do that to the bosses. Trip them, slow them, take their actions, and give your party the action advantage. Combat maneuvers in PF2 are part of good group play. A control martial is extremely powerful in PF2. Another reason why a kineticist is not a great frontline character. They use powers and you want a 10 hit point martial using combat maneuvers.
3. Mobility is huge in PF2. You have to choose spells and effects to drop a mobile enemy, especially a flier. Haste your group. Put fly on your control martial as trip knocks flyers to the ground. Pick up Earthbind. And use ranged power with the Reach Metamagic feat if necessary.
Reach Metamagic feat is the most powerful and useful metamagic feat in the game other than Quicken which is usable once per day. Take Reach on every caster you can.
4. Another reason to have a frontline martial as high fort and will saves with the success becomes a critical success really help with those effects like auras, poison, gazes, and the like.
5. Avoid incap spells. Focus on spells that have a good result on a success like slow. Crit successes suck, but you can find spells that do something on a success. It's very important that your casters vet spells by tags like avoiding incap and looking at what happens on a success.
6. This is why you need a big weapon martial that can pound through hardness. Construct hardness breaks after a certain damage threshhold, but you a group of soft hitters that likely have problems breaking it.
d4 cantrips on the casters. A rogue that doesn't get dex to damage. A kineticist using impulses with maybe an ok strength for d6 to d8 damage with maybe strength that is hard to boost with weapon runes. Maybe your warpriest can hit hard, but not sure how you built it.
Put a fighter or barb or champion in that group with a big weapon, high strength, and high athletics using a maneuver and you'll see the difference.
As far as DMing, create some house rules that don't break the game. I like to combine drawing weapons with movement like PF1 did to quicken the start of combat.
I combined the picking up the weapon while standing up to speed up getting back into combat because it does feel terrible to have to stand up, pick up your weapon or gear, and then use actions to use it.
PF2 takes some getting used to for the players, especially if coming from 5E or PF1 where the players have a lot of power. But it is loads easier to DM and once your players learn how the mechanics work, they can build more capable characters that can shift the action economy in their favor and learn to control bosses.
I think you'll want to tweak encounters for this group. Use more and weaker enemies. "BBEG" style single big enemy encounters will wreck a group like this because they lack a frontline heavy who can actually withstand an attack for any length of time.
The good news is you can do a lot without asking them to change their characters by adjusting combats. Add minions. Use things like ranged attackers that can harass from distance but do lower damage.
If someone does want to change classes, a Champion would MASSIVELY boost this party. They have high AC, lots of HP, healing, and their reaction dramatically boosts the defenses of allies. A champion paired with a rogue is a super dangerous combination, especially once Gang Up and Shield of Reckoning come online. Speaking from experience as a GM: a shield champion can make the Rogue standing next to them absurdly trough once you get Shield of Reckoning. It was extremely frustrating for me, and awesome for my players.
Guardian would also work well. Hell, Fighter/Barbarian would also add a lot because they're heavy armor front liners. That's the big gap in this group.
Remind them that things like Trip and Demoralize are huge difference makers, too. Trip is exceptionally strong in PF2.
But in general, as others said: this is a skirmisher party, not a door crasher "charge in and swing" party. They're going to need to fight differently to do well, and you'll want to give them encounters that let them do that. That's the part you can control to let them feel good about the characters they did make. But you can't throw encounters at them that would challenge a highly optimized party because they're not optimized and it'll be a lot harder on them.
You can make all of your "boss" fights puzzles instead. Your party has a lot of problem solving capability, so complicated situations, complex hazards, alternate win conditions, and large exploitable weaknesses could make these challenging but fun, and stand out from your regular battles.
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I don’t really see much value in telling the players to play different characters. Especially for a homebrew campaign where the GM can really be flexible with the levers.
I do think the not wanting any characters to ever drop is a pretty unreasonable general expectation for the party to have though and is worth talking with the table about. Probably, the issue, especially with a party if 5 and only 2 characters getting near the front lines, is that it is the same characters getting dropped over and over again and the party isn’t planning around expecting that to happen and how to mitigate it with tactics. If the party is expecting enemies to spread their attacks out or draw enemies away from focus firing one PC down, they need to have strategies in place to help rotate and replace the front lines. Spells offer many different ways to do this and the players can try out different strategies for it on their own (I don’t find many players enjoy being told exactly what to do, but are more receptive to general strategy ideas when they are actively being frustrated by encounters and trying to figure out how to approach them differently).
All that said, another nice thing about bringing in lots of minions to encounters with a couple of on level or lower leaders is that the HP swinginess of encounters gets leased so it is a little easier for players to see where the threat of the encounter will be. Ending a turn next to a boss and 3 minions should look like the kind of behavior that is going to get someone knocked out, whereas getting hit by a single powerful crit can feel like it came out of the blue.
You're missing Firelion's suggestion to house rule the action tax of picking up weapons away. Our group has a similar house rule we refer to as "sticky weapons". Being knocked prone and having the wounded condition is something our group finds punishing enough without the extra action tax to retrieve dropped weapons.
