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How is PF2E prep and GMing?
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<blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 8006138" data-attributes="member: 12731"><p>I too started out with the goal of limiting "risk free" healing to 10 minutes. (The whole game seems predicated on ten minutes being available after encounters, maybe not always but at least regularly). This then became "lets try to rest for 20" then 30, and it didn't take many levels before damage and hit point totals became large enough that Treat Wounds can't keep up, which leads us to my current assessment: 20-80 minutes.</p><p></p><p>But your definition of brutally hard doesn't match mine. How could it when you say your players keep adventuring with just the fighter at 75% (and presumably everybody else at lower hp)?</p><p></p><p>To paint the picture for everybody else, what happens after a hard encounter (when several party members have dropped, and been given minimal healing to stave off the Dying condition)?</p><p></p><p>In my case, the party seeks out a safe-ish place and hunker down to heal up. They don't use magical healing unless forced to. They don't press on if they don't have to.</p><p></p><p>My options - remember I'm running an official AP here - would be:</p><p>1) follow the script. Since the script often says nothing about monsters moving about (and often specifies very very long leading times before reacting in relevant ways, such as by ordering underlings to scout the area) this rest becomes risk-free. The players then spend maybe 15-30 minutes in real time hashing out exactly who gets what type of treatment, and exactly how many hit points are restored in each case. This is the case where "you rest for an hour and heal up completely" would have been a HUGE timesaver (since it arrives at the exact same end result in seconds instead of minutes).</p><p>2) add (weak) wandering monsters to add a risk - and therefore also a cost - to the healing up. However, if the aim is to make heroes keep adventuring, this cannot accomplish that. The only results are after all a) the party gets even more weakened, meaning the players will keep resting even more, or b) they retreat to heal up in a less "hot" zone. Or, of course, c) they blow their resource-based healing (=their Cleric's spells) and break off adventuring for the day.</p><p>3) invent new (strong) wandering monsters. But all this does is reinforce the feeling of "this dungeon is too strong for us". Making the party break off more often means less story progress per playing hour (and more cluttery downtime-admin).</p><p></p><p>Do note that none of these results say "the heroes grit their teeth and keep exploring". Why? Because the dungeon is clearly too dangerous for that to be a logical course of action.</p><p></p><p>Also note that the script almost never put a time pressure on the heroes. Sure, there's the odd mention of a prisoner dying in X hours if not saved before, but that is not communicated to the players beforehand, and so doesn't constitute a meaningful pressure point. On occasion, they enter a zone where strange things happen maybe every 8 hours. While this might be intended to make heroes hurry along, it fails to take the subject of this very thread into account - 8 hours is simply a very long time in PF2. We've already discussed in detail how much healing that affords a party.</p><p></p><p>It boils down to this: If you can get this battered when you start a combat at full health, risking a new such encounter when not at full health comes off as reckless at best. My players doesn't like that idea, and they avoid taking TPK-levels of risk when they don't have to.</p><p></p><p>[SPOILER="Aside"]On a meta level, my players are so experienced they've seen through the illusion of time pressure. Probably 99.9% of modules lie when they tell the heroes they must hurry. Almost every module is written so that the heroes arrive in the nick of time, regardless of when they actually arrive. I can't remember when I read a module that actually explored the fail case.</p><p></p><p>For example (I'm just making things up here): "if they don't get there in time, the dragon eats the princess, and Chapter 5 explores the chaos that erupts in the kingdom. Remember, Chapter 5 is optional and should yield no XP. It's purpose is to drive home that failure is actually possible. It's a punishment for failure, not a reward for being too cautious. If the heroes had just been a little more daring and active, they would have saved the princess. The reward is nice magical loot plus getting to skip chapter 5".[/SPOILER]</p><p></p><p>But anyhoo - I'm trying to run the AP as written, my players aren't reckless, and I don't see any tools to make them take more risks. You say "CapnZapp, you clearly have made the decision not to run with attrition" but I can't recognize myself in that at all. I have made no such decision, not that I can think of. If anything, I would have liked a bit of attrition, but my players aren't having it, not in a game where almost any encounter can take any one of the PCs from full to zero hp.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Zapp</p><p></p><p>PS. The obvious solution is to make the dungeon less dangerous. I mean, it's not that I don't understand this to be the obvious way to encourage heroes to take more risks and press on even when not at peak health. I've already dropped the idea to modify dungeon encounters for five players (the default is four). I've already started to switch out a couple of encounters each level for a bigger bunch of much lower enemies (such a fight is not only less random and therefore easier to control, it also gives the poor Wizard a chance to shine through his otherwise mediocre area attacks).</p><p></p><p>PPS. Adding actual time pressure (of the "The Dragon will eat the princess in three days time. Please hurry!" kind) works less well in PF2 than in other D&D games. Why? Because it incentivizes the cost-free healing that is Medicine et al! If you dungeon delve traditionally, and use up your Cleric's resources to proceed faster, all you end up doing is hasten the end of the adventuring day. And in this case, you only have three of those! If you instead depend on Medicine, you can probably reach the Dragon during the very first day (by taking a dozen or more 20-80 minute rests), and then camp just before the big fight (to make that fight more enjoyable for the casters in the party). In other words, adding "free" healing (coupled by the non-dependance on chiefly arcane casters) breaks a lot of D&D assumptions and paradigms.