Pathfinder 2E Pathfinder 2e: Actual Play Experience

[dave2008]

• Encounters are hard. part of this is my fault, as in a typical D&D game, I add substantially more difficulty in any encounter (Eg. more monsters, higher HP, environmental challenges). with 5 players in my group, the module designed for 4, and the very first encounter in this module being a pretty easy romp, I started ramping up other encounters. This has made for extremely challenging encounters that I'm now regretting. nobody has died, but boy, have the PC's been dropping a LOT. there have been 2 times now that a PC or animal companion has reached death 3 and it was only a miracle that they didn't die. Great drama - but I don't think it's good for EVERY. SINGLE. FIGHT.

Have you been using hero points? It seems like one of the major reasons for including them is to prevent people from dying.

 

[JmanTheDM]

Have you been using hero points? It seems like one of the major reasons for including them is to prevent people from dying.

Haven't yet. still slowly making my way through the GMG - so can't comment yet. maybe before the next session in 2 weeks.

Cheers,

J.

 

[dave2008]

Haven't yet. still slowly making my way through the GMG - so can't comment yet. maybe before the next session in 2 weeks.

Cheers,

J.

Hero Points are in the Core Rule Book:

HERO POINTS
Source Core Rulebook pg. 29
Your character usually begins each game session with 1 Hero Point, and you can gain additional Hero Points during sessions by performing heroic deeds or devising clever strategies. Your character can use Hero Points to gain certain benefits, such as staving off death or rerolling a d20. See page 467 for more about Hero Points.

 

[kenada]

Encounters are hard. part of this is my fault, as in a typical D&D game, I add substantially more difficulty in any encounter (Eg. more monsters, higher HP, environmental challenges). with 5 players in my group, the module designed for 4, and the very first encounter in this module being a pretty easy romp, I started ramping up other encounters. This has made for extremely challenging encounters that I'm now regretting. nobody has died, but boy, have the PC's been dropping a LOT. there have been 2 times now that a PC or animal companion has reached death 3 and it was only a miracle that they didn't die. Great drama - but I don't think it's good for EVERY. SINGLE. FIGHT.

The encounter-building guidelines are pretty solid in PF2, which is a difference from PF1 and D&D where they inevitably stop working or only work in narrow cases. Unless you’re intending to push an encounter up to a higher threat, you should be fine running them as-is (just tweaking them just for party size). That should help with your issue of having every fight be too hard/dramatic.

 

[JmanTheDM]

Hero Points are in the Core Rule Book:

HERO POINTS
Source Core Rulebook pg. 29
Your character usually begins each game session with 1 Hero Point, and you can gain additional Hero Points during sessions by performing heroic deeds or devising clever strategies. Your character can use Hero Points to gain certain benefits, such as staving off death or rerolling a d20. See page 467 for more about Hero Points.

duh! of course. yes, we use Hero points quite a bit - however, as I was typing this summary I realized we didn't use them for staving off death. it was something I was intending to remind the group over our Discord. we continue to learn.

Cheers,

J.

 

[JmanTheDM]

The encounter-building guidelines are pretty solid in PF2, which is a difference from PF1 and D&D where they inevitably stop working or only work in narrow cases. Unless you’re intending to push an encounter up to a higher threat, you should be fine running them as-is (just tweaking them just for party size). That should help with your issue of having every fight be too hard/dramatic.

yeah. they sure are. IME, D&D CR is a bit of a joke and the encounter building rules are simply not good. I build every encounter in D&D at beyond the toughest level, for even throw-away fights. the math is much better in PF2e, which is GREAT!. but it is taking some time to re-calibrate my default assumptions.

Cheers,
J.

 

[ronaldsf]

duh! of course. yes, we use Hero points quite a bit - however, as I was typing this summary I realized we didn't use them for staving off death. it was something I was intending to remind the group over our Discord. we continue to learn.

Cheers,

J.

Yes, awarding Hero Points 1/hour and reminding my players to use them for rerolls and to stabilize, moved the game from Dark-Souls-punishing bordering on feeling unfair, to tough and exciting. They are a default rule so definitely use them.

 

[CapnZapp]

I got that advice too when I first found PF2 to be unrelentingly hard (in official modules).

It's not wrong, but I can't say the default hero points are essential in any way to making the game work. Far more impactful is your encounter design; whether you create your own (and can go as soft on your heroes as you like), via whether you allow yourself permission to modify published encounters (nearly always making them less, not more, difficult) to running official scenarios exactly as published.

Guess I'm just saying using or not using hero points isn't the central focus here.

 

[JmanTheDM]

Yes, awarding Hero Points 1/hour and reminding my players to use them for rerolls and to stabilize, moved the game from Dark-Souls-punishing bordering on feeling unfair, to tough and exciting. They are a default rule so definitely use them.

yeah. I've been historically bad at awarding hero points. I keep forgetting . I remind my players to advocate the awarding of hero points anytime they witness something they deem "cool" or "heroic". they also forget. most of the hero point struggle, I think, is that I've historically awarded (in my D&D games) inspiration outside of combat. I've been treating Hero points the same - but there are few (IME) non-combat heroic moments compared to "inspired" moments - yeah, semantics, but I think its true. One change I'm considering based on the last session is to actively award heroic points in combat. like any critical hit should award one, a cool/innovative use of a skill or action in combat, things like that. I recognize this will likely significantly ramp up the awarding of Hero points - but with a threshold of max 3, I'm personally OK with cycling through these points very fast.

Cheers,

J.

 

[dave2008]

Haven't played yet, but Reactions sound more "realistic" to me as separate from the main action turns. Instead a complete compartmentalization of PC/monsters turns, kind of breaks immersion for me.

That is a misunderstand of what I suggested. Reactions would still be off-turn and thus not compartmentalized on the PCs turn. However, you have to actions (time) to pull them off. Now that I think about it, it might make sense to allow you take the reaction, but with the cost coming from your next turn (if you don't have any actions left on this round).