Pathfinder 2E Play report (Extinction Curse spoilers)

[CapnZapp]

I've been kinda worried about Extinction Curse since while it isn't written at same time when rules were unreleased, its still pretty close to release and I'm sure lot of writers haven't gotten out of the "single 3 level higher soloboss is fiiiiiiine" mentality

Cheers! Ask any question (at least up to level 7 )

 

[MaskedGuy]

Well how accurate you think difficulty level of encounters and hazards are in general?

(like to my experience trivial is "players win", low is "players win easily" moderate is "players win but might use some resources" and severe is "players get beat up badly especially if its solo boss", extreme is "probably tpk", what is your experience so far with them?)

 

[Porridge]

I don't consider PF2 easy to houserule at all.

I find this hard to believe, given how many (interesting, reasonably balanced) house rules I've seen you suggest!

Every time you as the GM say "yes" or "yes, but" (can I jump this ledge without spending a whole action, can I slide under this portcullis, can I jump there while holding this thing, can I remember this factoid while talking to the count/while fighting his guards....) you'll find that there's a feat somewhere which lets you do this.

There are hundreds and hundreds of feats, each making a specific thing for a specified skill slightly easier/quicker/better to pull off.

By saying yes, you've effectively invalidated that feat. Why take the feat if you can simply ask nicely? Put otherwise, as the GM I'm getting the message "don't let the heroes do this for free; only level 16 barbarians or level 12 rogues or people with this specific dedication archetype or whatever are supposed to pull that off".

This mega spamming of feats (there's already over 1100 feats!), and the way the game reserves the right to make crunch out of every littlest thing, was one of my biggest complaints with 4E, and it is one of my biggest complaints with PF2. Not only does it set up the game for maximum commercialization (the potential to sell feats in splatbooks is endless!) but more importantly, it tells me there is zero space for improvisation.

Regarding this particular issue, I share your deep dislike for feats which effectively prevent you from using your skills in natural ways. (This was one of my least favorite parts of PF1 - having a new book come out, and finding out that players were now expected to spend feats in order to do something they'd been doing for ages.)

I think PF2 has done better than PF1 in this regard (I think one of the devs said that it was a goal to avoid introducing feats of this kind), but I agree that it hasn't been done perfectly.

I do think that this issue is relatively easy to house rule, though. For example, in the general house rules thread, MaxAstro suggested this house rule:

"If something normally requires a feat to do but could logically be attempted without it, you can attempt it without the feat at a -4 penalty."

That seems like a decent way to both keep these skill feats useful, but not make them required in order to perform certain tasks.

 

[MaskedGuy]

I do have to say though that I do think lot of "I think I should be allowed to do this without feat" I've seen on forums have been... Questionable.

Like, making impression with deception instead of diplomacy is kind of... Well if you can do both with deception, wouldn't that just make deception better than diplomacy? Like deception is all about convincing target that you aren't lying, it has nothing to do with convincing them to like you or do what you say. If they have no reason to believe you are king of the world, even if you succeed at deception check, they'll just believe you truly are crazy. Allowing deception by default to do both "make impression" and "make request" action kinda takes away whole point of diplomacy besides the flavor.

 

[Celtavian]

I haven't really had much trouble narrating feats and things characters want to do even if improvising. Adding in Quick Jump or Combat Climbing just makes you better at something every character with the same skill can already do. It seems like that is what most skill feats do. They don't let you do things a character with the base skill can't do, they seem to enhance some aspect of the skill that already exists in most cases as far as using physical skills for "outside the box" play.

And you can do things with skill levels you can't do with the regular skill which I like. There should be some benefit to taking expert or master in religion or Arcana other than a higher roll. You have to take those higher skill levels to use rituals like resurrect or to exorcise haunts. I feel that makes players feel special for having expert or master in religion versus taking Trained and relying on a high statistic like you did in PF1 or 5E. In PF1 the wizard by default of having a high intelligence tended to be the best at every skill using intelligence regardless if it would make more sense for a cleric or druid to be better with knowledge nature or knowledge religion.