1. There is no such thing as a frontline kineticist. 8 hit point classes that don't get Master Armor until level 19 will never be a frontline class unless you really weaken the encounters.Going to disagree here. Con +4 combined with the armoring impulses lets a player build for str/melee and can easily keep up a max AC. Weapon infusion gives you access to trip and plenty of other good tactics. Will you outgun a giant bar or iron magus? No. But you'll have more ranged options than them for when the enemy is trying to close with you, when you're closing with them, and for when the enemy tries to escape. So it's more jack-of-all-trades, less dedicated to one specific narrow fighting style...but it'll work.
Recommendation: I houseruled that a PC can pick up their weapon while standing up as part of the same move action. It feels terrible to require to two actions to stand up and pick up their weapon.If it feels terrible, then play a melee kin. They don't need to pick up a weapon. :)
No wonder you don't think kins are strong - you add house rules that give martials free action compression abilities to make them on par with the kin's EB use. Well sure, if you do that, kins look less good.
I like the Kin, but not as a frontline fighter guy. No master armor until 19. Strength not their primary stat for athletics. Impulses even with weapon infusion max at d6 to d8. Even armor impulses just give them what a heavy martial gets, but with no master armor until level 19. Striking and property runes don't boost elemental blast damage even with weapon infusion.
It's not a good frontline class unless you're doing dual class. I have played four kineticist, three to level 17 plus.
Kineticist is a fun class, But not a great frontline class even with the high Con. This game is built on crits and AC resists crits. You generally want a shield user. The kineticist is an action hog of a class that doesn't have feats to improve its ability to use a shield meaning its action economy using a shield.
Bosses hit real hard in this game. You want to control them and protect against crits. The kineticist is not great at either, at least until level 18 when earth can get crit immunity. Tripping is not usually the best use of the kineticist's actions.
I don’t really see much value in telling the players to play different characters. Especially for a homebrew campaign where the GM can really be flexible with the levers.
I do think the not wanting any characters to ever drop is a pretty unreasonable general expectation for the party to have though and is worth talking with the table about. Probably, the issue, especially with a party if 5 and only 2 characters getting near the front lines, is that it is the same characters getting dropped over and over again and the party isn’t planning around expecting that to happen and how to mitigate it with tactics. If the party is expecting enemies to spread their attacks out or draw enemies away from focus firing one PC down, they need to have strategies in place to help rotate and replace the front lines. Spells offer many different ways to do this and the players can try out different strategies for it on their own (I don’t find many players enjoy being told exactly what to do, but are more receptive to general strategy ideas when they are actively being frustrated by encounters and trying to figure out how to approach them differently).
All that said, another nice thing about bringing in lots of minions to encounters with a couple of on level or lower leaders is that the HP swinginess of encounters gets leased so it is a little easier for players to see where the threat of the encounter will be. Ending a turn next to a boss and 3 minions should look like the kind of behavior that is going to get someone knocked out, whereas getting hit by a single powerful crit can feel like it came out of the blue.
I think you should be honest with the guy. For that group, he's going to have to be real careful and build weak encounters as that group is not built for strong encounters.
From what he told us about the group, I expect them to suffer all the stuff they are suffering. That group is not built to hammer.
I've played four kineticists to high level and never had them as a frontline guy as they are not built for it even with Con as a main stat. I've always had weapon infusion and played earth with defensive powers. They're too much of an action hog class to be frontline having to bring up their aura and get things going. Their damage is pretty weak with blasts with weapon infusion.
Warpriest is ok with a warrior with them to support.
Scoundrel rogue is the worst of the rogues in combat. I'm sure it's ok in a roleplay campaign, but thief is the top rogue followed by ruffian.
This is a new group to PF2 and the wizard requires some system mastery in PF2. We've had endless discussions about how much weaker the wizard is now. You really know how to build a spell list for a prepared caster in PF2 with all the new tags and four success levels.
I think its important that for the base game, the group has created a weaker group that would probably be somewhat ok if they had some system mastery for more advanced players. That isn't a great group for a beginner group learning PF2.
If my group made that group as their first group, I'd expect a lot of pain as they are experiencing in PF2. The only sort of easy to play strong class they picked is the warpriest with the healing font, but the warpriest got no one to support well that isn't going to get hit like a truck.
Nearly every single class in the group wears light armor and even the martials don't get Master Armor until late levels. Rogue is like 17. Kineticist is 19. I don't think any of the other classes get Master armor ever.
Even if they added at least one power class frontliner like a champion or a shield fighter, they would probably experience better success.
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I don’t really see much value in telling the players to play different characters. Especially for a homebrew campaign where the GM can really be flexible with the levers.
Yeah I really don't think this is a character problem*, at least with the information we have now. You can get away with a lot of stuff in this system. It sounds like a group not working together to deal with the boss.
*Outside of not having ranged/mobility tools but that's an easy fix.
