Pathfinder 2E How is Pathfinder doing?

[Thomas Shey]

Id somewhat expect them to be easier, as the reward for playing well and not letting them combine.

"Somewhat easier" and "don't even work up a sweat" seem to have a gap there though. The level-2s we dealt with recently weren't even worth using spell slots.

Not sure on the potions and elixirs, the treasure tables have the levels of consumables so the ones you got most recently, or could most recently buy/craft should be pretty potent, at least enough to shore you up for that second punch of a shortly incoming encounter. Straight up spell slots and wands or what have you are nice in that range too.

That does require staying on top of that with consumeables as a player, however, and I really wonder how good most people are about that (I'm certainly not, and I don't think my wife is any better). Its easy to look up when you actually need them and realize what you have is, by that point, junk, and it doesn't take many levels for that to happen.

Which ties back into base encounter difficulty and what kind of encounters are being used as the composite pieces, how they combine (directly or in waves, over how many rounds and from where, a fireball shaped group and streaming in less convenient firmation are different) and what the resulting total budget is.

Full health isnt vital to all encounters in pf2e, just the ones with the most threatening creatures. Especially if your party can swing some in combat healing for you.

I'm just questioning whether in traditional dungeons the GM always knows exactly how that combining-and-waves thing will end up happening, since some of it usually involves player actions. Mind you, I've argued this could go badly in older games too (maybe not D&D3 or PF1 after a certain level since there was so much ability to just overcook everything at the PC end, but certainly back in the early days of the game it was a good recipe for a TPK).

 

[Thomas Shey]

My personal experince has been that as the sole frontliner, I take all the damage. That means I need a lot of healing, while everyone else doesn't need any.

It's not that they mind or don't want to wait for me to heal - it's that a ten-minute break might get me backup to half hp, and it might take 2-3 hour to get me near full. This... discourages deep dives.

That's a bit of an artifact of, as you say, being the sole frontliner however. Honestly, it can get pretty bad in any D&D offshoot when the group is small enough or player choice forces everything on one guy (its also hard to make that reliably work, but that's another discussion).

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

"Somewhat easier" and "don't even work up a sweat" seem to have a gap there though. The level-2s we dealt with recently weren't even worth using spell slots.



That does require staying on top of that with consumeables as a player, however, and I really wonder how good most people are about that (I'm certainly not, and I don't think my wife is any better). Its easy to look up when you actually need them and realize what you have is, by that point, junk, and it doesn't take many levels for that to happen.




I'm just questioning whether in traditional dungeons the GM always knows exactly how that combining-and-waves thing will end up happening, since some of it usually involves player actions. Mind you, I've argued this could go badly in older games too (maybe not D&D3 or PF1 after a certain level since there was so much ability to just overcook everything at the PC end, but certainly back in the early days of the game it was a good recipe for a TPK).

Its def looser than set-piece encounter rooms, thats for sure. Generally i find the exp budget rating of the encounter to be more reliable than the levels, since only using higher level enemies can distort the meta and at level and lower can still be a nasty challenge if the encounter itself is severe or extreme. So I tend to build smaller encounters as patrol groups that are intentionally building blocks for larger encounters if ot comes up, like "here's a severe encounter for this area, but its actually in two patrol groups who may or may not actually fight the pcs together."

 

[Retreater]

Correct, Paizo didn’t just figure out how to write a good PF2 AP, because they already knew how to write great APs. And Abomination Vaults combined their innovation and narrative skills with an old fashioned dungeon crawl; a genre that PF2 does very well indeed. Hence its popularity.

5e lacks PF2’s depth, customizability, and texture as a dungeon crawling system, so while Paizo will undoubtedly do an excellent job with converting Abomination Vaults, a great deal will be lost.

Everybody certainly has their opinions, and I'm not trying to invalidate those or spread negativity, but IMO, the first several PF2 APs (which I've tried to GM) were not great. I think they didn't know how the structure and expectations of PF2 should work in an AP.
Heck, maybe they even converted APs they had in the works from PF1 or (at least) the PF2 beta.
I don't even hold that the Abomination Vaults is a good dungeon, regardless of the system.
The scale is too small, the reason to explore practically non-existent, not enough interesting exploration opportunities. It's basically a string of combat encounters in tiny rooms connected by short passages. The vertical connections don't make sense, even by their official admission that it was rushed.

