Pathfinder 2 GM Experience

[CapnZapp]

Up to maybe twelve sessions, and the characters are level four (the sorcerer is level five). Combat speed remains slow - my players refuse for me to "wing it", they want to play "by the rules", and we're still finding/learning individual small rules at least in one combat each session. This mostly concerns rulings at the periphery of what the rules concern themselves with; the exceptional cases. Time scouring the rules is mostly spent to find out if there IS a rule for something, or if the GM is free to make an off-the-cuff ruling. After all, the hardest rule to find is the one not there at all.

PF2 sure is complex, but crucially also a very decentralized ruleset. Before you can "just say yes" you ideally need to learn by heart every single one of the thousand feats, since if let's say you call for an Acrobatics check like you might in 5E, you might later find out that there's a level 7 or 17 feat that let's you do it with... an Acrobatics check. Thus you have inadvertently shortchanged a feat you did not know existed.

PF2 would have played much quicker with a group that were able to be... less anal?.. about details; a group that accepted that just because Xena the Barbarian was allowed to do this thing once using a simple save or check, doesn't mean she is allowed to do it ten sessions and levels later, when Gabrielle the Bard has picked up That Feat that specifically lets her do it in a certain way.

Thankfully we're playing on Sundays. Spending half an hour, forty-five minutes resolving a situation feels less bad with eight-hour play sessions.

PS. Examples:

• How much movement is spent by moving through an ally's space diagonally after already moving two squares diagonally?
• If a foe downs you, I assume he can step into your space? What are your options when you're healed back up to consciousness - I'm assuming you can't stand up from underneath a foe?
• When, exactly, can you make a Recall Knowledge check on a monster you have not met? Is it enough to know of its existence? Find its trail?
• How do you move a fallen ally out of harm's way if he weighs more than your max Bulk (Strength + 10)?
• What happens if you attempt to tumble through the squares of two enemies standing next to each other, and fail the second attempt?

The point of these examples are to ask you - are you absolutely sure you're supposed to allow the character to resolve the situation a certain way even without "that feat"? (=That you are wrong to allow it without that feat)

In all these examples, the only way to make sure it's appropriate to make a GM call is to first ensure the rules remain silent on the issue, and the only way to ensure this is to make a text search on the term or terms involved. For example, to find each and every mention of "recall knowledge", including feats. Only then can you summarize the "body of rules" to decide whether they have a say on your specific situation: is there a RAW answer or a RAI answer (where you judge one rule can be used in a different context) or if a houserule is warranted, or if a GM call (that might later be forgotten and/or changed) is best.

 

[Jimmy Dick]

I'm up to 32 PFS2 sessions ran (I'm losing track of them actually) and my experience GMing the sessions is a blast as I've gained more experience with the rules. Combat is intense, but the players and I really enjoy it. Right now the main issue I'm experiencing is remembering to do all the little things that I as the GM am supposed to do. Moving initiatives of dying players behind the monster that downed them, what it takes for them to regain consciousness (Master that!), doing the persistent damage and the flat checks every time, stuff like that.

I use the Condition Cards and my old Combat Pad from PF1, but I may be picking up the new PF2 Combat Pad to help me out some. It's really just a matter of mastering the little parts, but they are so important in the overall combat. A monster with a weakness like Fire 5 takes that when the persistent damage is taken, so that could be a major difference in a bigger battle. In fact, the last scenario I ran had that very detail play a significant role in the party winning the final fight. Had I not remembered the persistent damage each time along with the weakness, the party might have failed to win the battle.

Don't take this as a complaint. I've loving the system. The combats are just so much fun. You just don't really know if you're going to win or not although the players almost always do. It's just so much more engaging. As a GM, I really enjoy the scenarios because everyone is into the game far more than most players were in PF1. It doesn't matter if I am running online on Roll20 or live, the game just plays in a way that I find entertaining.

 

[kenada]

Before you can "just say yes" you ideally need to learn by heart every single one of the thousand feats, since if let's say you call for an Acrobatics check like you might in 5E, you might later find out that there's a level 7 or 17 feat that let's you do it with... an Acrobatics check. Thus you have inadvertently shortchanged a feat you did not know existed.

Instead of calling for a check, determine the action/activity first. That informs what you can do. If the action/activity doesn’t say you can do it, then you can’t do it. I find that approach much easier than calling for a roll and improvising the result.

For example, don’t call for an Acrobatics check. Determine that they are engaging in e.g., the Balance activity and use that to adjudicate the result.

