Paizo A question about Paizo/PF adventure design

[CapnZapp]

To summarize, if small bonuses are likely to have a big impact on gameplay due to how your game is designed, typical GM decisions are also likely to have a huge impact on gameplay. This will increase table variance, and may be the reason why people have such different experiences from playing PF2.

I read your post as explaining where a "table variance" comes from, but you post in response to my post, and I wasn't suggesting any table variance? I was talking about that when I say something about the system, I really mean "as viewed through the lens that is the official adventures".

I was talking about how you can absolutely create a campaign where the heroes doesn't experience a difficult fight ever. This is a simple fact. But it should not prevent us from stating "PF2 contains very difficult fights". After all, the APs are official. They follow the rulebook's official guidelines. If you set up encounters the "usual way" (monsters about your own level) you'll end up with easy encounters in 5E and hard encounters in PF2. Trying to dismiss that experience as "just one out of many playing styles" is not useful. There clearly is a difference.

 

[CapnZapp]

You can kind of fake hit point attrition by imposing an opportunity cost to rest, but that doesn’t generalize (i.e., it only really works in dungeons). I did it by incorporating a bunch of old-school techniques like wandering monsters tables.

I found this to be working poorly when I tried it in Extinction Curse. You can't entice players to stop resting when that only means increasing the risk.

If the party breaks off healing because of the threat from wandering monsters, that means getting on with the adventure. Which means they are all but certain to... face even harder encounters! And since they're not fully healed, the risks involved are significant.

If the party instead insists on staying put at camp, despite the risk of being found by a wandering monster, they might be lucky and not have such an encounter. But if they do, they hopefully vanquish that monster. Then the analysis is exactly the same - they keep resting again. In the end, either the wandering monsters deplete healing faster than Medicine can replenish it, and you mostly get frustration as the story grinds to a complete halt (if not the even greater frustration of a TPK). Or Medicine heals you faster than the wandering monsters can eat it away - and then why have wandering monsters in the first place?

Wandering monsters work when the analysis is that these encounters just pose a drain on your limited resources. Better move on with the adventure and spend your resources there instead.

But in PF2 hit points aren't limited. And pressing on without them is incredibly dangerous. So the choice between staying put and moving on changes completely - you always want to - need to! - stay put until your hit points are back.

I realized that in order to reestablish "let's move on" as a meaningful choice, I would have to make a load of changes to Pathfinder 2. Too many. It quickly gets to be too much. In the end, I instead abandoned the whole idea that "should we rest 10 minutes or 60?" is a useful minigame to have. Pathfinder just doesn't let that work. (Yes, when reading the rules you get the definite impression it was meant to work. It just didn't end up working in actual play)

Once you instead simply assume players always heal up after each fight (except in the rare case when the script tells you there's no time) the game just works much better:

• you save time since there's no more discussions "should we keep moving or stay put and rest" (and its follow-ups "where is a safe place to rest" and so on)
• you save time since there's no need to invoke the cluttery Medicine rules, just say "you rest until fully healed". Whether this takes 30 minutes or 50 minutes doesn't matter.
• you avoid needless lethality since players no longer are incentivized to make the mistake of adventuring with damage

The "showcase fight" style of adventure pacing, in other words.

Of course, certain things just cease to matter. In particular, the "mini game" of "what will you do with your 10 minute activities?" Since you basically give up counting them, heroes have as many as they need, and things like "should I Refocus or Repair my shield or just stand guard?" fall by the wayside, since you simply do all of them. Besides, Medicine will routinely require 40 or 50 minutes. That's 4 or 5 such activities. Each time you rest. So the idea that these are limited and that choosing between them is an interesting decision point just doesn't work.

So between each dungeon room you simply go "everyone is topped up on healing, focus points, shield repairs and such; where do you go now?". That sentence takes 5 seconds to speak, compared to easily 15 minutes of admin if you actually follow the very fiddly rules for every subsystem involved...

Of course, just assuming players can and do heal up after each fight doesn't suit every gaming group. But then again, Pathfinder 2 doesn't suit every gaming group. (In fact, I remain amazed how few steps Paizo have taken to accommodate different play styles!)

