Pathfinder 2E Another Deadly Session, and It's Getting Old

[kenada]

Yes, I'm quite often baffled by the way forumists on Paizo forums manage to completely ignore anything bad about their game, conjuring up one fantastical reason why what-you-consider-bad-is-actually-good after one another... It's a bit like talking to religious fanatics I imagine... (not that I'd ever make the mistake of participating on forums that allow religion & politics talk...)

It's also the reason I prefer to have my rules discussions here at EN World. You guys are considerably more open to the idea that a rule written in the book might not be as ideally perfect that it can't be improved further...

The official forums never struck me as a place to have a discussion about systemic issues unless there was a consensus about them already. reddit is a little better in some ways, but I kept getting pushback for suggesting official adventures might be too hard, so I stopped participating in those discussions (because it seemed like a poor use of my time).

 

[kenada]

Except that I actually looked at some other possible level 3 creatures in the Bestiary 1, and IIRC none of them came even close to the Ogre's "oneshotting" ability*.

There’s something that associates “wreckes lowbies” with being ogre-like, but that’s not where I was going. It’s more that newbies don’t have the experience that moderate-threat encounters assume, so they’re not being set up for success. For an introductory adventure, that feels like a failure of design to me.

 

[kenada]

This is similar to the adventures produced in 4E. It was a big departure in gameplay expectations, yet the adventure series they produced (the only in-print one they managed - the one that started with Keep on the Shadowfell) was written in the style of older editions. It was a flop, it is universally reviled, and probably was a factor in why 4E failed.
A stellar opening campaign/adventure is critical for the launch of a new edition, especially one with little backwards compatibility. Hoard of the Dragon Queen wasn't great by many opinions, but at least there was the solid Lost Mines of Phandelver.
I don't know if any official adventures or APs for PF2 are any better, but the Playtest was bad, the Demo adventure is horribly imbalanced, and the two adventures I've run from Age of Ashes show a weakness of design that doesn't support the gameplay.
Coming strong out of the gate with an adventure that really showed what the system could do that was written in the style that isn't just a Paizo-standard based off PF1, would have really promoted the system.
A comparison would be the release of a new video game console. The only games available are ones originally designed for the PS4, for example. But every time you load the game into your PS5, it stutters and crashes.

Lost Mines of Phandelver is just a solid adventure all around, and it’s really great as an introductory one. If I were introducing people to PF2 and wanted to run a pre-written adventure, I’d probably just adapt that to PF2.

Hilariously, my group TPK’d on the green dragon in Thundertree. They tried to just tank it and couldn’t keep up with the damage.

 

[Campbell]

I think I get what you mean from the AP comment, but could you elaborate on that a bit? Like, if a GM has a set of encounters planned for the adventure, they’re going to run into trouble?

I am mostly talking about how given how much of an impact individual choices can have inside of a combat and how exploration mechanics can shift the fiction about planning out the party's adventuring day is somewhat of a fool's errand. That moderate encounter could in one situation feel like a pushover because the right decisions were made and dice went their way. Playing out the exact same fight with some crucial positioning mistakes and some bad dice luck could mean the end of the adventuring day.

Moreover noncombat mechanics actually say what happens on success or failure so you have less room to nudge things in a given direction.

I absolutely still use keyed encounter maps with a mix of difficulties when running PF2. I just make sure I leave for shifting circumstances based on what happens in exploration mode.

 

[Campbell]

I do not really spend much time on the official forums - mostly because those players are almost coming from a culture of play heavily informed by Adventure Paths, Organized Play and Pathfinder First Edition. I have a radically different way of playing the game so most commentary is not that useful to me.

 

[CapnZapp]

There’s something that associates “wreckes lowbies” with being ogre-like, but that’s not where I was going. It’s more that newbies don’t have the experience that moderate-threat encounters assume, so they’re not being set up for success. For an introductory adventure, that feels like a failure of design to me.

Given the concurrent discussion on traps, I can understand that a group that uses foreshadowing and scouting and range might kill the Ogre before it gets in even a single attack.

But as I said, there's no indications that's how the game's supposed to be run.

On the contrary, everything about the rules and the scenarios and the balance ethos makes me assume monsters are meant to be able to deliver their main attacks immediately.

For instance, maps are routinely very small. You're meant to roll initiative when you are 10 squares away from the monsters, at most. (If the monsters can't even reach you with two actions, that effectively means you gain a free bonus round, and that's a HUUUGE advantage, that I simply cannot envision being taken into account)

My point here is that there's no experience that's gonna save you. Saying "obviously you need to kill the Ogre before it lands even a single hit on any of you" is not a reasonable assumption to make.

And a single hit is all it's gonna take to deliver bad luck...

