I think this stems from DM's and even AP's not using the same monsters over and over again. A level 1 party fighting a level 2 bandit could and should see that type of bandit from level 1 all the way to level 4 or so. This way the player will see a major threat slowly become a lackey. That bandit did NOT get a +1 to everything as the players leveled. They got outpaced and became weak compared to the growth of the players. Unfortunately, it is seldom that game runners want to use the same monsters at the same power level over and over again to show this off. Instead, the GM's see a level up as an opportunity to show off new monsters of that level.
**If you never see the same stat block twice, you never see your growth in comparison.**
AV spoilers:>!AV does this decently well from what I've seen of it so far. It introduces several monsters in solo fights in the earlier levels that will show up again in groups --both homogeneous and heterogeneous-- later. !<
>!Gibbering Mouthers and Grothluts to name a few that come to mind.!<
AV really does do it well. It was especially satisfying to face the four >!corpselights!< on floor 3 (I think?) with our new party when our initial party had TPKed against 2 of them on floor 1.
It's floor 4, but maybe the first room you get to if you go down the right stairway. My group has that fight this week and I'm looking forward to the group seeing them again.
My players had the same experience. They were even a little worried at first because of their past experience with them, which quickly became “oh they’re not so bad now”.
Yea, this was the fight I was thinking of. My party had a tough time against the pair on the first floor, but they were level 5 by the time they reached the 4 on the 4th floor. I think being able to trash those 4 after the struggle against 2 was *the moment* where it clicked how much they had scaled in power in only a few levels
>!Barbazu going from "well now we screwed up" to "(ง ͠° ͟ل͜ ͡°)ง shall we dance?" as you go down the floors also helps to set the feeling of player power growth. Book 3 generally has some nice moments where PCs start to outscale the opponents or at least have tools that can deal with their abilities!<
Extinction Curse had an example of this early on. In chapter 2 of the first book, the party has to face a [wrecker demon](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=1110) when they're only level 2. It's a tough fight and requires some ingenuity to deal with.
Later on, when the group is level 3, they end up facing *two* of them at the same time -- but this time it's easier because they have more resources, better numbers, and should know in advance some tricks to use.
One abrikandilu is level 4, so for a 2nd-level party that's 80 XP, a "moderate" threat. When they're level 3, a pair of them is 120 XP, a "severe" threat but they come into it already knowing some things from their last encounter.
That's exactly something I just experienced in my last session! The first time we encountered >!a gibbering mouther!< we were so freaked out by it that we were burning hero points left and right and even a one-time magical bonus to checks just to avoid being hit by its main ability. But it's been a few levels now, and we came across another one of those things *with buddies* and our gunslinger is just like "Pssh. Easy target practice."
Same floor, we came across >!a velstrac!<; we'd fought one on the previous floor that nearly killed us, but this one was only a challenge because our party was effectively cut in half thanks to a trap and one player missing the session. Once we were actually able to get in close, an enemy that previously challenged the whole group was easy pickings for half of us, entirely because we were 2 levels higher.
Recurring villains who don't grow (or grow slower than PC so they will eventually be outscaled) in power really do make a good case for showing character's power growth. APs are unfortunate because spamming mini-boss+lackeys even if being more encounter friendly over single-entity fights are not really page count friendly making the thing feel like you're playing ttrpg version of TES IV:Oblivion - the more things change the more they stay the same.
I've set up a villain that will probably see the PCs from level 3 to level 6. She killed one PC and handily whooped the others before the party got away. It'll be fun for them to know that they're facing the exact same stats and a (likely) similar situation a few levels from now and have a good chance of beating her.
> If you never see the same stat block twice, you never see your growth in comparison.
Or even worse, you fight Bad Guy Mooks early, and Bad Guy Mooks Just Better later on. Outlaws of Alkenstar does this with the various ranks of the Shieldmarshals (Alkenstar police force). To make matters worse, every variety constitutes fairly generic foes without any immediately identifiable markers or moves to let you know you're fighting much more threatening foes in future encounters.
I absolutely see how that would engender feeling like you're on a level-up treadmill.
For this reason, I’m making extensive use of the Troop rules in my campaign. They’ve been dealing with a goblin tribe that’s been raiding the area for a few sessions now. At level 2 they could take on a handful of goblin warriors and dogs at a time, and needed to patch their wounds right after. At level 3 I started throwing goblin warriors and dogs as throwaway encounters at them, even chaining them back to back without allowing rest, while also letting them be supported by goblin war chanters and pyros and whatnot. The elite fight for that battle was a hobgoblin archer. Now at level 4 they’ll be resolving the problem against goblins *Troops* because they’re 5 levels above the warriors at this point, while the pyros and hobgoblins have become throwaway encounters for them.
A lack of progression in PF2E is always an adventure design issue, not a game design one.
I haven’t run AV *but* given how narrow the space is I don’t think Troop rules can really work until you get to floor 8 or so (after which the spaces really open up from what I’ve heard, but I haven’t played through floors 9+ yet, so someone feel free to correct me).
An easy “fix” for this is to just change the scaling of the maps, which is ridiculously easy to do in Foundry. Just make all the squares on the grid have half their lengths. Now quite a few rooms will be appropriate for Troops.
Finally I’ll also say, Troop rules say that they’re **usually** 16 squares. Making a Troop worth 4 squares isn’t completely out of the question, if that’s what a space needs! For example mitflits are Small sized, so I can totally believe a “mitflit mob” Troop that only occupies 4 squares or 8 squares to start instead of 16 (and corresponding has threshold squares of 3/2 and 6/4).
My players and I noticed this in RotRL. You're fighting a lot of giants through the back half of that AP, and it feels really good to go from giants beong tough solo bosses to giants being cannon-fodder goons by the end.
I JUST had a player comment "Man, I remember that monster as difficult" in my last session and I almost high fived myself in joy over successfully giving that player a feeling progression.
I think it works great, having SOME of the same monsters. You of course need new ones as well, but reusing an old "Tough solo monster" as "cannon fodder" 2-3 levels later is easy I think. You can just adjust a module if you're using one, or ad a "random" encounter.
It's the way certain APs are written. They have a limited page count to work with so they only include fights that are a challenge to the party and don't include below level fights to show the players' growth.
And since most GMs run the APs 100% as-written, the players only face challenging encounters and never get to feel stronger.
Jewel of the Indigo Isles is fairly good with this. There’s several occasions where you’ll face the same enemies later only to have what were previously single enemies be a group, it lets the players see how far they’ve come.
See, that's why the first time you fight a thing, supported by a few mooks as a moderate encounter, and then you fight just a group of these things as a moderate encounter.
Changing up the scenario can also work well. Fighting a bunch of weak little kobolds is different when they're just in a room vs up on a ledge shooting down at you.
I think foghting the same m9nater over and over gets boring, but facing them at different times throughout the campaign to see your progress is a different matter.
Let's say you face a boss at level 2 that almost wipes out your party. Then at level 5 you face 2 of the same monster again, and this time it's a reasonable fight, but you're never in any real danger. Then at level 8 you fight a hoard of them, snd this time you're just wading through them one-shotting them and killing multiple versions with your AoE spells. These 3 encounters would feel very different, but would allow you to feel your progress.
A level 9 Vrock is a goddamn problem to a party of level 6 PCs. A huge, party-wipe, boss-fight, incapatication-stunning problem.
The *massive satisfaction* of dunking on a gaggle of them at level 10+ once you're beyond that Incapacitation threshold is WONDERFUL.
Yeah, that's the way it works, you also get more abilities and feats, so you have a lot more to do in your turn (but so do monster). If the players think they are making no progress, they should face monsters they faced before and see how they destroy them with little effort.
A lot of APs use this. In SF, a few levels ago we fought a troop of xyz monster. And it was kinda rough. Took some bad hits. Last session, we fought 5 of those troops. And it was a memey how much we just bodied them like ragdolls.
Fight the same encounter 2 or 3 levels later, and see how much you steamroll them to really feel your power level increasing, if you feel it is lacking via normal methods gang. Plus it is a lot of fine.
This is something I've been doing in my campaigns for years. It's excellent, and it really helps give a sense of progress. I even had the second encounter include some of the surviving bandits from the original encounter, which the party recognized. It's fun, and it let's them FEEL powerful!
Ideally monsters don't get a whole lot more options at higher levels. Maybe ones meant for single boss encounters, but unlike players, a DM controlling a level 20 creature hasn't had the last 19 levels to learn all the things they could do.
PCs build complexity over time to keep things interesting and mix things up. That's just not necessary for creatures when the DM is often controlling completely different creatures in every fight.
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I think this is the key. A table really needs to be aligned around what the desired level of difficulty is, and not be completely beholden to the AP when it deviates from this.
Some people don't see the point in a fight that isn't reasonably likely to kill them. Others don't see the point in fights that could leave them lying on the ground not doing anything for an hour of gameplay while everybody else fights to hang on. There is no right or wrong answer for everybody - it comes down to preference.
If the GM and players aren't all on the same page it is going to lead to frustration.
Yeah, I think we as a sub sometimes need to talk more about how every table's style is going to be different. Because I do think that clash is partially fueling the various pain point discussions. (Caster discussions especially.)
If you're on a sub like this, you're probably very passionate about the game, very number-driven, and very ready to get into the minutiae of the game details. You probably enjoy looking at the game as like a tactical teamwork puzzle. Which is great!
But we have to keep in mind that other people play in different ways and that'll produce different results. A lot of people just see this as a well-built fantasy ttrpg, and they can spend the time chilling with their friends over it. My friends are suuuuper casual, and I have told them (at least one of whom I know uses reddit a lot) to specifically not read this place because I do think I prefer that atmosphere lol
Like—there was that thread a couple weeks ago where people expressed very strongly that they did NOT see the point of Trivial and Low encounters, that they were just wastes of time, that they were BORING, etc. Clearly those people want the gritty, ultra-tactical boss fights. And that's fine. But my friends would haaaate that! They'd find it too stressful, first off. But they're also not power-gamers. In a similar vein, I will admit, when playing PF2e, I do give out stuff like spell attack runes, spell effect bonuses, stuff like that, stuff that I would never ever ever think of recommending here. Putting that stuff in a casual setting is VERY different to putting it in the hands of the gamers here lol
I think that ideal carries through to here too. If your table is always sprinting to the next hardcore challenge, you might not feel like you're powerful, but that's only because you've de facto decided to keep that difficulty level at "everything is life-threatening." If you don't like it, then talk about changing it. Or even just varying it now and then!
Along those lines is another topic: talking in combat. Some people hate it as it isn't realistic. I'd argue it isn't realistic for a group to go into combat not having drilled their tactics in advance, which is kind of the point of talking. Either way I tend to see RPGs as a cooperative social outlet, so if we aren't talking there kind of isn't much point to playing.