Yes, it isn't realistic that the next room's monsters just stand there for 40 minutes, while you recover from a fight maybe 60 feet away. But that's the way AP dungeons are designed, and that's the way the game want to run.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I read your post as explaining where a "table variance" comes from, but you post in response to my post, and I wasn't suggesting any table variance? I was talking about that when I say something about the system, I really mean "as viewed through the lens that is the official adventures".

Oh, I wasn’t disagreeing with you. Your last paragraph simply prompted the reflection, since I agree with you that both statements “PF2 forces DMs to cause TPKs” and “5e and PF2 are equally deadly” are false.

In short, I have started wondering if the 4 degrees of success paradigm isn’t the root cause of why PF2 is the way it is.

Once you start from the realization that a +1 in PF2 is worth a +2 in 5e, than you really need ACs to be in a tight band, and you need very few bonuses that don’t stack.

More importantly, you also need a ton of rules to try and counterbalance table variation, because otherwise, the effects of different GMs are more pronounced.

 

[kenada]

I found this to be working poorly when I tried it in Extinction Curse. You can't entice players to stop resting when that only means increasing the risk.

If the party breaks off healing because of the threat from wandering monsters, that means getting on with the adventure. Which means they are all but certain to... face even harder encounters! And since they're not fully healed, the risks involved are significant.

If the party instead insists on staying put at camp, despite the risk of being found by a wandering monster, they might be lucky and not have such an encounter. But if they do, they hopefully vanquish that monster. Then the analysis is exactly the same - they keep resting again. In the end, either the wandering monsters deplete healing faster than Medicine can replenish it, and you mostly get frustration as the story grinds to a complete halt (if not the even greater frustration of a TPK). Or Medicine heals you faster than the wandering monsters can eat it away - and then why have wandering monsters in the first place?

Wandering monsters work when the analysis is that these encounters just pose a drain on your limited resources. Better move on with the adventure and spend your resources there instead.

But in PF2 hit points aren't limited. And pressing on without them is incredibly dangerous. So the choice between staying put and moving on changes completely - you always want to - need to! - stay put until your hit points are back.

I realized that in order to reestablish "let's move on" as a meaningful choice, I would have to make a load of changes to Pathfinder 2. Too many. It quickly gets to be too much. In the end, I instead abandoned the whole idea that "should we rest 10 minutes or 60?" is a useful minigame to have. Pathfinder just doesn't let that work. (Yes, when reading the rules you get the definite impression it was meant to work. It just didn't end up working in actual play)

Once you instead simply assume players always heal up after each fight (except in the rare case when the script tells you there's no time) the game just works much better:

• you save time since there's no more discussions "should we keep moving or stay put and rest" (and its follow-ups "where is a safe place to rest" and so on)
• you save time since there's no need to invoke the cluttery Medicine rules, just say "you rest until fully healed". Whether this takes 30 minutes or 50 minutes doesn't matter.
• you avoid needless lethality since players no longer are incentivized to make the mistake of adventuring with damage

The "showcase fight" style of adventure pacing, in other words.

Of course, certain things just cease to matter. In particular, the "mini game" of "what will you do with your 10 minute activities?" Since you basically give up counting them, heroes have as many as they need, and things like "should I Refocus or Repair my shield or just stand guard?" fall by the wayside, since you simply do all of them. Besides, Medicine will routinely require 40 or 50 minutes. That's 4 or 5 such activities. Each time you rest. So the idea that these are limited and that choosing between them is an interesting decision point just doesn't work.

So between each dungeon room you simply go "everyone is topped up on healing, focus points, shield repairs and such; where do you go now?". That sentence takes 5 seconds to speak, compared to easily 15 minutes of admin if you actually follow the very fiddly rules for every subsystem involved...

Of course, just assuming players can and do heal up after each fight doesn't suit every gaming group. But then again, Pathfinder 2 doesn't suit every gaming group. (In fact, I remain amazed how few steps Paizo have taken to accommodate different play styles!)

