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Pathfinder 2E Pathfinder 2e: is it RAW or RAI to always take 10 minutes and heal between encounters?
- Thread starter ReshiIRE
- Start date
I am apparently super ranty today:
The encounter taken is from the Slithering. It is a common encounter. The characters are using basic tactics and playing into their strengths rather than mindlessly moving from room to room. You are confusing this for being very lucky because you are only seeing the end results of players who use basic tactics in concordance with their player builds.
Take the ranger in the example: he has a 19 dex, is expert in stealth, and put a +1 skill potency in stealth (these are ABP characters BTW). That gives a +15 bonus. He wants to be stealthy. He has the quiet allies skill feat (because he travels around with the fighter and magus who both wear plate and have 10 dex). So knowing only that, what does the character do when entering a dangerous location? Obviously he uses his stealth. So he sneaks in. He cannot be detected at all until he tries to edge around to get a peak through the half closed door. He has greater cover which gives a +4 circumstance bonus. So he is rolling at +19 . He rolled a 14 which is good but not a spectacular roll. To beat the Ahvothian’s hearing he normally has to beat a 28. But this particular one is busy training two dinosaurs so he is taking at least a -2 penalty. That means a 7 or higher will be a success (or a 16 or higher using quiet allies which is why the 26 succeeded exactly - but a 6 or higher is what the characters actually needed, see the next paragraph).
But what if the ranger rolls very low (and doesn’t have or want to spend a hero point)? Well, you as a GM are in charge of running the world and making it respond with verisimilitude. Look at things from the demons point of view: you are training your dinos, and over their growls and talons scrabbling on the floor, you think you hear a noise in the hall. Do you assume that is just the other cultists moving in and out of the temple (as they frequently do) or a band of adventurers come to kill the cult? Meta: do you move hard against the players or soft against the players and, based on the circumstances, are you justified in making that decision? So in these circumstances I would judge that the demon would quiet down the dinosaurs and come investigate but he’s not going to be stealthy about it (because it’s probably just cultists) and the ranger will hear it. So the ranger gets to take another action. He could set up an ambush, pretend to be a cultist (not likely to succeed because he has horrible cha but he can try), or simply hide or sneak away. The game loop continues as each side tries to eek out an advantage. (Note that this action is exactly what the group wants when they are stealthing in, so in that situation they only actually fail in their goals on a 6 or less).
That is of course mechanically what happens, but let’s look at it through the players perspective. You are playing a ranger who’s good at stealth. You know kicking in doors with no knowledge of what’s on the other side leads to death. You are at the entrance to the temple looking into the courtyard. What do you do? Obviously for me it’s: I have the other characters cover me (from outside the room) while I sneak inside looking for traps and/or tracks. I then sneak around to the various doors and look in or listen at them to figure out what’s going on. So that’s what I had the ranger do in the example. It doesn’t require system mastery or even being that lucky. It just requires immersion into the mindset of a character who’s job it is to try and safely do very dangerous things and who is sneaky.
You are reading the phrase as a prescription to railroad PCs into combat when it is meant to be a description of the creatures morale, the same as “surrenders if reduced below 30 hp” or “flees if any ally is killed”. Likewise the pauses for talking are to let the players engage with the expansive non-combat social options in the game.
Let’s look at the example with Nhalazarin from abomination vaults. Say you have a fast talking, pretty boy fire elemental sorcerer as the face of your group (+11 deception/+9 diplomacy vs her +9 will and +10 perception). The ghoul gives her ultimatum. The sorcerer say: “sure, sounds great. You don’t even have to bite me, one of your followers did already see? How long does turning into a ghoul take anyways?”
How do you respond? You could of course shut down all attempts at talking. But it sounds like you want roleplay? And your player definitely wants it. So maybe have the characters use a social skill. If they succeed she says. “Oh it will be a couple of days of untold agony as your body is reshaped into its new and glorious form.” And keeps talking. Say the sorcerer then responds “Okay that’s a while, why don’t you tell me all about you guys, since we will be joining you? That way we don’t have to waste time getting us up to speed once we become ghouls?”