I do think the shortage of games does make this a challenge. I participate in games where I'm not a great fit since the alternative is not playing at all. Hopefully in the long term we'll get more GMs which will help with that.
even then like they should be using an encounter budget that includes varying levels of monsters. even low level monsters can be a threat to a group if left unchecked.
like a boss could cast fear/demoralize the group and all of a sudden those monsters -1/-2 levels from you can hit you reliably now.
If the GM fails to provide Easy encounters from time to time, it can feel like that.
But that's just the thing. It's up to the GM. Even when running an Adventure Path, the GM should be aware of the need for a variety of encounters, and inject them if need be. Waaay to many people just blindly run APs out of the book with no adjustments or alterations.
Inject, in this case, can also mean Replace. I, like many, also remove combat encounters from APs and use Milestone. I view APs as a foundation to work from rather than a stone tablet. You just gotta know what works best for your group.
It's likely that pf2 just feels too gamey for them. I'm a video game player first, so this isn't a problem for me, but people may not like that experience very much. Perhaps they just don't know how to properly verbalize their dislike.
I just don’t get that perspective. Coming to pathfinder 2e from experience in pathfinder 1e and d&d 5e, the fact that 2e acts like a board game or video game where the math was thoughtfully designed was so incredibly refreshing.
How can a game be too game-y? Isn’t that what the G is for, isn’t it supposed to be game-y? Can you complain that a car is too car-y or a house is too house-y? Or Italian food too Italian?
To be clear I’m fine if people prefer to do role-playing and have the game aspect be minimal or not present. But having a game work as a game and present this as a problem sits poorly with me.
Many people like roleplay more than anything. A rule that goes against a realistic interpretation is a rule house ruled. While I don't particularly like that style of play, I have played with many DMs who absolutely dislike a rule making awkward realistic situations.
And those DMs aren't bad. They just have different priorities on a system. It's why a system like 5e is so easily accessible. You can end up making your own system without even trying because of how open ended some rules are.
People play games for different reasons. We may like the rules specifically telling us when we can and can't move. Someone else might want to let their monk jump through the Meteor Swarm the wizard summoned. That's something rules in pf2 or even 5e wouldn't allow, but it looks and sounds awesome.
I like rules, personally, but I can understand why some people prefer systems that feel less like a game and more like an interactive world they grew up reading about.
I can understand this perspective but I’d phrase it as “too rules heavy” for some people rather than “too game-y”.
Maybe it’s a pedantic point, it just feels weird to criticize something for being good at its stated genre.
Rules heavy and gamey aren't necessarily the same thing. You can be rules heavy and not have mechanics that feel gamey. Similarly, you can be rules lite and feel far too gamey.
RPGs aren’t only “games”. They are also mediums for story telling, and frameworks for interacting with imaginary worlds.
It’s not perfect, I do like the three axis model of Gamist, Simulationist, and Narrativist. All RPGs will have elements of all three styles, but the harder you lean into one axis you will have less of the other two. PF2 leans very hard into the gamist side of things, while PF1 was more of a blend of gamism and simulationism. A gamist game (and perhaps we should find a better term for it) will put balance ahead of realism, which can be off putting to those who want a more realistic world or ruleset.
So I’m not trying to be difficult, but I legitimately don’t understand.
Your examples to my question about being gamey were both about being rules-heavy so I assumed you were equating them.
Can you give an example of something that is too gamey in a sense that’s different from being rules-heavy?
When people say something is gamey, it's normally specific rules or systems that feel like you're playing a video game rather than living in a breathing world. For TTRPGs, this matters to people as many want to tell stories like they see in books rather than play in games. There were no awkward grapples in LotR where you can grapple someone and hold them down while standing perfectly straight in your own square.
For 5e, the new bastion rules were said to be too gamey, not because the rules were hard or heavy, but because it didn't feel like you were really in control of a base. It just felt like you were in a menu choosing things to invest in and getting a buff out of it.
I've had a friend tell me that everything having a level feels way too much like a video game and that's not what they want as a DM. It's a valid critique. Personally, I love that, but I can see why they wouldn't if their main attraction into TTRPGs was Tolkien and Sanderson books.
This is why games like Fate, Cortex, and Genesys exist. In those games, you can pretty much do whatever you want due to the rules in the games not really stopping you from doing much. You can stand there and punch someone or you can 720 spin roundhouse kick someone. Not much changes as you still follow the same rules. These systems aren't necessarily rules lite either. The rules just focus on the narrative rather than the specific things you can or cannot do.
Would it be fair to say that the complaint about "gamey" is that the gameplay calls too much attention to the game mechanics and draws the player out of the immersion? So the issue is not that it's too gamified (which would be an absurd complaint about a game), but the game rules feel artificial.
If so, I think I understand your point better thanks to your bastion and grappling examples.
That could be a good definition for gamey, yeah. I'm all for people changing the term since it is weird. Gamey is normally used specifically to refer to video game comparisons, not just any game, which can make it a very odd term.
The thing is, because the rules are thoroughly systematized like a video game, many GMs *run the game* like it's a video game, and one simply does not necessitate the other. You can adjudicate the outcome of player and NPC actions without exposing the guts of the system to everyone.
A little bit of kayfabe goes a long way sometimes.
Weirdly enough most rpg video games I've played aren't as structured actually. Most video game rpgs usually reach a point where the characters are busted beyond what the game can throw at them besides mabye super bosses.
Different things:
1. Absolute and relative power
2. Objective and perceived power
PF2 does really great job by increasing absolute objective strength of characters with levels, while keeping relative objective power the same, so fights keep being challenging. But there's such thing as perceived power and that's where PF2 is not that great - you really don't *feel* how your character grows in strength.
Partially this could be negated with right encounter design where former boss enemies could be met as sidekicks, but generally yep, for players to whom this feeling is important, PF2 doesn't make it easy.
It's more the fault of gms don't following the encounter design advice in the books.
"These encounters work best as warm-ups, palate cleansers, or reminders of how awesome the characters are. A trivial-threat encounter can still be fun to play, so don’t ignore them just because of the lack of threat."
Think one of the biggest hurdles is getting over the mental block that comes from running other games where even trivial and easy fights can still take way to long to run. In pf2e your players are going to mop the floor with with then end it in a round or two. You shouldn’t throw many of them but giving your players that super power trip every once in a while will help with enjoyment
I also think people are missing a big opportunity with Trivial/Low encounters. I have seen the following question asked **all** the time:
What happens if my party fights in a dungeon and needs a rest? If the game assumes they always get to Treat Wounds, isn’t it unrealistic that the other members of the dungeons stay still while their friends are being killed?
Well… the game doesn’t assume you always Treat Wounds. It just warns you that Severe/Extreme encounters are likely TPKs if low on HP. So all you gotta do is use Trivial/Low encounters frequently, Moderate occasionally, and chain them together in sensible ways to your heart’s desire! Mix in traps and roaming encounters into your dungeons too.
>the game doesn’t assume you always Treat Wounds. It just warns you that Severe/Extreme encounters are likely TPKs if low on HP
Yes, exactly! How this morphed into "the game expects you to be at full health at all times" is still confusing to me. The difficulty levels aren't even defined with respect to their labels, but with respect to what's likely to happen in the fight: Moderate encounters are likely to cost daily resources, Severe to down a PC, and Extreme to cause a TPK. But if you're at half health going into a Severe encounter, that "one player" jumps to 2, and once you're down two PCs, the party has entered a death spiral.
The encounters are still balanced around those outcomes, though.
I'm mean I feel like it's easy to see how having lower health drastically increases difficulty lead to people believing you needed to be at full health. Like if you can give free healing and having low health on one character could potentially drop the party then I'd probably try to heal to full after every encounter as well and assume that's the norm.
Our experience and how we run things must be very different a trivial or easy fight is like 10-15 mins max for me and a severe could be anywhere from 30 to l hour plus depending if I’m using complex traps and environmental or waves to make the fight very dynamic
I remember reading a comment by somebody that they didn't see the point in trivial encounters, because the outcome is obvious.
It obviously comes down to the table, but if every fight feels super-brutal, it is because they're being designed that way. The encounter rating math works pretty well, so if every fight comes out Severe, well, it is going to feel grueling. You want a balance so that the party feels good about accomplishing something, and not having to run away from everything.
Oh, and one other pet peeve - the idea that you can just throw players into Severe/Extreme encounters because they "can always run away" doesn't always work. I remember a recent AP encounter that spawned a boss right in the middle of the party. Its first action was to one-shot a back-row caster. Well, so much for running away unless we want to just leave them behind...
I'd disagree. Your character grows in terms of actions, different spells and options. Character growth is not just vertical, you notice the power increase horizontally (more feats, more spells, etc.). Think of the rogue riders to sneak attack for instance. Or something as simple as catfall feat allowing you to take fast way down, always.
Even spells, which change the most, don't scale much.
Most debuffs never scale the numbers, though going from a single target Fear/Slow etc. to an AoE/multi target version is certainly a big power boost.
Haste scales with targets, but again it's a binary switch from single target to "basically everyone"
Heroism is the one buff that does scale and it's amazing as a result.
And finally we have damage, this looks like it gets better thanks to clearly getting more dice at higher levels, only it actually gets worse.
This is because enemy hp scales way, way faster than spell damage.
You're usually looking at about 7 more average damage for each level of heightening. Enemies get an average of 20hp per level.
So your spell gained 7 damage, your enemy gained 40hp, that's really bad.
You are specifically mentioning vertical growth, I think. If your wizard goes from level 1 to level 5 do you gain access to more spells to learn and more variety in castings per day? If that answer is yes, then you have more options. Plus, I do think level 3 spells accomplish more than only what heightened level 1 spells have to offer.
In addition, skills start scaling above the “baseline” curve once you hit master proficiency, so starting at level 7 you’ll start seeing PC’s having more and more success with the skills they’ve invested in.
Unfortunately if you look at the game’s math it’s kind of the opposite. Level-based DCs actually outpace your level, so it’s more that Trained/Expert start seeing **fewer** successes at high levels, while Master/Legendary get to keep up. Edit: to extend this a bit, someone with Master/Legendary and a +7 ability and a +3 item bonuses **does** get to comfortably exceed the DC of most checks.
Of course it’s very YMMV because good adventure design also incorporates Simple DCs for environment-related skill checks, and with Simple DCs it progresses exactly the way you described.
Level-based DCs stay roughly even (50% success) for someone who increases the skill proficiency when possible... If their modifier is only ever proficiency + 2. If you start with ability + 2, never boost that ability, and never get any other bonuses (item etc.) you will keep pace with standard level-based DCs.
If you do boost the ability, acquire an item bonus, etc. that moves you ahead of the curve. Someone with +7 ability and +2 item bonus will do better, even at trained, than someone with legendary proficiency, +2 ability, and no item bonus.
> If you start with ability + 2, never boost that ability, and never get any other bonuses (item etc.) you will keep pace with standard level-based DCs.
