CapnZapp
Legend
Great!
Pathfinder 2E Tell me about The Abomination Vaults
- Thread starter Reynard
- Start date
I’ve been thinking about the purported difficulty of PF2. Monsters in OSE are dangerous, but it and other OSR games don’t really have the same reputation that PF2 does for being lethal. People acknowledge the lethality, but the expectations are different. I wonder how much that is at play here.
Is there an expectation in PF2 that of course you should be able to beat the encounters because why else have them? It seems like Paizo is trying to hint at another style of play, but PF2 lack systemic support for it. If you can do the things that @!DWolf discusses, then the fact that an encounter has become an extreme-threat matters less because the PCs can deescalate and disengage.
This is an area where I feel like PF2 is sending off really mixed messages. On the one hand, exploration mode calls back to an old-school style of play, and adventurers seem to support that. On the other, there is an expectations mismatch, and the system doesn’t quite do enough to support that style of play (e.g., it lacks morale and engagement mechanics).
With all that said and given the warnings you sometimes see to new GMs that they really should use all the rules and procedures in OSE, I’m not sure how inclined people are overall to that style of play in a D&D-like game. Was it always that way, or did play evolve to eschew it, and now use them becomes an intentioned choice?
Anyway, I guess that’s a long-winded way of saying: know your group. If your players are going to expect to fight everything regardless of how reasonable that seems or how much you hint otherwise, then it might be necessary to avoid certain things that would fail given their expectations. Otherwise, I think you can run a dynamic dungeon quite well. It’s going to be dangerous, but that also strikes me as part of the point.
(I don’t know how well-Jacquayed the map is. If it’s linear, as Paizo’s sometimes are, then that’s not going to work. However, since this is supposed to be a large-scale dungeon, I’d hope it wasn’t just a linear slog. Unfortunately, the last “megadungeon” campaign I ran from Paizo was Shattered Star, and its dungeons were mostly linear affairs, so I’m not that hopeful.)
It seems pretty well-Jacquayed, at least in the regard that there are numerous entrances to each level, other ways around.
Yeah. I've been playing in an OSE conversion of "Caverns of Thracia" and GMing an original adventure in Swords & Wizardry (another OSR game influenced by OD&D). "Caverns of Thracia" has had a handful of PC deaths, and my S&W game has had zero deaths in over a dozen sessions. Compared to my experience with Age of Ashes, these two adventures have been cakewalks.
I'd like to say that it's clever tactical play that has allowed us to be successful in these OSR adventures, but here's my interpretation. Characters are deceptively weak in PF2, and OSR characters are more badass than PF2 characters.
1) Well-armored characters in OSR games don't get hit often. A character with an AC 18-19 character (using ascending AC), and a monster has like a +1-3 bonus at low levels, you're not getting hit that often. And when you do, it's on average 3-4 points of damage. The most stoutly defensive characters in PF2 have a better than 15% chance of being hit with every attack (likely multiple attacks a round, likely with criticals).
2) Sleep and other spells in OSR games mean something. In PF2 casters can maybe negate a threat for a round. In OSR games, low level spells can legit end an encounter.
It's mostly number inflation and lengthy description of feats and special abilities that give the appearance of greater power level. In truth, compared within their own systems, I would say the OSR characters are better.
Professor Dungeon Master did a video recently that came to a similar conclusion for 5e. Newer games are “better balanced”, but characters end up being more vulnerable. The thing that keeps them from dying outright is the death mechanics. It’s one of the reasons why I won’t institute such a rule in my OSE game. I don’t want the safety net because the lack of one is makes players cautious, which results in prudent play.
PF2 goes one step further than 5e in baking swinginess into the overall design of combat. Critical hits hurt, and they’re necessary to make higher level creatures dangerous enough to keep them in line with the system’s encounter-building guidelines. Unfortunately, you lose the predictability you see in OSE that lets players decide whether to keep pushing or pull back and retreat.
I’ve been wondering what things would look like in PF2 if you stripped hit points way down and tried to reduce the swinginess while preserving the overall balance. My intuition tells me is it would feel better to (some) players because they couldn’t or would be less likely to drop from high hit points to down in one hit.
The other stuff about sleep is more complicated because strategic spells (like sleep) are balanced at the tactical level in PF2. I don’t think that one is solvable without conceding that quadratic wizards are actually desirable to some extent, which is supposedly the thing we should want fixed. Maybe further expand exploration mode with tactical actions and magic to help people deal with encounters?
CapnZapp
Legend
Very much this.
Some of the most frustrating aspects of the ruleset is how clearly you see different rules going in different directions - not all pointing in the same direction.
