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A recent discussion in the thread Need help with spell casters raised the question of what makes Pathfinder combat meaningful. I feel that that topic deserves its own thread.
The actual problem might not even be the class balancing, but the encounter design our GM prefers. Our GM does not like meaningless combat. Which means fights need to be dangerous to a certain extend. Also book keeping lots of enemies is not really fun for the GM. It drags the length of combat. So in practice this often means we have 3 to 4 combats per adventuring day. Almost every combat is atleast a severe difficulty encounter with a few enemies of party level or fewer enemies above party level. Enemies of party level -1 we see rarely. Party level -2 enemies I have never seen in any serious encounter.If GM is repeatedly applying Severe Encounters...
Severe-threat encounters are the hardest encounters most groups of characters have a good chance to defeat. These encounters are appropriate for important moments in your story, such as confronting a final boss. Use severe encounters carefully—there's a good chance a character could die, and a small chance the whole group could. Bad luck, poor tactics, or a lack of resources can easily turn a severe-threat encounter against the characters, and a wise group keeps the option to disengage open....then what you describe is the system working as intended.
Perhaps your best argumentation is asking them: Q) Does avoiding "meaningless combat" mean every fight must be a "final boss"?
Seisuke stated that their GM believes that combat has to be dangerous to be meaningful, so the GM skips Trivial-, Low-, and Moderate-Threat combats.
I myself base the severity of combat on the setting. If the party is entering an enemy castle by climbing a wall and fighting the guards on watch atop the wall, then the guards are probably Low Threat because they were just keeping watch. When the party descends to the courtyard, all the soldiers in the castle have reacted and regrouped. so the party will face a Severe-Threat or Extreme-Threat challenge. I explained my philosophy in Encounter Balance: The Math and the Monsters, comment #2.
Raiztt raised the question of meaningful combat in that Encounter Balance thread at comment #58:
So, this is a sprawling discussion of math and balance, but I notice that something very important to encounter design is absent:
Is the encounter fun or engaging?
As a DM of almost 20 years, I can say that after you've figured out your math you've still got several important things to consider:
1.) Enemy motivation/goals - Alternate Lose Conditions
2.) Player motivations/goals - Alternate Win Conditions
3.) Unusual or impactful terrain
4.) Interactables
5.) Diverse enemy types/abilitiesWithout one or more of these elements, no matter how perfectly tuned your encounter is, it will be boring.
Numbers 1 and 2 are especially important. When I'm creating an encounter, I make sure that the encounter matters beyond whether or not the PCs live or die. If you're going to be running a long campaign, you need to have ways for your PCs to 'lose' that does not involve a TPK and the campaign ending.
I piggyback the importance of the combat encounter on the party's mission. I remember a time in the module Forest of Spirits when the party was supposed to go deep underground below the House of Withered Blossoms to investigate a mystery. The house itself was occupied by hostiles, but the party sent their stealthy characters inside and eavesdropped to learn that the hostiles had nothing to do with the mystery. So they skipped the house itself and went directly underground. Combat in the aboveground house would have been a waste of time and resources in my players' opinion.
Another time in Spoken on the Song Wind, second module in Strength of Thousands, they decided to conduct a sting operation to capture some robbers stealing musical instruments from street buskers. They teamed up with some buskers, advertised a performance by the buskers, and blended into the crowd. They jumped the robbers, captured two immediately, and sent their familiars to follow the others to their hideout. The plot as written in the module simply had them Gathering Information to locate the hideout, but my players' idea was more fun. This was an easy combat, because they caught only the two weakest robbers and others would rather escape than fight, but it was very meaningful. Further details are available at Virgil Tibbs, Playtest Runesmith, comment #8.
By Raiztt's five points, the robbers' motive was to grab loot and escape. Some failed at that and some thought they succeeded. The player characters' motives were to identify and capture the robbers, and they were on the path to success. The escapes were only a temporary setback because they had planned for their stealthy familiars to follow. The unusual terrain was a marketplace full of people, so no Fireballs. The robbers interacted with the loot, which was a cheap drum off to the side disguised as an expensive drum via Item Facade. This encounter had some fairly ordinary robbers, but due to the playtest I added a playtest necromancer at the hideout as an ally of the robbers.
On the other hand, the battle at the hideout was a Severe-Threat encounter. The module set it up as three separate encounters: Low Threat against the two missing robbers, Low Threat against the third robber, and Moderate Threat against the fourth robber, but I grouped the last two together and added the necromancer. It came out as only Severe Threat because the party had seven members and the playtest runesmith. I figured the battle would be more meaningful with the robbers fighting side by side.
When is a combat meaningful to your characters?
Depends on the character, player and situation. Sometimes being a badass is fun, sometimes failing a side objective is engaging, sometimes struggling and overcome something is satisfying. Sometimes it's the die rolls, sometimes it's the banter and sometimes it's the consequences of your actions.
Running an AP is often less enjoyable unless the GM alters combats because having a good variety of challenges that include things your good against and some your not is needed. Every combat being similar, IE only small numbers of +1 or +2 enemies per encounter, fails to give variety that spreads the challenge around. Having secondary or environmental concerns also add healthy complications to encounters.
Getting to know what the characters can do and who your players are to provide entertaining combats is part of a GMs challenge.
Currently for me both my ranger and summoner feel good when they can use their abilities. My ranger mostly just sneaks about and turrets, so getting stealth and hitting two bow shots while my dino gets two hits in is the highlight of my turns. While my summoner prevented a down from a crit and managed to do some nice aoe damage so felt nice and useful.
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Putting meaningfulness aside, I'm more concerned with whether or not the combat is interesting, both as a player and as a gm, regardless of system.
I've long since found that, without a lot going against the party, moderates and below are simply unengaging from a combat execution perspective. They can be handled entirely on autopilot without a single daily resource being spent. That isn't to say that they can't be interesting or meaningful on a narrative level, but in that case there's no need to bother with the combat engine either.
Speaking purely as a player, the advice I see some people give about throwing in lows and such to make the players feel good is positively insulting. The ttrpg equivalent of "this meeting could have been an email."
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Putting meaningfulness aside, I'm more concerned with whether or not the combat is interesting, both as a player and as a gm, regardless of system.
I've long since found that, without a lot going against the party, moderates and below are simply unengaging from a combat execution perspective. They can be handled entirely on autopilot without a single daily resource being spent. That isn't to say that they can't be interesting or meaningful on a narrative level, but in that case there's no need to bother with the combat engine either.
My wife says that Moderate-Threat encounters are her opportunity to experiment with new tactics. The Severe-Threat encounters are challenging and require proven good tactics, but she discovers the good tactics for her current character at their current level by experimenting.