I think everyone has given reasonable advice. To go further than what everyone else has said, it's generally hard to know what to tell you without seeing everyone's characters.
The group is odd enough on a party level that I feel like I really need to know how their individual characters are built to begin to give more targeted advice. My answer to the OP's question varies wildly depending on how the kineticist is built, the level of optimization on the individual casters and their spell selections, and so on.
OP, if you're still around, I think everyone in the topic would benefit from some more detail on the character builds.
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I have some other suggestions for making combats more fun.
* Smack Talk. Seriously, have the bad guys do combat trash-talking at the PCs.
* Use Terrain. Vary things up a bit by what's on the map. Make it multi-level, have combats over rivers or lava with skipping stones, add cover and other dynamic things. I love having bad guys on top of crates in a warehouse, ready to topple things over, or shoving the PCs into water with sharks in it. Vary it up.
* Make the combat mobile. Have the bad guys move. Let them move in, hit, and move out again.
For your specific group, I agree with the advice to bring the encounter level down a little with more people to fight. I did run one CR+2 encounter for my Season of Ghosts group, but added a few CR-1 minions to it to give the less combat-oriented something to hit.
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I have some other suggestions for making combats more fun.
* Smack Talk. Seriously, have the bad guys do combat trash-talking at the PCs.
* Use Terrain. Vary things up a bit by what's on the map. Make it multi-level, have combats over rivers or lava with skipping stones, add cover and other dynamic things. I love having bad guys on top of crates in a warehouse, ready to topple things over, or shoving the PCs into water with sharks in it. Vary it up.
* Make the combat mobile. Have the bad guys move. Let them move in, hit, and move out again.
For your specific group, I agree with the advice to bring the encounter level down a little with more people to fight. I did run one CR+2 encounter for my Season of Ghosts group, but added a few CR-1 minions to it to give the less combat-oriented something to hit.
These are all great ideas, and I have one to build on them, especially in combination with adding more lower level creatures to encounters: Don't be afraid to let the minions have some personality as well, especially if it allows you to pull punches in the party is struggling with the encounter. If a creature with a good weapon has fallen in the combat already, but the party has had some bad luck and has a character down as well, the encounter can take on some fun new dimensions if one of the goblin warriors decides now is their opportunity to make a move and run over and steal a treasure or pick up a weapon and then flee, or traitor their comrades in the hopes that the PCs will not only spare them, but let them take control of the dungeon when they leave, or try to use a summoning gem or some other treasure ineffectively and have it cause trouble for everyone. It is a lot harder to get the opportunity for those kind of occasional curve balls if there is only one or two creatures in an encounter.
The OP said the players are enjoying the story. The problem is their experience with the system.
If these are all new players to the PF2 system, they chose some of the weakest starting classes in the game with an odd party composition. That's going to make the game feel bad.
It doesn't seem like the OP is looking for ways to spice up the role-play or make the story more fun. He's trying to understand why the PCs are getting hammered and going down so much and why magic feels ineffective.
It's a more nuanced post on "Why does PF2 feel so hard."
For reference, my group has 5 player characters; three casters (warpriest, occult witch, wizard) a single full martial (scoundrel rogue) and a frontlines kineticist. They started at level 1, and they are just about to reach level 8 next session.
That reminds me of my Strength of Thousands party, who are currently 8th level. We have:
Cara'sseth Ti'kali, a catfolk fire kineticist with wizard free archetypeIdris, an anadi divination wizard with Magaambyan attendant free archetype
Jinx Fuun, a tengu enigma bard with druid free archetype
Roshan Azar, a fleshwarp eldritch trickster (elemental sorcerer) rogue with Gelid Shard free archetype
Stargazer, a ghoran enigma bard with druid free archetype
Wilfred Eugenus Rosehill-Aglag, a dromaar redeemer champion with magus free archetype
Zandre, an elf starlit-span magus with dragon disciple free archetype
If these are all new players to the PF2 system, they chose some of the weakest starting classes in the game with an odd party composition. That's going to make the game feel bad.
Everyone except Wilfred's player is experienced in Pathfinder 2nd Edition and good at tactics. Most chose weak starting classes to roleplay being students of magic at the Magaambya Academy. The writers of Strength of Thousands anticipated this and put in several non-combat tasks that earn experience points at low levels to avoid the especially harsh weakness at 1st level. The free archetype has had little effect, except for Roshan's deliberately weird build.
To explain how I balance my encounters; I tend to only use creatures and hazards in the range of PL+2 to PL-2 when possible. The party have only ever faced Extreme encounters twice, both of which they went into with an in-game day of preparation and knowledge gathering in advance, and both of which they were allowed to prebuff as much as they wanted before the fight commenced. Every other combat encounter I have ever run has been Severe at worst, and never more difficult than Moderate if the fight was against things with a lot of resistances and/or immunities.
In theory, an Extreme-Threat encounter has a 50% chance of a Total Party Kill. In practice, the party has some trick to improve their odds of victory. My players like a divide-and-conquer strategy of splitting the enemy into two back-to-back Moderate-Threat encounters.
