| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I am steadily going through Alien Core to confirm that this is more than a hunch, but it's something I keep running into in Society scenarios, and I saw it in Murder in Metal City as well: tons and tons of creatures are desperately undertuned.
I first noticed something was up when my players were taking so little damage during a scenario that a single mystic was able to negate every hit, if anything managed to hit at all. I double-checked enemy stat blocks and, yep, they were all on the low side according to the creature building rules.
This seems to happen more often with humanoid enemies, low-level creatures, and creatures that use manufactured weapons. For example, every single aeon guard in Alien Core has absolutely scuffed to-hit and damage values, with a couple of them falling below the "low" values on the creature building tables (and no values going above moderate except for the Aeon Guard Commander's to-hit with their sword). Meanwhile, most of the higher-level "monstrous" creatures I've checked so far seem to be in line with statistical guidelines.
If I had to guess, I'd say someone on the team is calculating damage as if the enemies were player characters using regular weapons instead of following creature building rules. For example, the Ravenous Drake has its damage calculated as if it were a player character: a natural jaw attack (1d6) plus its strength (+4), and the bandits seen in a handful of Society scenarios have stats that line up with PC-based calcs (attribute + proficiency + level for accuracy, weapon damage die + attribute for damage). This means a lot of creatures aren't performing as well as they should, combat balance is unreliable, and players are getting bored because there's no actual challenge or danger against certain enemies. Also, humanoid foes--the type of enemy I was most excited to use--are basically dead on arrival.
Needless to say, this is really, really bad. I feel like I can't trust the stat blocks as-written anymore, and need to double-check and modify before every combat. This is also something that should not happen, as it requires 1) Paizo's higher-ups demanding the Starfinder team make a new game without actually explaining the engine to them, 2) the Starfinder team not taking it upon themselves to learn the engine on their own, and 3) nobody on the editing team bothering to double-check the math.
I love the Starfriends, but this kind of persistent error is simply unacceptable. This needs to become a priority for errata immediately, and Alien Core will need to be carefully combed through before it is reprinted.
I'll update you guys with actual statistics once I'm done going through literally every stat block, but that's going to take a while. Unfortunately, the pattern's holding true so far, so things don't look good.
This is also something that should not happen, as it requires 1) Paizo's higher-ups demanding the Starfinder team make a new game without actually explaining the engine to them, 2) the Starfinder team not taking it upon themselves to learn the engine on their own, and 3) nobody on the editing team bothering to double-check the math.
That's ... really disparaging. I don't personally know anyone on the design/development team, but having read through some of the posts during the SF2 playtest, not only do they know the game engine by study, they also know it by having played it extensively.
If you want to be a killer GM, you can certainly retune the enemies you put your players up against. But having the default tuning be 'easier' than you want doesn't mean that the game devs don't know what they are doing.
Finoan, this isn't about me being a killer GM (I am, in fact, a pushover). This is about a legitimate problem with the game's math. In 2e's engine, NPCs are built fundamentally different than PCs; their to-hit and damage curve factors in battlefield role and level, but not their ability scores (which are mostly for show/improvised checks) or what kind of weapon/natural attack they are using. Calculating to-hit and damage as if they were PCs results in creatures being unable to present the appropriate amount of threat for their level, breaking the game's balancing and making encounter building unreliable.
Higher-level creatures that do not use guns don't have this problem: their damage output sticks within the bounds of creature building outlines. So, it's specifically an issue with low-level and weapon-wielding creatures, probably because it's easier to just do PC math in one's head instead of consulting a table.
And the thing is, flavor-wise, these undertuned creatures and NPCs aren't supposed to be unusually weak: many are iconic villains/monsters and elite units. And even if they're undertuned on purpose, that doesn't make sense because we already have a device for that: the creature's level. The entire point of tethering a creature's statistics so closely to their level is to keep the game's math stable and reliable. If the math isn't stable, GMs have to go in and check/tweak each creature individually in order to nail the encounter feel they want, which is a massive time sink in a game that's already fairly prep-heavy. This is true regardless of whether you intend to make an encounter easy or hard.
Speaking of unstable math, I've seen damage output swing the other way, too: certain enemies have done way too much damage, and they've all had one thing in common: weapons with the Boost trait. But I'll rant about that some other time.
Anyway, sorry if this thread sounds harsh. I've had my eye on this issue for months, and the deeper I look, the worse it gets. I'm tired, I'm fed up, and I expect better from Paizo's design team. I feel like the money I spent on my special edition Alien Core was a complete waste, and my Society players--who already expect the game to be on the easier side--are struggling to enjoy themselves, because even "hard" combats are cakewalks.
|
I've seen both extremes in the SF2e scenarios, too.
On the easy side, sometimes, when a PC kills the creatures before anyone else even gets a chance to attack it, I give the dead creature the "GM Ferocity Feat." The creature will die, but not before everyone else at least gets an attack or takes their turn. Then I describe the kill as a big team effort. If I do that and the creature gets to go before the rest of the party does, I don't use its best attacks or tactics since it should be dead.
A fun example of something similar was when a soldier crit hit a creature about to charge him. The creature should have died right then, but instead, I kept the creature alive long enough to get its turn. The creature changed the soldier, but since the soldier had given it the suppressed condition, and a witchwarper had made difficult terrain, the creature's charge stopped short right in front of the soldier. That is when I described the suppressing fire slowing down and killing the creatures at the soldiers' feet. The whole table was either cheering or laughing.
I feel that this isn't making the encounter harder; it's just making it last long enough to be interesting. I think doing that to a too-easy encounter is easy to do on the fly, compared to trying to find a way to avoid a TPK because the encounter is too hard. So I'd much prefer to see encounters on the easier side than being too hard.
I will say that in one of the encounters, which was way too easy, and I may or may not have doubled a creature's HP, I feel I could make it harder next time just by using better tactics. Also, that final encounter was only moderate. I suspect that might be because the real boss fight is likely in a sequel.
_______________
On the harder side, recently, I would have defeated the entire party on the first turn if I hadn't switched to the easier adjustment as I was adding up damage. In this case, defeat doesn't mean a TPK, and the scenario doesn't end if the party is defeated in the first encounter, but it would shorten the scenario a lot. In this encounter, it actually would have been fun to defeat the party, but not until they had to fight it out for a few rounds.
|
Well, as I'm currently running my own conversion of Signal of Screams and had to do/modify most statblocks myself, I can't speak from experience, but if what OP says is true, this would certainly be a problem, as this would poke a hole into one of the best things I experienced with PF2 (and therefore also SF2): That encounters aren't guesstimates, but can be made quick and reliably, other than some other systems.
It's good to have encounters of different difficulties and some have to be hard to acquire it, to make the players feel like they *earned* it. Challenge is a spice of life, after all.
Alien Core combing still in progress (slow going due to long work hours). I think once I'm done I'll post some recommended fixes for GMs in addition to the data itself. Official errata may never happen, and I want people to be able to have fun with the Corpse Fleet and Azlanti Star Empire.
Like, these are Starfinder's flagship bad guy factions. They should at least be on par with other creatures of their level, y'know?
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I took a look at the Aeon Guard Trooper in Alien Core. They look like weak cannon fodder, especially in melee, but for ranged attacks in a group, their special abilities kick in, and really play into the trooper theme of them working as a unit. The Aeon Guard Commander has the Rally the Troops action. The Corpse Fleet Infantry and officers also work well as a unit too. The Corpse Fleet Infantry are also much better at ranged than melee.
Both of these look to work well in groups with a commander. The troops are better at ranged, while the commanders look better at melee. I like how that lets the commanders lead from the front and can help keep the troops out of melee.