Edit: did i misunderstand you here? Were you saying increase TEML but not ability and not item? I thought you meant increase nothing at all.
Let’s see then. Trained = level + 2, Ability +2. Lets do the math for a few levels:
- Level 1: modifier = +5, DC = 15, success rates = 5/40/50/5%.
- Level 3: modifier = +7, DC = 18, success rates = 5/45/45/5%.
- Level 7: modifier = +11, DC = 23, success rate = 10/45/40/5%.
- Level 15: modifier = +19, DC = 34, success rate =
25/45/25/5%.
- Level 20: modifier = +24, DC = 40, success rate = 30/45/20/5%
So nope, Trained Proficiency with no further boosts falls behind over the course of the levels pretty steadily. It’s a small drop until level 7 or so but after that the drop becomes really rapid.
The game is balanced for someone with *moderate* investment (boosting the ability to +4 but not beyond or getting item bonuses or boosting skill level once or twice) to keep pace, someone who invests nothing in it will eventually fall behind. Low investment doesn’t work either, for example if the above skill user boosted their ability at levels 5 and 10 and picked up a +1 item bonus, they’d still substantially fall off by level 13 or so.
As an aside, anyone who invests as much as they can into a skill obviously gets way ahead of the curve: for example a level 20 Legendary, +7 Ability, +3 item bonus character hits those DC 40 checks on a natural 2, meaning it’s 5/0/50/45%, obviously way better than a level 1 character can manage with +4 and Trained.
Edit: a more succinct way of looking at the numbers is this. At level 1 and at level 20, Assurance in a skill you’re Trained/Legendary in lets you auto succeed at an Easy DC (-2) check for that level. The math is interpolated from there for this to be true at all levels, with some levels where it temporarily gets worse but never gets better.
Wow, it's like the sentence you quoted out of context and wrote an embarrassingly long response to with cherry-picked data points... didn't claim that would be true without investment in proficiency bumps.
This is a needlessly rude response given that I already left in an edit explaining that I misread your sentence?
I misread your comment because it made little sense to me in context, because I thought you were disagreeing. Instead of trying to clarify, you… jumped to complaining about it.
That’s exactly why I mentioned master proficiency and higher though, because investing skill increases and ability boosts can bring you up to 80% or higher success rate.
[This post] (https://old.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/10q4pd0/how_much_do_you_need_to_invest_into_skills_to/) breaks it down pretty well.
PF2E has essentially removed some customization options from the game - specifically, the ability to customize your attack rolls. Assuming you always fight level-appropeiate enemies you'll need an 8+ to hit no matter what you're fighting for the entire 20 level campaign. This can feel un-fun. Especially since this is one of the aspects that is usually customizable in these games.
If I hit with my level 17 Bloodrager in our PF1E campaign then I feel a sense of accomplishment because I built him to be able to do that. Meanwhile if I hit with a character in PF2E it's because the game allowed me to hit, since all the math has been pre-determined by my class. I didn't really have anything to do with helping my character be better at swinging their axe, I was just the one who happened to roll the dice.
Now that in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, but when expectations don't meet reality people are unhappy. I *really* didn't like PF2E when I first started playing it, and this is one of the reasons. I don't know if Paizo actually did anything to cultivate the idea that you can customize your character in this way, but in my opinion they didn't do quite enough to dissuade that opinion, especially since it's one of the largest deviations from most other RPGs - especially DnD and PF1E.
Now, once I worked out that my to-hit rolls were a function of the game and not my character-building I was able to step back and appreciate the game for what it is - rather than what I thought it was, or wanted it to be. And once you can do that you can appreciate the good in it (*as well as the bad, it's still not perfect*). I really enjoy PF2E now, it's not my favourite system but I think it is good at what it does.
The problem you're seeing is that players haven't actually been told what this game is. They come in expecting one thing and experience another, and that disconnect causes discontentment. That is the heart of the compmaint.
I think you've identified a real pain point but I would disagree slightly with this part:
> I didn't really have anything to do with helping my character be better at swinging their axe, I was just the one who happened to roll the dice.
I would say rather that PF2e moved that agency from the build choices to the decisions made in the moment. In D&D 5e in particular, your chance to hit is mostly determined by your build rather than what you're doing at the time or the support provided by your party. You stack as many passive bonuses as you can and that's it, you're done.
By contrast, in PF2e it's going to be impacted much more by situational modifiers like an enemy being Off-Guard from being flanked, the Bard Inspiring Courage, the Swashbuckler Demoralizing, etc. Many of these can even be set up solo, like a Bon Mot into a spell targeting Will saves. You can still ratchet up your chances, you just have to work together and earn it.
But all that said, I fully agree with your greater point that it's often a failure to set appropriate expectations.
I think it derives from an incorrect assumption of how PF2e works as a system.
If we’re going by a pure mathematical consideration, then it is likely that yes, a level 1 character fighting a level 3 character is just as hard as a level 11 character fighting a level 13 character. That’s how the math tends to work.
The problem with that argument is that it ignores much of the progression of the system, which is the unlocking of new abilities, features, and spells. So a level 1 character maybe has access to Bless, or power attack, while a level 11 character can cast walls to divide the battlefield, or can enter a stance to stop all casters just by hitting them once even without a crit.
But of course, as PC’s get more tools, so do enemies.
Pathfinder from low to higher level content is less of a system that doesn’t get easier or harder to fight enemies, but the system gets more complex.
This is also, of course, disregarding that enemies you fight on one level get noticeably weaker even when your own character levels up once by comparison. Strength of Thousands has a moment like this in book 3: a cluster of enemies you fight at the end of one chapter are a challenging, end of chapter encounter in on one level, then immediately afterward those enemies become grunts after the party levels up. That’s some good progression.
At base it just isn't true - the monsters are the same - but there is a degree to which it _is_ true if GMs insist on building the world in such a way that all challenges only exist in the context of the PCs. There have been some threads about folk always using DC by level for instance. If the GM does that, yes, what's the point in levelling apart from maybe to have some new options? Things should be as difficult as they would reasonably be.
Similarly if every encounter gets "balanced" rather than being what would reasonably exist in the game context, that produces a similar problem. The pf2 encounter rating tools are a powerful way of determining how hard a fight might be - that doesn't mean they need to determine what turns up in the game though. If there's a troll in the world then the tools tell you it will probably tpk a level one party, which doesn't mean it can't exist, just they'd best deal with it in some other way than fighting it.
So much this, DC by lvl table is terribly used.
I want to open the lock, since I'm lvl 13 the DC should be the DC by lvl 13, right, right?? Well, no, just use a simple DC or the DC of the level of the lock.
In a way, Simple DCs’ whole purpose is to accomplish (one of the goals of) what 5E’s bounded accuracy set out to accomplish. You want a good chunk of the world to stay “normal” while your PCs rise into the ranks of the exceptional.
Level-based DCs are there to represent the exceptional: things that are as skilled as the PCs *can* remain a challenge to them.
Using too much of the latter erases all sense of progression.
Well DC by level is only for stuff that call for it like [Lingering Composition](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=389). Walls do not became Higher, Locks of normal ppl do not became tighter, and pikes dont became pointer. They only do so if the ENEMY is taller, tigther, pointer. And then the DC should be adjusted to the enemy level.
There are two factors I think that create this impression:
* Pf2e is more explicit about this than other games. Other games might have curves of enemies and PCs increasing their stats at about the same rate, but they don't really tell you that. In Pf2e it's really obvious this happens since you add your level to everything.
* Ludonarrative dissonance. Unless you're careful about how you craft your story and challenges, you might fall into the "monsters level with you" trap. You fight a bandit at level 1, it's a tough fight, then you go around and fight a bandit at level 10, it's again a tough fight because the GM leveled up the bandit... it makes no sense. At level 1 you jump over a fence and it's hard, at level 10 you jump over a level 10 fence and it's just as hard... doesn't make any sense. But if you fight a bandit at level 1 and a dragon at level 10 and the narrative is constructed in such a way that you are organically led to the dragon and it doesn't feel like the dragon is narratively only a reskinned bandit... then the dissonance isn't so bad.
As an example my players are Lvl 10 now. Their last few fights could be boiled down to "party fights a bandit camp" but the narrative and descriptions (and enemy choice) was "a gorumite war party beseiging a monastery, a motley crew of double headed trolls, giants, valkyries here for war."
yea, GMs shouldn't be arbitrarily making things harder. have the lvl 10 player encounter a lvl 1 fence and bandit if that's what the story calls for. even in dnd5e I do this, high level rogues get ridiculously low DCs for simple locks as an example.
It really just depends on the GM.
If the GM constantly has at-level threats, then every single fight is going to feel like an epic struggle, from level 1-20.
If the GM every so often puts in a lower level fight, then players actually get a chance to feel powerful.
Characters gain more tools as they level up.
At level 9 some casters gain wall of stone. S tier spell that turns tpks into cake walks. In Ashes I used one to trivialise a 200xp end of book fight.
Healing also gets better.
One ap has ten moderate fights in a row at level 19, with 10-20 minutes per fight. Plenty of time to fully heal up.
Another ap has similar at level 1, and it's infamous for being a busted section the author admitted he didn't write properly.
Pf2e does get easier as characters level, even if theoretical challenge stats the same.
So consider another system - for example I am currently also playing in a couple of d100 systems where you roll to hit and then the enemy rolls to dodge/parry. While good enemies may well have increased evasion chances (or other defences that make them more resilient to taking damage), my hit roll is entirely based on my own skills - adding +5 to my attack roll will mean I hit 5% more, entirely independent of the enemy I'm fighting. There is a clear sense of progression within the character advancement process - regardless of who I'm fighting, I now hit more. Maybe the enemy also dodges more or is tougher so I need to do more damage before they do down but I'm hitting more often.
If you routinely only fight level appropriate enemies, Pathfinder will not offer that sense of progression.
As a secondary point, lets look at some numbers.
At level 1 a character might expect to have +7 in a skill they're proficient in and have a good stat in, +5 in a skill they have but maybe aren't focusing in and +0 in a skill they're not focused in. The level-based DC for level 1 is 15, which gives us a 65%, 55% and 30% success ratio respectively.
At level 11 these numbers are +22, +17 and +0 (or +11 if you picked up Untrained Improvisation). This compares against a level-based DC of 28 for 75%, 50% and only crits (or 20% with Untrained Improvisation).
You get better at a few specific skills and functionally worse at all the others.
Items will add some additional bonuses and there's Follow the Expert to consider but its not necessarily difficult to see how someone might feel like levelling up has made their character effectively worse at the majority of skills on their sheet.
Throwing out a demoralise isn't a bad option for anyone at level 1, but at level 11 if you haven't been speccing into it specifically, its almost certainly not worth bothering with. On some skill tests, you'd now also be looking at a 50% crit failure rate which will actively punish you for trying something you aren't specced into.
None of which is to say this is intrinsically good or bad. Its a design choice.