My party faces PL+3 enemies only as the final boss at the end of a module. Otherwise, the enemies' levels fall into PL+2 to PL-4. In other campaigns I have thrown Severe-Threat challenges at them about twice a level, but I am going a little easier on the Strength of Thousands party with only one Severe-Threat encounter per level.
1. The warpriest and scoundrel often get knocked unconscious in hard fights, and the action tax of getting back into the fight (standing and picking up their weapons) is not very fun for them.
My players mastered tactical teamwork back during Pathfinder 1st Edition. One of the principles of teamwork is to make sure fellow party members do not drop. This is usually accomplished through retreating: if a PC realizes that they can go to 0 hit points in a single turn, then they back away from the enemy to a safe distance. The bard Jinx, the party's primary healer, or the wizard Idris, the secondary healer via Battle Medicine feat, will probably patch them up as soon as possible, but sometimes the healers are out of reach. And the champion Wilfred needs his Lay on Hands for himself.
A frontline kineticist can move out of melee and still attack fine with ranged Elemental Blasts. A warpriest can take a Step back and self-Heal. Don't risk being knocked unconscious.
2. Status conditions that come up a lot in boss fights (Concealed/Dazzled, Frightened, Sickened, Slowed) are frustrating and lead to a lot of wasted actions and bad turns.
Usually an opponent's ability that inflicts a debilitating condition deals much less damage than their primary attack. So my players don't worry about debuffs. Afflictions are the exception--those can hurt a lot. The party carries consumables that give bonuses against afflictions.
3. Strong enemies that don't stay close to the party can be a chore to fight, as their mobility is far higher than the melee players and everyone else does pretty low damage to single targets. They don't find plinking away with ranged weapons, cantrips and elemental blasts very compelling.
The spellcasters in my party have spells for 60-foot range and often longer. Most occult spells are 30-foot range, but the Needle Darts cantrip provides medium-distance attacks for occult casters. And we have a starlit-span magus who always wants to be at long range. Enemies are usually not as prepared to deal damage at range as the party, so they are only plinking away, too. Trying for range favors the party.
Don't disparage cantrips. PF2 is designed so that the spellcasters handle the low threats with cantrips and save their slotted spells for worse threats. Cantrips deal reasonable damage.
4. A lot of passive effects, hazards, auras, area-effect damage abilities, etc. happen in difficult fights, and it can make for a lot to keep track of and it can feel a bit overwhelming.
Enemy auras that frighten or sicken are a pain, but they usually have a requirement that the PC start their turn in the aura or move into it. If the party is properly spread out to avoid area effects, the enemy can usually catch only one PC in their aura.
Typically in my game, the rogue Roshan and the kineticist Cara close into melee, the bards Jinx and Stargazer stand 30 feet away, the champion Wilfred tries to stand 15 feet away from as many of those as possible for his protective champion's reaction but often ends up in melee, and the magus Zandre and the wizard Idris stand at the very edge of Stargazer's Courageous Anthem 60-foot emanation.
The other bard Jinx plays Triple Time to give everyone the speed to keep out of the auras,
5. They all get hung up on how many times (not actually that much) that bosses have critically succeeded on saves against their spells and abilities and how useless it makes them feel when they have sometimes multiple turns in a fight that amount to pretty much nothing.
Yeah, the defenses of PL+2 bosses are hard to overcome. But with your party the boss is outnumbered 5 to 1, so if only 40% of the attacks deal full damage, that is still full damage twice a round. The key is avoiding damage via teamwork while nibbling the boss down.
6. Resistances and immunities are annoying (mostly mental immunity, precision immunity, "resistance to all damage except XYZ", and Construct Hardness as a concept are the ones they get annoyed about.)
This week my players fought a Screaming Sulfur, 10th level, precision immunity, incorporeal resisting all damage 10 except force, ghost touch, or positive, and with a 30-foot frightening aura. It counted as a 40-xp Trivial Threat against the 7-member party plus NPCs, but it felt more like a Moderate Threat in combat given the way it could incapacitate PCs while resisting ordinary attacks. But the party had two ghost-touch weapons in the hands of the heavy hitters Zandre and Wilfred, and Idris threw force spells, so they took it down. And the Screaming Sulfur's aura was auditory, so the bards used Counter Performance to negate it. The setting did not warn of incorporeal creatures, but the experienced players knew to be prepared for incorporeal regardless.
Another point to make is debuffing. The rogue Roshan, realizing that her spellcaster and archer friends would seldom provide flanks, trained in Athletics to put enemies off-guard by Grapple or Trip. She is now a master in Athletics. The true merit of off-guard by Grapple or Trip was not Roshan's sneak attack damage; instead, it lowered the AC of the opponent for all the spellcasters tossing attack spells at it.
The OP said the players are enjoying the story. The problem is their experience with the system.
If these are all new players to the PF2 system, they chose some of the weakest starting classes in the game with an odd party composition. That's going to make the game feel bad.
