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General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Pathfinder 2e: is it RAW or RAI to always take 10 minutes and heal between encounters?
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<blockquote data-quote="Justice and Rule" data-source="post: 8413772" data-attributes="member: 6778210"><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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 <em>army </em>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.</p><p></p><p>Admittedly this might well not be the case with these enemies. You know better than I. But like [USER=70468]@kenada[/USER] says later, optimal play isn't something an NPC should always be concentrating on.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Exactly. Monsters want to <em>survive, </em>not just kill the party. Healing sucks, especially when you don't have access to magic.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Yeah, I have players with an old school mindset and they just play way more conservatively in general as well. OId habits die hard.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Justice and Rule, post: 8413772, member: 6778210"] 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 [I]army [/I]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 [USER=70468]@kenada[/USER] says later, optimal play isn't something an NPC should always be concentrating on. 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. Exactly. Monsters want to [I]survive, [/I]not just kill the party. Healing sucks, especially when you don't have access to magic. 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. 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. 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. Yeah, I have players with an old school mindset and they just play way more conservatively in general as well. OId habits die hard. [/QUOTE]
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Pathfinder 2e: is it RAW or RAI to always take 10 minutes and heal between encounters?
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