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

[Celtavian]

Thanks.

Though you could have made it much simpler to respond by explaining that everything revolves around

Spoiler

the spell Phantasmal Killer

I see nothing egregious about this. The effect is appropriate for the level.

As I understand it, your described outcome required the character to make two saves, first rolling a critical failure and then a failure.

Even with the use of a Hero Point, this can happen.

What seems to be a mistake, however, is
"while monsters (immune to the hazard) entered the fray, swarming and dealing sneak attack damage and others at range blasting with spells."

Unless I am mistaken, you have activated room C7 and its monsters while the heroes were still busy with the trap in C6, yes?

This is a mistake. An honest mistake that's very easy to make. But still - encounters are never intended to mix together.

Pathfinder 2's encounter math simply does not allow it. One Moderate encounter can be deadly as is (as you have discovered!)

Two moderate encounters combined... that's immediately equal to an Extreme encounter! Edit: ninja'd!

Twice as many monsters is quadruple the danger in this game, to phrase it a bit crudely but very directly!

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.

Not unless your players are extraordinarily good with a well optimized party including a Champion and a Cleric or a good caster who can split the battlefield. It is very rough if you're a group of loosely organized players with mostly martials and some kind of healer.

 

[Celtavian]

Age of Ashes is tougher than Extinction Curse. It seems because it was designed early, the encounter balance system was a little off. They have some real out of whack encounters. If we didn't have a Champion and a Cleric, I think the early modules would have killed us. Both of those classes are real game changers for party survival if played well. We had to use a lot of healing power through the first two modules. It gets easier as you gain levels as it seems encounter building seemed more sensible later on and the characters became more powerful.

Stick it out. The third module is when life becomes easier. The first two modules have some really nightmare encounter areas. The third one is a lot of reasonable except for one really dangerous encounter, which I think will see you back posting another TPK. There is one TPK encounter in the 3rd module that killed one member of our six man, one animal companion, and almost killed another two. That encounter was vicious.

Fourth module was the easiest so so far. Fifth is even easier. Be real careful on this one encounter late in the module in the 3rd book. It's a real nightmare.

 

[kenada]

I'm involved in three campaigns. One that is leaving 5e for Swords and Wizardry (I'm the GM), one that is leaving 5e for Old School Essentials (I'll be leaving as DM to be a player), and the PF2 Age of Ashes campaign, which I am GMing. The group wants the "authentic Adventure Path" experience - they want it as close to the RAW (and the design of the AP) as possible to see how the system holds up. I'm frustrated, but I think I'm not as frustrated as some of the players are - yet, they want to stick with it, and I'm willing to do the same as long as they are.

To clarify, the suggestion was for what to do next. If they want to play PF2 so badly they’d keep doing it even while it frustrates them, then maybe a less-frustrating (i.e., non-AP) followup could be an option. Anyway, the rest of my previous post still applies, so don’t feel like I’m trying to be pushy about PF2 just because it’s a game I like.

 

[kenada]

I'm not sold its day ending even in moderate ones; a big part of that is burning through spells, and its really hard to do all that in one encounter no matter what you do in PF2e, just because its really hard for a battle to last long enough to give you time.

I’d interpreted the way they defined moderate-threat as ending the adventuring day, but it just says stop to rest, so that may mean just stopping to Treat Wounds. If that’s the intent, then the guidelines definitely seem miscalibrated (versus what people are experiencing apparently).

(I don't disagree with the latter part of your statement, as long as what you mean is "can potentially lead to a TPK." With most opponents the way death is handled means its generally very unlikely that you'll get a solitary kill of a PC).

It’s possible to kill a PC if they have the wounded condition and are taking persistent damage (because they’ll start at dying 2 when they go down and a single tick of persistent damage will add another 2 to their dying condition), but realistically it going to be a TPK.

It may very well be that groups that are really bad with tactics will have severe problems with post-moderate encounters. I don't see that saying anything but "If you can't get them to change that, stick to moderate encounters". You can answer "Then what about APs?" to which my answer is "Its not the only game where a certain minimum level of play is assumed for published adventures." In fact, I'd argue most do.

Right. If a group can’t do the encounters as written in an AP, they should be changing them to make it fun for the group. The CRB even says as much. It does talk a lot about stuff like backstories and linking adversaries to characters, but if the players can’t hack it in combat, then you need to adjust the encounters to be something they’ll enjoy.