 

[Staffan]

It works well if the compounding encounters aren't topping the difficulty scale to begin with, its actually very rewarding with certain feats, and the biggest motivator ive seen for my party to actually break out the potions-- expediting their recovery because they dont have a full 10 minutes "you can hear shouting, itll be about a minute before the orcs arrive."

Low-level potions and elixirs are frickin' useless, particularly given their costs compared to wealth.

A 4th level character has about 30 gp in currency and consumables. A minor elixir of life costs 3 gp and heals 1d6, so if you spend all your money on those you get 10d6 of healing, or 35 hp on average. A 4th level frontliner probably has 50-60 hp (8 for ancestry, 12/level for class+Con bonus +2). Or you could go with healing potions, in which case you either have minor healing potions for 4 gp and 1d8 healing (which gets you 7 potions healing 31 hp + 2 spare gp) or lesser healing potions for 12 gp healing 2d8+5 hp (giving you 2 lesser for 28 hp + 2 minor elixirs of life for 7 hp, again a total of 35 gp).

IME, the game works pretty smoothly once you get to the mid-levels (7+), where you have had the chance to settle in to your role, get some minor items to help out, start getting the right feats, and so on. But at the lower levels, you don't have that. A 4th level character has three skill feats (one of which is background-based) and one Expert-level skill (unless they're a rogue/investigator). That's the earliest most characters even have a chance of getting Continual Recovery – if you want it earlier, you need to invest heavily into it by e.g. taking the Medic archetype at 2nd level (giving you Expert Medicine) and then using the 2nd level skill feat for it, or by using your 3rd level general feat to take it over something like Canny Acumen, Fleet, or Toughness.

I think part of my issue with this is that hit points go up pretty steeply in the early game – going from 20 hp at level 1 to 56 at level 4 is pretty big. But Treat Wounds stays at 2d8 for an average of 9 hp, which is almost half of a frontliner's hp at level 1, but like a 6th at level 4. And sure, IF you've invested in Expert Medicine, you can try for +10 hp, but that ups the DC to 20, which is like a 50% chance.

This, IMO, necessitates a slower-paced adventure than a traditional dungeon. Perhaps something like traveling through the wilderness where you might encounter one or two things with a few hours in between them, before reaching your target where you might have two more encounters in fairly rapid succession. Or exploring/patrolling a city, where you could have 3-4 encounters spread out over the course of a day. But look at something like the Corrupted Hermitage in The Show Must Go On. It's intended for 3rd level characters, and there's a pretty strong incentive to do the whole thing in one go (because someone has been kidnapped). And yet, it has 2 Low encounters, 8 Moderate, 2 Severe, and one that can be either Moderate or Severe depending on how things develop.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Low-level potions and elixirs are frickin' useless, particularly given their costs compared to wealth.

A 4th level character has about 30 gp in currency and consumables. A minor elixir of life costs 3 gp and heals 1d6, so if you spend all your money on those you get 10d6 of healing, or 35 hp on average. A 4th level frontliner probably has 50-60 hp (8 for ancestry, 12/level for class+Con bonus +2). Or you could go with healing potions, in which case you either have minor healing potions for 4 gp and 1d8 healing (which gets you 7 potions healing 31 hp + 2 spare gp) or lesser healing potions for 12 gp healing 2d8+5 hp (giving you 2 lesser for 28 hp + 2 minor elixirs of life for 7 hp, again a total of 35 gp).

IME, the game works pretty smoothly once you get to the mid-levels (7+), where you have had the chance to settle in to your role, get some minor items to help out, start getting the right feats, and so on. But at the lower levels, you don't have that. A 4th level character has three skill feats (one of which is background-based) and one Expert-level skill (unless they're a rogue/investigator). That's the earliest most characters even have a chance of getting Continual Recovery – if you want it earlier, you need to invest heavily into it by e.g. taking the Medic archetype at 2nd level (giving you Expert Medicine) and then using the 2nd level skill feat for it, or by using your 3rd level general feat to take it over something like Canny Acumen, Fleet, or Toughness.

I think part of my issue with this is that hit points go up pretty steeply in the early game – going from 20 hp at level 1 to 56 at level 4 is pretty big. But Treat Wounds stays at 2d8 for an average of 9 hp, which is almost half of a frontliner's hp at level 1, but like a 6th at level 4. And sure, IF you've invested in Expert Medicine, you can try for +10 hp, but that ups the DC to 20, which is like a 50% chance.