And yes, I see the occasional message from Paizo people that suggests they intended PF2 to be a much more free and flexible ruleset than what PF1 turned out as. Which clashes violently with how i see PF2 as the single most restricted and regulated ruleset I've ever seen, even more locked down than 4E.
Finally, while the rules themselves doesn't proscribe a certain play style, they do lend themselves to one pkay style in particular. When all the Adventure Paths we've seen so far very strongly doubles down on this lethal rigid railroad campaign style it doesn't really help if Paizo people claim you can do it in other ways. Show us, don't tell us, Paizo!
One area where I feel Paizo fell particularly short is the selection of variant rules:
Variant rules would have been an excellent opportunity to support other approaches, yet the GMG offers no options to switch up the game: no rules for simpler play, no rules for sandbox play, no rules for resource management, no variant Incapacitation rule, ...
Some of the GMG options are well received, but they aren't really offering any support for playing the game in those other ways Paizo claims they wanted their game to support.
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CapnZapp
Legend
Yes. To really drive home this point monsters can easily have a 15% chance of NOT hitting you.
When you're up against a BBEG it can even have a 50% chance of critting you, meaning that it hits you on rolling a 2.
Characters can easily go from 100% health to 0 hp in a single round. (Especially during single-digit levels. At high level the monster-hero balance markedly shifts in the heroes favor)
The way a monster of your own level has a massively higher attack bonus than yourself is one of the aspects my players like the least.
It also means Paizo has massively overvalued defensive properties. We quickly realized that the defensive game only favors the monsters (giving them more rounds to inflict damage) plus of course that longer drawn-out fights focused on avoidance and denial are simply less fun and slows the story.
So we quickly concluded going all out (and having a single Cleric) is faster, more efficient, more fun and just better.
You can't really tank in D&D and you definitely can't do it in PF2. Random chance plays a HUGE role. Yes, the fighter is more likely than the Wizard to have luck good enough to last as a tank for long enough.
But this misses the point: in order to give up offensive you need CERTAINTY. Your OSR numbers tell me you have that certainty.
PF2 don't.
If you're hit on a 15, adding +2 AC is worthwhile since it represents lowering the monster's chance of hitting from 30% to 20%, reducing incoming damage by a THIRD.
But when you're hit on a 5, adding +2 only means the monster goes from 80% to 70%. The damage reduction is much less significant, even taking critical into account. If you're going to run out of hit points anyway even if you are supposedly very defensive, it just ain't worth your while.
Much better then to instead kill the monsters. After all a dead monster is the only monster guaranteed to stop causing you damage.
And with significant battle healing available from the Heal spell and the Medicine skill, well, loads and loads of other abilities just fall by the wayside.
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CapnZapp
Legend
PF2 is written by someone coming fresh from the harrowing experience of playing a high-level Fighter in PF1 in a party full of spellcasters.
"Never again shall a spell be able to win an encounter by itself!" is the motto of PF2 magic.
In my experience PF2 and 5E faced the same problem: 3rd edition casters were horribly overpowered.
I find that the 5E solution is massively better. While casters were brought much more in line with Fighters, they still get to do pretty awesome stuff, and WotC managed to balance them at every level (at least somewhat).
PF2 went for a much less elegant and less successful approach (even though Paizo had 5E to study and learn from!):
- Spells are horribly weak at low levels, particularly in the area of killing monsters. Playing a damage dealing caster at levels 1-6 is a joke, compared to the damage a martial can cause
- They're strong at levels 10-15 and arguably approaching overpowered at the highest levels
- Since weapon attacks are often just better than spells, and monster attacks are better than player attack, it leads to the very unfortunate situation where a monster is generally best served by completely ignoring any spell list it might have, and simply use it's far deadlier special attacks.
Even wizardly monsters are most often better off skipping their magic to instead use their swords or claws, especially when of lower level than the heroes.
(I have slowly come to the realization there actually exists people that believe a low level monster is reasonably expected to use it's spells even in the face of Incapacitation. Find that notion utterly preposterous since instead of wasting two actions hoping you roll a 1 or 2 on your save, they can just... eat your face.
Meaning I kind of see how Incapacitation was intended to shield player characters... but hoo boy what a flawed concept that is!)
I cannot emphasize enough how wonky this feels, especially over a while campaign (we're level 19 now). As a GM I've basically given up on checking out the particulars of the spells detailed, unless the monster is significantly higher level than the heroes AND have been given the actually good spells.
In all other cases, if the monster has a breath attack or other area effect it is very likely much better than it's spells. And in any event the monster is likely sporting physical attacks with higher attack and damage values than even the strongest Fighter.