Speaking purely as a player, the advice I see some people give about throwing in lows and such to make the players feel good is positively insulting. The ttrpg equivalent of "this meeting could have been an email."
Sometimes, I throw a formerly difficult monster, which had been Level+2 on the first encounter, at the party after they have leveled up so that the monster is Level-1. This is to show them how much they have improved.
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Running an AP is often less enjoyable unless the GM alters combats because having a good variety of challenges that include things your good against and some your not is needed. Every combat being similar, IE only small numbers of +1 or +2 enemies per encounter, fails to give variety that spreads the challenge around. Having secondary or environmental concerns also add healthy complications to encounters.
Getting to know what the characters can do and who your players are to provide entertaining combats is part of a GMs challenge.
I have to routinely alter adventure paths because I run oversized parties of seven PCs. Against multiple enemies, I can simply add more enemies, but a combat against a single boss requires leveling up the boss or adding minions or having merely a Moderate-Threat encounter with the boss. Spoken in the Song Wind had two plot lines with separate final bosses. I swapped the order of the adventure, so they hit the 9th-level boss at 6th level and the 8th-level boss at 7th level. The challenge of the 8th-level rogue boss changed. Instead of stationary combat, he ran and hid in the forest. They had to spread out to find him, leaving them in a tactically more awkward situation where he could gain sneak attacks from hiding.
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Putting meaningfulness aside, I'm more concerned with whether or not the combat is interesting, both as a player and as a gm, regardless of system.
I've long since found that, without a lot going against the party, moderates and below are simply unengaging from a combat execution perspective. They can be handled entirely on autopilot without a single daily resource being spent. That isn't to say that they can't be interesting or meaningful on a narrative level, but in that case there's no need to bother with the combat engine either.
Speaking purely as a player, the advice I see some people give about throwing in lows and such to make the players feel good is positively insulting. The ttrpg equivalent of "this meeting could have been an email."
I think it's a useful point to look at for this discussion. "Meaningful" and "interesting" aren't exactly the same thing. "Interesting" could also be replaced by "fun" maybe. Why is a combat fun? It could be fun because it's meaningful, but it could also be fun because it's got just the right amount of difficulty for you to feel challenged.
I think a combat can be "moderate" or "low" and still be interesting, and the combat engine actually being a decent engine for the situation, but then it has to be something different than just "here's a small featureless room, now everyone tries to kill each other".
For example, maybe the real goal of the combat is to free some prisoners, which are tied up on a high ledge. The enemies aren't that impressive to the PCs, could just be a low threat if the PCs are fighting them directly. But there's a lot of climbing and difficult terrain in between and there's extreme time pressure because the monsters can execute helpless prisoners. So players may need to come up with "inefficient" approaches like spending spell slots to translocate there, or come up with clever plans for sneaking up or luring out the enemy by sending only one PC out to look like easy prey.
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Now, this is unusual. Most Low difficulty fights aren't set up so interestingly. But to compare; "this meeting could have been an email" because there weren't interesting points on the agenda, vs. because the people at the meeting weren't powerful VIPs. You can absolutely have a very good meeting with low-ranking people who are well-informed and came prepared with good talking points. Meanwhile, some meetings with VIPs who didn't really have anything particular to say can just be a ceremony that you have to do because they're important but it also feels like a waste of time.
Personally I actually feel quite aggravated about encounters that are quite hard but don't really do much in the story. There was just a really hard monster here just because. It wasn't a significant individual, they just needed another encounter to reach a total XP budget and this was the monster of the right creature type closest to the target level that they hasn't used yet.
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Combats are meaningful if they drive the story and/or provide a challenge.
1. You can have a bunch of weak combatants letting the players flex if the job is to intimidate a bunch of low challenge enemies to make the PCs look tough and send a message to the bad guys or to carve a path into enemy headquarters that eats some resources as they make their way to the BBEG.
2. Hunting down some huge monster that is a challenge, but isn't necessarily integral to the story. More of a side quest tossed in to break up the monotony.
For the challenge, I try to get a real good feel for the PCs capabilities then ramp the challenge to the point of pushing them to the brink of death. I want the PCs to feel like they could have died. If my PCs are saying things like, "I thought were going to die" or "I didn't think we would make it", but they still win then the goal is accomplished.
What I don't bother with is encounters with no meaningful reason to exist. I'm not a big fan of sandboxes. I much prefer story driven games with combats deriving from the story. Sandbox encounters I often handwave is I know they will be no real challenge and have no meaningful story addition.
I like to collapse lots of encounters in quick succession so as to strain party resources and really make them feel pressed like a real battle would. Very little downtime. Hit the enemy hard and fast or get hit hard and fast. I can't see why enemies would let a party prepare to destroy them or recover resources rather than press them.
I like to give the enemy the necessary resources to mount a challenge. If intelligent enemies, then adding caster and healing support like a PC party would have. If a huge monster, then boosts it CR or hit points to withstand concentrated attack long enough to be a threat.
You want the fight in the mind's eye to mirror a fantasy novel or game or action movie where the PCs win, but also know the stakes are high and the danger is real.
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I think the notion of meaningful combat here isn't unitary: a combat encounter can be meaningfully enjoyable and tactically engaging, but meaningless to the narrative of an adventure, just as a narratively meaningful battle can feel meaningless on a gameplay level if the encounter is trivial or excessively samey. One of the major issues underpinning the other thread was that Seisuke's GM appeared to be treating Pathfinder's encounters like a single-speed system, when in practice combat offers many ways of being fine-tuned to the party's tastes: contrary to general expectations, making those encounters easier could likely have made them more meaningful by virtue of making them less frustrating, but even within that same difficulty range, changing enemy distributions and levels would also have made combat more diverse, and given that player's character a bigger chance to shine.
For me, there are many ways in which an encounter can be made more meaningful, whether by making it more mechanically interesting or tying it more to the narrative: ideally, a meaningful encounter should introduce something that invites the party to play a bit differently during combat, whether it be an enemy's special ability, inter-enemy synergy, or an environmental feature, as well as introduce an element to the narrative that gets the party to think about how the encounter fits into the story: even a bog-standard encounter against some low-level skeletons can be meaningful if this is the party's first time dealing with the skeletons' resistances that adventure, and if the skeletons serve as foreshadowing that the party's going to be dealing with more necromancy later on. So long as the encounter adds something to the session, it has some degree of meaning, and the more it can be tied to the story and made interesting for the party to fight, the better.
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I don't think doing low threat encounters one after another is a lot of fun, but dominating enemies without having to get out the biggest spells can be rewarding from time to time.
