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

[Teemu]

The funny thing is that the Gamemastery Guide talks about combining encounters. It mentions how it can be dangerous, but the book also talks about how you could string low or trivial encounters together into a larger fight that is more challenging. The AP encounter framework and the cramped dungeon environments could be said to go against the suggestions laid out in the core books.

Also, retreating is mentioned in the CRB and the advice is to allow the party to retreat.

 

[kenada]

Combat as War vs Combat as Sport has two sides of the coin. The first is playstyle, and the second is system. Playstyle can be adapted to any game to make it play like war and less like sport. System, however, is going to limit the ability for a true war like experience because it can bind the game into a sport like experience.

The designers have indicated that having encounter powers and healing topped off is expected. As GM, you can chain encounters and prevent the PCs from resting, but forcing a fight or flight decision matrix alone, does not a combat as war game make. If you want to move away from the design expectations you need a good grasp of the rule system and how to make it work that way. Of course, you can always give the players rope and let them hang themselves if they choose to. Though, not having a good grasp on how the system works is also problematic for players.

PF2 uses a level band to determine encounters. Easy/Moderate/Severe/Extreme/Impossible. Depending on where the PCs land on the chart is going to impact their ability to fight like a war. The higher up the band, the less effective maneuvers, spells, and attacks will be. There is nothing outside leveling that can change that. Any particular combatant is going to be effected by the degrees of success in a particular band. Crit fail/Fail, Fail/Save, Save/Crit save. Players can get items, use spells, and tactics that can give them much better chance within the degree of success band, but nothing that will allow them to change position within the band itself. Again, only leveling will move a character in the degrees of success band. Bounded Accuracy, for example, allows players at any level to apply environment, items, spells, maneuvers, tactics, etc.. and be potentially successful. Fights are difficult, nearly impossible, but still possible that are not remotely possible in PF2.

There is a poster I think that goes by MagicSword that wrote a great guide about how to run combat as sport systems in a combat as war playstyle. I'll try and find it. That is certainly up my alley. I believe it was Justice and Rule that asked me what I wanted to achieve.
The type of PF2 game that !DWolf is certainly one I want to achieve. Though, I still understand that PF2 is designed with combat as sport as a tenet from a system perspective.

While I don’t think that expecting PCs to be topped off means a system is designed for Combat as Sport (e.g., WWN makes the same assumption), I think you’re onto something. Pathfinder 2e seems like it’s trying to be both. You’ve got all the exploration stuff, which is very important. You’ve also got a detailed, tactical combat system. If you don’t engage both fully, then the game is going to be harder for it. You’ve either missed opportunities to shift things to your advantage, or you get your butt kicked because you aren’t fighting at the level the system expects.

I’m not really sure what PF2 can do to ameliorate that except to provide more guidance (and tools) on transitioning into encounter mode and tools for scaling encounters based on the players’ tactical savvy. It’s something that’s been discussed here a few times (e.g., our discussions on running sandbox play or what CapnZapp has mentioned on shifting encounter difficulty). What Pathfinder 2e needs is a revised edition that cleans some of this stuff up. Unfortunately, editions in D&D-likes are cursed, and we won’t see a Pathfinder 3e for a while, and it’ll be incompatibly different so Paizo can resell everyone the same material all over again (and “fix” the prior edition).

 

[ReshiIRE]

Let's see what I remember.

-snip-

Great perspective to have. It does seem particularly rough to have a level 4, severe encounter early in an adventure path (assuming they were all level 1). I admit without experience I am somewhat scratching my head at the adventure path samples I've seen emphasising a bit more severe or extreme encounters than I would have expected - it seems to me that more encounters should be on the low or moderate side, with severe encounters being rarer (and perhaps not appropriate for level 1 or 2) and extreme encounters being only one or two per campaign.

It would also be interesting to know what character classes your players were all running - that monster seems particularly nasty if you don't have enough range to kite it for low-level encounters.

