Pathfinder 2E Balancing encounters (and converting stuff from other editions)

[dave2008]

A severe encounter is one you should win with good play, but bad luck or bad tactics could make things turn south. The Core Rulebook suggests a severe encounter is one in which the PCs might need to think about retreating if things start to turn against them. Severe is close to what Fifth Edition calls deadly.

That is much tougher than a 5e deadly encounter. In 5e, there is no need to retreat from a "deadly" encounter, unless the group was already mostly spent before the encounter.

 

[Tony Vargas]

There is no real way to balance encounters irrespective of player skill in Pathfinder 2. This applies for both team PC and team monster.

Not to be completely flippant/cynical (not completely), but isn't that the case with any D&D ed/clone/love-letter/heartbreaker game that even goes so far as to have encounter guidelines. I mean, taking 'player skill' to include everything from Gygaxian 'skilled play' to tactical savvy to gaming the DM to system mastery and chargen/level-up build-optimization?

A severe encounter is one you should win with good play, but bad luck or bad tactics could make things turn south. The Core Rulebook suggests a severe encounter is one in which the PCs might need to think about retreating if things start to turn against them.

Is PF2 like most versions of D&D, with no particular mechanics to facilitate such retreat, does it allow for abstract/automatic retreat like a 13A 'campaign loss,' or does is have mechanics that lie somewhere between those extremes?

 

[Tony Vargas]

I wasn't talking about new scenarios.
I was talking about the practice where you run your favorite modules in a new system. Whether it is easy or hard to convert can impact a game's popularity.

TBF, you didn't say anything about reprising favorite modules (nor wanting to economize by recycling modules), but, rather:

that will considerably narrow the appeal of using old Dungeon modules for your PF2 gaming needs... Perhaps not for serious projects, but for me, the lazy DM that just wants to pick something up.

Which sounded like, y'know, if you just want to pick something up, you're talking the company that's famed for putting out APs. There should be somethings for you to pick up & run. You shouldn't /need/ to mine other systems for good scenarios.

But, I get it if you'd want to reprise an old favorite, I've done that with 4e/E and 5e pretty easily (not /my/ favorites, full disclosure: I didn't much care for modules back in the day, but 'old favorites' by general acclaim - point is, not hard to convert from older D&D to 4e or 5e).
If running Village of Homlett or Forge of Fury or anything in-between for the nth time in yet another new edition is something you're wanting out of PF2, anyway...

 

[Campbell]

@Tony Vargas

You are right to be somewhat flippant. This is true for any game in which the things players do have an impact on their success and failure.

There are system level features that make the round to round choices players make in Pathfinder 2 have more of an impact. The delta between good play and poor play is fairly large compared to comparable games.

Right now there are no explicit retreat mechanics, but the GM does have the ability to transition between encounter and exploration mode at anytime. It suggests doing so anytime the results of an encounter seem like a forgone conclusion. That's how I would handle a retreat scenario.

There are a number of places in the rules where things are basically left intentionally blank for groups to make individual rulings based on GM judgment. This is one of them.

 

[Tony Vargas]

There are system level features that make the round to round choices players make in Pathfinder 2 have more of an impact. The delta between good play and poor play is fairly large compared to comparable games.

Even pinning down what constitutes 'good' vs 'poor' play in comparable games (variations on D&D) can be tricky.

Right now there are no explicit retreat mechanics, but the GM does have the ability to transition between encounter and exploration mode at anytime. It suggests doing so anytime the results of an encounter seem like a forgone conclusion. That's how I would handle a retreat scenario.

Interesting. That does sound closer to the 13A approach than I'd've expected.

 

[kenada]

The advice to stick to trivial encounters (the game's term, not truly trivial): wouldn't this mean slower xp gain (had I run an official module)?

If you follow the suggested rate of leveling (about once every four sessions) and accomplishments per session (several minor, one or two moderate, and one major [if any]), PCs should end up getting more XP from accomplishments than encounters.

 

[CapnZapp]

TBF, you didn't say anything about reprising favorite modules (nor wanting to economize by recycling modules), but, rather: Which sounded like, y'know, if you just want to pick something up, you're talking the company that's famed for putting out APs. There should be somethings for you to pick up & run. You shouldn't /need/ to mine other systems for good scenarios.

But, I get it if you'd want to reprise an old favorite, I've done that with 4e/E and 5e pretty easily (not /my/ favorites, full disclosure: I didn't much care for modules back in the day, but 'old favorites' by general acclaim - point is, not hard to convert from older D&D to 4e or 5e).
If running Village of Homlett or Forge of Fury or anything in-between for the nth time in yet another new edition is something you're wanting out of PF2, anyway...

The thing I want to say is:

My first impression is that using non-PF2 material for PF2 seems significantly riskier/harder than using non-X material for X (where X is an edition of most every dnd:ish game other than PF2*).

*) possibly excepting 4E but I don't want to discuss 4E

 

[CapnZapp]

If you follow the suggested rate of leveling (about once every four sessions) and accomplishments per session (several minor, one or two moderate, and one major [if any]), PCs should end up getting more XP from accomplishments than encounters.

Thanks, but my personal opinion is to either run with xp or shuck it entirely. That is, to me mucking about with monster xp when you end up getting more xp from other stuff just screams "just do milestones". To be worth the hassle, the xp you gain from encounters need to be "important".

 

[CapnZapp]

That is much tougher than a 5e deadly encounter. In 5e, there is no need to retreat from a "deadly" encounter, unless the group was already mostly spent before the encounter.

Yeah, complete newcomers to the game, or people that spend close to zero time minmaxing, might find "deadly encounters" to have some element what natural language suggests to be deadly.

For the rest of us; "deadly" is pretty much the lowest level of challenge where it's worth bringing out the dice, drawing a battlemap and so on, instead of just saying "you encounter a couple of bugbears, mow them down without breaking a sweat, and now you..."

In Pathfinder 2, I just found out that one (1) bugbear (an actual bugbear from the Bestiary, you know the hairy low-level upsized goblin monster) indeed is what you and me consider "deadly" (not 5E-deadly, deadly deadly).

You sure you weren't part of the monster design team, Dave?

 

[Tony Vargas]

My first impression is that using non-PF2 material for PF2 seems significantly riskier/harder than using non-X material for X (where X is an edition of most every dnd:ish game other than PF2*).

That's only to be expected, I suppose, but how hard/risky the native system is, itself, might have a lot to do with the contrast. 3.5/PF1 was a bear to build monsters/NPCs, let alone encounters under, and the results were unpredictable, 5e monsters are easier to build than 3e, but the encounter design guidelines more complicated, and not exactly more dependable - though, for a lot of folks they seem to break low, they can instead break high when the party is outnumbered.

It sounds like PF2 combats are less dependable in terms of intended/expected challenge, to begin with, even than PF1 or 5e, which is saying something. (But, then, in general, D&D(ish) games have never been at all dependable or simple in terms of encounter design, with guidelines either absent or complicated, and prone to delivering unanticipated results... with 4e, as always, the outlier you'd rather not discuss, of course.)

Ultimately, it sounds like a problem that's not new nor unique to PF2, and, thus, probably not much of a problem. (It might be off-putting to new players, or very hypothetical* players with only 4e experience bypassing 5e to go straight to PF2.)