Pathfinder 2E Embedding Level Into The Narrative

[5ekyu]

One of the things that really differentiates Pathfinder is the way it directly embeds level directly into the narrative of the game. One of the design goals for the game is to tell Pathfinder stories as well as the game possibly can. One of the core things that makes a Pathfinder story a Pathfinder story is that level matters and it matters deeply. They want fighting a higher level monster or character to feel desperate, a creature of your level to feel like an even match, and a lower level enemy to feel like you have the upper hand. This is irrespective of the details of individual monster designs. This is accomplished using a combination of mechanics :

• Extremely tight character and monster math.
• Level based scaling. You add your level to everything you are Proficient from including saves, spells, armor, weapons, and skills.
• Instead of challenge ratings monsters have a level. A monster of your level is roughly an even match. They will similar numbers in just about every respect. There is individual variance for monster's design.
• You achieve a Critical Success whenever you beat a DC by 10 and achieve a Critical Failure whenever your result is 10 less than the DC.
• Critical hits are strong. You double your damage and there is often an impact beyond the damage such as an archer pinning an enemy in place.
• Multiple Attack Penalty. Whenever you make more than one attack in a round your second attack gets a -5 penalty. Subsequent attacks beyond that suffer a -10 penalty.​

This all combines to make facing higher level opponents feel desperate. When you face off against a higher level monster you hit less, your spells are less effective, you get hit a lot more, and because of the way critical hits work you get critically hit more. Those critical hits hurt a lot. You also suffer the effects of their spells and abilities a lot more often. You really have to work as a team to bring those advantages down. Stuff like flanking, positioning, and invoking status effects become a lot more critical to success. You need to bring out all the stops. This is especially true because not only does your first attack succeed less often that second attack has such a low chance of success you often better off doing other things to help your chances.

Against a monster of your level your first attack will generally succeed about half the time. Your second attack will succeed about 25% of the time. You are generally better off using your third action to do something else.

Against a monster 3 levels higher your first attack will succeed about 35% of the time. Your second 10% of the time. Your third 5%. Generally only the first attack has a good chance of success.

These numbers can obviously change through tactics, status effects, and doing things like targeting weak saves. Against higher level monsters these things are all the more critical.

"They want fighting a higher level monster or character to feel desperate, a creature of your level to feel like an even match, and a lower level enemy to feel like you have the upper hand."

That sounds like just using a different scale.

5e went with setting the scale at equal CR means medium and that means "safe with modest expense". The "even match" 50/50 is labeled at deadly on their scale. (YMMV of course since different degrees of optimizatiin-fu skew these.)

If PF sets the scale so their "equal CR" means 50/50, then they just paired deadly with equal rather than deadly with over by x.

In both cases, gm who doesn't read beyond the number to see what "equal cr" means may be surprised. Cant count how many times folks not used to 5e threw equal CR only to see a quick downed foe and be all "what the heck? That didnt come close to killing you?!" Of course, if you read the 5e cr, that's what it's supposed to do.

I imagine there may be more than a few surprises in PF2 the other way, if equal CR means even match 50/50.

Course, easier to recover from a GM surprised by weaker fight than a GM surprised by dead PCs.

 

[5ekyu]

I must say tho, I actually chimed in thinking this was about actually working the level into the narrative - not about the different CR scale.

I was hoping for info on actual in game narrative representations of " level".

Not a set of combat based claims about how PF2 narrows the number of its adversaries to such a small slice of them at any given time.

 

[Campbell]

I am not talking about outcomes here. I am talking about how things feel in play - in motion as it were. I am talking about a higher level monster not just being stronger, but feeling stronger. I am talking about the mechanics of the game helping us to feel what our characters are feeling.

It's not just about those goblins being scenery. It's about them feeling like scenery.

Like when a 5th level fighter uses Swipe to swing at two goblin warriors, rolls a 2, and they still go down. The fighter is not just bigger and stronger - the player feels bigger and stronger. Same for when 2 other goblins try to shoot him with arrows and the DM rolls a 14 and a 13 out in the open and the arrows glance off the fighter's sword. We see his fighting skill at work and feel how much more skill he has gained.

Likewise I do not just want higher level monsters to be dangerous and for the outcome to be uncertain. I want them to feel dangerous and for the fight to feel uncertain in the act of playing the game. Making a monster of the same level an equal and having the same like ballpark stuff is not just shifting the numbers to me. It just feels right. It makes a fighter facing an orc warrior feel like they have met their match in every possible way.

The level based scaling and critical success/critical failure rules help make differences in prowess feel meaningful at the table. This is not just about combat either. This is true for social encounters, dealing with traps, exploration, and just about everything a character will do in the game.

Ludo Narrative Harmony, the connection between what is happening in the narrative of the game and how we as players and GMs feel during play, is the most important thing to me when I evaluate and play roleplaying games. In my experience so far it is one of Pathfinder 2's greatest strengths.

