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

[Yardiff]

Having a back up character in a system thats likely to kill a character is always a good idea. That way it only takes a few mintues to get back into play.

Just my 2 coppers.

 

[CapnZapp]

I don't really see the usefulness of comparing to retro games and OSE.

The whole point of Paizo's games is to offer a naughty word tonne of building crunch, something old-school games eschew, pretty much by definition.

Saying "you can roll up an old-school character in 5 minutes instead of two hours" may be true, but then I would like to observe that you can create four characters significantly faster than a single OSE character in Ludo...

Point is: nobody interested in a deep-crunch game like PF2 will consider OSE a comparable alternative.

 

[Retreater]

Point is: nobody interested in a deep-crunch game like PF2 will consider OSE a comparable alternative.

The point I was trying to make is that the designers of PF2 seemed to want OSR paradigms: lethal fights, combat as war, etc. My comparison was only to say that if you want to use those paradigms, then play and character creation should be streamlined.
We were having characters die on average every two sessions. That's not enough time to gain any system mastery.

 

[CapnZapp]

The point I was trying to make is that the designers of PF2 seemed to want OSR paradigms: lethal fights, combat as war, etc. My comparison was only to say that if you want to use those paradigms, then play and character creation should be streamlined.
We were having characters die on average every two sessions. That's not enough time to gain any system mastery.

I know it's poor consolation but the number of deaths* fell to zero once we reached level 7 or so.
*) since my Hero points work like WFRP Fate points there haven't actually been any character replacements.

 

[Retreater]

I know it's poor consolation but the number of deaths* fell to zero once we reached level 7 or so.
*) since my Hero points work like WFRP Fate points there haven't actually been any character replacements.

We've had a few in the Cult of Cinders (book 2 of the Age of Ashes AP), and they were in the 7th level area. I think we stopped around 8-9th level, with the adventure showing little chances of improving.
I never tried it with the variant Hero Points. RAW, they are basically "get out of jail free" cards - which is fine when the rest of the party can recover your unconscious body. But in the cases I had, these were TPKs (or at least total party dead/running away).
Of the modern d20-based games I've DMed, PF2 is probably the most lethal, where things can go really bad very quickly.

 

[CapnZapp]

RAW, they are basically "get out of jail free" cards - which is fine when the rest of the party can recover your unconscious body.

That's why I wrote:

I believe the RAW rule is strangely generous and stingy - at once.

Auto-stabilising isn't exactly nothing, but you still die if your friends lose the fight. Again, the narrative power of the meta currency is almost entirely absent.

I never tried it with the variant Hero Points.

Just to be clear, it's not Paizo's variant, it's mine:

Pathfinder 2E - variant Hero Points

I believe the RAW rule is strangely generous and stingy - at once. I clearly see the rule being geared towards tournament play where each of the four players gets rewarded by one hero point each during a four-hour session. For my home play, I don't like having to think about meta issues every...

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with the adventure showing little chances of improving.

To be clear, it's not that the adventures improve. It's that combats get slightly easier each level. The power balance between PCs and monsters slowly tilt in the PCs' advantage as you level up.

In fact, at high levels the official adventures start featuring more and more Extreme encounters, a challenge level that's almost entirely absent (and unneeded) at lower levels.

 

[MaskedGuy]

Meanwhile on sidenote, my "has seen deaths in PF2e" count is now... 1, but that guy got better since they had enough fame in organized play It was case where sorcerer had to act as hp tank vs boss due to everyone being immobilized by web.

I'm still curious to hear how first three books of age of ashes, extinction curse and agents of edgewatch compare difficulty wise. I can see at least two moments from first two ap that are overly deadly or at least risky(barghest in age of ashes and level 1 of extincion curse)

 

[Furmyr]

I run an Age of Ashes campaign and play in a Extinction Curse campaign.

In AoA we've had 3 deaths so far. Once in Adventure 2 (2 deaths in the same encounter) and once in adventure 3. We are currently in adventure 4 and there we've so far had one close call due to a huge tactical error by the fighter. This group has no cleric, but a alchemist that's responsible for keeping people up.

Last session I had a situation where three encounters bled into each others. They didn't fight all three at full strength at the same time. But by the time the first encounter were winding down reinforcements arrived. They held their ground and had little trouble dealing with them. All the encounters were several lower level enemies and I think that must have helped.

In Extinction Curse we've had no deaths and we've come to adventure 3, though we have had a couple of close calls where it's come down to one roll of the die and once I had to use a hero point to stabilize because the healer had to prioritize. Here we have had a very healing oriented cleric and that has saved us more than once.