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

[CapnZapp]

If my goal is selling people on a system, I probably don’t want to knock out their characters in the very first fight (even if they survive, and the party can retreat and rest) regardless of what’s doing it.

Then you can't offer up even a Moderate fight, I'm afraid.

(When we were new to PF2 we nearly had a TPK to a fight I later calculated to be Low. For some reason, they all tried killing the Bugbear with miserable results, while the three Goblins were left unmolested to do wild damage. No, none of us could really explain it afterwards )

One character losing all their HP and becoming Dying is something you can expect to happen at least once every session (when running the Extinction Curse AP, at least). This has only lead to the actual death (or rather, forced expenditure of a Fate Hero Point) once.

 

[kenada]

Then you can't offer up even a Moderate fight, I'm afraid.

I think that’s what I’m saying.

(When we were new to PF2 we nearly had a TPK to a fight I later calculated to be Low. For some reason, they all tried killing the Bugbear with miserable results, while the three Goblins were left unmolested to do wild damage. No, none of us could really explain it afterwards )

We had TPK when my PCs fought a monster they could have literally gone around.

One character losing all their HP and becoming Dying is something you can expect to happen at least once every session (when running the Extinction Curse AP, at least). This has only lead to the actual death (or rather, forced expenditure of a Fate Hero Point) once.

It definitely varies from game to game (we’ve had several sessions with little to no combat), but that sounds about right. If you’re getting in fights, someone is going to go down eventually, and that’s perfectly normal.

 

[CapnZapp]

But what PF2 has done with its +10/-10 critical mechanic is that it is strongly against the players, in my experience. PCs are more impacted by huge damage from a monster's critical hit or critically failing a saving throw.
If the party kills 5 goblins - great, that's a successful combat. If the monsters kill 5 PCs - well, that's the end of the campaign.
Without feats, special equipment, etc., the odds used to be that enemies would get a critical success only 5% of the time. It seems like 25-35% of the time now, often with weapons that trigger additional effects and damage as well.
This is a slight departure from the original issue, but that also stemmed from the frequency of criticals in the game (in that case, critically failing a saving throw that led to a death effect).

It is strongly in favor of higher-leveled combatants, is what it is.

This is why a single monster 3 levels higher than the characters is a credible solo encounter, even if the exact same monster is just a doorstop to the heroes six levels later (when it is 3 levels lower than the characters).

But yes, this means that a monster three levels higher than you invariably can take out 50% - 100% of your max hp in a single crit, and that you have ~25% of making said crit.

The effect is most pronounced at low levels. We're "only" level 13, but it already seems as if the effect is receding somewhat.

And the rulebook specifically states that heroes get better at succeeding at level-appropriate DCs as they level up. Meaning that it's not the designers' intention that the success rate of a task of your own level should always stay 50% (say). I would guesstimate it to start at 45% and slowly rise to maybe 60%.

Probably not coincidentally, there has been no Extreme encounters in this AP during the first three installments. Looking in coming adventures (I'm the GM) they start coming more and more often as you reach and pass level 15.

But my point here is that you can play the game using your own encounters, and that if you never feature monsters of a higher level than the PCs you can approximate the 5th Edition feel where you're not hit by lightning from out of nowhere, so to speak.

 

[CapnZapp]

that’s perfectly normal.

Yes. It might still be unacceptable to new gamers though. (Just clarifying I understand this point)

 

[CapnZapp]

I don't want to put words in your mouth, so I will simply ask - are you saying it's a railroad? Because it sounds like a railroad...

They're called paths for a reason. (That reason is probably that "Adventure railroads" were voted down at Paizo HQ... )

The simple truth is that Paizo knows parallel encounters (where if you do set A you bypass/negate set B) are unpopular. Space is limited. Everybody wants to experience the full content. Having two sets of encounters would mean half the content would go unused.

That doesn't fly when each level contains maybe 12 combat encounters and you need to do pretty much all of them in order to gain enough XP to level up (if you still use XP).

There are no PF2 APs featuring, say, a forest with lots of encounters, with no overarching goal, and where which ones to challenge and which to ignore is up to the PCs as much as the GM.

 

[Ancalagon]

Pathfinders niche is players that didn't like 3.0's no balance game theory. Everything in Pathfinder has always been that way. It's a game system that's primary focus is to make sure that players don't screw up the Tactical game by being "creative Players" . Thus things like All force effects effect everything except magic missile which only effects living creatures because heaven forbid a mage should activate a trap or destroy a potion vial in someones hand in combat. I've been playing pathfinder for awhile because it's what my friends want to play and I've discovered the game absolutely assumes all players are bad and will mess up the game, and that GM's aren't supposed to fudge anything.
Thus all the rules minutae and conflicting rules who's only purpose is to prevent creativity in the game that might bypass any encounter in the game because that's cheating.

My experience is limited to PF1, but have found the rules to be ... stifling.

 

[CapnZapp]

The ±10 crit mechanic seems to be what makes encounter scaling work. Higher level things do considerably more damage, but as you approach parity, the average damage levels out. I don’t think the system would work if one just eliminated it or tried to reduce its severity. However, it can be mitigated somewhat by using Proficiency Without Level. The scaling is still there, but it tracks much more slowly with creature level.