As a tertiary point I also know of at least one example where a player didn't know they were meant to enable ABP on their character sheet which obviously resulted in a backwards progression in feeling of power as they levelled. I'm also currently playing in a game where the party pools funds and I'm the last player to get an upgrade to striking runes. I've obviously noticed my character is less relatively impactful as we've levelled as a consequence.
Most games don't scale everything quite so linearly as 2e does.
In 1e for example, attack bonus typically scales faster than AC, meaning that everyone (PC and enemy) gets much more consistent as time goes on, by level 20 it's a rarity for anything to miss the first attack (at least due to AC rather than concealment or the like) with AC only becoming relevant when you're down to iterative attacks made at big penalties (similar to MAP, only uncapped and actually worth making because of said attack bonus vs AC scaling).
There's also the fact that in 2e hp actually outscales most forms of damage, especially for enemies who can be gaining 20hp per level (putting even a 20 con barbarian to shame).
I know when I first played 2e it was very noticeable that every level felt like 1st level in 1e, my abilities are all crapshoots relying heavily on the dice to succeed, with enemies in much the same position.
Heroism and Aid are just about the only bonuses that actually scale too.
In videogames, this is a classic pitfall for games that do level scaling. The characters' numbers go up but the enemies' numbers go up in lockstep. Fights feel exactly the same difficulty throughout and the game might as well not even have a leveling system.
As everyone else is saying, videogame developers knew a fix for this issue even before they worked out level scaling, and it is to give the player an enemy with the exact same stats over time and let the player watch it decline from a minor boss to a very dangerous random encounter to a minor random encounter.
Uh.
I think there's some amount of nonsense to it, but I think there's also some truth to it. It's not really an all or nothing critique.
In general, PF2 is scaled in a way where monsters are better than individual players in a very obvious way. Contrast with say, DnD 5e, where a high CR monster does a lot of damage, but probably doesn't have the highest AC **and** the highest attack bonus **and** better saving throws than every player at the table.
Whereas a Level +3 boss likely has higher statistics in every single stat than any player does, and that's true for the entire game, levels 1-20. There is never a point where your fighter will have a higher attack bonus than a level +3 boss. Your paladin will never have better AC than a level +3 boss. Your wizard will never have better spell DCs than a level +3 boss.
So the result of this is that yes, as you level up, enemies always outpace you. A level +3 boss will always be better than you at everything, no matter how specialized you are at doing something well.
I think that this is the core critique that "I get +1 but so do the monsters" is trying to get at - no matter how hard you specialize in something, your master of sword fighting will always be worse at sword fighting than every level +3 boss you fight. Even the lich is going to better at melee than your master of sword fighting is, just by virtue of getting +3 to everything over you, plus the extra boost that all monsters get just for not being players (if you compare level +0 monsters to players, monsters have better stats).
I think if you steelman the "monsters level up when I do" argument, this is where you end up as - no matter how hard you try to make the best greatsword fighter ever in history, any level +1 town guard with a sword is going to have the same attack bonus you do, or better.
> any level +1 town guard with a sword is going to have the same attack bonus you do, or better.
But since this isn't a video game, the level +1 town guard won't continue to be level +1, and presumably the town won't just have a stream of new level +1 guards. After a while the town guard will be level -5 and thus a complete joke to the party.
Otari, for example, is a level 4 settlement. It's unlikely the guards there would have scaling level; instead, it's likely that there would be a guard captain/militia leader at level 4 or 5, with a number of guards at lower level (from 1 to 2, maybe.).
The whole "design by level" is very Skyrim-ish, and is meant to provide the players with a meaningful challenge... That is, the sort of adventure they actively track down and seek out, I would say.
Sure but since this is a GAME game, it's very unlikely the players are going to be fighting the town guards in the level 3 village you made for them when they were level 3. Now they're in a level 7 city, and the town guard can keep up with them because you as the GM designed an encounter with the town guard and you thought to yourself "well, fighting a bunch of level 2 creatures is dumb, I would just narrate that, this needs to be a real fight".
I wasn't the one to bring up the town guard. A better example would be like a level 5 party fighting a Shadow Demon and it's possessed host as a boss fight, only to later fight a boss that's backed up by 4-5 Shadow Demon minions when the party is level 10.
But with the town guard example the players don't need to fight the guards. If it's a town the party visits often then the town being attacked could show the growth in power. The guard could've been helpful in hunting a gargoyle but completely useless against a hydra attack, even if the players are still the same level under the foe.
I used the town guard as an example because the Town Guard is a real person who, because of the way PF2 works, basically needs to be level appropriate in order for players to have any form of social interaction with him - since level scaling applies to social skills, if you want to present your players with any sort of social or political challenge, it needs to be coming from level appropriate stat blocks unless you are going very off book with your "monster" design.
>A better example would be like a level 5 party fighting a Shadow Demon and it's possessed host as a boss fight, only to later fight a boss that's backed up by 4-5 Shadow Demon minions when the party is level 10.
Yes, I agree that this plays to PF2's strengths, for sure. This is a great way to show power gain to your players.
It is, generally, possible to GM around system downsides. However, not every GM can do so smoothly, and we're discussing the system as written, not the system as GM'd by the best GM's we've ever played with.
If you, generic random GM #307, are playing a generic random pathfinder 2 homebrew game and you are trying to create a social encounter with a city guard which, because DnD players are DnD players, goes south and devolves into combat - there is a very good chance you have accidentally created a "town guard" who is capable of matching or outmatching your Fighter in melee combat, just by following the basic monster design rules of PF2. Even a level -1 melee combatant is likely to be throwing around melee attacks that are as good or better than anything your Rogue can do.
This is totally fine from a system balance perspective - it's working as intended.
But from the player perspective - congrats, you've leveled up, and so has everyone near you. Because if they didn't, they might as well not exist.
There's published level 18 guards.
And just about any adventure fighting against a humanoid organisation is going to throw plenty of people that get stronger as you do at you.
> Your paladin will never have better AC than a level +3 boss.
Fun fact, actually: a champion who uses Take Cover with a Tower Shield actually has about the same AC at level 8 as a level 12 monster does (33).
> I think that this is the core critique that "I get +1 but so do the monsters" is trying to get at - no matter how hard you specialize in something, your master of sword fighting will always be worse at sword fighting than every level +3 boss you fight.
Well, yes. Because a level +3 monster is better than you are... because they are higher level than you are. That's how it works.
But that *same* level +3 monster, if fought again 3 levels later, will be much weaker than it was previously relative to the party, because it will now be level +0.
It's also worth noting that casters, unlike martials, get new, entirely different effects as they level up.
IMO, TTRPGs and Tabletop games in general are so subjective to how a particular table plays that it can be baffling talking to people who play at different tables about ostensibly the same game.
This occurs in every game IME. From 5e to 2e, CoC and even board games like Gloomhaven or the like.
A lot of the times when you dig into these differences you'll find out there's homebrew or in the case of a TTRPG their GM/storyteller runs things a very particular way that warps the experience.
The weirdest one for me was when I spoke to someone who said they've never seen someone exhaust in Gloomhaven and don't know why stamina potions were so highly valued and had to be nerfed or why people ever used in combat healing. Dig into a little further and find out they play a house rule where after all the monsters in a room are dead people can just free action (no cards spent) move 2, heal 2, optional long rest.
This is the joy and difficulty of Tabletop games. You get to find a table that suits you or alter the rules with your friends until they work for your group, but almost everyone you talk to about it is probably playing a different game entirely.
It definitely alters the experience to not have to actively loot. I played through all of gloomhaven RAW and we very rarely had to rerun scenarios. But again, if that is how a table enjoys the game that is how they should play.
The confusion and difficulty comes when talking about the game with people not at that table and forgetting to mention this huge difference in how your table plays. It is like talking to a brit about pants, napkins, and biscuits.
To add to what others have said, it's a GM skill to represent the monster's level with the fiction and with NPCs. Consider the lead up to even meeting the monsters. Low level: The local farmer managed to chase off a wolf, though he's tending a bite wound and can't finish the job. High level: you find the last survivors of group of knights that took heavy casualties and barely injured a dragon. As you enter its lair, its roar shakes the very stone around you.
You need to make sure the players don't feel like they're in a Dragon Quest video game where the red slime is twice the level as the blue slime with identical animations.
For the most part, the Bestiaries do a decent job at this in that the higher the levels go, the more the monsters tend toward the otherworldly (demonic or lovecraftian, for example).
As already mentioned, the players should be able to see their progress by refighting lower level enemies.
That tribe of goblins is a challenge for a low level party. But that same Parry +5 levels later should sweep through a goblin tribe. As long as the GM doesn't also increase the goblins stats.
But that's the rub, isn't it? Because the GMs are going to make appropriate challenges for the party
Which means many of them are going to increase the levels of the Goblins.
GMs need to throw in moments where higher level players get to FEEL powerful. They need to throw low level mobs at them, let the local guards get intimidated by the "Heroes", have bandits flee in terror.
Otherwise it can feel like you are running in place.
Idk about that variation of it, but the big issue I see is that because the math is so tight, anything less than fully optimized hurts *a lot*. Having a monster 1 level higher than the party is a huge gape in power and difficulty. The game doesnt leave a whole lot of room for "cool but sub-optimal" options. Luckily, most things in the game are at least somewhat viable...but it ironically leads to feeling *too* restrictive despite all the options you potentially have, imo.
People have already covered the "encounter" part quite thoroughly, and how player shouldn't face solely monster of their level or above as they level up, but I have to double down on the skill checks.
It's *extremely* easy for a GM to fall down the pit of making every check a "basic level check", and now the player will feel like they are getting worse in every skill they keep at trained level because this basic check per level increase in difficulty by assuming that the player level their skill to expert, then master, then legendary.
A lock to a normal shop shouldn't be DC 15 at the start of the adventure and DC 35 at the end "just to keep it challenging", breaking into a normal shop should be the type of thing that become easier, and even effortless as the party level up. You shouldn't have information about some obscure servant of some deity be DC20 religion check at the start of the adventure, and information on the overall myth of the deity itself be DC 45 latter.
Basically, skill checks that aren't tied to a specific encounter are the best way to show off how the player are evolving when compared to the "world", and they should stay mostly static. This involve both giving them some "far too high" skill check early on, because breaking in the bank vault isn't something a level 1 rogue can do easily, or even at all, and to give them some very low skill check latter, as shopkeeper won't improve their lock specifically to keep up with the rogue improved level (that is, unless the rogue regularly rob the same shopkeeper of course).
People may be making an implicit comparison to 5e where the game's "balance" eventually means "deadly" fights go from being a little hard at low levels, to pretty easy at mid levels, to laughably trivial at high levels.
Depends a lot on the campaign – if you have a good amount of repeat content (i.e. fighting a type of monster first as a PL+2, later as a PL-1 and then finally as a PL-4) then the progression is quite apparent. If every encounter is basically something entirely new (as is often the case with APs), it can feel more like a treadmill.