My opinion from everything I've read and reading the system on paper is that the system should work but that I think the adventure / encounter designers in Paizo do not quite understand how best to take account of trival/low/moderate/severe/extreme encounter scale and put too much emphasis on the higher half, rather than the lower half. This, combined with unclear guidance and not taking into account the specific of creatures, leads to cases of extreme player frustration.

 

[payn]

The funny thing is that the Gamemastery Guide talks about combining encounters. It mentions how it can be dangerous, but the book also talks about how you could string low or trivial encounters together into a larger fight that is more challenging. The AP encounter framework and the cramped dungeon environments could be said to go against the suggestions laid out in the core books.

Also, retreating is mentioned in the CRB and the advice is to allow the party to retreat.

Hopefully, these kinds of things will be considered in future modules. Its not uncommon for the earliest adventures in a new system to not play to the strengths or fully appreciate whats possible.

 

[Retreater]

Also, retreating is mentioned in the CRB and the advice is to allow the party to retreat.

True, and I usually present it as an option. Even don't always have enemies pursue fleeing characters (as was referenced in an earlier post about my AV campaign). But when players don't want to retreat, when their characters think they can turn the tide of battle, or have a heroic last stand, or they just drop too quickly to be able to organize an escape - all those are problem situations that happen very frequently (in all TTRPGs).
Also replacing half a party after a partial TPK (HPK?) is still awkward, breaks continuity, and is demoralizing for all players who are invested in their characters' arcs and place in the campaign.
When I ran Age of Ashes, the story didn't matter because of the frequent character deaths. When I ran Abomination Vaults, the story didn't matter because there was effectively no story to begin with.
So, as I've said before (and hopefully demonstrated in this thread) Paizo has created a ruleset that actively works against their own Adventure Path format - which is their top money maker.
In this way, PF2 was a design blunder. It staggered out of the starting gate with a terrible demo adventure, subpar standalone modules, and a half-cocked AP. Just like 4e was hamstrung by terrible adventures early in its release cycle, PF2 may not get a "second chance to make a first impression" (to use an old product slogan).

 

[Thomas Shey]

While I don’t think that expecting PCs to be topped off means a system is designed for Combat as Sport (e.g., WWN makes the same assumption), I think you’re onto something. Pathfinder 2e seems like it’s trying to be both. You’ve got all the exploration stuff, which is very important. You’ve also got a detailed, tactical combat system. If you don’t engage both fully, then the game is going to be harder for it. You’ve either missed opportunities to shift things to your advantage, or you get your butt kicked because you aren’t fighting at the level the system expects.

Though, as I noted in an earlier post, this can be overstated. We've had fights where one or more of us was not on our game (usually because of personal flaws we're prone to as individuals) and we still got through. Were they harder? Sure. But not every fight is "be at your best or else."

What I'd argue the game does do, and isn't ideal for some people, is to expect people to at least actually engage with what works for an individual character or not. As an example, there's only a limited subset of characters where using all three actions as an attack is the best thing you can be doing, and I don't think its asking too much for people to know that. Asking that even that minimal effort not be necessary is, in essence asking that no mechanical decision matters. There absolutely are games like that (in practice, short of GM intervention it was true of OD&D for example), but its a bit much to expect every game, even every D&D derivative to be like that.

 

[Retreater]

It would also be interesting to know what character classes your players were all running - that monster seems particularly nasty if you don't have enough range to kite it for low-level encounters.

Sadly, I don't remember what classes were being played. This was close to 2 years ago, and there have been many characters between then and now.
I do recall the party being focused on melee, with the party fighter getting dropped very quickly.
But talk about a solid way to kill the enthusiasm for a new campaign using a new RPG system.
Not only has the adventure design been bad, I'd say it's been irresponsible - if that concept even makes sense in RPG writing.
If I were writing one of the first adventures that would be used to sell a new edition for a game system that is already going against the juggernaut that is 5e, you can darned well bet that I wouldn't be writing something with an extreme challenge encounter that can't be avoided in the middle of the first quest.
What were they thinking? It's like giving a young kid a video game controller and expecting him to beat Dark Souls.