Combats that required all the tactics, ressources and tricks and still were very close tend to be remembered the longest, but they are also exhausting both in-character and as a player.
Being integrated into a/the story is a defintive plus, of course!
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As you've already touched upon, combat is the means for an entirely different end.
It's about having fun, but to be more specific, combat is storytelling. This is why genuine risk of PC death can sustain the tension and stakes for many people. Part of that fun is the *lack* of agency in the RNG dice-rolls. Dice are a chaos element that disrupts expectations, so the story "writes itself" against the will of the participants, GM included.
The biggest tension that takes away from combat being a fun storytelling tool is that of time and pacing. Slowing things down to roll initiative and conduct combat is appropriate when there is real danger or narrative stakes like hostages, etc, but this also means that it is "overkill" to actually engage in combat vs weaker foes, or petty scuffles much of the time.
This is where playing via Foundry is not a pure plus anymore, as while it can make things faster for the GM in normal combats, it also raises the setup floor required to make an encounter happen.
A VTT like Foundry most especially makes improvised pseudo combat a harder thing to pull off, as the GM scrambles for a map, tokens etc.
I have never seen nor heard of a GM who has set up a "theater of the mind" Foundry ~map where you can still use its automation for actions and rolls, but specifically does not use a battle map.
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To bring it back around to the topic:
Combat is meaningful when it makes a difference to the story being told. If in hindsight there was no change, no new, then the combat might as well have not existed.
This change can be something mechanistic like a PC being killed, but I'd argue most of the time that's not where the meaning comes from. It's far more likely that combat is progressing a story, and not just the central plot thread of an AP.
A PC getting tired and frustrated, then crossing a personal moral line, is an example of meaning created by combat. Even something as simple as trying out a new planned tactic in combat adds meaning; either a success or fail both "add new text" to that player/PCs own story.
This is also why I get so bothered by crappy AP writing that forgets this. If you're there to get a McGuffin, writers must not have that be the sole "new," because that's the one bit of progress or "story" that's locked in as certain, it's very hard to write those checklist tasks in a way that gives them meaning. I'm still salty about the Vesicant Egg being so irrelevant that it may not even meet the threshold to be a McGuffin.
The PCs are expected to win, so it's the context of fights, all those uncertain variables, that creates the most meaning.
If the AP writes that some petty criminals instantly jump to "kill them all" murder-on-sight, that changes the meaning. If the AP expects the party to then kill all the petty criminals and loot the place for themselves, that is imposing story onto the players that they may find distasteful.
The writers of SoT often fail to understand that combat is a delivery vehicle for meaning, and that if the writer fails to select /create a meaning, something unintended is still going to be delivered.
We just had yet another "I cannot believe they wrote this" plot development in SoT, but I'll refrain from cluttering this thread. Might sit on the itch enough to get me to post in another thread about it. Makes me wonder how many folks actually played SoT up to L14 before glazing it.
Stolen Fate and Gatewalkers both did a much, much better job.
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Combat also doesn't have to mean getting the other team all down to 0 hp. From recent PFS examples:
I get lucky with a crit and one-shot the boss of a group of thugs in the first round of combat after saying stylish*, thugs all give up.
Encounter with a un underground room full of cultists with a narrow entrance, and I have Igneogenesis and immediately wall them in, cultists all give up.
Room with a few sleeping guards, and I'm a sneaky character with manacles; I cuff them to their beds and skip the combat part entirely.
Easy combats are perfect opportunities for a little improv.
* I pointed with a finger gun, said "Bang", and cast Needle Darts, and down they went. :3
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I think easy combats can be fun, in the same way that a candy bar can be fun without being memorable or meaningful. Meaningfulness is one way a combat can be fun but not the only one.
For example, you run into some goods working for the BBEG and they bluster for a bit and insult your party. And then you decide you've had enough and show them how painfully outclassed they are. This can be a really satisfying little fight without being truly challenging.
I do think the amount of set-up to make a combat makes a big difference. If a combat is over faster than it took to roll initiative, if some players didn't even get a turn, that tends to be lackluster. This does vary a lot by method of play, as Trip.H points out. If the GM can quickly sketch out a battle mat and get everyone in initiative that lowers the barrier for a fight to have the potential to be fun. Some of that is easier on VTT and some of it is harder.
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On the other hand, "does the party survive the high level monster" is a meaningful stake, but it does get old. What I'm thinking about is also, that it enables lazy encounter design. Stakes like that start out very basic: the encounter is challenging because the monster has high numbers.
Encounters with different stakes often already hint at a less-lazy design. "Can we save the hostages" or "can we stop the countdown while attacked by waves of enemies" suggests a lot more about layout of the battlefield, positions of enemies and overall that the players have to split their efforts between fighting and doing other things.
You can use interesting terrain with a boss monster too, but you're not automatically forced to think about it.
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Especially as a spellcaster, high-level enemies are often frustrating. Using your best spells early and seeing them bounce off a critical save is not great. Spending multiple rounds figuring out what save to target before committing to a big spell is also painful. Yeah, missing as a martial is also frustrating, but it's more frustrating when you're spending a limited resource.
High level enemies can be fair and balanced fights. The action economy of the party means they get many shots, some of which get through, and this eventually wins them the fight. But I don't find that very fun. I'd rather have the same XP budget of more mid-level enemies that we have less action advantage against, but more of our spells get through.
Now, interesting encounter design and stakes are a different way of adding challenge. Spending the XP budget of a Moderate fight on enemies, you could set up a fight in flat simple terrain, or in a complicated situation where the players also have to deal with the terrain and spend actions untying hostages and so forth. That does make it harder than typical for a Moderate fight. BUT, it makes it harder without inflating enemy numbers. So we have challenge and interest with less of the frustration of "the GM always picks high level monsters and they always crit on saves against my spells".
I believe, as it was raised in the other thread, that the GM is confusing "meaningful" with "difficult."
This was a common attitude during D&D 3.x/PF1e because of the way character optimization often made APL +3 combats "challenging" (what would be considered moderate encounters in PF2e) and APL +2 or lower combats "easy." However, PF2e's rating of encounters is much more accurate; even Paizo initially skewed encounter difficulty too high in Age of Ashes (from the feedback on the AP) before getting a better feel for the system.
Combat is meaningful when it makes a difference to the story being told. If in hindsight there was no change, no new, then the combat might as well have not existed.