And look at that, it’s roleplay. It’s meaningful and engaging if you let it be. If the PCs can get her talking she could spill a lot of information about the plot, and what’s around. Characters can do things like “say do you guys need a lot of bodies? We killed a whole bunch on the upper floors and just sort of stacked them up in out of the way places. I could show you were they are while we wait to transform.” And finagle their way out of the situation. The possibilities are endless.
Finally, here is a video with excellent advice about surviving in rpgs.
The encounter taken is from the Slithering. It is a common encounter. The characters are using basic tactics and playing into their strengths rather than mindlessly moving from room to room. You are confusing this for being very lucky because you are only seeing the end results of players who use basic tactics in concordance with their player builds.
Take the ranger in the example: he has a 19 dex, is expert in stealth, and put a +1 skill potency in stealth (these are ABP characters BTW). That gives a +15 bonus. He wants to be stealthy. He has the quiet allies skill feat (because he travels around with the fighter and magus who both wear plate and have 10 dex). So knowing only that, what does the character do when entering a dangerous location? Obviously he uses his stealth. So he sneaks in. He cannot be detected at all until he tries to edge around to get a peak through the half closed door. He has greater cover which gives a +4 circumstance bonus. So he is rolling at +19 . He rolled a 14 which is good but not a spectacular roll. To beat the Ahvothian’s hearing he normally has to beat a 28. But this particular one is busy training two dinosaurs so he is taking at least a -2 penalty. That means a 7 or higher will be a success (or a 16 or higher using quiet allies which is why the 26 succeeded exactly - but a 6 or higher is what the characters actually needed, see the next paragraph).
But what if the ranger rolls very low (and doesn’t have or want to spend a hero point)? Well, you as a GM are in charge of running the world and making it respond with verisimilitude. Look at things from the demons point of view: you are training your dinos, and over their growls and talons scrabbling on the floor, you think you hear a noise in the hall. Do you assume that is just the other cultists moving in and out of the temple (as they frequently do) or a band of adventurers come to kill the cult? Meta: do you move hard against the players or soft against the players and, based on the circumstances, are you justified in making that decision? So in these circumstances I would judge that the demon would quiet down the dinosaurs and come investigate but he’s not going to be stealthy about it (because it’s probably just cultists) and the ranger will hear it. So the ranger gets to take another action. He could set up an ambush, pretend to be a cultist (not likely to succeed because he has horrible cha but he can try), or simply hide or sneak away. The game loop continues as each side tries to eek out an advantage. (Note that this action is exactly what the group wants when they are stealthing in, so in that situation they only actually fail in their goals on a 6 or less).
That is of course mechanically what happens, but let’s look at it through the players perspective. You are playing a ranger who’s good at stealth. You know kicking in doors with no knowledge of what’s on the other side leads to death. You are at the entrance to the temple looking into the courtyard. What do you do? Obviously for me it’s: I have the other characters cover me (from outside the room) while I sneak inside looking for traps and/or tracks. I then sneak around to the various doors and look in or listen at them to figure out what’s going on. So that’s what I had the ranger do in the example. It doesn’t require system mastery or even being that lucky. It just requires immersion into the mindset of a character who’s job it is to try and safely do very dangerous things and who is sneaky.
You are reading the phrase as a prescription to railroad PCs into combat when it is meant to be a description of the creatures morale, the same as “surrenders if reduced below 30 hp” or “flees if any ally is killed”. Likewise the pauses for talking are to let the players engage with the expansive non-combat social options in the game.
Let’s look at the example with Nhalazarin from abomination vaults. Say you have a fast talking, pretty boy fire elemental sorcerer as the face of your group (+11 deception/+9 diplomacy vs her +9 will and +10 perception). The ghoul gives her ultimatum. The sorcerer say: “sure, sounds great. You don’t even have to bite me, one of your followers did already see? How long does turning into a ghoul take anyways?”