A player wants to feel like spending that skill up on religion was meaningful and not just a +2 bonus. And PF2 makes sure he feels that way. So when the fighter or barbarian is doing some crazy incredible physical feats with skill feats for Athletics, the priest can feel like he is also doing something interesting with religion when he exorcises haunts or is able to resurrect people from the dead using a ritual.

I don't see how having these skill feats stops you from doing like you would in 5E and having a player describe some activity that is outside the box and applying a skill roll. The skill feats aren't doing outside the box things. They just improve what you can already do. That has nothing to do with some outside the box use of a skill thought up on the fly to do something specific in the game.

I like needing fewer house rules. I hated having to write pages and pages of house rules to make the game work. Then having to get the players to accept the house rules. I hated even more having to rewrite powers and rules because some powers were too good and some were too weak. A house rule to enhance or simplify the game everyone agrees on can be cool here and there, but needing to write house rules to balance the game was not fun. The fewer house rules the better.

I think the PF2 skill system is one of the most interesting skills systems yet created for the D&D/PF system. It provides a DM clearer rules to adjudicate skills. But even more importantly, it makes the player feel like skills are important and meaningful in the game, both the choice of feats and levels of expertise. An expert in religion really is better at religion than a trained person even with a higher intelligence. That is shown in a meaningful way in the game. Same with any skill like Deception or Acrobatics. If you take expert or master in a skill even if you have a lower or slightly lower stat, you truly feel like you are better at that skill for spending greater resources training it up. To me that is an improvement over 5E or earlier editions or PF1.

 

[dave2008]

I like needing fewer house rules. I hated having to write pages and pages of house rules to make the game work.

That is my fear with PF2e having to write a bunch of house rules just to make the game work how I want. Fortunately, that is also one of my favorite things about D&D/PF as well. I just need to understand PF2e better so I can make the game work properly.

 

[CapnZapp]

I find this hard to believe, given how many (interesting, reasonably balanced) house rules I've seen you suggest!

Lol

 

[CapnZapp]

Well how accurate you think difficulty level of encounters and hazards are in general?

(like to my experience trivial is "players win", low is "players win easily" moderate is "players win but might use some resources" and severe is "players get beat up badly especially if its solo boss", extreme is "probably tpk", what is your experience so far with them?)

The game itself sets a baseline, in that one PF2 monster of a given level is generally at least as nasty as a hero of that level (in straight-up combat; it might be helpless in situations requiring skills or smarts or social ability). That alone is a reasonably large difference to 5E, as you can imagine.

Then you add the layer of official encounter construction as implemented by an official adventure, and the difficulty-difference gets larger. 5E adventures feature relatively few encounters which are designed to really test the players' skills and tactics. An official PF2 adventure path (such as Extinction Curse, since that's the only one I've GM'd) is on the other hand relatively uninterested in featuring encounters the heroes have won already before the fight have started. Even a "moderate" encounter (the most common kind) is difficult enough that one character could drop - meaning the players can't "sleep at the helm"; the difficulty is enough to make player tactics important even during this average combat.

To summarize, look for underlined text:

When you play 5E with reasonably experienced players (that is, players willing to invest in building combat-capable characters) and "everything turned on" (meaning feats and multiclassing is allowed, and you allow heroes to purchase at least some magic items for gold) I'd say official adventures (I've run three reasonably large campaigns: the playtest module Legacy of the Crystal Shard, Out of the Abyss, and Tomb of Annihilation) oscillate between trivial "players win" and low "players win easily" (except, as always, at the first three levels, when no combat is ever truly trivial). To reach the level of severe "players get beat up..." you pretty much need to make an extra effort as the DM.

