Pathfinder 2E Regarding the complexity of Pathfinder 2

[kenada]

If you take a monster that is much higher level (say L+3 or L+4) and combine it with PCs that are already injured, you are likely to end up with multiple dead PCs, even if they are trying to flee.

Hmm. That’s fair. Yes, you could be more likely to lose someone if the party isn’t at full resources. I was trying to probe into the system’s intent by looking at how it treated “impossible encounters”, but there’s not enough there to determine say with certainty that this is an accepted outcome.

 

[!DWolf]

When there is no danger or no consequence there is no need to roll. If the party is in down time just let them heal to full. The healing system is best used when coupled with exploration mode and pressure. Some examples:

1. An important NPC has been kidnapped by bugbears who are going to torture them for information. The PCs have tracked them to the lair, a maze of twisty little passages with weird acoustics, and are exploring it. Every other turn or so they hear the NPC scream as they are being tortured. Scattered throughout the lair are trivial or low threat encounters - the occasional trap, giant rat or spider, etc. but there is also a Bugbear lurker who likes to make the encounters not as trivial.

2. The party are holed up in an abandoned (?) cabin in the woods. There are weird knickknacks all over the place, a haunted basement with a partly completed escape tunnel, an attic with books, etc. And outside is an Anti-paladin with a hoard of cannibals. Every couple of turns or so he sends in a wave of cannibals to soften the party up. The cannibals retreat before they die to be healed. The party is going to get ground down eventually and that is when the anti-paladin is going to come in and finish them off.

3. The party is looting a ship that is grounded on a jagged cliff. There are hazards all over the ship - giant hungry seagulls, undead sailors, structural damage, etc. but also loot (very heavy loot) that the party wants to get off. But the tide is coming in. Each turn the waters rise and more and more bad things happen to the ship until eventually it will break free and be swept away.

These are situations where healing time matters and where the healing rules really work. Other situations- the party is resting at an inn for the night, for example, don’t require the healing rules - you can hand wave them...

4. Unless of course the inn is innhabited by a cast of colorful characters and the gm has prepared a list of who murders who and when along with who gets blamed for what murder and the whole thing will need to be resolved before before morning when the circuit judge arrives to execute whoever is responsible for what.

 

[Undrave]

Here's my relevant post from the other thread:

A Ranger at mid level can have an attack modifier of 0, -2, -3, -4, or more and that's only depending on his own gear and action choices (not any external factors, of which there are nearly always some). Then you roll heapfuls of dice for every attack, and you modify many of them with weaknesses and resistances.

So. Anyone's basic attack modifier is 0, -5, -10 if you spend your round doing three attacks. This is reminiscent of "BAB" from d20 if you remember. (And as you probably know, D&D 5E ignores this and just lets you do each attack at your normal attack bonus)

Agile weapons get a special "one less" modifier, so this becomes 0, -4, -8. So far, so good.

Now Rangers get 0, -3, -6 against targets that they have previously marked. If Rangers use agile weapons we get 0, -2, -4.

Now then, all heroes get to choose from class-specific feats and the Ranger can choose "Twin Takedown" which allows him to attack with both weapons with a single action assuming he wields one weapon in each hand. There is also a feat called "Dual strike" that pretty much does the same thing, just with completely different specifics. For one thing, it requires two actions, not just one. (Rangers access this feat through multiclassing or archetypes)

Our level 11 Ranger has both these feats. He also has three weapons: one throwing dagger which carries all the magical runes, one hatchet, and one cold iron bastard sword. The dagger and hatchet are agile, the sword is not.

This immediately makes the combinatorics explode.

He can start off a turn making a dagger/hatchet twin takedown attack, with 0, -2 attack modifiers (assuming the target is previously marked). He can then make a dual strike (with the same weapons) with his second action, and the attack penalties are -4, -4 for those attacks. If he takes these two actions in reverse order, we get 0, 0, -4, -4, so that's better (and different). Obviously the damage will be different for each weapon.

