Who Actually Has Time for Bloated Adventures?

[payn]

Because of the adventure design Paizo uses (I think stuck in the 3.x/PF1 mindset), there are still too many encounters. PF2 is based around the encounter as a unit of difficulty balance; however, Paizo still thinks of their adventures as an "adventuring day/attrition model." This is perhaps also a result of "we have to cram X# of encounters in this book to get enough XP to level up."
Honestly, I could get by with a lot less detail and fewer encounters. I would rather have a handful of great, memorable encounters than a bunch of middling ones.
Within the unit of a single encounter, things can turn quickly. Creatures (especially with critical hits) can do a scary amount of damage and really threaten a character. The encounter building mostly works - even if they don't always follow their own advice in their APs. (Having too many Severe Encounters in Abomination Vaults, for example.) But when something says "Severe" - they mean it.
I don't think the PF2 encounters overstay their welcome to the extent that 4e or 5e encounters do.

Im curious if Paizo has gotten the hang of PF2 yet in adventure writing yet? Its not uncommon for an edition change such as this to take time for the module writers to catch up to how the new system works. Though, Abomination Vaults showed me that PF2 is not great at running a classic megadungeon campaign. I do think a Pathfinder era AP is well suited to it however.

 

[Retreater]

Im curious if Paizo has gotten the hang of PF2 yet in adventure writing yet? Its not uncommon for an edition change such as this to take time for the module writers to catch up to how the new system works. Though, Abomination Vaults showed me that PF2 is not great at running a classic megadungeon campaign. I do think a Pathfinder era AP is well suited to it however.

The popular opinion is that Abomination Vaults marked the beginning of the "properly balanced" encounter design for APs. Strength of Thousands, in particular, is celebrated as being pretty well balanced.
My Quest for the Frozen Flame so far hasn't been ridiculously challenging (like I found with Age of Ashes, Extinction Curse, and several encounters in Abomination Vaults); however, it is (IMO) overwritten, needlessly complex, and heavily scripted (which is something you don't want in a hexcrawl.)
If I told you we're playing a campaign about basically traveling with a Stone Age tribe of wooly mammoth riders, crossing the tundra to find a new home. What would you expect? Frozen hazards? Fights with megafauna and saber toothed cats? Survival challenges? Maybe not a nation-spanning plot?
So there's no survival challenges. The valley is a temperate 70 degrees year-round. You have 8 factions including a white dragon that uses fire attacks, a demon invasion, and a tribe of necromancers. The megafauna are all there to be tamed and ridden into battle with your tribe.
Like, I'm good with just a simple premise. Let there be an evil warlord and his agents tracking down the tribe. I don't need layers of intrigue that are going to confuse my players at every turn.

 

[payn]

The popular opinion is that Abomination Vaults marked the beginning of the "properly balanced" encounter design for APs. Strength of Thousands, in particular, is celebrated as being pretty well balanced.
My Quest for the Frozen Flame so far hasn't been ridiculously challenging (like I found with Age of Ashes, Extinction Curse, and several encounters in Abomination Vaults); however, it is (IMO) overwritten, needlessly complex, and heavily scripted (which is something you don't want in a hexcrawl.)
If I told you we're playing a campaign about basically traveling with a Stone Age tribe of wooly mammoth riders, crossing the tundra to find a new home. What would you expect? Frozen hazards? Fights with megafauna and saber toothed cats? Survival challenges? Maybe not a nation-spanning plot?
So there's no survival challenges. The valley is a temperate 70 degrees year-round. You have 8 factions including a white dragon that uses fire attacks, a demon invasion, and a tribe of necromancers. The megafauna are all there to be tamed and ridden into battle with your tribe.
Like, I'm good with just a simple premise. Let there be an evil warlord and his agents tracking down the tribe. I don't need layers of intrigue that are going to confuse my players at every turn.

I love love love all those layers of intrigue, but I certainly get they are not appreciated by many. I guess if I was running the adventure id find a way to include the exciting encounters, but chop away at the complexity of the factions. Perhaps make the factions the hazards for a little jack in the box on the path to facing the (now) obvious main plot.

Either way, its good to hear that the encounters are balancing out better.

 

[Lanefan]

1. Since I don't run 8 encounters per adventuring day, how challenging should each encounter be.
2. Since I have a larger (or smaller) party, how should that change encounter design.
3. Some characters have magic items, how does that affect the encounter balance?
4. If I want to have a horde of lower level baddies, how do I keep them challenging?
5. Adverse: how do I make a solo boss challenging without a single deadly attack (such as the over-powered breath attack.)
6. My party has a couple of characters with powerful builds that regularly (and vastly) overshadow the rest of the group. Will WotC ever acknowledge this?
7. Environmental hazards? How should they modify encounter design?
8. What if I want to alter monsters? How does that affect Challenge Level? (Greater HP, magic items, new special abilities, templates?)

I don't think these are even special case situations. Several of these can happen in an average session.

The best long-term answer to all of those is very simple:

Trial and error.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't think the PF2 encounters overstay their welcome to the extent that 4e or 5e encounters do.

I have to admit when people say PF2e combats take too long, I really do have to wonder what they're comparing them to.

 

[BrokenTwin]

I have to admit when people say PF2e combats take too long, I really do have to wonder what they're comparing them to.

I mean, there's definitely faster systems out there, but in comparison to games like D&D 5e, I'm pretty sure that's only said by people who have already internalized the latter's ruleset.

 

[cranberry]

I miss the 1E modules that could be completed in 1-3 sessions.

 

[Autumnal]

Paizo makes plenty of those too. They’re just I subject to some of these concerns, so get talked about less, at least outside Paizo’s own forums.

 

[grankless]

Extraneous encounters will always exist in games where things are written assuming you're using encounter-based XP awards. It's unfortunate.

Also, since you're running Quest for Frozen Flame, there is something you NEED to do: Either use ABP, or drop some striking runes yourself in loot piles, because for whatever reason there is not a single striking rune to be found in either book 1 or 2.

Otherwise... Yeah, you have to read the whole thing to run it well. That's how these work.

 

[Carlsen Chris]

I do. Me. I love bloated adventures.