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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 8234236" data-attributes="member: 70468">I ran a sandbox in PF2. Of the reasons why I switched to OSE, none of them had to do with whether PF2 could support sandbox play. It did, and it worked fine generally. I find the argument presented that PF2 can’t do sandbox play unpersuasive. It conflicts the with actual experience, and it’s appears predicated on the assumption that PF2 can’t do other styles of play.[USER=5142]@Aldarc[/USER] touches on why that problematic: balance. Old-school sandboxes don’t really concern themselves with balancing encounters against the capabilities of the PCs. If you say to someone running that kind of game that the PCs can encounter a dragon, and it will kill them if they fight it, the response you should expect is: yes, that’s the point. I think there are a few areas where PF2 doesn’t provide useful tools out of the box (reaction rolls, morale, evasion/retreat), but those are added easily.The other issue mentioned is attrition. The assumption is that it works like story-driven games, which are paced around the adventuring day. That’s not how old-school sandboxes work. In old-school play, time operates on a fixed schedule. As time ticks by, the GM is making checks for wandering monsters. You can’t spend an unlimited time resting because either something will find you, or something will show up in the dungeon and negate some of your progress. Necrotic Gnome has really good examples of the latter in their adventures, which feature random events in place of a traditional wandering monsters table.There is one area where PF2 does not do enough, which is creating an appropriate sense of danger. PF2 makes combat feel dangerous by making it swingy. You can go down at any moment (whether from crits or because you took a bunch of lucky hits), but the dying condition gives everyone a chance to get you back in the fight, so while it feels dangerous, it’s not that lethal. Consequently, it encourages PCs to push their luck. If they instead died at 0 hit points or had less forgiving dying mechanics, they would be more inclined to pursue a “combat as war” approach because it would be instrumental to their survival.For example, the PCs spent most of <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/what-is-the-point-of-gms-notes.678952/post-8227707" target="_blank">last session</a> preparing to attack a pack of ghouls in a dungeon. They think there are 8 or so ghouls. The cleric wants to destroy them, but fighting the ghouls in a fair fight is suicide. She might be able to turn a few of them per turn if she gets lucky, but there’s a pretty good chance at least a few PCs (or the entire party) could die. Ghouls have crappy THAC0, but there are still 8 of them. The plan is to set up an ambush and use fire (and retainers) to their advantage.If we were doing PF2, I expect the PCs would have charged in and attacked the ghouls even though 8 ghouls is a well beyond an extreme-threat encounter for a 1st level party. There’s nothing in PF2 that disincentivizes them not to push their luck. In OSE, they’re all afraid of dying. Even if PCs start at max hit points, most creatures can still kill a PC very easily. If you can create an appropriate sense of danger, then you can induce that “combat as war” style of play, and the old-school sandbox should work.I’ll note I did use Proficiency Without Level. Recalculating stats on the fly wasn’t really a big deal. If you’re using a VTT like Foundry, the <a href="https://foundryvtt.com/packages/pf2e-toolbox/" target="_blank">PF2E Toolbox</a> handles that for you automatically. I was motivated at the time to flatten out the difficulty (because I didn’t understand or appreciate the importance that imminent death played to the game loop), but I had also grown tired of having to audit my players’ character sheets to make sure they were updating their proficiencies correctly. It’s far more burdensome to have to audit everyone’s sheet all the time than to subtract level from an check or defense when we get into combat.</blockquote>

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