I also believe that combat is for generating story, but sometimes the piece of the story is very small. I am currently running Hurricane's Howl. The module began well with the party traveling to the ruins of Bloodsalt for archaeology. It had two encounters on the road through the jungle to Bloodsalt. The story of the encounter against animals was only, "The jungle is dangerous." The story of the encounter with a small bandit gang is that the bandits were fleeing because a bigger bandit gang, the Knights of Abendego, wanted to absorb them. That was a moment of foreshadowing. My party laughed at them (the double-sized party reduced an intended Severe 8 down to Low 8) and gave them a map to Whitebridge Station where maybe they could find semi-honest work with the Aspis Consortium.
In addition, this journey was also the party's first time camping out at night and setting up watch, so I gave them a night encounter, too. It was only Trivial Threat, but the two PCs on watch had to deal with it alone for a round and protect the champion's mount from being eaten.
Putting meaningfulness aside, I'm more concerned with whether or not the combat is interesting, both as a player and as a gm, regardless of system.
="Deriven Firelion"] Combats are meaningful if they drive the story and/or provide a challenge.
Sometimes a combat is meaningful as a challenge rather than as part of the plot. This still builds story, but the story is about how the PCs handled the challenge. The way a PC fights can reveal their personality. The encounter during night watch had nothing to do with the plot of Hurricane's Howl, but it did relate to the overall Strength of Thousands story of the PCs graduating from students to researchers at the Magaambya Academy and learning practical field work.
And if an encounter would amuse my players, I will try to fit it into the story in some way.
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This is something I've really struggled with in my campaigns. I was certainly just going "Oh here's some guys, beat them up", and it gets stale.
I actually took a lot of inspiration from Balder's Gate 3, which I think tackles this problem quite well, especially given 5e's more limited ruleset when it comes to monster design. While it still undeniably has filler fights, the game takes pains to vary combat as much as it can by introducing varied combat environments. It's pretty rare to have a large square room with no difficult terrain, traps, verticality, etc.
So to me, a "meaningful" combat encounter has come to mean one that introduces something new or interesting for the players (and me, the GM) to interact with. This can be interesting terrain, a monster with a unique ability, or a different objective to the combat outside of just killing the enemies.
For example, a recent combat encounter I had involved an almost "king-of-the-hill" aspect, as the enemies and the PCs battled to control a harpoon cannon on a docked boat. It really let the athletics-focused barbarian shine, as shove became instantly more valuable.
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I believe, as it was raised in the other thread, that the GM is confusing "meaningful" with "difficult."
TBH I think this is reinforced somewhat by how the game is presented. When's the last time an AP had a combat that wasn't just fighting a group of enemies in a box? Tougher is basically the only knob some GMs might realize exists.
For being such a combat focused game it's weird to me how little PF2 considers environmental design or alternative objectives or monster gimmicks when presenting combat design.
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Some of the most interesting and meaningful combats I have run did two main things. And this is in agreement with a lot of the posts so far.
1 The story did not stop just because initiative was rolled.
2 Combat included goals of interest for the players. Things they wanted to or needed to achieve that they had a stake in.
I think challenging combat can be fun, but its not necessary for the combat to be interesting or meaningful.
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I believe, as it was raised in the other thread, that the GM is confusing "meaningful" with "difficult."TBH I think this is reinforced somewhat by how the game is presented. When's the last time an AP had a combat that wasn't just fighting a group of enemies in a box? Tougher is basically the only knob some GMs might realize exists.
For being such a combat focused game it's weird to me how little PF2 considers environmental design or alternative objectives or monster gimmicks when presenting combat design.
There's an idea that I've been wanting to try out for this.
Make flash cards with the specific rules for environmental things, specially the ones that you don't use all that often because they're hard to remember. Like hazardous terrain for example.
When preparing an encounter, draw 1-3 cards and commit to designing the encounter to include your draw from the random terrain deck. Then when actually running the encounter, put the reminder card on the table so everyone can easily reference the rules.
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One thing to keep in mind that there is another entity at the table that gets to influence how interesting a combat is. The GM does NOT have anything like total control and neither do the players.
The dice also get a say in things.
We've all been in a moderate encounter that became exceedingly hard (sometimes actually threatening characters or a TPK, or even achieving that) when there was some combination of the players dice going very, very cold and the GMs dice running very, very hot.
And conversely we've all been in the Severe or Extreme encounter that became much easier or even trivial when the dice decided that they wanted to stress the R in RNG.
So as a GM I don't try TOO hard to find the right balance. As long as I'm sort of kind of close the dice will often make things exciting, if things are too hard the dice can save me (one of my super powers is to have my dice as a GM turn utterly, utterly cold at exactly the right time to stop a TPK. Even when physical dice are rolled openly at the table).
Its one of the reasons why a series of Moderate encounters often work
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I believe, as it was raised in the other thread, that the GM is confusing "meaningful" with "difficult."TBH I think this is reinforced somewhat by how the game is presented. When's the last time an AP had a combat that wasn't just fighting a group of enemies in a box? Tougher is basically the only knob some GMs might realize exists.
For being such a combat focused game it's weird to me how little PF2 considers environmental design or alternative objectives or monster gimmicks when presenting combat design.
Well, my party is currently outdoors in Hurricane's Howl, so technically they are not in a box. However, the map the module provided for the most recent battle was a 175-foot by 120-foot rectangle of grass with two trees, one big rock, and an extinguished campfire. It might as well have been a box. The starlit-span magus Zandre prefers to shoot from hiding, but the only cover he had was the rock. I regretted that I had not provided a map with better terrain.
For example, for the encounter before that, I had uploaded a map of a full 12-tent camp with supplies, campfires, and lookout sites from the Internet. And before that, I uploaded a map of an 80-foot wide river because I had put bandits and their captives on a boat on the Terwa River rather than on foot as the module had. The players got ahead of the bandits via Umbral Journey/Shadow Walk, scryed their approach with Scrying Ripples, and ambushed them from shore.
A meaningful character story in that battle is the tengu bard JInx Fuun, who grew up on an oceangoing ship, flew over to the boat and took control of the rudder. She was a better sailor than the bandits.
An upcoming map called "Crossing the River" put an angry elite behemoth hippopotamus in a 20-foot-wide creek that they called the Terwa River. Yeah, the so-called river was only 5 feet wider than the hippopotamus. I moved that hippopotamus to the boat encounter where it caught up late in the battle. The party calmed it down after it ate a bandit. The champion had been shoving bandits off the boat.
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One thing to keep in mind that there is another entity at the table that gets to influence how interesting a combat is. The GM does NOT have anything like total control and neither do the players.
The dice also get a say in things.
We've all been in a moderate encounter that became exceedingly hard (sometimes actually threatening characters or a TPK, or even achieving that) when there was some combination of the players dice going very, very cold and the GMs dice running very, very hot.