Here's some of the very basic adventure design stuff Paizo should have followed (especially in their first AP adventure) ...
1) Extreme/deadly encounters should be well telegraphed, out of the way, not necessary to progress in the dungeon
2) Encounters that can't be stacked together shouldn't be connected by a simple door UNLESS you clearly tell the GM to not stack them and then give a good reason they aren't stackable in the fiction (e.g.: "these two factions hate each other and won't come to the aid of the other side.")

 

[kenada]

Though, as I noted in an earlier post, this can be overstated. We've had fights where one or more of us was not on our game (usually because of personal flaws we're prone to as individuals) and we still got through. Were they harder? Sure. But not every fight is "be at your best or else."

I agree the increase in difficulty is not as stark as it’s being portrayed, though not fully engaging either is probably not a sound tactic.

What I'd argue the game does do, and isn't ideal for some people, is to expect people to at least actually engage with what works for an individual character or not. As an example, there's only a limited subset of characters where using all three actions as an attack is the best thing you can be doing, and I don't think its asking too much for people to know that. Asking that even that minimal effort not be necessary is, in essence asking that no mechanical decision matters. There absolutely are games like that (in practice, short of GM intervention it was true of OD&D for example), but its a bit much to expect every game, even every D&D derivative to be like that.

That was one of our problems. I had a player playing a bomber alchemist who played very conservatively. He would only throw one bomb per round—typically a DPS bomb; and then hide behind his shield. From what I understand, you should really want to be handing out consumables to buff the party and focus on debuffing the monster with your bombs in combat because raw bomb damage isn’t very good compared to what other characters can do.

 

[FrozenNorth]

It strikes me as reasonable for monsters not to fight optimally necessarily. The same goes for fleeing. I’d expect it more likely that the average monster just wants the intruders out of its lair. Otherwise, a party could exploit that by luring the monster out and stealing all of its stuff while it’s gone.

Also, retreating is mentioned in the CRB and the advice is to allow the party to retreat.

Monsters should be privy to the same information about the world as the characters (subject to their intelligence), and should interact with the world based on that information (and their own natures).

A monster seeking a meal would probably lie in wait, try to ambush the most lightly armored opponent, and drag them off for a peaceful meal. (if encountered outside its lair). A more powerful monster in a lair may be satisfied killing one or two characters for a future meal and letting the rest of the party escape (@Retreater ‘s HPK). An intelligent monster is actively going to try to prevent its enemies from escaping, and is absolutely going to set up countermeasures against their return (after several hours or a few days). And of course, monsters include undead and demons, for whom destroying life IS their goal.

The “I scare you off then take no actions while you go back to town and buy the items and reinforcements” is rather unlikely given the large number of monsters with human intelligence or higher.

I tend to ask myself how a party would react if the situation were reversed, and the fact of the matter is most parties I have DMed are very reluctant to simply let an opponent run away if they can prevent it.

 

[Justice and Rule]

There were also two fights in AV (both solos) that probably would have resulted in multiple casualties if the monsters hadn’t (i) inexplicably decided not to focus fire; and (ii) decided not to pursue the fleeing party.

In both cases, these were higher level fights that also had resistances to the damage types used by the party while having vulnerabilities to damage types we couldn’t easily use.

Not focus firing and not chasing fleeing attackers can be a perfectly reasonable response for solos: spreading out damage across multiple attackers might break them sooner than definitively messing up one dude while the others hack you in the back, and continuing a fight isn't always someone's objective: in real life, most of the time you are trying to avoid getting hurt.

The latter one is something I run into with wargames a bunch, where if you don't give people instructions to keep their army an army and not a casualty list, they will grind it down to the bone without much care. It's that sort of "There is no tomorrow, so commit everything today" sort of thing.

Admittedly this might well not be the case with these enemies. You know better than I. But like @kenada says later, optimal play isn't something an NPC should always be concentrating on.

There is a poster I think that goes by MagicSword that wrote a great guide about how to run combat as sport systems in a combat as war playstyle. I'll try and find it. That is certainly up my alley. I believe it was Justice and Rule that asked me what I wanted to achieve.
The type of PF2 game that !DWolf is certainly one I want to achieve. Though, I still understand that PF2 is designed with combat as sport as a tenet from a system perspective.

