Paizo A question about Paizo/PF adventure design

[The-Magic-Sword]

I want to disagree with you a bit as I am one of the DMs that is likely to have a problem and appreciate the Capn's advice on this. I come from a time before encounter building guidelines and XP budgets. I can read and understand them and use them, but I don't like them. I find them unnatural and immersion breaking. I always eventually discard them (I did in 4e and 5e) and I would want to do so in PF2 as well. Designing a game this way just feels unnatural to me. If I can't intuitively place monsters / NPCs were I want, that is likely to be a real problem for me. That is one reason that I will probably be a PC and not a DM/GM if I ever get the chance to play PF2.

Also, I don't play video games so I have no idea what that reference is about.

But the whole point of the games you're used to not having them is that its completely ok to have fundamentally unbalanced encounters that the players need to treat as problems to solve instead of battles to just fight. Whereas Zapp is insisting that systems where the encounter guidelines are nonfunctional create a reasonable expectation that they shouldn't function elsewhere, because the players should just be able to handle it full tilt.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

There are times when it's clearly too much - like having 40 guards combine forces at the castle for a massive assault. My last TPK in the system included a simple door trap and a handful of guards stepping forward to defend their room that was obviously under attack. Having them stay there and wait in the room to be killed and let the ritual in the next room be compromised, well, it's illogical and stupid design. But if you put them in there, it's a TPK. Moreover, it's a TPK in a round - without even giving the party a chance to retreat.
Something that any edition of D&D/PF for the past 40+ years could handle - a couple of guards attacking during a door trap - causes PF2 to collapse under its own over-designed, bloated weight.

But that encounter works just fine in pf2e, the trap has an exp value, the guards have an exp value.

If that combined exp value is within the encounter guidelines, there's no special reason it should be a TPK. If they were meant to each be hard on their own, of course combining them would make them too hard-- but you can adjust that easily enough, the game gives you the tools to do so.

If you could combine them in those other systems without thinking about it, than those other systems probably "collapsed" in the sense that the encounters would have been jokes individually. Like, offered no resistance at all, which is a pretty accurate summary of 5e, from the years I spent GMing it.

Conversely, if its obvious the guards wpuld attack, them congrats you just set the parameters for a single encounter, budget accordingly.

Look, if you and Zapp want to hate on the system (regardless of disclaimers to the contrary) thats great and all, but you're gonna get called out, "overdesigned, bloated mess" indeed.

 

[Retreater]

But that encounter works just fine in pf2e, the trap has an exp value, the guards have an exp value.

If that combined exp value is within the encounter guidelines, there's no special reason it should be a TPK. If they were meant to each be hard on their own, of course combining them would make them too hard-- but you can adjust that easily enough, the game gives you the tools to do so.

If you could combine them in those other systems without thinking about it, than those other systems probably "collapsed" in the sense that the encounters would have been jokes individually. Like, offered no resistance at all, which is a pretty accurate summary of 5e, from the years I spent GMing it.

Conversely, if its obvious the guards wpuld attack, them congrats you just set the parameters for a single encounter, budget accordingly.

I didn't design the encounters. Paizo did. And they should've done a better job.

 

[dave2008]

But the whole point of the games you're used to not having them is that its completely ok to have fundamentally unbalanced encounters that the players need to treat as problems to solve instead of battles to just fight. Whereas Zapp is insisting that systems where the encounter guidelines are nonfunctional create a reasonable expectation that they shouldn't function elsewhere, because the players should just be able to handle it full tilt.

No, for me the point is I don't want to worry about balanced encounters. I didn't like when it was introduced to me in 4e and sounds like it is even worse in PF2. I was able to massage 4e to work with my DM style, I'm not sure I can do that in PF2.

I'm old school I guess, balanced encounters just seems wrong to me - like in my bones.

 

[dave2008]

But that encounter works just fine in pf2e, the trap has an exp value, the guards have an exp value.

If that combined exp value is within the encounter guidelines, there's no special reason it should be a TPK. If they were meant to each be hard on their own, of course combining them would make them too hard-- but you can adjust that easily enough, the game gives you the tools to do so.

If you could combine them in those other systems without thinking about it, than those other systems probably "collapsed" in the sense that the encounters would have been jokes individually. Like, offered no resistance at all, which is a pretty accurate summary of 5e, from the years I spent GMing it.

Conversely, if its obvious the guards wpuld attack, them congrats you just set the parameters for a single encounter, budget accordingly.