And conversely we've all been in the Severe or Extreme encounter that became much easier or even trivial when the dice decided that they wanted to stress the R in RNG.
So as a GM I don't try TOO hard to find the right balance. As long as I'm sort of kind of close the dice will often make things exciting, if things are too hard the dice can save me (one of my super powers is to have my dice as a GM turn utterly, utterly cold at exactly the right time to stop a TPK. Even when physical dice are rolled openly at the table).
Its one of the reasons why a series of Moderate encounters often work
This is a good point. I've seen enough Moderate encounters that turned out routine and easy, but also enough of them that were a lot harder than expected.
There's a notorious situation in a level 5 PFS scenario where the party of pregens runs into a black pudding (level 7 creature) which on the face of it is just a moderate encounter. And yet many reviews listed it as an absolutely unreasonable killer encounter. There's some reasons for that;
- The rogue, barbarian and fighter pregens all prefer slashing and piercing weapons, and don't have backup bludgeoning weapons, except their fists. Although the rogue is a thief rogue, at the time of publication they didn't add their dex to unarmed strike damage yet.
- This was an introductory scenario, so a lot of people are still figuring out how PF2 even works.
Which, you know, is not too different from a not super experienced group of players in an AP.
On the other hand, savvy players might say "feh, Moderate isn't so hard" and react appropriately;
- The wizard has enough fireballs at hand
- The wizard has a +1 striking staff that the martials can borrow
- The ooze doesn't have high AC and can be taken down by just going all-out with bare fists and pretending MAP doesn't exist
- With some luck you might also just pick up a backup weapon with what little spare cash you do have
- Falling back 1-2 rooms to a narrower spot helps against oozes that get split off spawning within actual attack reach of the party
The point to all of this is that Moderate encounters aren't objectively hard or easy. There's a lot that isn't captured in the monster numbers;
- dice luck
- player skill
- attrition due to resources spent on previous encounters
- terrain (for example, an underwater fight can be a lot harder)
- distance (when you need to spend a lot of actions getting to enemies while they do stuff at range)
- story related "busywork" (untying hostages, crowds that need calming, other things that demand you to spend actions on other things than fighting enemies)
Some of this is planned extra difficulty, but usually not officially priced into the "Moderate" label.
I think we should try doing a lot more with these things because they're ways to make combats different and interesting, and also to make them challenging, but without having to use high level monsters with high DCs all the effin' time.
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Here's another weird idea about attrition. PF2 of course mostly runs on an idea of each encounter being balanced standalone. Which overall is great because you can run a "you travel for a week and then have an exciting fight and travel for another week" adventure and get to the encounter difficulty you want quite easily. You don't need to have four encounters per day to make the last one exciting.
But attrition CAN be interesting, but we don't always want to have to have lots and lots of encounters to get there.
Skill challenges seem like a decent way to streamline this. If we're for example doing a castle infiltration where you might need to quietly deal with some guards, quickly hustle from here to there, maybe take a few hits from a trap as you quickly move past. Those are all opportunities to use attrition as stakes.
So every time you do poorly at some obstacles and accrue a bunch of awareness points, everyone just takes some damage, or gets sickened or frightened, or has to spend some spell slots or focus. And then eventually you get to a fight, and you're probably not going into that fight in pristine health and resources. But you were also able to do this skill challenge in say, half an hour and fit in some story into it, and then get to the fight. For me this sounds really good for weekday night gaming sessions where we want every session to move the story forward, but also want a fun fight.
Compared to a lot of scenarios where skill challenges seem a bit forced because really failing them just isn't an option, I think skill challenges where the penalty for failures is taking some attrition before your next fight is really convenient. And not going into a fight pristine can be a good way to make those stand out more too.
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One other thing I like to do to make a combat meaningful against sentient enemies with speech is having them mock or deride the characters in some way. Really irritate them and anger them. Or threaten something important to them. Over the years, I've found players really get invested when someone they are going to fight is talking smack to them or threatening them getting them all riled up.
That's why I like to make sure when DMing to build meaningful relationships into the story so there is something to threaten. I like to build the PCs up as heroes so when they are getting smack talked, they have a reputation to live up to. They can't look weak to some enemy talking smack.
I tend to write smack talk or what a villain might say during encounter prep to really get under the PCs skin. I've found players get more invested in a battle when I do this. And they feel better when victory is achieved. And they come up with some fun smack talk themselves which adds to the RP.
You don't want to put the PCs in a situation where they have no chance to save their meaningful relationship. That is a big no-no unless you want to do this to start a campaign where the goal is revenge.
Both of these methods are fun to make a combat seem more meaningful. It's amusing to write up some smack talk too, get the PCs interacting with their enemies.
Seconding Deriven's suggestion, though it doesn't always necessarily need to be threats. Good character banter can dramatically elevate a fight that might otherwise be super forgettable. Great idea.
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It definitely makes a big difference when you do that yeah. When you're out to specifically show These Guys that you're better than them it actually isn't a problem at all if it's easy. Stuff like using Assurance Athletics to keep someone on the ground for much of the fight is especially gratifying if it's someone who was previously lording things over you. Although you might as a GM push the HP to monster level balance a bit so that enemies last a bit longer.
I do feel like this works better if you spend some time coming up with your own taunts, rather than just preprinted ones from an adventure. Maybe it's because you're tuning them to your players, or maybe because it's more in your own voice, but the delivery feels better that way.
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It's also something that can require a bit of a careful hand. There are some PFS scenarios that got a lot of negative reviews that I think were down to "it feels like being bullied in high school again". On the one hand as a writer you want to set up the bad guys to actually be bad, so that beating them feels good. But without the right delivery, that can hit the wrong nerves on your players.
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IMO, PF2 isn't a good system for purely difficult combats. Fighting +4 or +5 enemies isn't fun if you don't have the tools for it. Difficult being you fail all your spells and miss most of your attacks because the numbers are against you is the definition of not fun for me. Barely surviving this sort of fight takes all the joy out of playing for me.
Bunches of -2 to +1 enemies with story context, environmental concerns, secondary objectives and such is far more enjoyable. The more things involved in combat other then the encounter building rules the better.
The game can't calculate that stuff though, so GMs need to figure out how to setup good combats personalized for their group.
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A dozen years ago I ran The Hungry Storm in the Jade Regent adventure path, in which the PCs travel in a caravan crossing the ice-covered northern continent, Crown of the World, to reach Tian Xia. A "hungry storm" refers to a morozoki storm, which would kill any unsheltered person caught in it, included caravans with magical protection from cold weather.