 

[Campbell]

@Blue

A lot of that is circumstantial and is highly dependent on tactics and resources available. The Flatfooted condition is pretty common and grants a -2 Circumstance penalty to Armor Class. The Frightened condition is also fairly common and grants a status penalty to all checks and DCs (including AC) equal to the condition value which is usually 1 or 2. These tend to be short term and require effort or resources to pull off and stay active.

Spells can also provide status bonuses to attacks. At low levels this will generally be +1, although at higher levels Heroism can go as high as +3. At low level before you get access to magic weapons the Magic Weapon spell which provides a +1 item bonus is a good way to even the odds.

Swings can vary from altering odds by 2 up to like 6 or 7 if the stars align and timing and coordination are good. Flanking and buff spells are going to be your most consistent ways to even the odds. Against a monster with a low save Demoralize, Trip, and Grapple can help.

 

[CapnZapp]

This is why I like bounded accuracy so much more. I could be totally wrong because I havent played PF2e, but this makes me feel like lower CR monsters will become useless as a tool for the DM. Is there any form of bounded accuracy in PF2e to combat this?

No.

Anytime you're fighting a monster even two levels higher than you, you really feel outmatched. You better clear out any mooks and do it fast, because every party member needs to whale on this monster before it crits and downs one of you.

Monsters less than two levels beneath you are really easy. Monsters four levels below you don't even normally yield any experience!

 

[CapnZapp]

One of the things that really differentiates Pathfinder is the way it directly embeds level directly into the narrative of the game. One of the design goals for the game is to tell Pathfinder stories as well as the game possibly can. One of the core things that makes a Pathfinder story a Pathfinder story is that level matters and it matters deeply. They want fighting a higher level monster or character to feel desperate, a creature of your level to feel like an even match, and a lower level enemy to feel like you have the upper hand. This is irrespective of the details of individual monster designs.

I'm not sure this is what the market wants right now... It feels tone-deaf to issue an edition that goes directly counter to the prevailing trend as set by the market leader (5th Edition).

Paizo could easily have redefined what a "Pathfinder story" is to not emphasize level. Even if you remove level from proficiency a high-level monster would still trounce a low-level party.

You could still tell the same kinds of stories. (Stories does not depend on or even care about you being absolutely barred from success at 14th level but suddenly having a great shot at success at 16th level.)

It would just be much more accessible to the overwhelming majority of gamers (i.e. 5E gamers), and come across as less dogmatic.

 

[CapnZapp]

This concerns me. Just three levels provides such a big difference?

Very.

 

[CapnZapp]

The criting at beating the AC by 10 is a big deal. A huge deal. If the monster is poorly designed this will lead to a total party wipe. Which happened a lot in the playtest.

Well, you're clearly implying there is a way to fix this through better design. But there isn't.

Encounter design yes, monster design no.

Any time the players face a monster three or four levels higher than the party there will absolutely be a real risk of the monster quickly downing a couple of characters, which in turn can spiral into a TPK.

There's no real way around it, unless you mean you intentionally work against the core fundamentals of the game: that this monster will hit easily and do massive damage?

tldr: As I see it, this isn't a result of "poor design". It is a clear and direct consequence of how the game is built to function, from its very core.

 

[CapnZapp]

I think it is a probably a good idea to have a different default than 5e, but I must say it is one of my favorite aspect of 5e. I much prefer BA to the massive increases in ability you see in 3e/PF1/4e and now PF2e. That being said, I don't think it will matter much to a player. I hope to give it a try soon and find out.

I think we're focusing too much on exactly what kinds of Orcs can touch the heroes and who can't.

Paizo's chosen design has much more far-reaching consequences than this.

Remember NPC attitude and influence rules (every D&D usually has at least skeleton rules for this)?

Well, a level 5 Bard can automatically shift the attitude of a level 1 creature two steps every time, no chance of failure.

At level 5 you can sport a +13 bonus and have the ability to "take 10" for an automatic result of 23. Any creature with a +3 Will save bonus will have a DC of 13 to be influenced. Hence, a result of 23 is a critical success every time.

This means that already at level 5 you can automatically shift the opinions of average people from hostile to neutral not using magic.
Yes, I am aware player characters are immune from this rule.

If you come from 5E this is clearly in the realm of supernatural influence. "Let's not argue who killed whom..."

In Pathfinder 2, it is just the default: at level 5, first-level people doesn't matter any more.

 

[CapnZapp]

So the GG will allow one to extract level from the narrative then?

That's rather putting too high expectations on what this will likely say.

After all, you can already now manually subtract level from every roll from every creature. I don't see why this will not take you at least 90% of the way.

Yes, they will likely spam a few pages worth of advice on how this changes things (from how the world works to how NPCs look at you), but really, without having read any of it, I can already tell you they could just have written "...or, you know, how it works in 5E".

If Paizo really wanted to fully commit to a proficiency-without-level alternative, and to get my credit for doing so, we would see a Bestiary where all this subtraction had been already made for us. That is, all the numbers in all the monster stat blocks having been recalculated to not include level.

My point is: Paizo don't get my credit for providing a profiency-without-level game just by publishing a page in a supplement. That still leaves all the work to the GM and players.