This, IMO, necessitates a slower-paced adventure than a traditional dungeon. Perhaps something like traveling through the wilderness where you might encounter one or two things with a few hours in between them, before reaching your target where you might have two more encounters in fairly rapid succession. Or exploring/patrolling a city, where you could have 3-4 encounters spread out over the course of a day. But look at something like the Corrupted Hermitage in The Show Must Go On. It's intended for 3rd level characters, and there's a pretty strong incentive to do the whole thing in one go (because someone has been kidnapped). And yet, it has 2 Low encounters, 8 Moderate, 2 Severe, and one that can be either Moderate or Severe depending on how things develop.

Hmm, so a Druid with Goodberry can pop off a berry that restores 1d6+4 every 10 minutes with no daily limit at level 1, which increases to two of them per 10 minutes at level 4. The Champion's Lay on Hands is 6 HP that becomes 12 HP at level 4. Hymn of Healing (Bard) and Life Boost (Witch) are similar, and there are other sources I'm not thinking of.

Between the many replenishable magical effects, Treat Wounds and its hour doubling/critical/expert and the feats that enhance it, my experience has been that normal healing in a dungeon isn't that hard unless your dungeons are more like rapid raids than cautious crawls. I'm thinking of popping potions to shore up health in an emergency situation where you don't have enough time to use your usual healing strategies, I wouldn't expect to see that happen super often, it's just an interesting bit of problem-solving when it does.

It's not very anything-goes (despite the variety), but a low level dungeon crawling party can prepare in a lot of ways to be very resilient, between treat wounds, renewable magical healing, actual slots (Divine Font for clerics.)

 

[Staffan]

Hmm, so a Druid with Goodberry can pop off a berry that restores 1d6+4 every 10 minutes with no daily limit at level 1, which increases to two of them per 10 minutes at level 4. The Champion's Lay on Hands is 6 HP that becomes 12 HP at level 4. Hymn of Healing (Bard) and Life Boost (Witch) are similar, and there are other sources I'm not thinking of.

The only one of those that's actually inherent to a class is lay on hands. The others all require very specific choices made in character building, some of which are more costly than others. For example, Hymn of Healing requires that you either spend your 2nd level feat on it instead of your muse's feats, or that you're a human with the Natural Ambition ancestral feat.

But they certainly help when they are available. In the three Pathfinder campaigns I've been involved in I've seen:

1. One group that had both a paladin and a cleric, and the cleric also focused on Medicine. The other characters were a primal sorcerer with heal for the occasional combat heal, and an alchemist who could whip up an occasional elixir of life even if her focus was on bombs. This campaign also had the advantage that levels 5-7 or so were spent hex-crawling, which reduced the pressure (since you usually didn't have an enemy in the next room to worry about). This campaign has been on hold a bit since we've been trying out other games, but up to level 12 it's been working fine.
2. Another was a larger group where a rogue was persuaded to pick up Medicine and the associated feats (because he was the one with skill increases and feats for it), and there was also a redeemer who helped. This group did not have a particularly healing-focused cleric (they did have a cleric but with harm instead). I was GMing this group, and it was much rougher even if it kind of worked out (but the strongly dungeon-focused AP we were playing really didn't help).
3. The last was a victim of circumstances, and a frickin' disaster. When we started out, we planned to have a fighter, a cleric, a ranger, a wizard, two rogues, and an investigator. However, the cleric dropped out before we started because he needed to focus on studies, and the fighter's player has only rarely been able to make it. I've been trying to make that work first by having Medicine on the ranger, and when it was clear we'd need a tank I first made a monk with the Medic archetype, and when he died I tried a fighter with the Blessed One archetype. All of these were disasters.

Now, one might say that of course the last one was a disaster and the second one was rough, without a dedicated healer. However, I think the game should work well without one. I want either a game where people can make the PCs they want to play without having to be overly concerned with fulfilling party roles, or where the game strongly indicates that you need to make sure you have X, Y, and Z in your party (and preferably where there are multiple different ways of doing X, Y, and Z), like in 4e. Pathfinder 2 gives a whole lot of options for each individual character, but requires that the party fulfills certain requirements, making many of the options trap options for the party – at least in a high-pressure environment.