What happens when a caravan is caught by a morozoki storm? The module is named after the storms, yet that detail was overlooked. Of course, the party investigated the morozko storm that blocked the Koumissa Gap up to Unaimo by sending their hardiest characters into it.
I decided that a morozoki storm is a ten-mile-wide hurricane filled with sharp ice shards that do 1 point of damage per minute to anyone standing in the wind, slower if the character is protected by medium or heavy armor. In addition, a mile into the storm has supernatural cold that does 1 point of cold damage per minute, too. The ground under it becomes littered with ice shards that make it difficult terrain.
My quotes are taken from my chronicle Amaya of Westcrown, The Hungry Storm Module.
A villain named Katiyana had discovered a base at the north pole with technology that let her create and control morozoki storms. She was deliberately killing travelers. The party discovered this by defeating some of her underlings. It was supposed to be a plot hook.
They did not bite the hook. They wanted to reach Tian Xia to continue their original mission.
North from Iqaliat, the party returned to the original Path of Aganhei to cross the Crown of the World. They did not divert to the Storm Tower to stop Katiyana as the module intended. That was not their job. In fact, I expected this and let them encounter two Snowcaster Elves investigating the morozoki storms and pass the information about Katiyana on to them, so that they did not have to feel guilty.
I had other plans, heh heh.
...
Then a morozoki storm began chasing them. Uksahkka's weather sense verified that it was literally chasing them, veering whenever they tried to move out of its path. Before the storm overran them, a winged figure appeared in the sky. It was Katiyana. ...
The storm caught them. The caravan tried racing sideways and the storm kept its original course at three miles per hour, probably because Katiyana could no longer see them. The passengers were packed into chests to protect them from the ice shards, but the drivers and aurochs were exposed. Soon a crevasse blocked their path. Amaya cast Snow Shape a few times to make an ice ramp down into the crevasse, which protected them from the wind and its ice shards. And she cast Communal Resist Energy on everyone to protect them from the supernatural cold when that arrived. Spreading it across everyone lowered the duration, so she cast it again until she ran out. Then a 4th-level cleric passenger took over by channeling. After three hours, the storm passed with everyone still alive.
Now taking out Katiyana was a personal grudge.
The danger and villainy of Katiyana was abstract to the party, despite it being the central theme of The Hungry Storm. I had to make it personal for it to become a meaningful conflict. This is just like the villain taunting the party as Deriven Firelion suggested. It added emotional stakes to the battle.
I wonder whether the stakes make combat meaningful. A dangerous combat has the stakes of life or death, regardless of whether it is a random encounter with no relevance to the plot. An easy combat lacks those life-or-death stakes. A combat necessary to continue the plot has stakes of the player and their character's investment in the story. A combat related to a particular character's backstory has personal stakes. A pompous, mocking villain creates personal stakes right at the beginning of combat.
That leaves out my players enjoying Moderate-Threat combat encounters just for practicing with their abilities, especially after leveling up. I suppose I could phrase it as emotional stakes in the choices made in leveling up, but that feels like a stretch. My players simply like roleplaying their characters, including in combat.
IMO, PF2 isn't a good system for purely difficult combats. Fighting +4 or +5 enemies isn't fun if you don't have the tools for it. Difficult being you fail all your spells and miss most of your attacks because the numbers are against you is the definition of not fun for me. Barely surviving this sort of fight takes all the joy out of playing for me.
Wait, a Level+4 enemy is an Extreme Threat against a party of four. And a Level+5 enemy is 41% stronger, beyond Extreme Threat. Those encounters would have a high chance of killing off the party. That is a better reason for avoiding such enemies.
My campaign has seven PCs, so a Level+4 enemy would be only (4/7)(160xp) = 91xp Moderate Threat. I still avoid Level+4 enemies because the odds favor them dealing a critical hit with damage more than a single party member can handle. The party would win in the long run, but a PC would drop to Dying 2 in the first round so another party member would have to stop to save them mid-combat. And yet another PC would drop while getting the first back on their feet. It would be terribly frustrating, especially with most attacks and spells bouncing harmlessly against the enemy's high defenses. I would rather use Level+3 with extra minions.
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The thing about higher level, solo enemies (and how much of a threat they pose in PF2) in relationship to whether they make for more meaningful encounters, is that parties can pretty easily build to trivialize them by the mid levels of the game. Casters are particularly effective at action denial in these fights, if they are prepared for it, and at the point even a level +4 solo enemy is losing an action a turn, the fight is pretty well handled, even if that takes as many as 5 or 6 actions away from a party of 4 to keep up.
The trick to those combats feeling dangerous is usually the party not being prepared when they first encounter the creature to beat it "the easy way." The thing is, it seems too common for GMs to run such encounters with an all out attack plan that is either a TPK or death for the creature, and in those situations where the party is really caught of guard, you are not going to be able to have 5 of those encounters over a level 20 Adventure and not almost certainly, eventually, kill the whole party.
I also find it ironic that so many players dismiss the threat that 8 level -2 creatures can pose to an unprepared party for the same action denial reasons that the players can learn how to pose a threat to higher level enemies. Maybe they are just used to spell casters being prepared to handle lots of lower level enemies and not as used to casters being prepared to help tackle higher level enemies, so the higher level ones tend to feel more dangerous.
I also find it ironic that so many players dismiss the threat that 8 level -2 creatures can pose to an unprepared party for the same action denial reasons that the players can learn how to pose a threat to higher level enemies. Maybe they are just used to spell casters being prepared to handle lots of lower level enemies and not as used to casters being prepared to help tackle higher level enemies, so the higher level ones tend to feel more dangerous.
Mass mooks can even be more challenging than solo threats at higher levels, assuming they have abilities that don't care so much about the level difference. However, they do run into a problem where they can be removed en masse by AoE incapacitation or by multiple AoE blast spells from a party with multiple casters. This is also the biggest threat a solo creature can provide, meaning some kind of AoE incapacitate that can threaten an immediate loss.
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If I were to throw my 2 cents in here, it would be that the fights with a modest surplus of under-leveled foes have been some of the most memorable I've run (or at least I hope my players would agree).
One was a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath for a boss with half a dozen mi-go running around. I designed the Dark Young to be a fairly serious threat, while the smattering of mi-go were just dangerous enough to act as a mass of minions worth swatting out of the way to get to the boss and easy enough that taking them out gave a sense of momentum to the fight.
The other, by far more fun fight was against what I ended up calling the "Himbo Brigade". The adventure specified that the guards in the area were chosen for their attractiveness and susceptibility to charm magic. Since this was an adventure in the higher level range, I wasn't terribly convinced of there being very many elite-level warriors just laying around, so I let their level range stray a bit below the CL-4 and doubling their number, with some truly atrocious Will saves.
