Pathfinder 2E Looks like I will be running a PF2e game in a few weeks...suggestions?

[kenada]

The Beginner Box Game Master’s Guide has an explanation on pages 40–41 for building encounters. The gist of it is you determine a budget and then pick monsters per that budget. If you have more or less than 4 players, you add or remove monsters from the encounter. See the “Different Party Sizes” section on page 41. Note that you still award the originally budgeted XP.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Listen to Keneda. Unlike me, he actually knows what he's talking about regarding the Beginner's Box.

 

[kenada]

It’s disappointing that it’s not up on Archive of Nethys. A few things are slightly different from the Core Rulebook, so it would be handy to have as a reference. I only have a hardcopy, so I have to go pull it off my shelf whenever I need to look up something.

 

[dave2008]

For the record, while people love APs ive never had an easy time running published material, its always been more work for me, and led to a less comfortable game, regardless of my familiarity or confidence in the system in question.

That is my experience as well. I just can't seem to run a published adventure as well as I run my own

 

[Campbell]

Just realized I didn't elaborate on this the way I wanted to. The main corebook has a whole section after this discussing what to do with larger or smaller parties (which as I recall adds up to "prorate").

Actually XP is just XP. No prorating or adjusting based on party size.

Party Size

The rules for advancement assume a group of four PCs. The rules for encounters (page 489) describe how to accommodate groups of a different size, but the XP awards don’t change—always award the amount of XP listed for a group of four characters. You usually won’t need to make many adjustments for a differently sized group outside of encounters. Be careful of providing too many ways to get accomplishment XP when you have a large group, though, since they can pursue multiple accomplishments at once, which can lead to the PCs leveling up too fast.

Prorating is probably somewhat more fair, but I just don't think the juice is really worth the squeeze there, especially considering that a fair deal of the XP from most adventures is going to come from accomplishments which go to everyone anyway.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Actually XP is just XP. No prorating or adjusting based on party size.

I answered that badly. I was referring to encounter XP budget, which in practice does prorate, as noted on page 490.

 

[CapnZapp]

Started helping create characters for this and reading the BBox DM rules. I was confused on Experience.

It's wording is a little odd. It sounds as if you give the entire party the entire amount that is listed on the table, so if the table lists 40 XP for the encounter, than each member of the party will get 40 XP? That means that what is listed on the table it is not split between 4 members for a total of 10 XP each, but instead each member gets 40 XP each?

The short answer is yes, each party member gets the 40 XP.

(There are several replies but none simply answering the question)

I found PF2 incredibly confusing at first as regards how XP is handled and explained. And that as a very experienced D&Der.

Spoiler: ASide

I now understand it, but I remain convinced setting up your game for exactly 4 players to the detriment of other party sizes is not worth it.

The reason PF2 works this way is ONLY to save the players from having to divide a number by four. That is utterly trivial and definitely not worth the mental acrobatics required by everyone not playing with four players. Plus the convoluted explanations from people trying to say that encounters somehow become more balanced with the add-extra-monster procedure this shift to a four-man party focus requires.

No. Just no.

Saying a Goblin is worth perhaps 50 XP and that this is shared by everyone defeating it (so a solo hero gets 50 XP and ten heroes get 5 XP each) remains far more natural intuitive simple easy and above all: functional. Then, if XP totals are raised exponentially (so that an Ogre is worth 300 XP and a Dragon 1500 perhaps) you don't even have to worry which levels the individual heroes in the party are.

PF2 experience over-engineered a solution to a problem that didn't need solving. Which is actually a description apt for several PF2 subsystems. The moral of the story is: it's better to just ask people to do easy math.

 

[kenada]

Spoiler: ASide

I now understand it, but I remain convinced setting up your game for exactly 4 players to the detriment of other party sizes is not worth it.

The reason PF2 works this way is ONLY to save the players from having to divide a number by four. That is utterly trivial and definitely not worth the mental acrobatics required by everyone not playing with four players. Plus the convoluted explanations from people trying to say that encounters somehow become more balanced with the add-extra-monster procedure this shift to a four-man party focus requires.

No. Just no.

Saying a Goblin is worth perhaps 50 XP and that this is shared by everyone defeating it (so a solo hero gets 50 XP and ten heroes get 5 XP each) remains far more natural intuitive simple easy and above all: functional. Then, if XP totals are raised exponentially (so that an Ogre is worth 300 XP and a Dragon 1500 perhaps) you don't even have to worry which levels the individual heroes in the party are.

PF2 experience over-engineered a solution to a problem that didn't need solving. Which is actually a description apt for several PF2 subsystems. The moral of the story is: it's better to just ask people to do easy math.

Spoiler: Response to aside

The idea seems to be to standardize the XP awards. An accomplishment or particular-threat encounter is the same amount of XP regardless of level. That makes a certain kind of sense, but it comes with a cost when you deviate from the system’s base assumptions. Personally, I just prorated the XP and didn’t bother with adding or removing creatures (multiply by 4 then divide by the number of PCs). That meant encounters didn’t stay the same level of threat when party size changed, but I wasn’t very concerned about that.

 

[CapnZapp]

Spoiler

Sure there are ideas. But the flaw isn't thinking - it's having bad luck when doing so. Not all ideas should be realized.

In other words, standardizing XP awards is... not particularly useful, and certainly not worth the hoops you have to jump through. Making a "severe encounter" worth the same XP every time is in itself neutral, but when you consider the alternative - that a "goblin" is worth the same XP every time, you have an alternative that is also in itself neutral, except everything else is far less confusing.

Change for change's sake, and an "idea" they'll hopefully abandon in PF3.

 

[MaskedGuy]

And I hope they keep this exp system around because I much prefer it