we are fairly new to PF2 (PF1 player here) how do we survive?
3 PCs (as above) all first level ...
a majority of our combats involve fey, ghosts and phantasms
the gunslinger always stays 50-60 away leaving the other two to take the brunt of incoming attacks
I feel like every fight is 2 players against everything...
I'm not sure if the GM is altering encounters and I don't want to try to look it up because that's a crappy thing to do.
no reliable in game healing source found (found 1 NPC who got mad at us for putting ourselves in danger and gave us 1 minor healing potion). no battle medicine, only the potential of 2 castings of lay on hands (6 points each) from the champion which are used generally in round 2 and 3 of any combat.
we either need to rest 20 (or more minutes) after every encounter or go into every encounter at 1/2 HP (or less... except the gunslinger who never gets hit). The characters are supposed to be in a hurry to check on/save people in this mysterious fog and verisimilitude feel lacking when we have to rest long periods after every fight.
to top it off, our dice rolls suck
advice?
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First couple things that come to mind are for the monk to learn Battle Medicine and keep their Medicine proficiency up, since they're generally always gonna have a hand free for it.
The gunslinger could pick up the Munitions Crafter feat and use that to make Life Shot ammo. It's not spectacular healing, but it works at pretty long range and that feat allows you to make ridiculous number of them for free (up to 20 every day at level 2).
Neither of these helps much at level 1, but level 1 should go pretty quickly, especially if you're dealing with above average encounters.
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OK, first - basic PF1 => PF2 paradigm/meta changes.
For player tactics:
* Blitz attacking (attack, attack, attack, the only defense is dead enemies) is a bad plan. Spend some actions on defense.
* Yes, only making one attack in a round is still a good and productive round. Your first attack is your best attack anyway.
* Battles are won by the group, not by individuals. Focus on party tactics and powerful combos, not on individual power.
* For many enemies, attacking their stats is a good plan. Debuffs can become rather important.
* Similarly, buffs for your allies is also important. The most universally available and constantly repeatable buff is Aid.
For GM:
* Level is the most important stat. It overrides pretty much every other consideration of encounter balance. Don't send over-leveled enemies at the party.
* It is more fun and engaging to have lower level enemies that are 'fighting to win' than to have higher level enemies that you have to 'hold back' with in order to avoid TPK.
* Yes, it is expected that the party is at full HP before every fight. Attrition isn't supposed to be an encounter balance consideration. Only spell slots and n/day abilities suffer attrition.
Next, for this particular group of PCs.
Lay on Hands is pretty good for in-combat healing. It would be better if there were more options, but you don't need a dedicated healer. Like Losonti mentioned, Monk with Battle Medicine is pretty nice. Combo that with Robust Health (once you are high enough level) if going that route.
What you do need to do is work on taking less damage. The Champion is the king of damage mitigation. Between Shield Block and Champion Reaction, they should be able to prevent a good chunk of damage each round. Make sure that the party (at least the Monk) stays near the Champion so that the Reaction can work.
If it is at all possible, make the enemy spend actions on Stride rather than spending your own actions on Stride. A Champion and Monk aren't the greatest ranged damage dealers, but if the enemy is even worse at it, then use the ranged options anyway and force the enemies to come to you. Especially with a Gunslinger as backup. Enemies probably don't want to get into a ranged combat battle with a Gunslinger. So if the party can shave off half the enemy's HP while they are closing the distance to you, all the better.
Enemies sometimes have a weakness that can be exploited. Whether that is a particular damage type that they have a literal weakness to, or a lack of some combat options (like having no ranged attack at all) that you can take advantage of. Also, enemies usually have some sort of special abilities, reactions, or unique attacks that they will make use of that you will need to be aware of to try and mitigate or avoid. This often makes battles feel more like a puzzle to solve rather than a nail that you hit with the same hammer as last time. That is at least the intent. So you are going to want to research your enemies. If your characters know that you are going to be facing fey, ghosts, and phantasms, then they should spend some time in town researching the basics of those types of creatures in general. And then when combat breaks out, it is often a good idea to spend an action or three on Recall Knowledge to find out any special things about these particular enemies that you are facing. It is certainly better action use than making a 3rd attack at -10 penalty.