They were a blast to roleplay leaping into the fray for their beautiful patrons, and even funnier once the party sorcerer noticed the will save issue and blasted them with Phantasmal Calamity. Though the fight as a whole wasn't a serious threat (even if the himbos did manage nearly to KO the monk when he opted to surround himself with 6 of them far away from the rest of the party), it was a great time.
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I think the established wisdom that mooks are easy to dispose of and not dangerous, is not really true. It's true at very low level when mooks may be mostly woodland critters and such without good ranged/area options and can be easily sidelined. People then "learn" they're not significant. And that belief doesn't get updated enough when new evidence comes in later.
I've actually seen mooks be pretty dangerous both at later levels, and in newer game content (I think writers have learned some tricks). Some things that are pretty dangerous:
* Mooks having a lot of HP and taking a lot of time to kill. This is where casters matter a lot, because their saves do tend to be low so area spells are very efficient here. And incapacitation effects can be much faster than weapon attacks at getting rid of mooks with lots of HP.
* Mooks that make the boss stronger. Sometimes it's specific abilities like commander-like abilities or a bard, but it can also be by setting up flanks for the boss. That boss that crits so hard and so often, does it even more when he gets flanks.
* Mooks with very accurate attacks. Like a bunch of casters with Force Barrage, or some NPC BS ability that is just far too accurate. They can damage PCs even when going just by level, they shouldn't hit all that often.
* Note that the way monster stats are built, even normal mooks tend to have enough to-hit to punch up a level.
* Mooks with area attacks. These tend to be really nasty. When you get breath-weaponed by a whole bunch of mooks it tends to really take a toll on the party, especially the casters that don't get as many "treat a success on a save as crit" abilities.
* Mooks with maneuver abilities, like a "if they hit, they auto-trip". There's still a lot of those abilities around. I recently played in a scenario where we ran into four weak marsh giants as mooks - but each of them can do a strike with auto-trip if the strike hits. Since mooks still have enough to-hit to have a good chance of hitting on their first strike, that's a lot of PCs getting knocked down which absolutely devours your action economy.
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Just popping in to remind everyone that, according to encounter guidelines, a fight against eight lesser deaths is considered a moderate threat encounter for a party of four level 20 PCs.
Or, heck, for twenty more ExP in the budget you could substitute out four of those lesser deaths for the Grim Reaper himself, and still not quite reach the budget for a standard severe encounter.
So that is why many 20th-level characters are considered immortal. They can beat the Grim Reaper and his minions. :-)
More seriously, I have run a few sessions with a 20th-level party (chronicle). They are impressively powerful.
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Another advantage of using Level-3 mooks instead of Level+3 bosses is that mooks are more common and more plausible. High-level threats are supposed to be rare.
I find level creep among enemies to be unbelievable. The PF1 Ironfang Invasion adventure path began with CT 1/2 Ironfang Recruits invading a village. They had a few stronger named characters with them, such as Tukang, Grenadier Trainee CR 1; Semfet, Ironfang Scout CR 1; and Kergri, Ironfang Heavy Trooper, CR 2. When the party and some refugees escape the village into the Fangwood Forest, they have to hide from Ironfang patrols consisting of 1 or 2 Ironfang Scouts CR 1 and twice as many Ironfang Recruits CR 1/2, except for the times they encounter more experienced CR 3 scouts. At the end a battle at an Ironfang camp in the forest has CR 3 and CR 4 Ironfang Soldiers and the CR 7 final boss.
Early in the 2nd module, still in the Fangwood Forest, the party encounters an Ironfang patrol, but this time consisting of an Ironfang Patrol Leader CR 4 and three Ironfang Forest Prowlers CR 2. Why weren't these fellows sent out to hunt down the refugees in the 1st module? Late in the 2nd module, the party takes back Fort Trevalay from Ironfang control, battling Ironfang Forest Soldiers CR 3, Ironfang Squad Sergeants CR 3, a pair of monks CR 4 in the Ironfang Legion, and their leader Eygara CR 6. Okay, I explained away the challenge difference there in that the Ironfang Legion had to use their strongest soldiers to conquer a fortress.
When I converted the Ironfang Invasion adventure path to Pathfinder 2nd Edition, I used the 1st-level Hobgoblin Soldier as the basic unit of the Ironfang Legion. They were tougher than Ironfang Recruits, but rather than inventing a weaker version, I added villagers organized into civilian defense squads to help the party. I did invent Ironfang Heavy Troopers, creature 2, by leveling up a Hobgoblin Soldier and giving them heavy armor. But for increasing the challenge at the party leveled up, I simply threw more Hobgoblin Soldiers and Ironfang Heavy Troopers at them. The theme of the adventure path was about fighting an army, so they found squads of soldiers.
The encounter math of PF2 breaks down below Level-4, so I later built a 5th-level Large-sized troop unit illustrated by a picture for four Hobgoblin Soldiers. I carefully adjusted the numbers to resemble the damage and resilience of 4 Hobgoblin Soldiers in a pack. This was to create the impression that they were still battling squads of Hobgoblin Soldiers. This made more sense for the setting than inventing individual Ironfang soldiers who each fought at 5th-level. When the party hit 9th level, I made a 9th-level Gargantuan troop illustrated by 16 pictures of Hobgoblin Soldiers.
Now I am running Strength of Thousands in which the creatures are already built for PF2. I am encountering the unnatural level inflation in the 3rd module, Hurricane's Howl. A major bandit gang called the Knights of Abendego has its own characters: Abendego Brute, creature 8; Abendego Jailer, Creature 10; Norgorberite Spy, creature 10; and Abendego Priest, creature 11; plus named individuals.
Back in the 2nd module, the party fought a powerful crime boss nicknamed Froglegs (I mentioned her back in comment #5). Froglegs was only 8th level, like the bottom-level Abendego Brutes. Why are the weaklings in the Knights of Adendego powerful enough to lead their own gangs in other locations? The Knights do not practice disciplined training.
I talked with my wife (poor dear has to put up with spoilers) and we decided to add Abendego Trainee Squads to the Knights of Abendego. These troops will be the Bandit Gang from NPC Core shrunk down to Large size and given a few features from the Knights of Abendego. The encounters with the Knights of Abendego need proper mooks. The 8th-level Abendego Brutes will be viewed as experienced bandits sent on an important mission instead of the weakest of the Knights.
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I find level creep among enemies to be unbelievable.