EDIT: Here is the link for The-Magic-Sword's write up.

Yeah, I asked that because honestly that's the biggest question. I can run a 5E "Combat as War" game or a 5E "Combat as Sport" game, but it all comes down to how I approach things and engineer the outcome for my player. Similarly I think you can do both in PF2, but you have to know beforehand what you want before going in: if you want combat to be more about the players getting to style and do cool stuff on people, I would simply pull back on the difficulty of foe you send at your players. For example, use weak template versions will give you the same combat granularity, but a more manageable solo enemy.

For me, I think I want a bit of both, though I think in my heart I'm more of a Combat as War guy. I suppose I want my players to not just approach everything with a sword, so I want there to be times where they could get womped hard if they just do stupid stuff. So the rules as written work for me.

It strikes me as reasonable for monsters not to fight optimally necessarily. The same goes for fleeing. I’d expect it more likely that the average monster just wants the intruders out of its lair. Otherwise, a party could exploit that by luring the monster out and stealing all of its stuff while it’s gone.

Exactly. Monsters want to survive, not just kill the party. Healing sucks, especially when you don't have access to magic.

One of the biggest bummers was finding our an enemy was weak against fire, but all your daily spells were useless and your best bet was spamming cantrips.

This is something where you have to give your players a chance, or warn them going into the game that they need to be prepared for because you might not be giving them such chances. My group of grognard gamers always buy flasks of oil for this sort of thing, as well as for a retreat option. In 5E I had a group that loved using caltrops and ball bearings, which was hilarious when it worked.

The funny thing is that the Gamemastery Guide talks about combining encounters. It mentions how it can be dangerous, but the book also talks about how you could string low or trivial encounters together into a larger fight that is more challenging. The AP encounter framework and the cramped dungeon environments could be said to go against the suggestions laid out in the core books.

Also, retreating is mentioned in the CRB and the advice is to allow the party to retreat.

This is how most of my encounters are, too. I don't do nearly as many solo encounters as the APs seem to have, and I prefer larger groups compared to solos. It's not just about letting people style on lower-level guys (because if they are close to level they can still really mess you up) but makes solo encounters unique and something to buckle down for since they'll likely have comparably-higher AC. The players need to buckle down to beat them in a way they might not need to when the monster has a lower AC.

While I don’t think that expecting PCs to be topped off means a system is designed for Combat as Sport (e.g., WWN makes the same assumption), I think you’re onto something. Pathfinder 2e seems like it’s trying to be both. You’ve got all the exploration stuff, which is very important. You’ve also got a detailed, tactical combat system. If you don’t engage both fully, then the game is going to be harder for it. You’ve either missed opportunities to shift things to your advantage, or you get your butt kicked because you aren’t fighting at the level the system expects.

I’m not really sure what PF2 can do to ameliorate that except to provide more guidance (and tools) on transitioning into encounter mode and tools for scaling encounters based on the players’ tactical savvy. It’s something that’s been discussed here a few times (e.g., our discussions on running sandbox play or what CapnZapp has mentioned on shifting encounter difficulty). What Pathfinder 2e needs is a revised edition that cleans some of this stuff up. Unfortunately, editions in D&D-likes are cursed, and we won’t see a Pathfinder 3e for a while, and it’ll be incompatibly different so Paizo can resell everyone the same material all over again (and “fix” the prior edition).

Making a good system and telling people how to make that system sing are two very different things. I think PF2 could do better at explaining it's expectations, but honestly it kind of works for me.

I agree the increase in difficulty is not as stark as it’s being portrayed, though not fully engaging either is probably not a sound tactic.


That was one of our problems. I had a player playing a bomber alchemist who played very conservatively. He would only throw one bomb per round—typically a DPS bomb; and then hide behind his shield. From what I understand, you should really want to be handing out consumables to buff the party and focus on debuffing the monster with your bombs in combat because raw bomb damage isn’t very good compared to what other characters can do.

Yeah, I have players with an old school mindset and they just play way more conservatively in general as well. OId habits die hard.