It doesn't seem like the OP is looking for ways to spice up the role-play or make the story more fun. He's trying to understand why the PCs are getting hammered and going down so much and why magic feels ineffective.
It's a more nuanced post on "Why does PF2 feel so hard."
The OP asked this
Do any more experienced GMs than I have tips that could help me make boss fights more fun?
They also listed out the reasons their players don't always have fun with the harder encounters, so that experienced GMs can make suggestions for the GM around addressing those issues. Because of that, I think it is not useful to approach this advice thread as a general discussion about the difficulty of PF2 or what players should do to fight hard encounters better. As a GM, telling your players they are just not good enough and that they need to get better is a recipe for frustrated players to quit the game, and the issues the OP brings up are fairly easy to accomodate on the GM side of things in ways that don't just make the encounters feel easier. AP writers add curve balls to encounters fairly frequently, as well as bad strategies the creatures might try to employ or things they will waste actions doing in the first rounds of combat all the time. They do this not to just make things easier but to give creatures memorable character.
The OP said the players are enjoying the story. The problem is their experience with the system.
If these are all new players to the PF2 system, they chose some of the weakest starting classes in the game with an odd party composition. That's going to make the game feel bad.
It doesn't seem like the OP is looking for ways to spice up the role-play or make the story more fun. He's trying to understand why the PCs are getting hammered and going down so much and why magic feels ineffective.
It's a more nuanced post on "Why does PF2 feel so hard."
The OP asked this
They also listed out the reasons their players don't always have fun with the harder encounters, so that experienced GMs can make suggestions for the GM around addressing those issues. Because of that, I think it is not useful to approach this advice thread as a general discussion about the difficulty of PF2 or what players should do to fight hard encounters better. As a GM, telling your players they are just not good enough and that they need to get better is a recipe for frustrated players to quit the game, and the issues the OP brings up are fairly easy to accomodate on the GM side of things in ways that don't just make the encounters feel easier. AP writers add curve balls to encounters fairly frequently, as well as bad strategies the creatures might try to employ or things they will waste actions doing in the first rounds of combat all the time. They do this not to just make things easier but to give creatures memorable character.
Do any more experienced GMs than I have tips that could help me make boss fights more fun?
Given the entirety of the post, the OP wasn't looking for "more fun" in ways that are story-oriented, but ways to deal with the issues the OP presented.
Those very much have to do with choosing weak classes to form a party and not understanding systemically why they don't work so well.
His entire group is already becoming discouraged. They have been playing PF2 for nearly a year. Recommending he make the encounters weaker begs the question, "Why?"
That why is because that group composition is not strong. Their abilities don't synergize well.
All the stuff the OP listed doesn't surprise me at all given that party composition. I've been playing PF2 since it came out and it's better to be clear that certain classes are much, much stronger than others, especially in boss fights.
The group would be better off incorporating a few strong classes into the group until they gain more experience.
Everyone except Wilfred's player is experienced in Pathfinder 2nd Edition and good at tactics. Most chose weak starting classes to roleplay being students of magic at the Magaambya Academy. The writers of Strength of Thousands anticipated this and put in several non-combat tasks that earn experience points at low levels to avoid the especially harsh weakness at 1st level. The free archetype has had little effect, except for Roshan's deliberately weird build.
Is this a different DM for your group? Your group is all experienced with PF2 and a very large group. They run with weaker characters and do ok because they understand how things work together and have a lot of room for failure with seven characters or so.
]Everyone except Wilfred's player is experienced in Pathfinder 2nd Edition and good at tactics. Most chose weak starting classes to roleplay being students of magic at the Magaambya Academy. The writers of Strength of Thousands anticipated this and put in several non-combat tasks that earn experience points at low levels to avoid the especially harsh weakness at 1st level. The free archetype has had little effect, except for Roshan's deliberately weird build.Is this a different DM for your group? Your group is all experienced with PF2 and a very large group. They run with weaker characters and do ok because they understand how things work together and have a lot of room for failure with seven characters or so.
I am the usual GM for this particular group of players. My wife (Jinx's player) and younger daughter (Idris's player) are also in an online Tyrant's Grasp campaign with another GM named Tom. My players don't need to optimize their characters because those characters achieve victory through teamwork, and because I adjust the campaign to suit their style (see Common Sense versus The Plot for an adjustment in which they acted like students rather than adventurers).
Rather than viewing seven PCs as room for failure, I view it as seven individual weak points. If a Moderate Threat focused on just a single PC, then that PC is going down. The party will rescue that PC, but it breaks the flow of the combat. A single PL+3 enemy counts as a Low Threat against a party of seven, but that enemy's attacks automatically focus on a single PC each round and can take them down. Therefore, I avoid PL+3 enemies, except for a dramatic final boss.
That why is because that group composition is not strong. Their abilities don't synergize well.