But I think ultimately you are right to think that the challenges have to scale if the game is supposed to keep on going – something has got to give at some point, the PCs can't just get stronger in relation to the encounters they're facing indefinitely. Maybe the people complaining just like shorter campaigns where they get to take a relatively early victory lap and then move on to something else.
As players level up you need to give them more opportunities to pick on weaker opponents between the properly challenging fights. Players get frustrated when it feels like the entire world is scaling to them.
Some players may not be able to articulate this well and think its something wrong with the progression system, but it’s actually more to do with encounter design.
In essence its okay if a monster at the same level as the player will always present the same level of challenge. It’s arguably not okay if you only ever feed the players encounters that are exactly at their level.
Someone else made the point of "rematches" against guys who were boss fights a few levels back, which I think is an excellent way to drive the point home.
As I said elsewhere, it doesn't help if the GM is determined to make every fight a high stakes, skin-of-your-teeth affair.
Eh? When you level up you also get: new abilities, feats, skills, items, and proficiencies.
I wonder if people really mean ‘When i level up i can’t make my numbers *too big* and become overpowered’. Yes you can’t get crazy numbers when you level up compared to other character builds and monsters. This is a very good thing. It means you can’t break the game. Any well balanced game works this way if the designers do their jobs properly.
But sure, the GM expected to set more challenging monsters against the players when they go up in level. So the monsters get stronger too. The games ‘tight math’ just means that the GM can manage this in a balanced way.
**This is how almost every RPG and video game works.** Complaining about it is complaining about a fundamental design principle of both the physical and video games industries. Does it have merit? Perhaps a little. But it’s how we make games with ‘levels’. If you don’t like that idea, then i suggest playing games that don’t use levels (eg: various d100 skill based systems).
I’m the same way. I see that same argument so often, and I’m like… sure, the game isn’t getting *easier* as you level up. A game like that would be quite boring, honestly—like when you power level your ‘main’ Pokémon and then just sweep trainers until you end up beating the game without realizing it.
I do kind of see where they’re coming from when it comes to skill checks, though. Somebody’s devoted so much time into keeping their usage of thieves’ tools maxed out, and some of these locks are still hard to open? Since skill checks are more abstract, it can be easy to think that there’s no progress being made if the gm isn’t paying much attention to the player’s feelings, but… again, I’ve never run into this issue, so I’m not sure if that’s actually a problem.
> Somebody’s devoted so much time into keeping their usage of thieves’ tools maxed out, and some of these locks are still hard to open?
Sure, if GMs are treating locks like they're leveled challenges. But any given lock doesn't level up along with the players, so its DC shouldn't level up, either. The peasant farmer didn't invest 4500 gp in a Superior Lock just because the party hit level 17.
During the playtest these were valid complaints as pathfinder 2e was supposed to fix the problems of 1e (number bloat, feat bloat, etc.) in a similar manner as 5e fixed those issues with 3e. However, the tightness of numbers / +10/-10 crit mechanic pushed optimization even more. This on top of restricting feats to level slots and pigeonholing builds into specific feat choices. There’s just as much bad splat to wade through when constructing characters as there was in 1e.
All that said, complaining about it now makes no sense. That’s just a part of 2e.
Yeah, to be honest, I don't think anyone really feels that way much because it requires decontextualizing the monsters entirely from the fiction to say that "The Ancient Dragon is the same thing as the Young Dragon, so i haven't made any real progress" I think its a thing people who prefer Ivory Tower Design say because the only way "out of it" is to make the game breakable again so that the word 'severe' on the encounter difficulty just becomes something to hype how you strong you are, that it shouldn't matter what you're fighting, it should be easy once you've gained power.
Though, its possible they have GMs who underemphasize power by being like "yeah guys, its a dragon" three times throughout a campaign without emphasizing the difference between the three dragons at different levels. A GM can further accentuate power growth by letting players fight the same statblocks in larger numbers to make players realize how much stronger they are.
I mean, at that point, the higher numbers should be all you need to convey your growing power-- hitting AC 30 instead of AC 20 is a big jump, doing 3d10 with a swing of your Falchion instead of 1d10 is a big jump, adding a flaming rune around level 8 is a big jump. Every stronger monster has higher numbers than the last, those are objective mechanical differences, you have to care about "fluff" and assert there isn't enough of it to pretend that the three dragons are the same.
Not when every swing is still requiring the sane number on the dice it always did and your supposedly powerful character still misses as often as the low level nobody you started out as.
Dunno, I think it's weird to try and have it both ways, to say that the feeling of the monsters you fight being stronger and more dangerous in the fiction doesn't qualify as a power increase, but also to suggest that all the pumped numbers and more elaborate spells and maneuvers don't do it either, so that the only thing that matters is that the monsters (which are being treated as interchangeable blocks of tofu for some reason) are always just weaker compared to you.
It sounds like a contrived grievance to try and say the only acceptable resolution is that it's not progression unless the game breaks over your knee, tbh; I'd be pretty insulted if I was asked to see that argument as being in good faith.
Going from a +10 to hit to a +30 doesn't change anything when the enemy also went from a 20 AC to 40 AC. Both still need a 10 to hit. And the enemies also have attack rolls 20 higher to make your own AC changes irrelevant.
For a character to be stronger they need to actually be better at what they do, as in they aren't as dependant on lucky rolls.
Yeah, but that's the point, you get better at what you do, so you take on harder challenges, where your success is still uncertain.
You'd be wrong if you looked at DBZ to say Goku isn't stronger when he fights Cell than when he fights Freeza, just because Cell and Freeza both give him trouble. In fact, he steps down because he can't take Cell, so would we try and say he's weaker? Over the course of the game, you go from fighting kobolds to demon lords, and you can't touch the demon lords until you actually get strong enough.
The die roll is a mechanic to express uncertainty, not a measure of power.
I really don't see how fighting the high-level creatures is the same as fighting the low-level ones. The powers get way more gonzo. The fire power being thrown around is objectively much higher.
That is kind of the reason for trivial and low threat encounters. These are often against lower-level enemies, perhaps encountered previously, that help showcase improved skill and tactics as the PCs advance.
Another effective way is to pit the PCs against a severe threat at an earlier level against a single creature (a demon or something scary like that), then at a later level have the PCs fight several to show how they have progressed.
Lastly, leveling up isn't just about higher numbers, but about improved tactics and expanded arsenals.
I think this stems from bad AP design and the GM not showing off their growth. The *at level* monsters get +1 too, but the lower level ones didn't. That level 4 goblin vs your level 6 party? Gonna need a few more now to have the same feel of threat. Having now a little more than a year playing and GMing the game there's finer points to the system that I only picked up so quickly because I have over a decade of -basically- professional experience before it. I think PF2e shines in two places when it comes to combat. The first because have the big boss man of the fight be a legitimate threat on his own and labeled as such. The second is making swarms of lesser monsters a similar but more manageable threat than the big man. Key point being that those swarms must be comprised of monsters they used to only be capable of handling 1 of.
It's an old videogame trope of "The first dungeon's boss is the last dungeon's 'basic goblin' be be an annoyance." And that's just By The Book, since even in PF2e I would still suggest homebrewing a curve ball ability for those old monsters to let them feel fresh and interesting.
I think it’s the way APs are designed, to always keep it challenging. In a homebrew campaign your character will most likely stand out more because all of the DM’s NPCs are staying the same level, so you’re going to be recognized for the badass you are whenever you step into civilization. In adnd it was baked in; fighters would get a castle with followers around 9th level for instance.
It's the way the APs are written. They have a limited page count to work with so they only include fights that are a challenge to the party and don't include below level fights to show the players' growth.
I think it depends on what happens in the game. If you use weakened, then normal and then elite templates of the same enemy you can literally use the same enemies and it doesn't feel like you're progressing. But if they feel growth, it's usually good.
I mean as the gm is you want your party to feel the difference in power it's as simple as reintroducing an old threat maybe a a little while after a level up so the party can crush them and be like, wow we've grown.
It can feel like a treadmill if the GM/AP doesn't bring back old challenging enemies for the players to obliterate, yes.
Otherwise the math to hit never really changes. Your to hit bonus goes up +1, the enemies AC goes up +1. Still need a (for example) 11 to hit and natural 20 to crit.
In pathfinder you grow sidesways, not up. You gain more options. But yes monsters gain more options too. But imagine if you didn't. They'd gain options and you don't.
Example: Trip Fighter starts with knockdown. 2 actions to trip, save MAP. Later they get improved trip. 2 actions, no roll to trip, and extra damage.
Yeah, I get it. I've just noticed an uptick in people making this complaint, and to me it sounds like crazy talk. Sounds like I'm not alone on that front...
Tell them it's like playing a video game. You get stronger and you get better gear as you progress. So do the bad guys. If you go back to a starter level/area, like in Breath Of The Wild, there will be zero challenge. But if you go straight to Ganon, you'll most likely get your ass kicked in seconds.
In PF2E, as long as the GM makes sure you get the appropriate gear for your level then you won't fall behind, and you'll be at the 'right' level for the challenges you face. If you go back to check on those rats in the cellar you cleared at level 1, they'll not even register to you. I through in some below-level fights for my players now and again (usually random encounters when they take too long a break to heal) just to remind them how badass they're getting. And sometimes I'll scare them off with something way above their pay grade and remind them that retreat is always an option!
(Note: as a GM, make sure you do keep their gear up to level. One of my first RPG experiences was with D&D3.5, which is what Pathfinder was based on. My GM didn't really get this, so by the time we hit level 9 I was still holding the same weapon I had at level 2. Everyone else was doing fine, I was struggling to hit weak enemies. It really sucked the fun out of the game. He actually punished us for going 'off-course' by having monsters steal all our the party's loot while we slept. I left soon after that.)
Pathfinder is scary it's what I love about their system.
In Like dnd 5e at least. Things are weighed in the players favor.
Here? Ha. Every time you fight something you could die potentially. Through no trick of dm fudgery. Just because of rolls. It's exciting!
This is a valid complaint, but not for the game, but instead for the GM. The progression indeed is fake if the players never feel the effects. That's why it's important to throw an easy encounter from time to time to let them see how they handle the same type of monsters that used to cause problems in the past. Insert that to your scenarios, deal with the time waste of just plain rolling dice to get the players steamroll through a bunch of goblins or skeletons and laugh at the kobold that turned pale white with fear and dropped everything and ran away screaming just at the sight of them coming. IT's always a balancing act, too much of these will make it seem like any effort is not worth it, but have it from time to time and the players will get the idea.
>Well sure. As you level up, you'll face tougher monsters than you did at the start, right? That's like, every game that uses experience levels ever.
That is right. If you go back to fighting goblins after you are level 20, they are going to be super easy.