I’m not sure how badly it would break APs to run them as written modulo using Proficiency Without Level. Harder encounters would definitely be easier, but the easier ones could potentially a bit nastier. It would be interesting to see how the threat levels came out, but that’s probably a non-trivial amount of work.

Well, since we're having these discussions we must first ask ourselves what it means when an AP is "broken". If you mean that the unrelentingly fiendish difficulty disappears, then yes, it's "broken". Unless you instead consider that precisely the opposite of broken!

But generally, the fact easy encounters become slightly harder can't compensate for hard encounters becoming slightly easier.

Only the encounters that stretch the heroes to their limits matter. Everything else is just varying amounts of trivial.

Look at the XP awards handed out by PWL. You should see that you would need to regularly confront the heroes with monsters 5 or 6 levels higher than the PCs unless you want the task of getting the loot to become easier. That the monsters of lower level than the PCs become slightly harder should not be a great issue for the PCs, except in the (very rare) case when you have loads and loads of originally trivial monsters that now aren't as trivial.

For instance, you could previously have a fight against eight level -4 creatures. This fight would likely become non-trivial in a PWL party without good area damage spells.

But as I said, encounters going outside of the mold are rather uncommon. The vast majority of encounters feature 1-4 creatures, unless the monsters are higher level than you are, when there are rarely more than 2 creatures.

tl;dr: In my evaluation PWL is not challenge neutral. It will make existing adventures easier, since there are fewer challenge spikes.

Of course, if you create encounters of your own where you know you will be using PWL, this is of zero concern.

 

[Retreater]

PF2 is definitely like this. It is far from a given that anyone is "punished" by this.

I would say that any system that allows for the creatures to critically hit for more damage and with greater frequency against the characters is adversarial. The +/- 10 makes them happen more often than it would on a natural roll of 20. Criticals are also much more powerful than in any previous edition I can recall. Especially with special attacks like spells and breath weapons.
It happens more frequently with monsters than characters in Adventure Paths because the monsters are typically higher level than the PCs and have greater attack bonuses. I also roll many more attacks for the monsters because they usually don't have good options other than "every action is an attack." Characters cast spells that cut into their action economy. Characters raise shields. There are so few times when a monster should "waste" its action to do something other than a basic attack. So the characters usually have a reduced action economy in practice compared to the (higher level) enemies they face. Fewer die rolls mean less chance for criticals.

 

[CapnZapp]

I would say that any system that allows for the creatures to critically hit for more damage and with greater frequency against the characters is adversarial. The +/- 10 makes them happen more often than it would on a natural roll of 20. Criticals are also much more powerful than in any previous edition I can recall. Especially with special attacks like spells and breath weapons.

I don't understand or agree with this viewpoint.

It's not as if 3e or 5e or whatever your preferred system is sets the gold standard for "not adversarial" and every system more deadly than that is "punishing".

First off, even a system with way more character permadeath than [insert your system here] isn't necessarily punishing or adversarial. If it works the way its players like it, there's no issue. Secondly, just because crits are bigger and happen more often does not mean the game is "adversarial". If the system doesn't cause perma-death, you can simply characterize the system as being "more exciting".

Instead your choice of language make it sound like you have a GM that drags you into a system you don't want to play. That can indeed be punishing and adversarial.

PS. Throwing an Ogre at brand new players is indeed punishing and adversial. But I'm not prepared to extend this characterization to the game as a whole.

 

[Retreater]

I don't understand or agree with this viewpoint.

It's not as if 3e or 5e or whatever your preferred system is sets the gold standard for "not adversarial" and every system more deadly than that is "punishing".

First off, even a system with way more character permadeath than [insert your system here] isn't necessarily punishing or adversarial. If it works the way its players like it, there's no issue. Secondly, just because crits are bigger and happen more often does not mean the game is "adversarial". If the system doesn't cause perma-death, you can simply characterize the system as being "more exciting".

Instead your choice of language make it sound like you have a GM that drags you into a system you don't want to play. That can indeed be punishing and adversarial.

PS. Throwing an Ogre at brand new players is indeed punishing and adversial. But I'm not prepared to extend this characterization to the game as a whole.

Sorry if my word choice makes it sound like I think it's a punishment or a form of torture to play/GM PF2 . I meant "punishing" in the same way someone might say "brutal."
So it is a brutal system compared any TTRPG system I've played or GMed in the past 20 years. I have had more frequent character death in it than I have in 3.x, d20 Modern, PF1, D&D 4E, Gamma World 7E, D&D 5E, WHFRPG 4, Savage Worlds, Dungeon World, Numenera, City of Mists, 7th Sea, Star Wars Age of Empire, Call of Cthulhu (even in Masks of Nyarlahotep), Labyrinth Lord, and Swords & Wizardry. Old School Essentials has come close, but I was playing with guys who had no concept of teamwork or apparently any desire for their characters to live. So when I say that the design comes across as balanced against the PCs, I am saying that with these different systems in my mind for comparison.
Does this make it a bad game? No. But it might mean that it's not especially well-balanced for long-term campaign play in a published, highly structured Adventure Path that goes to level 20. And that means that Paizo's bread-and-butter Adventure Path format is being disserviced by some of these mechanics, at least while they continue to use their traditional design paradigms.