But it only really works for PF2eThough seriously, Pathfinder 1e, 2e and D&D 5e all have the "rules as written" encounter building to be about xp budget for the levelThey do it differently in practice, but all of them frame it that way
It depends. I skipped 3e, but in 4e and 5e the guidelines work for a particular group. For instance in 5e, the encounter guidelines worked just fine one of my groups, but not the other. There is just a lot of variability in player groups in 5e. PF2e has less divergence between groups so the encounter guidelines are overall more effective.
Sorry, I'm not following you. 3e, PF1, 4e, & PF2 didn't/don't have the philosophy that low level enemies are continual dangerous.
Again, I'm not sure what your point is. Your writing is unclear to me. What is your point?
But what I'm trying to say "by RAW, the encounter building math in D&D 5e, Pathfinder 1e and Starfinder are kinda nonsensical since they assume that enough large number of trivial difficulty creatures is enough to make CR 8 encounter as if the difficulty was same as single CR 8 creature."
OK, I get what your saying. However, my point was that the math does work. It works just fine for one of my groups, but as I noted previously not the other. The math works for a certain set of assumptions and play styles. But it is not broad or robust enough to accommodate the many different groups and play styles available in 5e. Though all they need to correct this is a few paragraphs, maybe a page, detailing how to adjust the guidelines base on your group (for 5e at least).What I'm referring is the formula from Dungeon Master's Guide where encounter difficulty is determined by total exp of the encounter, but if there are multiple enemies then the exp amount for sake of difficulty is multiplied. So if there are 15 or more monsters, you multiply total exp of those 15 enemies by 4. So in theory twig blight, a CR 1/8 enemy, would be 25 * 15 * 4 xp so 1500 xp which would be deadly encounter for 3 4th level characters... But in practice though, twig blights are slow and easy to avoid so uh.... Yeah.
Thats what I meant, even if you have hundreds of them, if pcs are high enough level they are really easy to defeat before they ever get in range of attacking pcs.
Same way, Pathfinder 1e and Starfinder has option of "If you want to simple encounter cr without counting exp budget, you can just have multiple of same CR creature and use this table to determine cr". Table where 16 creatures is "creature's cr plus 8" which in case of stuff like... Well 16 level 1 goblins aren't really "moderate" challenge to level 8 party anymore.
Or if you want to use full encouter building rules, then by raw, if you have enough mites to give 2,457,600 xp to each of 4 party members, it would be CR 30 encounter. Even though at high enough levels, no amount of mites is going to kill players even if they get lucky with few nat 20s.
Sorry if that still doesn't make sense? I'm not native speaker, but I really should practice my english grammar. It has kinda gotten rusty since I spend too much time in chats
Paizo asked a dev who worked extensively on 4th edition D&D to help design 2nd edition Pathfinder and liked his contributions so much they put him in overall charge of the edition. PF2e is much better about "protecting players from themselves" in much the same way 4th edition D&D did, for example by eliminating complexities like free-form multiclassing and ensuring the choices offered by various classes (say, feat lists) are carefully curated to avoid overwhelming the player. PF2e is NOT by any stretch of the imagination identical to 4th edition D&D but it can meaningfully be described as a 3e/4e hybrid.