Okay so lets do Dual Strike before Twin Takedown in the future.

Now imagine he's attacking with dagger/sword instead of dagger/hatchet. The penalties become 0, -2 followed by -4, -8. Wait, what? The dual strike feat (but not the twin takedown feat) specifies that if the second attack is not made by an agile weapon, there's an additional -2 penalty. This explains why the first pair of attack modifiers are 0/-2 instead of the expected 0/0. For the second pair of attack modifiers the extra penalties comes from both this and how the third attack carries a "double -3" penalty for a non-agile attack (again assuming a ranger with a marked target, otherwise we're talking -10) explaining the -8. The -4 is the double -2 penalty for an agile weapon.

Okay so let's instead do the sword attack before the dagger in each pairing. Dual strike sword/dagger, twin takedown sword/dagger becomes 0, 0, -6, -4. Note how the numbers are completely different. (In fact, if you aren't a PF2 rules expert, I don't expect you to be able to follow along. Just go "this sounds extremely fiddly" and that's all I ask of you) Finally we have arrived at the optimal sequence.

That is just a single very small example. It just scratches the surface of what a single hero has to deal with for each and every combat turn, since the specifics rarely stay the same.

Hot damn...

 

[!DWolf]

Hot damn...

The ranger example is an edge case and to use it as an example of every characters turn is a bit (massively) hyperbolic:

Consider a first level human fighter with sudden charge and snagging strike. He has a scimitar in one hand (he’s a pirate, yarr!) and the other free. Suppose he wants to sudden charge one target then attack a different one with snagging strike? Well he can just use his pre-calculated bonus for the first attack but then he has to subtract 5 from the second attack and add 1 from the sweep property. That’s not difficult math.

Or consider a wizard who wants to cast ray of frost on a giant rat and then cast shield on themselves. They need to roll to hit using the previously calculated bonus on their sheet.

 

[Ancalagon]

Now, with PF2, I feel like we need to carefully evaluate each situation and figure out if a frontal attack is really in our best interests. Which is a good thing, IMHO, and leads to a more nuanced roleplaying experience.

This actually is an important element of many OSR type games. There is no such thing as a "balanced encounter". There are encounters. Combat is just one of many options you can take.

 

[Undrave]

The ranger example is an edge case and to use it as an example of every characters turn is a bit (massively) hyperbolic:

Consider a first level human fighter with sudden charge and snagging strike. He has a scimitar in one hand (he’s a pirate, yarr!) and the other free. Suppose he wants to sudden charge one target then attack a different one with snagging strike? Well he can just use his pre-calculated bonus for the first attack but then he has to subtract 5 from the second attack and add 1 from the sweep property. That’s not difficult math.

Or consider a wizard who wants to cast ray of frost on a giant rat and then cast shield on themselves. They need to roll to hit using the previously calculated bonus on their sheet.

That's still a lot of stuff...

 

[Ancalagon]

4. Unless of course the inn is innhabited by a cast of colorful characters and the gm has prepared a list of who murders who and when along with who gets blamed for what murder and the whole thing will need to be resolved before before morning when the circuit judge arrives to execute whoever is responsible for what.

Is this a reference to the most excellent adventure, "rough night at the three feathers"?

 

[jmartkdr2]

That's still a lot of stuff...

If two floating modifiers is too much, Pathfinder isn't right for you.

 

[!DWolf]

Is this a reference to the most excellent adventure, "rough night at the three feathers"?

Yes it is! I have the WFRP 2e version but never got to run it... one of these days though I will convert it to PF2E (mostly the setting needs converting as it’s not a mechanics heavy adventure) and spring it on my players as a one shot - maybe have an investigator, a witch, and a rogue as pregens.

 

[dave2008]

When there is no danger or no consequence there is no need to roll. If the party is in down time just let them heal to full. The healing system is best used when coupled with exploration mode and pressure. Some examples:

That is really good point / suggestion. Is that how it is handled in the rules and/or published adventures, you just your take on how to run it?