Yes, it isn't realistic that the next room's monsters just stand there for 40 minutes, while you recover from a fight maybe 60 feet away. But that's the way AP dungeons are designed, and that's the way the game want to run.

Well, yes. I basically said as much with the rest of that paragraph you omitted. Unless you’re running the game with a non-default style (and here I assume official adventures and/or a balance-focused approach as default), it’s not going to work. However, thanks for explaining in depth why it won’t work.

I wonder if Stamina should have been the default since that’s an (semi-)official way to get half your hit points back after an encounter. There are a handful of subsystems in the GMG that are just out there enough I wonder if these are directions that were considered but discarded for being too different. Anyway, that’s not really germane to this discussion.

I will say that when I talk about wandering monsters, I mean wandering monsters done right. If you’re just attacking the party after a die roll, then that’s going to make wandering monsters feel punitive when the party rests and just not very interesting.

Of course, encounter balance in this case is predicated on encounters being rolled together. It’s a different paradigm. That’s what I refer to as a non-default style and I say that for other styles attrition is just not a thing. Even in the case I describe, it only kind of works. It’s still not the same as the traditional model, and I expect it will eventually stop working completely at higher levels.

You made a point earlier about discussing the game with it’s default assumptions. I think it’s critically important to understand it at that level, but that is so one can make an i formed decision when tweaking or adjusting it. In this case, the OP was asking about a non-default style of play. The gist of it is that PF2 can kind of do it, but it’s not the same, and it might not work across a campaign. It’s definitely not something you do in official adventures.

I tried to make it work in my game, though attrition wasn’t a driving reason for my approach. I want exploration to be a meaningful part of the game and not something we just segue through to the fights. I think my players are fine with it, but I’m growing tired of it as a GM. That’s why I’ve discussed trying running OSE for my group in the other thread.

I still think PF2 is a surprisingly good fit for an old-school style of game. However, I’m starting to believe that it is not a great fit for an ongoing campaign. I feel like you will eventually hit a point where you just get tired of swimming against the tide. If they could do something with similar mechanical complexity to 5e or OSR games with the level of customization and monster design, then PF2 would have been an amazing game. Instead, we got something that has its moments but I’d otherwise describe as just okay.

 

[MaskedGuy]

On sidenote, I'm glad that beginner box adventure at least seems to be much more tamer than plaguestone and slithering Oh god the design in slithering x'D

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Pathfinder APs used to be designed at a very low bar of difficulty so as not to exclude players. You certainly did not need to be optimized at all to be successful in a Paizo AP. That might have changed dramatically with 2e

I also think 1st edition Paizo APs dungeons were designed to be quite responsive. I regularly combined encounters both to speed up play and provide more challenge.

It is of course possible to just narrate some creatures behaviours rather than roll initiative. Sometimes that speed bump creature can be used as dungeon dressing or to make a point. Though even a 5hp goblin can shout a warning if it wins initiative.

The 4e Idea (not execution) of encounters over several areas seems like how you need to think of it.
If you don't kill those two goblins before they flee, they might raise alarm and then it becomes all a big battle.
They also serve as spotters against a solo rogue or a familar trying to sneak in.

Also, 5hp goblins are better than 30hp fighters the goblins might be killed or overcome with a single cast of sleep or two arrows depending on the situation (depends of you feel about killing people without warning).

 

[TheSword]

Yes, i agree. Just running rise of the Runelords and the goblin fort and below has the opportunity to become far harder if players are dumb/unlucky.

 

[CapnZapp]

If you don't kill those two goblins before they flee, they might raise alarm and then it becomes all a big battle.

I hope you're still talking about 5E or Pathfinder 1, because when it becomes "all a big battle" in Pathfinder 2, then is when the heroes start dying...

 

[CapnZapp]

On sidenote, I'm glad that beginner box adventure at least seems to be much more tamer than plaguestone and slithering

Referring to Menace Under Otari I take it?

 

[MaskedGuy]

Referring to Menace Under Otari I take it?

Yup.