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I hate to be a nay-sayer... but Battle Medicine can only be used by the healer (the Monk) once per day per subject (the Champion). If this is all you need, great!
Otherwise look into the Assurance & Continual Recovery feats.
Note:
1) A trained 1st level medic with Assurance & 14 Wis hits the Treat Wounds threshold of 15 right away.
2) Continual Recovery is a Level 2 feat and requires Expert Medicine.
If the Gunslinger never takes any damage, maybe he should help with the healing? Or do something non-MAP like Intimidating Glare (which doesn't have to be shouted across 50', in a language that the opponents possibly don't speak).
* * * * * *
At the risk of suggesting an unwelcome change in party composition... perhaps the Gunslinger could become an Archer of the Fighter or Ranger type. Instead of Crit Fiashing when "our dice rolls suck", go for a class/weapon with 0 action reload and higher steady-state damage flow?
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Battle Medicine can be used once per hour - if the target took Robust Health or Godless Healing as a feat.
Treat Wounds is outside the combat, and Lay on Hands can be used there as well.
In any case, in-combat healing is not always needed.
As Finoan said, it is usually assumed that everybody is full health when entering a combat. There are exceptions, but the GM should be aware of it increasing difficulty a lot, especially in a group without a medic or healer.
The gunslinger takes his hitpoints out of the shared pool by staying far away, but that is more of a meta discussion. As soon as enemies appear behind him and he is far from his teammates help, the sniper tactics cease to be that attractive.
Pathfinder2e is a team game, much more so than 1e.
The gunslinger will be really thankful for somebody grappling an enemy (+2 to his attacks basically), for example
First of all, APs are written with a party of four in mind. Either have a fourth character (shared by the players, or perhaps the GM), or ask the GM to tone the adventure down a little.
This very much sounds like Season of Ghosts. Adjust my advice accordingly if it isn't, but Season of Ghosts should have no big time crunch. There's a bit of a narrative disconnect when people are potentially in danger and you need to rest for 10 minutes at a time, but there shouldn't be consequences for taking your time to rest. As said before, encounter math presumes nearly full HP for players. If there's a time crunch or you're going into encounters partially depleted, encounters should be taking that into account. If your GM insists on the time crunch, they should be tuning down the encounters (or dropping more healing items).
Well, there are a myriad of ways to heal that don't require a dedicated spell caster. The easiest of which is to have some with the medicine skill patch you up between combats. And looking at the skill feats available to you, Battle Medicine is the 1st skill feat that makes sense to grab (from the Medicine skill).
But also, as others have noted APs are written assuming a 4 person party. If you have less than that, the GM should be reducing the enemies in some way to compensate.
Even if you had a cleric, they wouldn't be able to keep up with the healing needs by spending spells or even healing fonts. These are good for keeping someone from going down in a fight, but not for topping people up between fights (which is the general expectation for combat). All of which is to say....I get that it breaks immersion to need to rest between fights, but that's more an issue with the way the adventure is written for such low level characters.
Or perhaps, you just need some mental reframing. Yes, you're in a hurry. You want to save people. But you also know that doing so recklessly will just get you, and any survivors killed.
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It helps to frame damage not as wounds, but as general short term exhaustion, headaches, cuts and bruises.
Catching your breath, get a little stitching on that nasty cut, put some poultice on the shoulder and chew some herbal remedy.
Drink some water, have a snack.
Get a refreshing massage from the divine hands of your champion.
Stretch your muscles, refocus your concentration, repair the dent in the shield.
Crawling into the boss fight to keel over during his speech won't help the captured villagers one bit!
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Otherwise look into the Assurance & Continual Recovery feats.
Note:
1) A trained 1st level medic with Assurance & 14 Wis hits the Treat Wounds threshold of 15 right away.
This is incorrect. Assurance ignores your ability bonus. It is 10 + level + proficiency. At level 1 that is 13. so it doesn't help you. By level 3 however, even at just trained you hit the DC 15 with assurance. You can hit DC 20 (expert healing 2d8+10) by level 6. Master DC 30 by level 14.