Pathfinder 2nd Edition tactics are quite flexible, so almost every party can find a style that lets the characters synergize their abilities. I had mentioned Roshan's initial plan to use Grapple to make enemies off-guard, because she knew that the party composition would not synergize with a rogue's flanking routine for sneak attack. However, that plan turned out to be more useful for the spellcasters than for Roshan herself, so it became her contribution to teamwork. The wizard Idris has no good focus spells, so at low levels in the 1st module he carefully learned spells of 1 hour duration so that he could buff the party in advance and then cast cantrips during combat itself. Thermal Remedy for 5 temporary hit points was such a good spell for that tactic that Idris now casts the 4th-level version for 10 temporary hit points. The two bards work together so that whenever Stargazer has to drop her Courageous Anthem for other spellcasting then Jinx will start singing Courageous Anthem so that the party is never without the +1 bonus. Usually Jinx sings Triple Time, but the party can handle a turn without Triple Time better than a turn without Courageous Anthem.
Synergies exist. The weirder party compositions have to invent their own rather than copy standard practices.
1. There is no such thing as a frontline kineticist. 8 hit point classes that don't get Master Armor until level 19 will never be a frontline class unless you really weaken the encounters.
Cara in my campaign is a fire kineticist who fights close to the enemy. Her class gives her only 8 hit points, but her key attribute is Constitution, so she has CON +4. Most 8th-level martials have only CON +2, so Cara gains an extra 2 hp per level from her extreme Constitution. She knows that she can take a few more hits than her spellcaster teammates, so she risks herself to reduce the risk on them. And that way she can use Thermal Nimbus in her kinetic aura for extra damage that totally ignores enemy AC and saving throws.
I had fun two weeks ago when the party battled a Dezullon, a 10th-level plant creature with regeneration 15 (deactivated by fire). When it felt the fire of Cara's Thermal Nimbus it instinctive fled from the fire that would negate its regeneration every turn. It ran into nearby shallow pond. From the party's viewpoint, the dezullon wasted an entire turn moving instead of attacking, and it removed its sickening Stench aura from their vicinity, too. They kept casting fire spells at it to suppress the regeneration, but they blamed the occasional unlucky dice roll resulting in a miss or save on the pond water (which had no mechanical effect. This was just roleplaying to reduce the annoyance).
Oh, that is a bit of advice for benwilsher18: sometimes the enemy's own instincts or habits will interfere with the most effective use of their abilities. A cowardly enemy with a nasty aura might chose to stay far away from enemies despite the effectiveness of its aura. An angry enemy with a good ranged attack might prefer to get up close and personal with melee attacks. Enemies are not always great tacticians. Roleplaying a strong enemy as overconfident or overcautious based on their personality can be fun for us GMs.
]Everyone except Wilfred's player is experienced in Pathfinder 2nd Edition and good at tactics. Most chose weak starting classes to roleplay being students of magic at the Magaambya Academy. The writers of Strength of Thousands anticipated this and put in several non-combat tasks that earn experience points at low levels to avoid the especially harsh weakness at 1st level. The free archetype has had little effect, except for Roshan's deliberately weird build.Is this a different DM for your group? Your group is all experienced with PF2 and a very large group. They run with weaker characters and do ok because they understand how things work together and have a lot of room for failure with seven characters or so.I am the usual GM for this particular group of players. My wife (Jinx's player) and younger daughter (Idris's player) are also in an online Tyrant's Grasp campaign with another GM named Tom. My players don't need to optimize their characters because those characters achieve victory through teamwork, and because I adjust the campaign to suit their style (see Common Sense versus The Plot for an adjustment in which they acted like students rather than adventurers).
Rather than viewing seven PCs as room for failure, I view it as seven individual weak points. If a Moderate Threat focused on just a single PC, then that PC is going down. The party will rescue that PC, but it breaks the flow of the combat. A single PL+3 enemy counts as a Low Threat against a party of seven, but that enemy's attacks automatically focus on a single PC each round and can take them down. Therefore, I avoid PL+3 enemies, except for a dramatic final boss.
That why is because that group composition is not strong. Their abilities don't synergize well.Pathfinder 2nd Edition tactics are quite flexible, so almost every party can find a style...
Is the OP DMing your group? That is what I was asking.
8 hit point frontliners with few defensive abilities don't work very well as a frontliners against hard encounters unless you weaken them. They way crits are set up, it's very hard to withstand crit hits for soft targets.
The advice to weaken the encounters with an odd composition group is the best advice anyone can give to new group that built an odd group.
Is the OP DMing your group? That is what I was asking.
8 hit point frontliners with few defensive abilities don't work very well as a frontliners against hard encounters unless you weaken them. They way crits are set up, it's very hard to withstand crit hits for soft targets.
The advice to weaken the encounters with an odd composition group is the best advice anyone can give to new group that built an odd group.
The OP benwilsher18 has their campaign and I have my campaign. But the parties in the campaigns are sufficiently similar, such as having a frontline kineticist, that I figured that descriptions of how my players handle the party composition might enlighten benwilsher18's party.
