Pathfinder 2E Pathfinder 2e: is it RAW or RAI to always take 10 minutes and heal between encounters?

[Doctor Futurity]

I just want to chime in here, even if I'm late to the party.
PF2 is a fine game. I ran session 46 of a homebrew campaign last Tuesday, and we have introduced no significant rules variants or homebrewes fixes. It simply isn't necessary.

The things that I have changed, at least compared to published APs that have their own problems, are as follows:

• most skill DCs are borrowed from the list of example static skill DCs.
• I tend to use larger numbers of lower level adversaries, and only rarely have +2 or +3 level foes (though more often now that the PCs have reached 11th level). I still haven't used a +4 level adversary, except on a couple rare occasions when I was really foreshadowing a recurring villain, and had the guy cut out of the fight for plot reasons.
• I also tend to seed magic items in loot a little earlier than the expected guidelines suggest. I'm convinced that many items in PF2 have inflated item levels and costs, and so have compensated a bit.

None of those "changes" involve fundamentally rewriting the game, and I recognize no "fundamental flaws" in the game. Like any RPG, a clever DM is going to adjust things on the fly, so as to create a more enjoyable gaming experience for his players.

Your experience really mirrors mine, although early on I leaned on level +3 or +4 foes more frequently and realized that was a huge mistake, and not really necessary for a hard challenge. The game also improved considerably as my players got better at spotting synergies and utilizing the out-of-combat healing.

My only complaint with PF2E is some of the rules are a bit disorganized.....there are some rules where you need to reference two or three unrelated spots to get the big picture (good example: crafting a magic weapon with runes; or how one goes about identifying magic items).

 

[Dragonsbane]

My experience:

• My players often cannot fully heal after a battle. Healing is nerfed in my game (Treat Wounds 1/day on a subject, Focus healing spells only work 1/day on a subject)
• I don't hand out "enough" items and don't use APB
• I use random encounters, sometimes a great deal
• There are rarely safe places to rest while in dungeons or similar environs
• I use monsters LV+3 at least once a session
• I give more monsters AoO... many more
• Almost nothing Uncommon is allowed at all
• No magical items in stores except some consumables or items level 3 and below
• Wounded condition is not removable without a full rest

Our games (2 groups) are going strong. No TPKs (although in one group the sorcerer does go down now and then), no balance issues. Worst case is I click "weak" in Foundry on the monster, it lowers its numbers a little. Full rest before battles? I call bull****.

Abomination Vaults is one of the games, and my players are not having issues at all. They are all veterans though, but still... all the hysteria over not having time to rest, enough items.... totally overblown.

 

[dave2008]

Our games (2 groups) are going strong. No TPKs (although in one group the sorcerer does go down now and then), no balance issues. Worst case is I click "weak" in Foundry on the monster, it lowers its numbers a little. Full rest before battles? I call bull****.

Abomination Vaults is one of the games, and my players are not having issues at all. They are all veterans though, but still... all the hysteria over not having time to rest, enough items.... totally overblown.

Interesting, I thought the tighter math in PF2e would lead to a more normalized experience. It seems the differences in play experiences are not that dissimilar to 5e. I guess different groups play differently in all editions!

 

[Thomas Shey]

My experience:

• 
  
• I don't hand out "enough" items and don't use APB

As always, this seems to disproportionately punish non-spellcasters.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

I've occasionally had scenarios where PCs didn't have time between encounters to heal over the last 3 years and the game worked fine, I feel like its something that you can do sometimes to challenge the PCs in a different sort of way and it'll be fun, but not something you would do constantly.

I've done it by having a second encounter wave into the tail end of the first, and by giving them only a minute between some minions and a boss, both worked fine, the second especially wasn't a problem because it was plenty of time for someone to whip out a healing spell or a consumable potion. The first was actually an interesting little challenge in terms of the party having to make space for themselves to regroup, and make some value judgements about how to use their actions and resources. The game does intentionally include options that mainly have utility for encounters that stack this way, Form Retention for Druids. Engagement range makes a lot of difference too, because if foes can't bring their full force to bear on the party without wasting time moving up (or has to use worse ranged attacks) then the party gets that time to regroup.

