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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 8107093" data-attributes="member: 12731">I agree to the mathematical angle. You can't make a game more deadly unless you a) make it deadly only to the monsters, or b) accept more character deaths.I don't agree with the loaded language. Nobody is "punishing" anyone.I'd say it is actually quite reasonable to accept some level of risk at low levels. (Not Ogre levels of risk, mind you) In fact, D&D has always been risky at low levels. And a level 1 D&D character is simpler and faster to create than in almost any other ttrpg. The fact this changes fast as you level up doesn't change the fact that losing a level 1 D&D character is not losing a great time investment. We've all heard the stories of old, where you waited to flesh out your character's background story until you had reached maybe 3rd or 4th level. Doing it before there was just too great a risk of it all going to waste because your character didn't make it out of the risk zone of the lowest couple of levels. Dying meant whipping up a new hero, which you did in 15 minutes tops. Then when you had a couple of 'ventures under your belt, you would probably also have come up with all sorts of background details. Conveniently, the risk of actual death quickly recedes at this point, and once higher-leveled save or die effects become common you have resurrection magic as well.PF2 is definitely like this. It is far from a given that anyone is "punished" by this.---But while the Ogre example is unquestionably risky, I'd say that PF2 is pretty good at presenting the illusion of risk without actual risk.Once off the lowest levels, yes, a player character might go down every other fight, but this very rarely leads to actual character death. Mostly the combat system works insofar that after one or two rounds the players think everything is lost, and maybe it's time to flee. However, even as little as one round later, it's obvious to everybody that the fight is under control, we got this, there's no problem here, even if it will take us another couple of rounds to actually deplete all the monster hp.That's a good thing. Perhaps even worth the actual gauntlet you're running to reach that 4th level (or so) alive! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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