Look, if you and Zapp want to hate on the system (regardless of disclaimers to the contrary) thats great and all, but you're gonna get called out, "overdesigned, bloated mess" indeed.

In case you are unware, the reference is to an encounter in a Paizo AP. I forget which one, but there is an entire thread on it. So, it is not like @Retreater made it up.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

I didn't design the encounters. Paizo did. And they should've done a better job.

At what? Making the encounters less functional for others so they can be more functional for you?

At the end of the day, you're the GM, and so am I, the buck stops with us to adjust things for the table, my concern is whether the system gives me the tools to do that. Whereas the takeaway is that you expect to adjust the content of the adventure, without adjusting the encounters themselves? Its a fundamentally broken proposition.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

No, for me the point is I don't want to worry about balanced encounters. I didn't like when it was introduced to me in 4e and sounds like it is even worse in PF2. I was able to massage 4e to work with my DM style, I'm not sure I can do that in PF2.

I'm old school I guess, balanced encounters just seems wrong to me - like in my bones.

I mean, I think thats fine-- but if you don't want to worry about balanced encounters, then why not just stop worrying about balanced encounters? I don't think there's anything fundamentally different about the games where you didn't have to worry about it, a given monster could easily still be too much for your party to handle, flooding them with the orcs they can barely take 2 of is still going to kill them.

Its not a difference of whether you had to, its a difference of whether you do, accepting that you don't really just makes you more open to other ways of solving the encounters in the first place, since you're already accepting beating them down in a straightforward manner should sometimes be suicide, and should sometimes be a cakewalk. Those games didn't have different mechanics in terms of balance, just a different attitude toward a lack of balance-- in those games it was desirable and the GM expected players to problem solve around it, but its not like your ability to handle an encounter in that way is meaningfully handicapped.

Plus, there's something to be said for the idea that not every game is for every player-- maybe you would be happier with another system, or retreater would, if they're unwilling to adjust encounters to suit their style and group. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink, the encounters they're referring to are probably pretty easy to adjust down to accommodate combination-- and easier than an adjustment in 5e would have been, which I know because I've done a bunch of adjustment in both.

 

[Nilbog]

It seems to me that different systems have a different amount of flex inherent to them, so something like PF2 you can get away with two extra guards arriving and the party coping, anymore than that you are straying into TPK* territory. Maybe 5e has greater width so maybe 6 guards can turn up before you enter the TPK zone. (Maths is used purely as an example I'm not basing it on actual mechanics)

I don't think either system is right or wrong, its which one you as a DM best fits your play style if you think 3 extra guards should be a mortal threat to the PC's then hey knock yourself out with PF2 as that will require you to do the least amount of work for the game style you like (if we are purely basing it on encounters) otherwise go for a different system.

*when I say TPK I mean an encounter that the party is almost guaranteed to lose by using only standard game mechanics

 

[Retreater]

In case you are unware, the reference is to an encounter in a Paizo AP. I forget which one, but there is an entire thread on it. So, it is not like @Retreater made it up.

Yes. It was about a combined trap encounter in the second book of Age of Ashes that TPKed my group. Here's a link to the thread. Another Deadly Session, and It's Getting Old

 

[Retreater]

At what? Making the encounters less functional for others so they can be more functional for you?

Maybe by designing encounters that aren't intended to be only "you go to room A, clear all the enemies in room A, take extended rests, go to room B, clear all the enemies in room B (who were sitting there politely until you were quite ready for the fight)."
I would argue that writing adventures that can only be run a single way is not a great way of doing it. Look at Lost Mine of Phandelver - in Cragmaw Hideout, the goblins there have various strategies they can do when the party invades their lair (turning loose the wolves, flooding the caves, retreating and notifying the bugbear chieftain, etc).
Are we saying that the new, robust, expertly designed, thoroughly playtested PF2 can't handle this kind of gameplay? Where intelligent enemies can behave, well, intelligently?
So what a designer should do is present smaller encounters, less deadly traps, etc., that a smart group can attempt to face at their own pace. Find and disable the trap, and it's not an issue. Sneak up and take out the sentry, and you don't have the bell rung to warn the complex. But if you charge in and face everything at once, you might have a bad day.
But Age of Ashes' design assumes that its players are not capable of this. Each room is a "balanced" encounter, devoid of any connection to the rest of the world. A GM can't string them together to threaten a party and likewise can't reward the party who plans and adapts.