It’s a lot like adjudicating moves in a PbtA game in that the rules for adjudicating moves are triggered by the fiction, and that determines what you roll and how to interpret the result.

 

[kenada]

How much movement is spent by moving through an ally's space diagonally after already moving two squares diagonally?

Same as normal. The ally just needs to be willing.

If a foe downs you, I assume he can step into your space?

You can share a prone creature’s space if it is willing, unconscious, or dead.

What are your options when you're healed back up to consciousness - I'm assuming you can't stand up from underneath a foe?

A prone creature can’t stand up if another creature occupies its space, though it can Crawl away.

When, exactly, can you make a Recall Knowledge check on a monster you have not met? Is it enough to know of its existence? Find its trail?

You can Recall Knowledge on a topic at any time since there is no requirement restricting when.

That’s not to say Recall Knowledge is particularly well-written. It doesn’t handle families of monsters very well. RAW, the DC is based on the monster’s level, but it doesn’t make sense that one would suddenly stop knowing that a red dragon breathes fire simply because it grew up from a young red dragon to an adult red dragon, and your skill was no longer enough to make the DC.

How do you move a fallen ally out of harm's way if he weighs more than your max Bulk (Strength + 10)?

Treat its bulk as half when you drag it. If that’s still too much, you can’t drag the ally unless you Interact with it to remove gear that’s weighing him down, which is probably going to require many Interact actions.

What happens if you attempt to tumble through the squares of two enemies standing next to each other, and fail the second attempt?

You can’t move through the enemy’s space and trigger reactions as though you left your current space. Since you can’t end your turn in a creature’s space, you would need to move to an empty space instead. If you triggered a reaction as you moved to an empty space, you would presumably have Lesser Cover, since the reaction triggered while you were in the other creature’s space.

 

[CapnZapp]

Same as normal. The ally just needs to be willing.


You can share a prone creature’s space if it is willing, unconscious, or dead.


A prone creature can’t stand up if another creature occupies its space, though it can Crawl away.

...

Let me stop you right there. I thank you for your willingness to help out, but please remember that this isn't a rules thread. That is, I wasn't asking for help (all of these examples we eventually figured out). I stopped you before your replies went into implied or house rule territory; partly because we should discuss that elsewhere.

Instead I'm asking: are you certain a feat doesn't impact the ability to do or not do something? That is, you "can't" just rule a character can push away a fallen ally, if it later turns out there's a feat for that. Sure you might say there isn't - but how do I know that without searching the entire rulebook?

Same with crawling. I can't think, for instance, that spending one action to crawl out of the occupied square, then one action to stand up from prone is awfully expensive and just rule that "with a DC NN Acrobatics check you roll away and end standing up" because there might be a feat that does this (or similar).

My point is: Pathfinder 2 lends itself very poorly to the easygoing fast GM style where you "wing" it. Almost everything you'd "wing" in another, less specified, edition of D&D, the designers have turned into a feat in PF2. Meaning they send a clear message "you're not supposed to be able to do ANYTHING not explicitly allowed, since we reserve the right to create a feat for that down the road".

 

[CapnZapp]

You can’t move through the enemy’s space and trigger reactions as though you left your current space. Since you can’t end your turn in a creature’s space, you would need to move to an empty space instead. If you triggered a reaction as you moved to an empty space, you would presumably have Lesser Cover, since the reaction triggered while you were in the other creature’s space.

Not that this is a rules thread, but I realized I need to be more specific for this example to make sense.

Imagine a narrow corridor a single square wide (yet with a ceiling high enough to allow tumbling past foes). Ahead of you are two enemy creatures, one right behind the other.

So I move up to the first monster, and I make my first Tumble Through check. So far so good. Then I fail the second. At this point I must by definition be in the first monster's square, or I couldn't trigger my Acrobatics check (to Tumble Through, you must try to enter a monster's space). Per the rules of failure, my movement ends. In the square of the first enemy. Do I drop prone? Do I bounce back to before the first enemy? Or what?

I mean, you could argue the rules never allow a hero to move past two adjacent enemies, but that feels needlessly restrictive (not to mention untenable once you're outlevelling the monsters). I want to be able to wing it, but feel I can't unless I know a thousand feats by heart.

 

[kenada]

Let me stop you right there. I thank you for your willingness to help out, but please remember that this isn't a rules thread. That is, I wasn't asking for help (all of these examples we eventually figured out). I stopped you before your replies went into implied or house rule territory; partly because we should discuss that elsewhere.

