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

[Thomas Shey]

It’s typical for a new system. I remember how lack luster the early 5e adventures were, they got better as the writers (well, mostly Chris Perkins tbh) grew more comfortable within the system. The first adventure paths paizo released were made for a system that was effectively 7 years old and played and understood by everyone in the industry, so their initial quality is aberrant. I imagine that as pf2e is more understood as a system the quality of adventures will rise. They should also get James Jacobs to be more active in AP development in general, I’ve always found he knows how to utilize the systems and narrative tools of the game and setting to their fullest, both in 1e and 2e.

Some of the early 3e adventures were, effectively, written for AD&D2 and showed it, and at least the first adventure for 4e was notoriously bad, too. It just seems to be a thing.

 

[payn]

Personally I find predictable to be antithetical to fun, and it’s something that poses a bit of a challenge within 2es encounter rules. Making a balanced encounter the players can win if they are paying attention is rather easy, but overused it makes encounters incredibly boring. I’d rather give some slightly too easy encounters mixed with slightly too hard ones and let the players be responsible for setting the pace of exploration (with an incentive to not overly rest recovery of course.)

Part of the challenge of laying out easy and difficult encounters is the reset nature of the system between encounters. You heal up, and reset encounter powers, so every fight you have a reasonable arsenal at your disposal. At the table, it doesn't matter if you have easy and difficult fights because you are, with exception of daily powers, ready to handle it. You dont have to make the difficult choices of the past of trying to avoid the combat, or use the battlefield to your advantage, to ensure you make it through the adventuring day.

 

[JThursby]

Part of the challenge of laying out easy and difficult encounters is the reset nature of the system between encounters. You heal up, and reset encounter powers, so every fight you have a reasonable arsenal at your disposal. At the table, it doesn't matter if you have easy and difficult fights because you are, with exception of daily powers, ready to handle it. You dont have to make the difficult choices of the past of trying to avoid the combat, or use the battlefield to your advantage, to ensure you make it through the adventuring day.

Agreed, it isn't as cut and dry as variable difficulty. I'd like to see supplements for exploration through more hostile terrain like the Gravelands or planar exploration that are more oppressive and have riskier or more limited rests. I'd also like APs to use the environment rules more often: I've had enough combats on obstacle free plains and averaged sized rooms in my TTRPG career to be bored of both playing them and running them.

 

[Campbell]

The game I ran (and feel PF2 is almost uniquely suited for) was a Soulsbourne inspired narrative sandbox. Basically the players took on the role of talented young adolescents left behind while the village elders went on their annual trip to pay taxes to the Queen. They had to manage the village's defenses when it was attacked by a local orc tribe.

The game involved juggling a lot of plates between dealing with various factions within the orc tribe, managing defensive positions, seeking allies from outside, dealing with the returning elders who did not see things the same way as the PCs, etc. I really stressed the exploration and downtime rules, expanding them somewhat. We also did some custom rituals because a faction within the orc tribe included a death cult so lots of curses and undead rituals.

Between encounters I usually gave players at least 10 minutes to recover, but often getting more than that in dangerous areas could be fraught if the right precautions were not taken. I also let escaping orcs utilize the same resting rules which could make for interesting play and counter play at times.

I will note that we only played PF2 for 5 months. The game ended with them at 5th level. We had a really fun experience and will return to it again, but we like to play a lot of different games.

 

[Justice and Rule]

It's true that 5E and PF1 have variable difficulty that the CR systems dont capture accurately. This can be very difficult for new GMs and players and cause a bit of frustration. For the experienced though, it can be interesting from a game perspective since fights can often be unpredictable.

In PF2, I know exactly how every +3/4 level fight is going to go. Its very predictable and reliable, but if that's fun or not depends if you like that set up.

I don't think that characterization quite works: rather, what PF2 does well is that it creates a recognizable baseline so that I have a rough judge of how difficult something is. I can toss in spice as I need to, create terrain or room features to switch things up, etc. Creating variability isn't hard, but it's important to know where your baseline is so that you can accurately judge your range. For me, a guy who likes sandboxes and large dungeons, it's useful because I can get an accurate judge of different situations, like what happens if I combine units from these two rooms. But at the end, it's still a dice game and it still depends on what my players attempt to do. That's really where I want my variability.

Instead, 5E is just... ill-conceived in this regard. CR varies wildly, making it difficult to create satisfying encounters based on just using the book. Can I eyeball a good encounter? Yeah. Takes a little time, but eventually you get an instinct for it. But I can do that for just about any RPG I play. The bigger point is that this is terrible for beginners: they are told that these are the guidelines for creating encounters and they flat out do not work.

And I feel like this is a consistent thing with 5E: it's a nice system if you are a lapsed RPG player, someone who has a sense of systems and can see how the relative simplicity of 5E's systems are going to play out. I got into it quick for that reason. But if you are new to RPGs, it's not great: its simplicity isn't consistent, and being "simple" isn't always an advantage; sometimes it is simply a lack of guidance. And not knowing what to do and having no way of actually finding out is generally what I've found slows things down the most.