How do you respond? You could of course shut down all attempts at talking. But it sounds like you want roleplay? And your player definitely wants it. So maybe have the characters use a social skill. If they succeed she says. “Oh it will be a couple of days of untold agony as your body is reshaped into its new and glorious form.” And keeps talking. Say the sorcerer then responds “Okay that’s a while, why don’t you tell me all about you guys, since we will be joining you? That way we don’t have to waste time getting us up to speed once we become ghouls?”
And look at that, it’s roleplay. It’s meaningful and engaging if you let it be. If the PCs can get her talking she could spill a lot of information about the plot, and what’s around. Characters can do things like “say do you guys need a lot of bodies? We killed a whole bunch on the upper floors and just sort of stacked them up in out of the way places. I could show you were they are while we wait to transform.” And finagle their way out of the situation. The possibilities are endless.
Finally, here is a video with excellent advice about surviving in rpgs.
Justice and Rule
Hero
This is a big part of how I play things, and how (despite being confusing due to the limitations of language) the stealth system is actually really good for this sort of thing. So you fail a Stealth check... in PF2, it's not suddenly over, but you go from unnoticed to undetected (Or as I would say, your opponent goes from unaware to aware). This only means that they think there is something in the vicinity with them, rather than having a good idea of what, where, or who. That isn't GM fiat, that's straight up what the rules are.
Now we get to have room to roleplay, like @!DWolf goes into: just being undetected means that a creature could have a variety of reactions, dependent on the situation: are they already in a combat situation? Are they on the look out for enemies? Are they in an area where they would expect other people? Is it a place where creatures (hostile or otherwise) sometimes get in? That all goes into the soft versus hard approach. If you have a terrorist securing a building who hears something, it might cause more problems because those NPCs would be on their guard and expecting hostiles. The above example shows when failing a stealth check might create a bit of tension, but not a full-on fail state: there's lots of reasons for the demon to approach this without being fully on guard, nor calling down reinforcements for no reason.
The other half of this is something that is outline in the GMG but I guess is antithetical to how d20 games developed, so it gets forgotten. I think it's also in the DMG as well. But failing forwards is meant to be part of the game. Some of it is codified: it's hard to be immediately detected from Stealth, for example. In other parts, like in Knowledge Checks, it's meant to be done on a case-by-case basis. In this case, the Ranger has an opportunity to try other things, whether it be to try and continue sneaking, bluff, etc. It doesn't immediately devolve to combat.
CapnZapp
Legend
Shrug.
Just because "many people" aren't having this issue does not mean it doesn't exist.
Perhaps you're talking to mostly experienced GMs. Just to take one example.
How about you we instead discuss what the rulebooks actually say or doesn't say?
Do you acknowledge that my description is fair and representative, or not? And if you don't, can I ask you to point to the passages you claim adequately explains how PF2 encounters work in practical play, and what to do and not do?
Thanks
CapnZapp
Legend
If you consider it "exceedingly harsh" to give advice that avoids TPKs at the table, that's on you.
So please, don't relativize.
No game explains everything, but i haven't asked for everything.
CapnZapp
Legend
The fact remains:
What you get away with in almost every other iteration of D&D, you don't here.
CapnZapp
Legend
I am sorry these people are trying to invalidate your experience.
I try my best to convince them your experiences are representative of the very real differences between PF2 and pretty much every other game in the D&D sphere, but it is hard going.
Some people just can't accept their chosen favorite game can have real impactful flaws.
Regards,
Zapp
CapnZapp
Legend
Nope, still there.
CapnZapp
Legend
just because you cope alright doesn't mean all criticism is groundless.
However, it is important to note that a laundry list of flaws does not in and of itself constitute useful criticism.
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