Assurance is still 100% the way to go with medicine, it just doesn't come online until level 3 unless you get a proficiency boost at level 2 (see rogue, investigator, etc.)
That being said, at level 1 with a +2 wisdom, a PC only has to roll a 10 to succeed at a medicine check.
At the risk of suggesting an unwelcome change in party composition... perhaps the Gunslinger could become an Archer of the Fighter or Ranger type. Instead of Crit Fiashing when "our dice rolls suck", go for a class/weapon with 0 action reload and higher steady-state damage flow?
I don't see anything wrong with the gunslinger. I admit that my experience with gunslingers is from Pathfinder 1st Edition in my Iron Gods among Scientists campaign, but I skimmed the rules for PF2 gunslinger and the chassis seems solid enough.
"Our dice rolls suck" is a temporary condition unless the reason the rolls suck is that the build depends on rolls of natural 15 or higher. Most classes can hit an average opponent on a roll of natural 11 or higher. The gunslinger has expert proficiency with firearms and crossbows but only 1d4 precision damage from Slinger's Precision beyond the weapon dice rather than a +4 Strength bonus, so they will depend on critical hits to enhance their damage to martial-character expectation, but a regular hit is good enough against Moderate Threats.
Gunslingers rely on their Gunslinger's Way to deal with the action-economy cost of a Reload 1 weapon. What is the way of the gunslinger in gourry187's campaign?
we are fairly new to PF2 (PF1 player here) how do we survive?
3 PCs (as above) all first level ...
a majority of our combats involve fey, ghosts and phantasms
the gunslinger always stays 50-60 away leaving the other two to take the brunt of incoming attacks
I feel like every fight is 2 players against everything...
Why is the gunslinger staying so far back? Fey, ghosts, and phantasms typically lack Reactive Strike (formerly known as Attack of Opportunity) to take advantage of the gunslinger's Interact action to Reload. The gunslinger would be safest staying only 15 feet back within range of the champion's protective reaction. The gunslinger ought to have Dex +4 and light armor, giving them AC as good as the monk's AC, so they do not need the distance because of fear that an enemy will charge them to take advantage of low AC.
Given that no-one in the party is squishy, I recommend a skirmishing style of combat rather than a front line and back line formation. Finoan's advice not using blitz attacking is correct. For example, the monk does not need to stand next to the enemy. Instead, the monk could Stride to the enemy, make two Strikes with a Flurry of Blows action, and then Stride away from the enemy, like a PF1 Spring Attack. That forces the enemy to Stride themselves, losing an action. Next turn the monk can pull a trick such as Demoralize rather than the first Stride and have an action-economy advantage over their opponent. Champions are not as mobile, but they have heavy armor and can afford the Raise a Shield action. The champion should move keep both other PCs within range of Champion's Reaction (which one do they have?) if possible, even if that means one fewer Strike.
With the party working hard on avoiding damage rather than soaking up damage, the gunslinger will become a target more often, but they can bear being a target, especially with a champion nearby.
no reliable in game healing source found (found 1 NPC who got mad at us for putting ourselves in danger and gave us 1 minor healing potion). no battle medicine, only the potential of 2 castings of lay on hands (6 points each) from the champion which are used generally in round 2 and 3 of any combat.
My players view a need for in-combat healing as sign that they are not defensive enough in combat. Defense is never perfect, so a single Lay on Hands or Battle Medicine can be necessary, but needing two per combat shows either a high-threat battle or a lack of defense. My PCs typically heal between encounters, even when it takes 20 minutes.
I'm not sure if the GM is altering encounters and I don't want to try to look it up because that's a crappy thing to do.
Pathfinder 2nd Edition (and earlier editions) give 1st-level characters fewer hit points than they need. 1st-level humanoid opponents, such as Bloody Blade Mercenary and Dwarf Warrior, typically have 19 or 20 hit points. This shortage is mostly corrected at 2nd level.
If the GM is not altering encounters, then an encounter that would give 4 PCs 60 xp each would give 3 PCs 80 xp each. The extra 33% experience will have the party at 2nd level sooner than expected and temporarily correct the unaltered encounters. If the GM uses milestone leveling rather than experience points and is not toning down the encounters, then the GM ought to give the party an extra level.