The kineticist Cara in my campaign cannot stand adjacent to opponents and soak hits for several rounds. That is the job of the shield-raising champion Wilfred, except when Wilfred needs to stand 15 feet back closer to the spellcasters to protect them. But even then, he stands within 15 feet of Cara to protect her. Thus, Cara is borrowing Wilfred's defensive ability. A warpriest lacks a champion's reaction like Wilfred, but instead has a divine font to heal damage. The roles are similar. And a warpriest does not become expert in light and medium armor until Divine Defense at 13th level, so the warpriest's only defensive advantage over a high-dexterity kineticist is Shield Block. The kineticist in benwilsher18's campaign might be a frontliner because only the kineticist, the rogue, and the warpriest can survive the front line, not because any are good at it. They are all 8-hit-point classes.
Which elements does the kineticist wield? An earth kineticist had defenses such as Armor in Earth.
Other commenters have recommended skirmishing, in which the party does not have a front line. Instead, they scatter and move away after engaging the opponent in melee or always stay away and use ranged attacks. Nevertheless, other more obscure strategies fill the spectrum between front line protecting the rear and full skirmishing. One might work well for the party in benwilsher18's campaign.
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Don't forget that everyone gets fresh hero points at the start of every session.
It might be the only thing that keeps anyone from dying once you resume.
Is the OP DMing your group? That is what I was asking.
8 hit point frontliners with few defensive abilities don't work very well as a frontliners against hard encounters unless you weaken them. They way crits are set up, it's very hard to withstand crit hits for soft targets.
The advice to weaken the encounters with an odd composition group is the best advice anyone can give to new group that built an odd group.
The OP benwilsher18 has their campaign and I have my campaign. But the parties in the campaigns are sufficiently similar, such as having a frontline kineticist, that I figured that descriptions of how my players handle the party composition might enlighten benwilsher18's party.
The kineticist Cara in my campaign cannot stand adjacent to opponents and soak hits for several rounds. That is the job of the shield-raising champion Wilfred, except when Wilfred needs to stand 15 feet back closer to the spellcasters to protect them. But even then, he stands within 15 feet of Cara to protect her. Thus, Cara is borrowing Wilfred's defensive ability. A warpriest lacks a champion's reaction like Wilfred, but instead has a divine font to heal damage. The roles are similar. And a warpriest does not become expert in light and medium armor until Divine Defense at 13th level, so the warpriest's only defensive advantage over a high-dexterity kineticist is Shield Block. The kineticist in benwilsher18's campaign might be a frontliner because only the kineticist, the rogue, and the warpriest can survive the front line, not because any are good at it. They are all 8-hit-point classes.
Which elements does the kineticist wield? An earth kineticist had defenses such as Armor in Earth.
Other commenters have recommended skirmishing, in which the party does not have a front line. Instead, they scatter and move away after engaging the opponent in melee or always stay away and use ranged attacks. Nevertheless, other more...
Earth has the low level Armor in Earth. That's their best defense at low level.
They eventually get a cool ability that works with Armor in Earth where they become an earth giant.
The ultimate is the earth form that gives temp hit points and immunity to crits and precision damage at level 16 or 18.
Low level kineticist doesn't have great defenses. Higher level they can get some.
The main frontliner usually wants a shield. It's very hard with the action cost to use a shield and kineticist powers, especially overflow powers.
I wouldn't recommend a new group try a more complicated class like a kineticist as a frontliner. Kineticist is not an easy class to use well as they shine using abilities in combination rather that you learn over time versus a straightforward playstyle like a fighter or champion.
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How often do you give out Hero points and under what conditions? Handing out more hero points can certainly help a group.
As the GM, you can also look over the group and come up with some items you feel would help them. I had already mentioned the Boots of Bounding and 2nd rank wand of Tailwind. If you have a group going up against 9th level threats, hopefully they are at least 7th level. At that point some interesting runes and interesting staves can come in.
Assuming you are not using automatic bonus progression, you should also review the players equipment. Has anyone not had a chance to get an armor potency rune? This is the time you could start giving them armor resilience runes. Has everyone who uses weapons got a striking weapon? Has everyone got an item to boost one of their primary skills.
If you are trying to do a low magic campaign, you should just use the Automatic Bonus Progression. The math in Pathfinder 2e really does assume certain equipment and lacking that does make everything harder than it should be.
Thanks for all of the replies and advice everyone!
We play again in a couple of days, resuming a fight that was going pretty badly for them against a level 9 dragon boss and a level 5 lair hazard. The warpriest is debuffed for the rest of the fight due to critically failing a save and has also been knocked unconscious and revived once, so he is pretty much out of the fight; and everyone else (thankfully including the boss) is down to 50% or less of their HP.
I'm confident that they will win, but I'm not as confident that all of them will survive. We'll see how the rolls go.