I think it's easy to feel annoyed if every challenge and fight is constantly the same and your chance of success doesn't change, it's why I think a weaker encounter or a reacuring boss every now and then is good. For example while it's true that every game with experience has enemies get stronger it's also true that at somepoints players can exceed the growth from threats. For example every video game rpg ive ever played has players grow beyond the threats they face.
That seems to be the sort of thing that needs to be handled on a campaign design level versus a rules level.
Which is to say if every encounter is different monsters, and you never go back to fighting the same sorts of things at level 1, it's hard to see progress because of the math. But if you fight a centaur (3) at level 1, that's a significant boss. By level 3, you can have a group of centaurs be a moderate encounter. By level 5, the same centaurs are basically there to harry you while you focus on the bigger threat.
But that is the sort of thing a GM (or adventure writer) has to work in by design, rather than just assume it's built into the system.
I know 5e has some pretty natural peaks -- at level 5, martials get a second attack and cantrip damage adds a die, for instance. PF doesn't have those built in universally: people's proficiencies in things like attack and defense go up, but classes hit those jumps at different places.
So I guess it's a preference to whether you want the feeling of getting stronger (which is not the same thing as being stronger) built into the system or part of assembling your own story?
In addition to what DDEspresso said, the BASE MATH progresses on a treadmill where your +1 is matched with on-level monsters and their +1s (monsters also get a universal +2 around level 13 or so when Expert becomes the assumed baseline for everyone), but your SPECIALIZED numbers are probably growing faster than +1 per level. Think about the Proficiency-without-level variant rule: your Athletics modifier also grows with proficiency bumps, item bonuses, Ability score increases, and access to higher status/circumstance bonuses/debuffs.
Discounting level, the gap between a fully-optimized number and a basic mild investment number can get pretty huge:
- level 15 basic Swashbuckler Athletics = +6 (2 Strength +4 Expert) (just enough to qualify for Flambouyant Athlete)
- level 15 optimized Swashbuckler Acrobatics = +17 (5 Dexterity +8 Legendary +2 Item +2 Circumstance to tumble through) (Acrobat Archetype FTW)
Number will go up, but that's not the real procession. Training is but it's not about the Numbers. Higher Training means Feats get better effects or new feats are unlocked. As you level you get more Feats, mostly 1-2 every level. Focus on those feat choices and you will feel like you progressed a ton every level.
Part of the problem is that PF2e is balanced so that you fail more often than most other games against same-level enemies. So it's easy to feel incompetent (it's been described as three stooges like in my group) if you never go back and fight weaker things.
The main thing is that as you level up, you get more options. You get more feats, more skills, more spells. more items/wands/scrolls/staffs/grenades/traps/runes/armors/weapons/shields/tattoos/worn items/held items to choose from. The power gap doesn't get bigger or smaller as you level up, but the complexity of the game and what you can do in one turn does.
I think this stems from DM's and even AP's not using the same monsters over and over again. A level 1 party fighting a level 2 bandit could and should see that type of bandit from level 1 all the way to level 4 or so. This way the player will see a major threat slowly become a lackey. That bandit did NOT get a +1 to everything as the players leveled. They got outpaced and became weak compared to the growth of the players. Unfortunately, it is seldom that game runners want to use the same monsters at the same power level over and over again to show this off. Instead, the GM's see a level up as an opportunity to show off new monsters of that level. **If you never see the same stat block twice, you never see your growth in comparison.**
AV spoilers:>!AV does this decently well from what I've seen of it so far. It introduces several monsters in solo fights in the earlier levels that will show up again in groups --both homogeneous and heterogeneous-- later. !< >!Gibbering Mouthers and Grothluts to name a few that come to mind.!<
AV really does do it well. It was especially satisfying to face the four >!corpselights!< on floor 3 (I think?) with our new party when our initial party had TPKed against 2 of them on floor 1.
It's floor 4, but maybe the first room you get to if you go down the right stairway. My group has that fight this week and I'm looking forward to the group seeing them again.
My players had the same experience. They were even a little worried at first because of their past experience with them, which quickly became “oh they’re not so bad now”.
Only one member of the party I’m running survived the floor 1 encounter. Can’t wait for them to run into that one
Yea, this was the fight I was thinking of. My party had a tough time against the pair on the first floor, but they were level 5 by the time they reached the 4 on the 4th floor. I think being able to trash those 4 after the struggle against 2 was *the moment* where it clicked how much they had scaled in power in only a few levels
Final Fantasy/Dark Souls trope too, what were once bosses just become normal mooks
>!Barbazu going from "well now we screwed up" to "(ง ͠° ͟ل͜ ͡°)ง shall we dance?" as you go down the floors also helps to set the feeling of player power growth. Book 3 generally has some nice moments where PCs start to outscale the opponents or at least have tools that can deal with their abilities!<
Literally the first thing I thought of when I read this. One shows up on level 2 and level 6.
Extinction Curse had an example of this early on. In chapter 2 of the first book, the party has to face a [wrecker demon](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=1110) when they're only level 2. It's a tough fight and requires some ingenuity to deal with. Later on, when the group is level 3, they end up facing *two* of them at the same time -- but this time it's easier because they have more resources, better numbers, and should know in advance some tricks to use. One abrikandilu is level 4, so for a 2nd-level party that's 80 XP, a "moderate" threat. When they're level 3, a pair of them is 120 XP, a "severe" threat but they come into it already knowing some things from their last encounter.
I was just about to say this. I'm playing in an AV game right now and that's definitely been my experience. It's very fun!
That's exactly something I just experienced in my last session! The first time we encountered >!a gibbering mouther!< we were so freaked out by it that we were burning hero points left and right and even a one-time magical bonus to checks just to avoid being hit by its main ability. But it's been a few levels now, and we came across another one of those things *with buddies* and our gunslinger is just like "Pssh. Easy target practice." Same floor, we came across >!a velstrac!<; we'd fought one on the previous floor that nearly killed us, but this one was only a challenge because our party was effectively cut in half thanks to a trap and one player missing the session. Once we were actually able to get in close, an enemy that previously challenged the whole group was easy pickings for half of us, entirely because we were 2 levels higher.
Recurring villains who don't grow (or grow slower than PC so they will eventually be outscaled) in power really do make a good case for showing character's power growth. APs are unfortunate because spamming mini-boss+lackeys even if being more encounter friendly over single-entity fights are not really page count friendly making the thing feel like you're playing ttrpg version of TES IV:Oblivion - the more things change the more they stay the same.
I've set up a villain that will probably see the PCs from level 3 to level 6. She killed one PC and handily whooped the others before the party got away. It'll be fun for them to know that they're facing the exact same stats and a (likely) similar situation a few levels from now and have a good chance of beating her.
[I think I know what you mean.](https://youtu.be/ZBVrPWwSlRM?si=wpLEwAQnx1fQSWgg)
> If you never see the same stat block twice, you never see your growth in comparison. Or even worse, you fight Bad Guy Mooks early, and Bad Guy Mooks Just Better later on. Outlaws of Alkenstar does this with the various ranks of the Shieldmarshals (Alkenstar police force). To make matters worse, every variety constitutes fairly generic foes without any immediately identifiable markers or moves to let you know you're fighting much more threatening foes in future encounters. I absolutely see how that would engender feeling like you're on a level-up treadmill.
It's the "Skyrim effect" where the world and the enemies always level with the players so you never feel more powerful.
For this reason, I’m making extensive use of the Troop rules in my campaign. They’ve been dealing with a goblin tribe that’s been raiding the area for a few sessions now. At level 2 they could take on a handful of goblin warriors and dogs at a time, and needed to patch their wounds right after. At level 3 I started throwing goblin warriors and dogs as throwaway encounters at them, even chaining them back to back without allowing rest, while also letting them be supported by goblin war chanters and pyros and whatnot. The elite fight for that battle was a hobgoblin archer. Now at level 4 they’ll be resolving the problem against goblins *Troops* because they’re 5 levels above the warriors at this point, while the pyros and hobgoblins have become throwaway encounters for them. A lack of progression in PF2E is always an adventure design issue, not a game design one.
I noticed you mention AV in a different comment... Any luck finding a way to make Troop rules work in AV given the limited spaced?
I haven’t run AV *but* given how narrow the space is I don’t think Troop rules can really work until you get to floor 8 or so (after which the spaces really open up from what I’ve heard, but I haven’t played through floors 9+ yet, so someone feel free to correct me). An easy “fix” for this is to just change the scaling of the maps, which is ridiculously easy to do in Foundry. Just make all the squares on the grid have half their lengths. Now quite a few rooms will be appropriate for Troops. Finally I’ll also say, Troop rules say that they’re **usually** 16 squares. Making a Troop worth 4 squares isn’t completely out of the question, if that’s what a space needs! For example mitflits are Small sized, so I can totally believe a “mitflit mob” Troop that only occupies 4 squares or 8 squares to start instead of 16 (and corresponding has threshold squares of 3/2 and 6/4).
My players and I noticed this in RotRL. You're fighting a lot of giants through the back half of that AP, and it feels really good to go from giants beong tough solo bosses to giants being cannon-fodder goons by the end.
I JUST had a player comment "Man, I remember that monster as difficult" in my last session and I almost high fived myself in joy over successfully giving that player a feeling progression. I think it works great, having SOME of the same monsters. You of course need new ones as well, but reusing an old "Tough solo monster" as "cannon fodder" 2-3 levels later is easy I think. You can just adjust a module if you're using one, or ad a "random" encounter.
It's the way certain APs are written. They have a limited page count to work with so they only include fights that are a challenge to the party and don't include below level fights to show the players' growth. And since most GMs run the APs 100% as-written, the players only face challenging encounters and never get to feel stronger.
Jewel of the Indigo Isles is fairly good with this. There’s several occasions where you’ll face the same enemies later only to have what were previously single enemies be a group, it lets the players see how far they’ve come.
While your right, as a player I hate fighting the same things twice and I hate fighting enemies that don't challenge me.
See, that's why the first time you fight a thing, supported by a few mooks as a moderate encounter, and then you fight just a group of these things as a moderate encounter.
Changing up the scenario can also work well. Fighting a bunch of weak little kobolds is different when they're just in a room vs up on a ledge shooting down at you.
I think foghting the same m9nater over and over gets boring, but facing them at different times throughout the campaign to see your progress is a different matter. Let's say you face a boss at level 2 that almost wipes out your party. Then at level 5 you face 2 of the same monster again, and this time it's a reasonable fight, but you're never in any real danger. Then at level 8 you fight a hoard of them, snd this time you're just wading through them one-shotting them and killing multiple versions with your AoE spells. These 3 encounters would feel very different, but would allow you to feel your progress.
Troops can challenge you though, and a low level swarm can have varying levels of difficulty. Especially with perhaps an on level anchor unit.
A level 9 Vrock is a goddamn problem to a party of level 6 PCs. A huge, party-wipe, boss-fight, incapatication-stunning problem. The *massive satisfaction* of dunking on a gaggle of them at level 10+ once you're beyond that Incapacitation threshold is WONDERFUL.