 

[Retreater]

Our party consists of a wizard, fighter, champion, cleric, and monk. I don't feel like anyone is blatantly suboptimal. Spells are almost all combat oriented (damage and healing) but there are no magic buffs going on.
The warriors use defensive auras, shield blocks. They have a pretty solid frontline.
I'm not a master tactician, but I am an experienced gamer, and it's not apparent to me what they should be doing differently. It's probably going to get more challenging for them as I expect the monk player to leave soon for personal reasons.
I'm sure that a GM can make it more survivable, but running this AP by the book, that's not possible for me. The only other adventures I've read from Paizo (ogre demo adventure & the playtest) make it seem that extreme difficulty is the assumption of the system. Even when I created my own encounters using the method in the Core Rulebook, I found that they were far more difficult than encounters in most other systems I've DMed (and that's been quite a few).

 

[kenada]

Spells are almost all combat oriented (damage and healing) but there are no magic buffs going on

This is probably part of the problem. Buffs on top of debuffs are really potent. You can boost your hit and crit rates by 15~30% if you’re stacking them up right.

From a tactical perspective, traditional RPG tactics can be self-defeating. If everyone charges in to fight the boss, then you’re just saving it the trouble of spending actions to move over to engage with the party. Make it waste those actions, shooting it as it approaches. If they won initiative, have the melee martials delay, so they can be ready to attack once it gets close.

The same goes for third actions. Unless you’re a flurry ranger fighting your hunted prey, you really shouldn’t be making a third Strike. It’s not likely to succeed, so you’re basically fishing for crits. You probably have a better chance trying to Demoralize your opponent. Even just moving away can be decent effective healing when the boss is likely to hit on its third attack.

Even when I created my own encounters using the method in the Core Rulebook, I found that they were far more difficult than encounters in most other systems I've DMed (and that's been quite a few).

Is this a matter of expectations or perception? Like, a “low-threat” encounter feels more difficult than what you would expect a “low-threat” encounter to be in another system?

 

[kenada]

With that said, I’ve read the encounter building guidelines result in harder encounters than intended. The suggestion was to treat creatures as one level higher for encounter-building purposes. I can’t find the comment on reddit now, and it was paraphrasing something supposedly said by the devs, so take that for what it’s worth. I guess we’ll find out if that’s true when the the next errata is released (supposedly soon).

Update: Found the post. It was on the official forum and was something discussed on Know Direction (anonymous comment from a dev re: difficulty). I was confusing it with the recent thread on houserules and a side conversation on possible changes to wounded and dying.

 

[glass]

Nah. I'm quite serious.

If you are quite serious about your eyeballs bleeding, then I think you should see a doctor and stop blaming it on PF2. Unless you are jabbing yourself in the eyes with the books - that would be quite plausible since they seem to keep their corners quite well. In which case you should probably just stop doing that (and maybe still see a doctor just in case).

_
glass.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I’d interpreted the way they defined moderate-threat as ending the adventuring day, but it just says stop to rest, so that may mean just stopping to Treat Wounds. If that’s the intent, then the guidelines definitely seem miscalibrated (versus what people are experiencing apparently).

I'd expect the latter, honestly, because even the rough fights I've been in just didn't last long enough to burn through most of anything but someone's absolute top level spells. We definitely needed some Treat Wounds at the end there (I've been playing pretty much the damage sponge in both games, a Fighter in one and a Champion/Bard in the other, so I was often the person who needed the most propping up; I went down in a couple times, so its not like I didn't see some rough ones), but the real issue is that there's just not time to spend all the resources involved. If people are having fights that last the 6-8 rounds routinely in kind of needs for that, I'd be interested in, well, how (and I don't mean to be critical in saying that, I'm just genuinely puzzled).

It’s possible to kill a PC if they have the wounded condition and are taking persistent damage (because they’ll start at dying 2 when they go down and a single tick of persistent damage will add another 2 to their dying condition), but realistically it going to be a TPK.

Sure. But I'm willing to call that first situation reasonably uncommon. Like I said, I can see the second being, honestly, much more likely (we had one occasion in the group with my Fighter where both he and the monk went down, it was just the opposition was on their last legs at that point and the two spellcasters were able to finish the job at that point).

Right. If a group can’t do the encounters as written in an AP, they should be changing them to make it fun for the group. The CRB even says as much. It does talk a lot about stuff like backstories and linking adversaries to characters, but if the players can’t hack it in combat, then you need to adjust the encounters to be something they’ll enjoy.

Absolutely.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Our party consists of a wizard, fighter, champion, cleric, and monk. I don't feel like anyone is blatantly suboptimal.

Well, there IS a wizard in the party...