</p><p></p><p>Which brings us back to the basic conclusion "Paizo ought to have discussed this in the CRB and they should have offered an attrition variant in the GMG".</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="CapnZapp, post: 8006138, member: 12731"] I too started out with the goal of limiting "risk free" healing to 10 minutes. (The whole game seems predicated on ten minutes being available after encounters, maybe not always but at least regularly). This then became "lets try to rest for 20" then 30, and it didn't take many levels before damage and hit point totals became large enough that Treat Wounds can't keep up, which leads us to my current assessment: 20-80 minutes. But your definition of brutally hard doesn't match mine. How could it when you say your players keep adventuring with just the fighter at 75% (and presumably everybody else at lower hp)? To paint the picture for everybody else, what happens after a hard encounter (when several party members have dropped, and been given minimal healing to stave off the Dying condition)? In my case, the party seeks out a safe-ish place and hunker down to heal up. They don't use magical healing unless forced to. They don't press on if they don't have to. My options - remember I'm running an official AP here - would be: 1) follow the script. Since the script often says nothing about monsters moving about (and often specifies very very long leading times before reacting in relevant ways, such as by ordering underlings to scout the area) this rest becomes risk-free. The players then spend maybe 15-30 minutes in real time hashing out exactly who gets what type of treatment, and exactly how many hit points are restored in each case. This is the case where "you rest for an hour and heal up completely" would have been a HUGE timesaver (since it arrives at the exact same end result in seconds instead of minutes). 2) add (weak) wandering monsters to add a risk - and therefore also a cost - to the healing up. However, if the aim is to make heroes keep adventuring, this cannot accomplish that. The only results are after all a) the party gets even more weakened, meaning the players will keep resting even more, or b) they retreat to heal up in a less "hot" zone. Or, of course, c) they blow their resource-based healing (=their Cleric's spells) and break off adventuring for the day. 3) invent new (strong) wandering monsters. But all this does is reinforce the feeling of "this dungeon is too strong for us". Making the party break off more often means less story progress per playing hour (and more cluttery downtime-admin). Do note that none of these results say "the heroes grit their teeth and keep exploring". Why? Because the dungeon is clearly too dangerous for that to be a logical course of action. Also note that the script almost never put a time pressure on the heroes. Sure, there's the odd mention of a prisoner dying in X hours if not saved before, but that is not communicated to the players beforehand, and so doesn't constitute a meaningful pressure point. On occasion, they enter a zone where strange things happen maybe every 8 hours. While this might be intended to make heroes hurry along, it fails to take the subject of this very thread into account - 8 hours is simply a very long time in PF2. We've already discussed in detail how much healing that affords a party. It boils down to this: If you can get this battered when you start a combat at full health, risking a new such encounter when not at full health comes off as reckless at best. My players doesn't like that idea, and they avoid taking TPK-levels of risk when they don't have to. [SPOILER="Aside"]On a meta level, my players are so experienced they've seen through the illusion of time pressure. Probably 99.9% of modules lie when they tell the heroes they must hurry. Almost every module is written so that the heroes arrive in the nick of time, regardless of when they actually arrive. I can't remember when I read a module that actually explored the fail case. For example (I'm just making things up here): "if they don't get there in time, the dragon eats the princess, and Chapter 5 explores the chaos that erupts in the kingdom. Remember, Chapter 5 is optional and should yield no XP. It's purpose is to drive home that failure is actually possible. It's a punishment for failure, not a reward for being too cautious. If the heroes had just been a little more daring and active, they would have saved the princess. The reward is nice magical loot plus getting to skip chapter 5".[/SPOILER] But anyhoo - I'm trying to run the AP as written, my players aren't reckless, and I don't see any tools to make them take more risks. You say "CapnZapp, you clearly have made the decision not to run with attrition" but I can't recognize myself in that at all. I have made no such decision, not that I can think of. If anything, I would have liked a bit of attrition, but my players aren't having it, not in a game where almost any encounter can take any one of the PCs from full to zero hp. Zapp PS. The obvious solution is to make the dungeon less dangerous. I mean, it's not that I don't understand this to be the obvious way to encourage heroes to take more risks and press on even when not at peak health. I've already dropped the idea to modify dungeon encounters for five players (the default is four). I've already started to switch out a couple of encounters each level for a bigger bunch of much lower enemies (such a fight is not only less random and therefore easier to control, it also gives the poor Wizard a chance to shine through his otherwise mediocre area attacks). PPS. Adding actual time pressure (of the "The Dragon will eat the princess in three days time. Please hurry!" kind) works less well in PF2 than in other D&D games. Why? Because it incentivizes the cost-free healing that is Medicine et al! If you dungeon delve traditionally, and use up your Cleric's resources to proceed faster, all you end up doing is hasten the end of the adventuring day. And in this case, you only have three of those! If you instead depend on Medicine, you can probably reach the Dragon during the very first day (by taking a dozen or more 20-80 minute rests), and then camp just before the big fight (to make that fight more enjoyable for the casters in the party). In other words, adding "free" healing (coupled by the non-dependance on chiefly arcane casters) breaks a lot of D&D assumptions and paradigms. Which brings us back to the basic conclusion "Paizo ought to have discussed this in the CRB and they should have offered an attrition variant in the GMG". [/QUOTE]
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