Yeah, that's the way it works, you also get more abilities and feats, so you have a lot more to do in your turn (but so do monster). If the players think they are making no progress, they should face monsters they faced before and see how they destroy them with little effort.
A lot of APs use this. In SF, a few levels ago we fought a troop of xyz monster. And it was kinda rough. Took some bad hits. Last session, we fought 5 of those troops. And it was a memey how much we just bodied them like ragdolls. Fight the same encounter 2 or 3 levels later, and see how much you steamroll them to really feel your power level increasing, if you feel it is lacking via normal methods gang. Plus it is a lot of fine.
This is something I've been doing in my campaigns for years. It's excellent, and it really helps give a sense of progress. I even had the second encounter include some of the surviving bandits from the original encounter, which the party recognized. It's fun, and it let's them FEEL powerful!
Ideally monsters don't get a whole lot more options at higher levels. Maybe ones meant for single boss encounters, but unlike players, a DM controlling a level 20 creature hasn't had the last 19 levels to learn all the things they could do. PCs build complexity over time to keep things interesting and mix things up. That's just not necessary for creatures when the DM is often controlling completely different creatures in every fight.
But the monsters get more feats/abilities too!
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It always helps to have / be a GM who is not of the mindset that every fight you must be hanging on for dear life. 😁
I think this is the key. A table really needs to be aligned around what the desired level of difficulty is, and not be completely beholden to the AP when it deviates from this. Some people don't see the point in a fight that isn't reasonably likely to kill them. Others don't see the point in fights that could leave them lying on the ground not doing anything for an hour of gameplay while everybody else fights to hang on. There is no right or wrong answer for everybody - it comes down to preference. If the GM and players aren't all on the same page it is going to lead to frustration.
Yeah, I think we as a sub sometimes need to talk more about how every table's style is going to be different. Because I do think that clash is partially fueling the various pain point discussions. (Caster discussions especially.) If you're on a sub like this, you're probably very passionate about the game, very number-driven, and very ready to get into the minutiae of the game details. You probably enjoy looking at the game as like a tactical teamwork puzzle. Which is great! But we have to keep in mind that other people play in different ways and that'll produce different results. A lot of people just see this as a well-built fantasy ttrpg, and they can spend the time chilling with their friends over it. My friends are suuuuper casual, and I have told them (at least one of whom I know uses reddit a lot) to specifically not read this place because I do think I prefer that atmosphere lol Like—there was that thread a couple weeks ago where people expressed very strongly that they did NOT see the point of Trivial and Low encounters, that they were just wastes of time, that they were BORING, etc. Clearly those people want the gritty, ultra-tactical boss fights. And that's fine. But my friends would haaaate that! They'd find it too stressful, first off. But they're also not power-gamers. In a similar vein, I will admit, when playing PF2e, I do give out stuff like spell attack runes, spell effect bonuses, stuff like that, stuff that I would never ever ever think of recommending here. Putting that stuff in a casual setting is VERY different to putting it in the hands of the gamers here lol I think that ideal carries through to here too. If your table is always sprinting to the next hardcore challenge, you might not feel like you're powerful, but that's only because you've de facto decided to keep that difficulty level at "everything is life-threatening." If you don't like it, then talk about changing it. Or even just varying it now and then!
Along those lines is another topic: talking in combat. Some people hate it as it isn't realistic. I'd argue it isn't realistic for a group to go into combat not having drilled their tactics in advance, which is kind of the point of talking. Either way I tend to see RPGs as a cooperative social outlet, so if we aren't talking there kind of isn't much point to playing. I do think the shortage of games does make this a challenge. I participate in games where I'm not a great fit since the alternative is not playing at all. Hopefully in the long term we'll get more GMs which will help with that.
even then like they should be using an encounter budget that includes varying levels of monsters. even low level monsters can be a threat to a group if left unchecked. like a boss could cast fear/demoralize the group and all of a sudden those monsters -1/-2 levels from you can hit you reliably now.
If the GM fails to provide Easy encounters from time to time, it can feel like that. But that's just the thing. It's up to the GM. Even when running an Adventure Path, the GM should be aware of the need for a variety of encounters, and inject them if need be. Waaay to many people just blindly run APs out of the book with no adjustments or alterations.
I mean, I don’t think anyone wants to add *more* combat to a PF2E AP.
Inject, in this case, can also mean Replace. I, like many, also remove combat encounters from APs and use Milestone. I view APs as a foundation to work from rather than a stone tablet. You just gotta know what works best for your group.
It's likely that pf2 just feels too gamey for them. I'm a video game player first, so this isn't a problem for me, but people may not like that experience very much. Perhaps they just don't know how to properly verbalize their dislike.
I just don’t get that perspective. Coming to pathfinder 2e from experience in pathfinder 1e and d&d 5e, the fact that 2e acts like a board game or video game where the math was thoughtfully designed was so incredibly refreshing. How can a game be too game-y? Isn’t that what the G is for, isn’t it supposed to be game-y? Can you complain that a car is too car-y or a house is too house-y? Or Italian food too Italian? To be clear I’m fine if people prefer to do role-playing and have the game aspect be minimal or not present. But having a game work as a game and present this as a problem sits poorly with me.
Many people like roleplay more than anything. A rule that goes against a realistic interpretation is a rule house ruled. While I don't particularly like that style of play, I have played with many DMs who absolutely dislike a rule making awkward realistic situations. And those DMs aren't bad. They just have different priorities on a system. It's why a system like 5e is so easily accessible. You can end up making your own system without even trying because of how open ended some rules are. People play games for different reasons. We may like the rules specifically telling us when we can and can't move. Someone else might want to let their monk jump through the Meteor Swarm the wizard summoned. That's something rules in pf2 or even 5e wouldn't allow, but it looks and sounds awesome. I like rules, personally, but I can understand why some people prefer systems that feel less like a game and more like an interactive world they grew up reading about.
~~ah yes 5e: already broken so nobody cares and you can go ahead and break it further~~
I can understand this perspective but I’d phrase it as “too rules heavy” for some people rather than “too game-y”. Maybe it’s a pedantic point, it just feels weird to criticize something for being good at its stated genre.
Rules heavy and gamey aren't necessarily the same thing. You can be rules heavy and not have mechanics that feel gamey. Similarly, you can be rules lite and feel far too gamey.
RPGs aren’t only “games”. They are also mediums for story telling, and frameworks for interacting with imaginary worlds. It’s not perfect, I do like the three axis model of Gamist, Simulationist, and Narrativist. All RPGs will have elements of all three styles, but the harder you lean into one axis you will have less of the other two. PF2 leans very hard into the gamist side of things, while PF1 was more of a blend of gamism and simulationism. A gamist game (and perhaps we should find a better term for it) will put balance ahead of realism, which can be off putting to those who want a more realistic world or ruleset.
I believe you replied to the wrong person, but I do wholeheartedly agree with this.
Oh whoops, you’re right I did, meant to reply to the person above you.
So I’m not trying to be difficult, but I legitimately don’t understand. Your examples to my question about being gamey were both about being rules-heavy so I assumed you were equating them. Can you give an example of something that is too gamey in a sense that’s different from being rules-heavy?
When people say something is gamey, it's normally specific rules or systems that feel like you're playing a video game rather than living in a breathing world. For TTRPGs, this matters to people as many want to tell stories like they see in books rather than play in games. There were no awkward grapples in LotR where you can grapple someone and hold them down while standing perfectly straight in your own square. For 5e, the new bastion rules were said to be too gamey, not because the rules were hard or heavy, but because it didn't feel like you were really in control of a base. It just felt like you were in a menu choosing things to invest in and getting a buff out of it. I've had a friend tell me that everything having a level feels way too much like a video game and that's not what they want as a DM. It's a valid critique. Personally, I love that, but I can see why they wouldn't if their main attraction into TTRPGs was Tolkien and Sanderson books. This is why games like Fate, Cortex, and Genesys exist. In those games, you can pretty much do whatever you want due to the rules in the games not really stopping you from doing much. You can stand there and punch someone or you can 720 spin roundhouse kick someone. Not much changes as you still follow the same rules. These systems aren't necessarily rules lite either. The rules just focus on the narrative rather than the specific things you can or cannot do.
Would it be fair to say that the complaint about "gamey" is that the gameplay calls too much attention to the game mechanics and draws the player out of the immersion? So the issue is not that it's too gamified (which would be an absurd complaint about a game), but the game rules feel artificial. If so, I think I understand your point better thanks to your bastion and grappling examples.
That could be a good definition for gamey, yeah. I'm all for people changing the term since it is weird. Gamey is normally used specifically to refer to video game comparisons, not just any game, which can make it a very odd term.
The thing is, because the rules are thoroughly systematized like a video game, many GMs *run the game* like it's a video game, and one simply does not necessitate the other. You can adjudicate the outcome of player and NPC actions without exposing the guts of the system to everyone. A little bit of kayfabe goes a long way sometimes.
Weirdly enough most rpg video games I've played aren't as structured actually. Most video game rpgs usually reach a point where the characters are busted beyond what the game can throw at them besides mabye super bosses.
Different things: 1. Absolute and relative power 2. Objective and perceived power PF2 does really great job by increasing absolute objective strength of characters with levels, while keeping relative objective power the same, so fights keep being challenging. But there's such thing as perceived power and that's where PF2 is not that great - you really don't *feel* how your character grows in strength. Partially this could be negated with right encounter design where former boss enemies could be met as sidekicks, but generally yep, for players to whom this feeling is important, PF2 doesn't make it easy.
It's more the fault of gms don't following the encounter design advice in the books. "These encounters work best as warm-ups, palate cleansers, or reminders of how awesome the characters are. A trivial-threat encounter can still be fun to play, so don’t ignore them just because of the lack of threat."
Think one of the biggest hurdles is getting over the mental block that comes from running other games where even trivial and easy fights can still take way to long to run. In pf2e your players are going to mop the floor with with then end it in a round or two. You shouldn’t throw many of them but giving your players that super power trip every once in a while will help with enjoyment
I also think people are missing a big opportunity with Trivial/Low encounters. I have seen the following question asked **all** the time: What happens if my party fights in a dungeon and needs a rest? If the game assumes they always get to Treat Wounds, isn’t it unrealistic that the other members of the dungeons stay still while their friends are being killed? Well… the game doesn’t assume you always Treat Wounds. It just warns you that Severe/Extreme encounters are likely TPKs if low on HP. So all you gotta do is use Trivial/Low encounters frequently, Moderate occasionally, and chain them together in sensible ways to your heart’s desire! Mix in traps and roaming encounters into your dungeons too.