When you play PF2 with the same players, and this time run the game as RAW as you're able to (no variant rules) - I'd say official adventures aren't shy to start off at severe "players get beat up badly especially if its solo boss", and never go below moderate is "players win but might use some resources". As soon as you the GM make the mistake of letting two encounter groups of monster merge their forces you're instantly looking at a possible extreme "probably tpk", so you need to resist that urge, even when it feels slightly ridiculous that the second set of monsters sit on their hands while their allies get slaughtered just one room away. (It would help if official maps weren't so cramped)

But I'll say it again: as a good DM or GM you can fix all this. Each game has its issues, but encounter difficulty is not one of them, insofar that it isn't inherent to a game's design. I mean, adding a red dragon always makes a dull 5E fight more exciting Removing just one monster from a PF2 fight is often enough to give the party some breathing room.

 

[CapnZapp]

My biggest problem in EC is that I want to be able to present a "standard" (RAW, unmodified) experience to my players, but I also don't want them to have to rest for a full hour after nearly every combat. That is, we went into this with the ambition to first experience the "intended" difficulty level, before making any changes. Realizing I want to make changes then becomes a problem

In other words, tweaking encounters wasn't the big problem. Having to tweak them at all was. I went into this with (what I consider) a reasonable expectation of difficulty, and have found out that level of difficulty was higher than I could imagine. Which is a nice change of pace, I guess

Spoiler: A few specific examples

For the most part, the fault doesn't lie with the adventure writers. They use the CRB encounter budget guidelines correctly.

There are a few cases of overpowered critters. The Corrupted Retainers are listed as level 2, but have been shown to more resemble strong level 3 creatures.

Mistress Dusklight's circus bouncers are probably within the range for a level 8 creature, but it still feels off that a creature described as a "bruiser" should have elite fighting abilities. In my mind a "bruiser" is more like a "brute" than a "soldier" to use 4E terminology, so I've lowered their attack bonus by 4.

For the most part, anytime the party can heal up after an encounter, they will be fine, no matter what the next encounter holds. And the adventure very rarely makes this (getting 20-60 minutes of undisturbed downtime) difficult. But the very first chapter will probably go down in a single evening. It's possible if not probable they will have to fight the end boss with every resource already depleted, which a GM should be aware off beforehand. (It can easily take a GM by surprise, given that it's the first level of perhaps your first PF2 campaign. Yes, I'm talking about myself )

The very end of Chapter 8 doesn't read as being different, but if you look carefully at the map and Mistress Dusklight's abilities, you'll realize she can send heroes back into the maze, making the fight against her potentially life-threatening for the heroes that remain. Again, the problem is the potential for taking a GM by surprise.

On the other hand, some supposedly difficult fights, and indeed entire chapters, play much easier than they read. Part of this is the timing of the martials' striking runes (if players sink all their money into getting them as early as possible that will likely make that level clearly easier), part of it is how certain levels represent a much bigger upgrade than others. And of course part of it is the nature of the monsters - a given party will obviously be better geared to handle some types of monsters than others. In a few cases the difficulty could even be ascribed to me misinterpreting a given monster's ability or tactics: it took me a while before I realized a monster needs to spend an action to maintain a Grapple, and I probably ran the Smoldering Leopards and the Vrock wrong.

Our group found levels 1, 3 and 6 to be especially difficult. On the other hand, level 4 was rather easy and level 5 would have been easy had I not attempted to slow them down by upping the monster challenge (as I'm sure I've explained upthread).

 

[MaskedGuy]

Hmm, I do think I need to probably run it myself too to see if specific levels really are easier than other levels :O Like it could be anything from party composition(Like I imagine that any party that has a fighter will have easier time dealing damage early on) to "how early they buy this item" to "Well they intentionally made encounters easier for what isn't supposed to be climax of the entire book" so hard to tell what is what.

I do also think that 3rd or 4th 2e AP might be time when its finally easier to tell what is intended experience and what is "early bugs from gamemastery book or rules being written at same time as aps so writers didn't have access to all resources". Well that and system being new for everyone including the writers xD