I've been reviewing the recent encounters where they struggled (including this one) and there is definitely one key factor in all of them; AOE damage dealers really hurt them a lot more than they should, especially when this damage comes from a higher-level monster that has a DC hard enough that some of them fail their saves on average. The warpriest has the Harm font and doesn't prepare many Heals, so the group relies on the Witch casting Soothe, Life Boost and Summon Unicorn to keep them going, and despite her best efforts if more than one of her allies is getting damaged each round she can't keep up.
I think from a GM perspective, if I avoid using creatures with high damage + high save DC area damage abilities against them in general, then the difficulty scaling of encounters should be more accurate. Their low mobility and quite strict action economy (for everyone except the rogue at least) leaves them sitting ducks for this kind of foe.
AOE damage gets much worse at higher level. AOE spells are some of the most brutal in the game because of the double damage on a crit fail. They can eat hit point pools really badly.
A warpriest with a harm font is a weaker version of the cleric. The two action heal in PF2 is one of the strongest spells in the game. What makes the cleric strong is having a font of max level 2 action heals. Your warpriest went with harm which is always d8 damage whether 1 or 2 or 3 actions unless healing undead.
I guess give your group kudos for surviving while tying one hand behind their back. They really chose suboptimal builds. The rogue is one of the strongest classes in the game unless you're a scoundrel. The cleric is one of the strongest classes in the game as long as you choose heal font. Occult witch is good is choose resentment. Wizard is ok as long as you know what spells to take and slot them in most of your slots.
Your group definitely chose a hard path to start PF2 with. I think they would have more fun if you keep playing with a more optimal party with a fighter, bard, rogue thief, cleric with heal font, and some other of the classes that make the game easier.
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My own personal take on PL+3 / PL+4 boss fights usually includes some of the following:
1) Make defenses like damage immunity dependent on a reaction, but applicable to a wide range of damage. That means it's not just certain party members who have their damage ignored, and the party can get past the immunity by eating the reaction (or at higher levels, canceling it with magic).
2) Lower the attack stat by 1 or 2 to reduce crits.
3) Give the creature interesting options for movement and special abilities that will both entertain and keep the threat high despite reduced attack.
4) Hand out enough hero points that everybody has at least 2 going into a boss fight.
5) Play the creature as dumb and don't have it focus fire unless the players do something that would naturally encourage it (like having only one character engage in melee).
6) Don't use superior mobility to have a creature kite unless that is central to it's personality, or it is already loosing. If the boss creature is sure of it's superiority, why would it kite?
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I've been reviewing the recent encounters where they struggled (including this one) and there is definitely one key factor in all of them; AOE damage dealers really hurt them a lot more than they should, especially when this damage comes from a higher-level monster that has a DC hard enough that some of them fail their saves on average.
NPC spellcasters sometimes seem like they're split between absolute jokes and absolute horrors. Sometimes they're placed in such bad tactical situations that they have no will to live. And sometimes they hit so hard that it's hard to see that the party had any chance against them.
The thing with the really dangerous ones is that they often have a combination of these factors:
- they have high save DCs for their level
- they are higher level than the PCs, so the DCs were hard to begin with, and their spells also do a lot of damage
It's sort of a multiplication problem. High damage spells times high DCs means lots of failures and critical failures.
The warpriest has the Harm font and doesn't prepare many Heals, so the group relies on the Witch casting Soothe, Life Boost and Summon Unicorn to keep them going, and despite her best efforts if more than one of her allies is getting damaged each round she can't keep up.
I think from a GM perspective, if I avoid using creatures with high damage + high save DC area damage abilities against them in general, then the difficulty scaling of encounters should be more accurate. Their low mobility and quite strict action economy (for everyone except the rogue at least) leaves them sitting ducks for this kind of foe.
Another trend I'm seeing here is that it feels like the players don't really analyze and adapt to things that repeatedly cause a problem for them. The low mobility of the frontliners is something that the casters could help out with by preparing Fly and Haste for example.
I don't know if they realize this. Or maybe they're having difficulty seeing the patterns - if you use different monsters all the time, they might not connect the dots that all these monsters cause them the same problems. If you left clues that they might run into more of the same monster, that could cause them to do more of that preparation caster stuff.
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Anyway, I think what the others have said is true; this party has a lot of weak choices in it. If those are the characters the players want to play, fine. But then maybe it's time for you to just make encounters easier. One or two weak characters could have been fine, but if all of them are weak and they're not adapting & teamworking, then this is just not a party that should be playing at "default" difficulty. Dial down the numerical difficulty a bit.
If you're using a published adventure, just put weak templates on some of the monsters in most fights. Or if you're building your own adventures, just use a lower XP budget to construct encounters, and use few L+2 monsters. Again, if you wanted to use a particular monster but it's L+2, just put a weak template on it to make it more like L+1 instead.
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If you are using a published adventure and don’t like applying the Weak adjustment to everything, allow the PCs to be one level higher than the adventure calls for. It achieves about the same thing.
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If you are using a published adventure and don’t like applying the Weak adjustment to everything, allow the PCs to be one level higher than the adventure calls for. It achieves about the same thing.
This can work too. Good mention. Weaken the encounters or let the PCs be a level above.