I think a good way to put a lot of the tightness in Pathfinder 2e is that its there is you want it, but the system is still plenty robust enough that your party has tools to deal with a variety of situations-- even a conventionally difficult encounter is going to hit different depending on how many actions moving around actually takes, or how foes are grouped up, or how ruthless your tactics are. In my experience this generally means you have more 'control' because you have guidelines to fall back on, or reverse engineer, but you can still break those rules to bring your game in fun directions. Like, we have a very well integrated magic item system, but ABP or Masterwork items can just replace it if you don't want to hand out a bunch of magic items right?

I reverse engineered the wealth by level table to create a 'spend gold to level' system, simply by taking the normal wealth for a single PC to get over the course of a level and making that the requirement to level, but then tripling the treasure by encounter table values to use as dungeon treasure guidelines (in other words, it costs the wealth they would normally get to level, but I'm placing three times as much wealth in the world to compensate, but then its a sandbox so they're unlikely to find all 300%) my point bringing this up is that the game is super flexible once you start getting comfortable with what the default is and how it works, you can flex it in all kinds of little ways-- including encounters and resting, to relate it back to the thread discussion.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Interesting, I thought the tighter math in PF2e would lead to a more normalized experience. It seems the differences in play experiences are not that dissimilar to 5e. I guess different groups play differently in all editions!

My experience is the opposite: the tighter the math, the greater an impact DM’s rule interpretation and on the fly rulings will have.

By way of example, in a game with tight math, a DM with monsters that focus fire and exploit character weaknesses will have much more brutal combats than one where the DM is actively trying not to down characters (no judgment on either DMing approach).

Edit. Example from my first PF2 campaign: The DM missed that “Exacting Strike” had the Press keyword and allowed the Fighter to call it retroactively. The effect on the game was extremely noticeable compared to the other characters.

 

[Philip Benz]

My experience is the opposite: the tighter the math, the greater an impact DM’s rule interpretation and on the fly rulings will have.

By way of example, in a game with tight math, a DM with monsters that focus fire and exploit character weaknesses will have much more brutal combats than one where the DM is actively trying not to down characters (no judgment on either DMing approach).

That's really interesting, I wouldn't have guessed there were DMs who pulled out all the stops to try to optimise monster tactics to destroy the PCs.

I tend to try to run monsters and NPCs organically, so that they are focused on their own goals, rather than just destroying the PCs. Also, most of my NPCs and critters rate high on the incompetence scale, it's often funnier to watch them fumbling to get their team to work together, than to see their tactics coming off like a well-oiled machine.

Some critters are naturally smarter than others. But even some of the smart ones are selfish or arrogant or have any number of character flaws that prevent them from being effective team players.

YMMV.

 

[FrozenNorth]

That's really interesting, I wouldn't have guessed there were DMs who pulled out all the stops to try to optimise monster tactics to destroy the PCs.

I sincerely doubt it comes from a place of wanting to destroy the PCs. I suspect it comes from the same place you described : wanting to play opponents organically.

From the opponents’ perspective, failing a combat will often result in their deaths (players are notorious for leaving no opponents standing). Likewise, the monsters presumably know perfectly well what their strengths are. A pixie who opposes the PCs will absolutely try to avoid engaging in physical combat. Flying creatures won’t conveniently land to be attacked by heavily armored melee opoonents.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Focus Fire is always pesky; there are very few games where its not usually the best solution (the exception being games with mook systems, where cleaning those out early can be a better choice), but it tends to be annoying to players when directed at them, especially if applied in a "who is most dangerous?" sort of way, because it can easily feel like being picked on.

 

[Justice and Rule]

Focus fire is difficult because it can be appropriate, but there are also times when it looks like the GM is being cheap. Playing "realistically inefficient" is very much a tightrope walk, and it's easy to fall on the "GM metagaming things to make it extra difficult" side of things as it is to the "GM is just letting us win" side.