 

[!DWolf]

I find that Abomination Vaults (and pf2e in general) works very well for a “sandbox”/“combat as war” type game. As an example of what I’m talking about:

Spoiler: Minor spoilers for Abomination Vaults

This last session, the game started in the dungeon and there was a debate about whether to press on and face the ghoul librarians or go back to town. The wizard really wanted to get in there and the group had a side quest (collecting books for the bookseller) and they knew their main quest (stop the gauntlight from firing; given to them by the mayor) lay through the library (revealed by the friendly ghoul morlock). But they had other side quests (such as investigating the fires breaking out around town and running for mayor). After taking careful stock of their resources they decided to tackle the ghouls. The party then spent 45 minutes real time debating strategy. They finally settled on luring the ghouls into a choke point with a calculated retreat. They then began to execute it by making sure they had multiple clear escape routes and having the surprisingly stealthy dwarf champion do a peak into the library. Where they found no ghouls. So instead they begin to cautiously clear rooms in the library: which is when the ghouls struck with their own strategy (having learned from the last time the party fought them). The ghouls intended to distract them and seal the doors (with bars they had installed) and separate the party and prevent retreat, while the spellcasters took out the party’s light sources. The ghouls would then swarm the blinded party while a ghoul boss (the scrivener) took out the party one by one in the darkness. However, since the last time a fighter with an axe and the swipe feat had joined the party and they were absolutely devastating to the ghouls, even in the darkness. The result was a massive battle with the party escaping by the skin of their teeth with several weapons and an ever burning torch left behind — and many ghouls destroyed, including two casters.
The party then spent the next several days doing downtime activities (partly because it was raining hard and they didn’t want to traverse the swamp): crafting, selling loot, rearming, and gathering info.

For this style of play, I find my experiences mirroring those described by @The-Magic-Sword — with healing resources being consumed either for expedited recovery or as emergency in combat healing (there is a medic, alchemist dedication, and champion in the party). I also find that the party rarely heals up to full in the dungeon (because I roll for wandering monsters), instead only risking 10 or 20 minutes in any area they don’t know is safe. This means that they may go into fights without full health but because of the focus on strategy and tactics and preparations (and then absolutely being willing to retreat) they usually get away with it.

 

[payn]

I find that Abomination Vaults (and pf2e in general) works very well for a “sandbox”/“combat as war” type game. As an example of what I’m talking about:

Spoiler: Minor spoilers for Abomination Vaults

This last session, the game started in the dungeon and there was a debate about whether to press on and face the ghoul librarians or go back to town. The wizard really wanted to get in there and the group had a side quest (collecting books for the bookseller) and they knew their main quest (stop the gauntlight from firing; given to them by the mayor) lay through the library (revealed by the friendly ghoul morlock). But they had other side quests (such as investigating the fires breaking out around town and running for mayor). After taking careful stock of their resources they decided to tackle the ghouls. The party then spent 45 minutes real time debating strategy. They finally settled on luring the ghouls into a choke point with a calculated retreat. They then began to execute it by making sure they had multiple clear escape routes and having the surprisingly stealthy dwarf champion do a peak into the library. Where they found no ghouls. So instead they begin to cautiously clear rooms in the library: which is when the ghouls struck with their own strategy (having learned from the last time the party fought them). The ghouls intended to distract them and seal the doors (with bars they had installed) and separate the party and prevent retreat, while the spellcasters took out the party’s light sources. The ghouls would then swarm the blinded party while a ghoul boss (the scrivener) took out the party one by one in the darkness. However, since the last time a fighter with an axe and the swipe feat had joined the party and they were absolutely devastating to the ghouls, even in the darkness. The result was a massive battle with the party escaping by the skin of their teeth with several weapons and an ever burning torch left behind — and many ghouls destroyed, including two casters.
The party then spent the next several days doing downtime activities (partly because it was raining hard and they didn’t want to traverse the swamp): crafting, selling loot, rearming, and gathering info.

For this style of play, I find my experiences mirroring those described by @The-Magic-Sword — with healing resources being consumed either for expedited recovery or as emergency in combat healing (there is a medic, alchemist dedication, and champion in the party). I also find that the party rarely heals up to full in the dungeon (because I roll for wandering monsters), instead only risking 10 or 20 minutes in any area they don’t know is safe. This means that they may go into fights without full health but because of the focus on strategy and tactics and preparations (and then absolutely being willing to retreat) they usually get away with it.

This would have wiped us out. Not my experience at all.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

I think that as a dungeon crawler, the game is hardcore, meaning it requires the party to make preperation and choices and then the results are the efficacy of those choices.

Its easy enough not to play that way, by simply not having encounters bleed, adjusting encounters or character level, giving a lot of rest time, etc etc, five minute workdays etc etc.

But its harder to have the illusion of 'traditional dingeon crawling' while succeeding and also having a release from the need to make strategic choices in character building, resource management, and tactics.