 

[payn]

I don't think that characterization quite works: rather, what PF2 does well is that it creates a recognizable baseline so that I have a rough judge of how difficult something is. I can toss in spice as I need to, create terrain or room features to switch things up, etc. Creating variability isn't hard, but it's important to know where your baseline is so that you can accurately judge your range. For me, a guy who likes sandboxes and large dungeons, it's useful because I can get an accurate judge of different situations, like what happens if I combine units from these two rooms. But at the end, it's still a dice game and it still depends on what my players attempt to do. That's really where I want my variability.

Instead, 5E is just... ill-conceived in this regard. CR varies wildly, making it difficult to create satisfying encounters based on just using the book. Can I eyeball a good encounter? Yeah. Takes a little time, but eventually you get an instinct for it. But I can do that for just about any RPG I play. The bigger point is that this is terrible for beginners: they are told that these are the guidelines for creating encounters and they flat out do not work.

And I feel like this is a consistent thing with 5E: it's a nice system if you are a lapsed RPG player, someone who has a sense of systems and can see how the relative simplicity of 5E's systems are going to play out. I got into it quick for that reason. But if you are new to RPGs, it's not great: its simplicity isn't consistent, and being "simple" isn't always an advantage; sometimes it is simply a lack of guidance. And not knowing what to do and having no way of actually finding out is generally what I've found slows things down the most.

The baseline is everything though, you cant escape it. I dont like the MMO boss feature of severe/extreme encounters and there isnt really any way around that other than only running at level or lower combats.

My nearly 20 years of experience in 3E/PF translates easily to 5E, I dont know what to do with PF2. Most variants and hacks dont help my issues. I will concede that 3E/5E CR system is a poor guide for newbs and can be frustrating for the uninitiated.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Instead, 5E is just... ill-conceived in this regard. CR varies wildly, making it difficult to create satisfying encounters based on just using the book. Can I eyeball a good encounter? Yeah. Takes a little time, but eventually you get an instinct for it. But I can do that for just about any RPG I play. The bigger point is that this is terrible for beginners: they are told that these are the guidelines for creating encounters and they flat out do not work.

And I feel like this is a consistent thing with 5E: it's a nice system if you are a lapsed RPG player, someone who has a sense of systems and can see how the relative simplicity of 5E's systems are going to play out. I got into it quick for that reason. But if you are new to RPGs, it's not great: its simplicity isn't consistent, and being "simple" isn't always an advantage; sometimes it is simply a lack of guidance. And not knowing what to do and having no way of actually finding out is generally what I've found slows things down the most.

I am always leery when someone who is clearly not a beginner DM makes comments about how one system is clearly more beginner DM-friendly than another one.

With that said, let me do the exact same thing. Both my 12 y.o. and my 10 y.o. have taken a hand at DMing 5e. Both were successful and neither ran into the issue you described of CR being wildly off. As a matter of fact, my experience is that if you follow the CR guidelines, the adventures will probably be on the easy side, which means that there is leeway for both the DM and the players to make mistakes.

This has not been my experience in PF2. There are a large number of decision points where a beginner DM with beginner players can make a “wrong” decision that will TPK the party. Like a party in which no one has Medicine. Or a party in which more than one character put a 16 in their prime stat. Or the players split the party. Or the DM focus fired. Or the DM didn’t hand out Hero points after the beginning of the game. Or the DM had reinforcements enter the room without giving the players an opportunity to rest.

Of course, many beginner DMs choose to start with a published module so the don’t have to worry about balancing encounters. Of course, the published modules all have multiple deadly fights (can attest to Plaguestone and Abomination Vaults, AoA and EC is hearsay).

As for my kids, they haven’t been interested in DMing PF2. I suspect the 600 page CRB discouraged them. Or maybe the fact that they failed the PFS I ran for them due to 3 “poor” rolls (i.e. less than 12 on a d20).

 

[JThursby]

This has not been my experience in PF2. There are a large number of decision points where a beginner DM with beginner players can make a “wrong” decision that will TPK the party.

This is definitely the case, PF2e is more deadly and the way crits work makes numerical differences between the roll and the DC more impactful. I’ve had encounters go south pretty fast when the enemies get an early crit or two off. Ultimately I want those kinds of stakes in my games though, I ran Curse of Strahd a lot in 5e because it had a reputation as “the hard one,” and I wanted my players to play seriously and be challenged. And while CR being wonky isn’t the worst thing in the world, I’ll admit that it and other grossly inelegant design in the 5e ruleset bother me, and I have seen inexperienced DMs run afoul of things like not knowing what to do for skills.

 

[CapnZapp]

My nearly 20 years of experience in 3E/PF translates easily to 5E, I dont know what to do with PF2.

This.

 

[CapnZapp]

This has not been my experience in PF2. There are a large number of decision points where a beginner DM with beginner players can make a “wrong” decision that will TPK the party.

And this.