 

[kenada]

I am mostly talking about how given how much of an impact individual choices can have inside of a combat and how exploration mechanics can shift the fiction about planning out the party's adventuring day is somewhat of a fool's errand. That moderate encounter could in one situation feel like a pushover because the right decisions were made and dice went their way. Playing out the exact same fight with some crucial positioning mistakes and some bad dice luck could mean the end of the adventuring day.

Moreover noncombat mechanics actually say what happens on success or failure so you have less room to nudge things in a given direction.

I absolutely still use keyed encounter maps with a mix of difficulties when running PF2. I just make sure I leave for shifting circumstances based on what happens in exploration mode.

Okay, yeah. PF2 definitely is not amenable to having a plan and assuming it stays intact once it makes contact with the PCs. That’s kind of RPGs in a nutshell though.

 

[kenada]

Given the concurrent discussion on traps, I can understand that a group that uses foreshadowing and scouting and range might kill the Ogre before it gets in even a single attack.

But as I said, there's no indications that's how the game's supposed to be run.

On the contrary, everything about the rules and the scenarios and the balance ethos makes me assume monsters are meant to be able to deliver their main attacks immediately.

For instance, maps are routinely very small. You're meant to roll initiative when you are 10 squares away from the monsters, at most. (If the monsters can't even reach you with two actions, that effectively means you gain a free bonus round, and that's a HUUUGE advantage, that I simply cannot envision being taken into account)

My point here is that there's no experience that's gonna save you. Saying "obviously you need to kill the Ogre before it lands even a single hit on any of you" is not a reasonable assumption to make.

And a single hit is all it's gonna take to deliver bad luck...

I think we’re in violent agreement.

I’m not assuming any particular style of play. In this case, I assumed that PCs got involved with the ogre, and now they have to fight it on that map that’s included in the adventure. They probably win (because moderate-threat encounter), but they’ll probably have to stop for the day (because newbies), and someone might have died (because massive damage). While using a different creature eliminates the last one of those three things, it won’t necessarily eliminate the first two.

Separate from that, I’m saying what I would do if I wanted to use that to introduce players to the game. Well, I’d actually toss the encounters as written but keep the setup. I’d do that not as some playstyle preference but because there’s too much risk that they’ll create the wrong impression, and I don’t think constantly hard encounters is very fun. Even if you don’t do my style and would rather do something more kick-in-the-door, I’d still suggest using a different mix of encounters than the two moderate-threat ones in the book.

 

[Retreater]

I've seen the argument made against critical hit charts/decks in the past that it unduly punishes the PCs. If a PC gets an exceptional damage from a critical hit or inflicts a debilitating injury on a typical monster - whose lifespan is measured in rounds - that doesn't matter so much.
But what PF2 has done with its +10/-10 critical mechanic is that it is strongly against the players, in my experience. PCs are more impacted by huge damage from a monster's critical hit or critically failing a saving throw.
If the party kills 5 goblins - great, that's a successful combat. If the monsters kill 5 PCs - well, that's the end of the campaign.
Without feats, special equipment, etc., the odds used to be that enemies would get a critical success only 5% of the time. It seems like 25-35% of the time now, often with weapons that trigger additional effects and damage as well.
This is a slight departure from the original issue, but that also stemmed from the frequency of criticals in the game (in that case, critically failing a saving throw that led to a death effect).

 

[Ancalagon]

I heartily recommend every PF2 Gamesmaster to never combine encounters. You simply can't.

Having monsters react to pesky heroes' invading by doubling up on guard shifts, retreating to fortified positions and combining their strengths are very natural actions to have your monsters take, especially if reasonably intelligent. And in nearly every other game, doing so is good GM:ing!

This can trip up the best of us. It is sometimes easy for the heroes to accidentally trigger two room's worth of foes at the same time. I know of few other games that would punish such an innocuous mistake as harshly as Pathfinder 2...!



But you can't do that in PF2 unless you know exactly what you're doing.

By this I mean that as you gain experience with the system you will learn what your heroes can take. You can also create the illusion of reinforcements while not actually having the heroes face a double-strength encounter, by having the monsters come in waves and not all at once.

I hope you see that I'm not saying your experiences aren't valid. PF2 is sometimes very VERY hard. But in this case there is hope, because there was never any intention that the heroes should have to deal with monsters while still figuring out the trap.

Oof

See, as someone who runs some OSR games too, I find this... disturbing.

Encounters shouldn't necessarily be balanced to the party. It's up to the party to avoid threats and un-winable fight. See a big dragon at level 3? avoid it. you can't avoid it? Try to bribe it, offer it services, something.

The assumption that every encounter must be "balanced" bothers me. It can end up feeling extremely contrived. And not be able to have the monsters react to the PCs? Yikes....