Unfortunately, this is pretty close to inevitable in any game like Pathfinder where characters get SO much more powerful as they advance in levels.
You can sometimes manage things by moving locales. Eg
Book 1 - Village
Book 2 - Town
Book 3- City
Book 4 - Capital City
Book 5 - Biggest city in world
Book 6 - Extra Planar City
Then it actually can make sense that there are threats of the appropriate level. Although even then while it kinda makes sense that the SWAT team equivalent are quite high level if makes little sense that the patrol of beat cops are suddenly all level 10.
But most of the time it really makes very little sense that the inhabitants of the environment just "happen" to be CR -3 to CR +3.
Personally, I've learned to completely (or almost completely) ignore this just like I ignore the silliness that is Hit Points, sprites being able to hit Giants in the face, etc etc etc. Its part of what D&D is and always has been.
I find level creep among enemies to be unbelievable.Unfortunately, this is pretty close to inevitable in any game like Pathfinder where characters get SO much more powerful as they advance in levels.
You can sometimes manage things by moving locales. Eg
Book 1 - Village
Book 2 - Town
Book 3- City
Book 4 - Capital City
Book 5 - Biggest city in world
Book 6 - Extra Planar City
Quite true. And I find fun in cataloging the actual locales used for the greater threats.
Iron Gods: 1. Fires of Creation - Local caves. 2. Lords of Rust - Bandit town. 3. The Choking Tower - Wizard's tower. 4. Valley of the Brain Collectors - Site of alien invasion. 5. Palace of Fallen Stars - Capital city. 6. The Divinity Drive - Mile-long alien spaceship.
The alien invasion in book 4 is weird, but every adventure path should have a unique place. The capital city of Starfall had increased difficulty as the home of the headquarters of hostile high-tech enemies.
Ironfang Invasion 1. Trail of the Hunted - Village and forest. Fangs of War - Fortresses. 3. Assault on Longshadow - City under assault. 4. Siege of Stone - The Darklands. 5. Prisoners of the Blight - Cursed and blighted forest. 6. Vault of the Onyx Citadel - Extraplanar countryside.
"Biggest city in the world" does not describe the 5th-book location. "Unnatural Setting" would be more appropriate. Nirmathas lacks big cities, so the adventure path in Nirmathas had to double down on its dangerous-forest theme.
Strength of Thousands: 1. Kindled Magic - College (Magaambya Academy). 2. Spoken on the Song Wind - City (home of Magaambya Academy). 3. Hurricane's Howl - The PCs' first field expedition and bandits in a town. 4. Secrets of the Temple-City - Foreign capital city. 5. Doorway to the Red Star - Alien planet. 6. Shadows of the Ancients - Magaambya Academy again but under 20th-level assault.
The first two books offer mild enemies relative to the size of the locations, because those locations had maintained peace. And book 6 breaks the mold by returning to a previous location. I guess the reason the Knights of Abendego in Hurricane's Howl seem over-leveled is that "bandits in a town" are a good book 2 threat rather than a book 3 threat.
Then it actually can make sense that there are threats of the appropriate level. Although even then while it kinda makes sense that the SWAT team equivalent are quite high level if makes little sense that the patrol of beat cops are suddenly all level 10.
The random encounter table in Palace of the Fallen Stars for hazards in the streets of Starfall would have killed 90% of the population in Starfall if the table applied to anyone beside the party.
But most of the time it really makes very little sense that the inhabitants of the environment just "happen" to be CR -3 to CR +3.
Personally, I've learned to completely (or almost completely) ignore this just like I ignore the silliness that is Hit Points, sprites being able to hit Giants in the face, etc etc etc. Its part of what D&D is and always has been.
It is gamist (favors game mechanics) rather than simulationist (favors a realistic world), but I appreciate when the writers minimize the breaks from plausibility. For example, NPC bystanders of less than Level-3 could interact with the party, because they don't have to fight each other. Then the city would feel more well-rounded.
I think one thing APs could do with the plausibility issue is have more examples of much higher level DCs for specific kinds of tasks early on in adventures. Ideally these would be things like make an impression checks/influence, recall knowledge checks, or non-essential out of combat skill checks that create an appeal to come back to a space at a higher level for a short boon or reward that is not really available at lower level without extreme luck.
I think that would help players not feel like they are on a treadmill of numbers that are required to fall into a certain range and make it more clear that there are higher level tasks in the world, even where NPCs themselves are not generally at that level.
The plausibility of scaling issue is why I had issues with Siege of the Dinosaurs in the middle of Extinction Curse. Being in a town at least 5 levels lower than us and having combat encounters with creatures that were our level or higher made our progress as characters feel like we were on a treadmill than a ladder.
Most other APs I've played or run have managed to avoid this issue.
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The treadmill of the chance of success against a same-level opponent is constant across all levels (depending on creature type, since some creatures such as oozes have low AC for their level) was deliberately built into Pathfinder 2nd Edition. It keeps the math simple enough to allow the tight math that the developers wanted. During the PF2 playtest Jester David dubbed it with the more colorful name "Red Queen's Race."
I do dislike how despite the big numbers, character's aren't really increasing their odds of success, just staying on the coin-flip treadmill. I believe PCs should get really good at their specialization, ideally fast! Don't think it's about narrative at this point, but fun.I always preferred “Red Queen’s Race” to treadmill. From Through the Looking Glass:
Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."
"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"
Verisimilitude breaks is when home-grown enemies keep pace with the party's level while the other people in the setting fall several levels behind in the Red Queen's Race. These are enemies whose backstory implies they got their training among the low-level people, rather than fiendish invaders from another dimension or recently-escaped undead formerly sealed in an ancient tomb. However, raising the level of the common people can also break verisimilitude when an underpaid minion could earn good money or be the king of the hill by moving to the pleasant 1st-level settlement where the party started.
I view the plausibility of a combat as relevant to the meaningful-combat topic. Fighting a battle that makes no sense in the context robs the battle of much of its meaning.
pauljathome pointed out that the most-plausible adventure paths move the party to settings where higher-level NPCs and enemies make sense. Start in a peasant village, move to a respectable town, stop by a prosperous city, go to the impressive capital city--each step implies a higher level among the inhabitants. Or send the party into a deep dungeon or lost temple that has been cut off from its surroundings and fill it with party-level monsters that can survive versus each other. Strength of Thousands breaks that mold by starting at a prestigious academy in a prosperous city, but the PCs are sent on easy service missions for training rather than sent against the greatest dangers around. Until they faced major dangers in the city of Nantambu late in the 2nd module, but the PCs were 6th level and had earned a reputation for excelling in combat. A good excuse maintains plausibility.