There is value in having the rules cited and linked when the discussion pertains to the nature of the rules. It allows other participants to read and decide for themselves whether the representation is in good faith or construed for rhetorical effect.

Instead I'm asking: are you certain a feat doesn't impact the ability to do or not do something? That is, you "can't" just rule a character can push away a fallen ally, if it later turns out there's a feat for that. Sure you might say there isn't - but how do I know that without searching the entire rulebook?

Same with crawling. I can't think, for instance, that spending one action to crawl out of the occupied square, then one action to stand up from prone is awfully expensive and just rule that "with a DC NN Acrobatics check you roll away and end standing up" because there might be a feat that does this (or similar).

It doesn’t matter. You determine the action and resolve it as written. A feat may change that, but that only matters if the character has the feat. If you decide to improvise something else, then it’s true you run the risk of trivializing a feat or some other choice another player has made or may make.

My point is: Pathfinder 2 lends itself very poorly to the easygoing fast GM style where you "wing" it. Almost everything you'd "wing" in another, less specified, edition of D&D, the designers have turned into a feat in PF2. Meaning they send a clear message "you're not supposed to be able to do ANYTHING not explicitly allowed, since we reserve the right to create a feat for that down the road".

You’re right, and I agree. Pathfinder 2e is not a game of rulings. If a GM expects to wing it, that’s not going to work very well. Whether that is liberating or constraining depends on what one prefers as a GM.

 

[kenada]

Not that this is a rules thread, but I realized I need to be more specific for this example to make sense.

Imagine a narrow corridor a single square wide (yet with a ceiling high enough to allow tumbling past foes). Ahead of you are two enemy creatures, one right behind the other.

So I move up to the first monster, and I make my first Tumble Through check. So far so good. Then I fail the second. At this point I must by definition be in the first monster's square, or I couldn't trigger my Acrobatics check (to Tumble Through, you must try to enter a monster's space). Per the rules of failure, my movement ends. In the square of the first enemy. Do I drop prone? Do I bounce back to before the first enemy? Or what?

I mean, you could argue the rules never allow a hero to move past two adjacent enemies, but that feels needlessly restrictive (not to mention untenable once you're outlevelling the monsters). I want to be able to wing it, but feel I can't unless I know a thousand feats by heart.

Regarding this example, Tumble Through is clear how it works and what its limitations are. If you want to improvise something, allowing more than what it says, you have to decide whether you are comfortable possibly trivializing some feat or other capability. Like you intimated in your other post, Pathfinder 2e is not a game amenable to rulings.

 

[kenada]

This is a separate post, so I can walk through adjudicating this situation because understanding the back and forth between the player and the GM and flow of play goes to the GM experience.

When the player narrates what they are doing, you have to decide what action they are attempting if they have not called it out. Even if they do, you still need to decide whether it’s an appropriate one for this situation. Some actions may actually require other ones to set things up, such as having to Make an Impression to an indifferent creature before making a Request.

By default, Tumble Through allows you to Stride up to your speed and move through the space of one enemy. The GM informs the player of this, and they make an Acrobatics check against the enemy’s Athletics DC. On success, they treat the enemy’s space as difficult terrain. Unfortunately, there is another enemy in the way, and nothing allows them to move through another enemy’s space.

At this point, the PC has expended one action and has two actions left. The rules for movement preclude them from ending their turn in an occupied space, so they must decide whether to Tumble Through the next enemy or Stride back whence they came.

The PC decides to Tumble Through again, but they fail. They could opt to Stride back (since Tumble Through allows you to Stride up to your speed), or they can try again with their last action. The only thing that matters regarding the first enemy is that the PC cannot be in its space when their turn ends.

Let’s say they fail again, then they must Stride away, vacating that space. This satisfies the condition that they cannot be in an occupied soace at the end of their turn (assuming the creature is not two size categories larger, etc).

That’s the adjudication experience in a nutshell. It’s why I say PF2 is actually a fairly simple system. A complex situation can be adjudicated by determining the actions or activities that apply and then resolving them. If someone needs to make a check, that is indicated by the action or activity.

As an aside, I also like this approach because it lets me build content on top of the action system. I can create a feat that expands or alters Tumble Through, and I don’t have to worry about situations that work similarly but aren’t resolved with Tumble Through for some reason.

 

[CapnZapp]

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