All of this because Pathfinder 2 is severely overcompensating for how 3E/PF1 casters ruled the world as gods.
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CapnZapp
Legend
Pathfinder 2 goes significantly further than 5E in this regard.
(But yes, as I remember 5E really the only character that felt reasonable able to actually tank was the Barbarian. Meaning twice the hp of the character with the most hp is the needed level of hp to make you able to tank with any degree of predictableness)
Since PF2 aims (and even succeeds!) in making every combat exciting - there's little of the "bag of hp" feeling people accuse 5E of - there really is no time for that OSE predictability.
Of course what no game since arguably 3E has remembered is that losing 9 out of 72 hp can still feel exciting if you know there are no good ways to get it back (without expending your only potion, or asking the Cleric to weaken her ability to provide emergency healing, or to admit temporary defeat and walk back to the inn, ...)
It all goes back to one thing: today's players have no patience. Free healing is popular since it allows you to be awesome always. The price you pay is losing control, at least if you still want the game to be exciting or challenging.
(Yes, this is a "get off my lawn" argument, but that doesn't mean it isn't true)
It’s probably worth moving the discussion into it’s own topic since this was originally about Abomination Vaults. At the same time, I’m not sure how much legs the discussion has. I’m going to consolidate some and try to keep responses brief.
Where I’m going with this for PF2 is that PF2 embraces the big hits. Combat feels dangerous again, but instead of being the result of systems that work together to discourage careless play, it’s just part of the flavor. That would be fine, but now players have fewer signals to tell them when they should retreat.
Not having that indicator would be fine if the game just assumed you were always supposed to win fights, but it causes problems when encounters snowball or when you throw an impossible encounter at the PCs (as the GMG suggests for e.g., hexploration). Because you can be dropped at any time, the only indicator you have is just how easily the enemy hits you (or crits you!).
Well, there is one more indicator: foreshadowing. If you know an impossible encounter is coming, or encounters have snowballed, then you need to signal that to the PCs, so they can take measures or try to avoid it. This gets back to what @!DWolf was discussing earlier regarding narrative difficulty control. I’d prefer in-combat signals too (beyond obliterating the fighter and letting everyone flee in a panic), but that’s not how things work.
I’m reminded of a conversation I had here a few months back regarding OSE. Someone was trying warn about some of the problems OSE had that later games solved, and I’m like: no, that’s a feature. In PF2’s case, I don’t agree PF2 is as constraining regarding rulings and such that you perceive it as; but I’ll concede a lot of that comes down to perception and how one uses the system.
Paizo designed PF2 to support the adventures they wanted to write. I haven’t seen anything that strikes me as markedly different from PF1, so I expect they’d have written more or less the same ones even if PF2 were just a *book for 5e.
The thing that drives predictability in old-school D&D is the absence of critical hits, which didn’t become a core feature of the game until 3e. Since you died at 0 hit points, you needed to be careful, but you could assess how safe it was to remain in combat. Critical hits mess that up, and easier dying rules remove the incentive to retreat.
Where I’m going with this for PF2 is that PF2 embraces the big hits. Combat feels dangerous again, but instead of being the result of systems that work together to discourage careless play, it’s just part of the flavor. That would be fine, but now players have fewer signals to tell them when they should retreat.
Not having that indicator would be fine if the game just assumed you were always supposed to win fights, but it causes problems when encounters snowball or when you throw an impossible encounter at the PCs (as the GMG suggests for e.g., hexploration). Because you can be dropped at any time, the only indicator you have is just how easily the enemy hits you (or crits you!).
Well, there is one more indicator: foreshadowing. If you know an impossible encounter is coming, or encounters have snowballed, then you need to signal that to the PCs, so they can take measures or try to avoid it. This gets back to what @!DWolf was discussing earlier regarding narrative difficulty control. I’d prefer in-combat signals too (beyond obliterating the fighter and letting everyone flee in a panic), but that’s not how things work.
My issue as a first time PF2 GM was that I had difficulty predicting some of the challenging encounters. Part of this was due to just how swingy crits can be. It seemed that sometimes a crit could deal 10 damage and sometimes 45, depending on the dice results. And they happened often, like 5+ times per battle.
This is why I suggest to the OP what others suggested to me. Start with a few shorter adventures before diving headfirst into an Adventure Path, be willing to modify the adventure, and allow "redos" (especially as your players are learning the system).
PF2 isn't like when we went from 3.5 to PF1 - the gameplay has changed significantly. Don't expect players (or yourself as the GM) to be instantly ready to run the greatest campaign ever. It's a learning time.
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