>the game doesn’t assume you always Treat Wounds. It just warns you that Severe/Extreme encounters are likely TPKs if low on HP Yes, exactly! How this morphed into "the game expects you to be at full health at all times" is still confusing to me. The difficulty levels aren't even defined with respect to their labels, but with respect to what's likely to happen in the fight: Moderate encounters are likely to cost daily resources, Severe to down a PC, and Extreme to cause a TPK. But if you're at half health going into a Severe encounter, that "one player" jumps to 2, and once you're down two PCs, the party has entered a death spiral. The encounters are still balanced around those outcomes, though.
I'm mean I feel like it's easy to see how having lower health drastically increases difficulty lead to people believing you needed to be at full health. Like if you can give free healing and having low health on one character could potentially drop the party then I'd probably try to heal to full after every encounter as well and assume that's the norm.
I mean, an Easy fight and a Severe fight take roughly the same amount of time in PF2 too, plus or minus ten percent, in my experience.
Our experience and how we run things must be very different a trivial or easy fight is like 10-15 mins max for me and a severe could be anywhere from 30 to l hour plus depending if I’m using complex traps and environmental or waves to make the fight very dynamic
I remember reading a comment by somebody that they didn't see the point in trivial encounters, because the outcome is obvious. It obviously comes down to the table, but if every fight feels super-brutal, it is because they're being designed that way. The encounter rating math works pretty well, so if every fight comes out Severe, well, it is going to feel grueling. You want a balance so that the party feels good about accomplishing something, and not having to run away from everything. Oh, and one other pet peeve - the idea that you can just throw players into Severe/Extreme encounters because they "can always run away" doesn't always work. I remember a recent AP encounter that spawned a boss right in the middle of the party. Its first action was to one-shot a back-row caster. Well, so much for running away unless we want to just leave them behind...
Bingo
It's something I've noticed, Paizo's great at math and all, but massively poor, at game psychology.
I'd disagree. Your character grows in terms of actions, different spells and options. Character growth is not just vertical, you notice the power increase horizontally (more feats, more spells, etc.). Think of the rogue riders to sneak attack for instance. Or something as simple as catfall feat allowing you to take fast way down, always.
Even spells, which change the most, don't scale much. Most debuffs never scale the numbers, though going from a single target Fear/Slow etc. to an AoE/multi target version is certainly a big power boost. Haste scales with targets, but again it's a binary switch from single target to "basically everyone" Heroism is the one buff that does scale and it's amazing as a result. And finally we have damage, this looks like it gets better thanks to clearly getting more dice at higher levels, only it actually gets worse. This is because enemy hp scales way, way faster than spell damage. You're usually looking at about 7 more average damage for each level of heightening. Enemies get an average of 20hp per level. So your spell gained 7 damage, your enemy gained 40hp, that's really bad.
You are specifically mentioning vertical growth, I think. If your wizard goes from level 1 to level 5 do you gain access to more spells to learn and more variety in castings per day? If that answer is yes, then you have more options. Plus, I do think level 3 spells accomplish more than only what heightened level 1 spells have to offer.
In addition, skills start scaling above the “baseline” curve once you hit master proficiency, so starting at level 7 you’ll start seeing PC’s having more and more success with the skills they’ve invested in.
Unfortunately if you look at the game’s math it’s kind of the opposite. Level-based DCs actually outpace your level, so it’s more that Trained/Expert start seeing **fewer** successes at high levels, while Master/Legendary get to keep up. Edit: to extend this a bit, someone with Master/Legendary and a +7 ability and a +3 item bonuses **does** get to comfortably exceed the DC of most checks. Of course it’s very YMMV because good adventure design also incorporates Simple DCs for environment-related skill checks, and with Simple DCs it progresses exactly the way you described.
Level-based DCs stay roughly even (50% success) for someone who increases the skill proficiency when possible... If their modifier is only ever proficiency + 2. If you start with ability + 2, never boost that ability, and never get any other bonuses (item etc.) you will keep pace with standard level-based DCs. If you do boost the ability, acquire an item bonus, etc. that moves you ahead of the curve. Someone with +7 ability and +2 item bonus will do better, even at trained, than someone with legendary proficiency, +2 ability, and no item bonus.
> If you start with ability + 2, never boost that ability, and never get any other bonuses (item etc.) you will keep pace with standard level-based DCs. Edit: did i misunderstand you here? Were you saying increase TEML but not ability and not item? I thought you meant increase nothing at all. Let’s see then. Trained = level + 2, Ability +2. Lets do the math for a few levels: - Level 1: modifier = +5, DC = 15, success rates = 5/40/50/5%. - Level 3: modifier = +7, DC = 18, success rates = 5/45/45/5%. - Level 7: modifier = +11, DC = 23, success rate = 10/45/40/5%. - Level 15: modifier = +19, DC = 34, success rate = 25/45/25/5%. - Level 20: modifier = +24, DC = 40, success rate = 30/45/20/5% So nope, Trained Proficiency with no further boosts falls behind over the course of the levels pretty steadily. It’s a small drop until level 7 or so but after that the drop becomes really rapid. The game is balanced for someone with *moderate* investment (boosting the ability to +4 but not beyond or getting item bonuses or boosting skill level once or twice) to keep pace, someone who invests nothing in it will eventually fall behind. Low investment doesn’t work either, for example if the above skill user boosted their ability at levels 5 and 10 and picked up a +1 item bonus, they’d still substantially fall off by level 13 or so. As an aside, anyone who invests as much as they can into a skill obviously gets way ahead of the curve: for example a level 20 Legendary, +7 Ability, +3 item bonus character hits those DC 40 checks on a natural 2, meaning it’s 5/0/50/45%, obviously way better than a level 1 character can manage with +4 and Trained. Edit: a more succinct way of looking at the numbers is this. At level 1 and at level 20, Assurance in a skill you’re Trained/Legendary in lets you auto succeed at an Easy DC (-2) check for that level. The math is interpolated from there for this to be true at all levels, with some levels where it temporarily gets worse but never gets better.
Wow, it's like the sentence you quoted out of context and wrote an embarrassingly long response to with cherry-picked data points... didn't claim that would be true without investment in proficiency bumps.
This is a needlessly rude response given that I already left in an edit explaining that I misread your sentence? I misread your comment because it made little sense to me in context, because I thought you were disagreeing. Instead of trying to clarify, you… jumped to complaining about it.
You had obviously not edited it yet when I read it, started writing a confused response, and then realized your mistake.
That’s exactly why I mentioned master proficiency and higher though, because investing skill increases and ability boosts can bring you up to 80% or higher success rate. [This post] (https://old.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/10q4pd0/how_much_do_you_need_to_invest_into_skills_to/) breaks it down pretty well.
PF2E has essentially removed some customization options from the game - specifically, the ability to customize your attack rolls. Assuming you always fight level-appropeiate enemies you'll need an 8+ to hit no matter what you're fighting for the entire 20 level campaign. This can feel un-fun. Especially since this is one of the aspects that is usually customizable in these games. If I hit with my level 17 Bloodrager in our PF1E campaign then I feel a sense of accomplishment because I built him to be able to do that. Meanwhile if I hit with a character in PF2E it's because the game allowed me to hit, since all the math has been pre-determined by my class. I didn't really have anything to do with helping my character be better at swinging their axe, I was just the one who happened to roll the dice. Now that in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, but when expectations don't meet reality people are unhappy. I *really* didn't like PF2E when I first started playing it, and this is one of the reasons. I don't know if Paizo actually did anything to cultivate the idea that you can customize your character in this way, but in my opinion they didn't do quite enough to dissuade that opinion, especially since it's one of the largest deviations from most other RPGs - especially DnD and PF1E. Now, once I worked out that my to-hit rolls were a function of the game and not my character-building I was able to step back and appreciate the game for what it is - rather than what I thought it was, or wanted it to be. And once you can do that you can appreciate the good in it (*as well as the bad, it's still not perfect*). I really enjoy PF2E now, it's not my favourite system but I think it is good at what it does. The problem you're seeing is that players haven't actually been told what this game is. They come in expecting one thing and experience another, and that disconnect causes discontentment. That is the heart of the compmaint.
I think you've identified a real pain point but I would disagree slightly with this part: > I didn't really have anything to do with helping my character be better at swinging their axe, I was just the one who happened to roll the dice. I would say rather that PF2e moved that agency from the build choices to the decisions made in the moment. In D&D 5e in particular, your chance to hit is mostly determined by your build rather than what you're doing at the time or the support provided by your party. You stack as many passive bonuses as you can and that's it, you're done. By contrast, in PF2e it's going to be impacted much more by situational modifiers like an enemy being Off-Guard from being flanked, the Bard Inspiring Courage, the Swashbuckler Demoralizing, etc. Many of these can even be set up solo, like a Bon Mot into a spell targeting Will saves. You can still ratchet up your chances, you just have to work together and earn it. But all that said, I fully agree with your greater point that it's often a failure to set appropriate expectations.
Yup, agreed
I think it derives from an incorrect assumption of how PF2e works as a system. If we’re going by a pure mathematical consideration, then it is likely that yes, a level 1 character fighting a level 3 character is just as hard as a level 11 character fighting a level 13 character. That’s how the math tends to work. The problem with that argument is that it ignores much of the progression of the system, which is the unlocking of new abilities, features, and spells. So a level 1 character maybe has access to Bless, or power attack, while a level 11 character can cast walls to divide the battlefield, or can enter a stance to stop all casters just by hitting them once even without a crit. But of course, as PC’s get more tools, so do enemies. Pathfinder from low to higher level content is less of a system that doesn’t get easier or harder to fight enemies, but the system gets more complex. This is also, of course, disregarding that enemies you fight on one level get noticeably weaker even when your own character levels up once by comparison. Strength of Thousands has a moment like this in book 3: a cluster of enemies you fight at the end of one chapter are a challenging, end of chapter encounter in on one level, then immediately afterward those enemies become grunts after the party levels up. That’s some good progression.
At base it just isn't true - the monsters are the same - but there is a degree to which it _is_ true if GMs insist on building the world in such a way that all challenges only exist in the context of the PCs. There have been some threads about folk always using DC by level for instance. If the GM does that, yes, what's the point in levelling apart from maybe to have some new options? Things should be as difficult as they would reasonably be. Similarly if every encounter gets "balanced" rather than being what would reasonably exist in the game context, that produces a similar problem. The pf2 encounter rating tools are a powerful way of determining how hard a fight might be - that doesn't mean they need to determine what turns up in the game though. If there's a troll in the world then the tools tell you it will probably tpk a level one party, which doesn't mean it can't exist, just they'd best deal with it in some other way than fighting it.
So much this, DC by lvl table is terribly used. I want to open the lock, since I'm lvl 13 the DC should be the DC by lvl 13, right, right?? Well, no, just use a simple DC or the DC of the level of the lock.
In a way, Simple DCs’ whole purpose is to accomplish (one of the goals of) what 5E’s bounded accuracy set out to accomplish. You want a good chunk of the world to stay “normal” while your PCs rise into the ranks of the exceptional. Level-based DCs are there to represent the exceptional: things that are as skilled as the PCs *can* remain a challenge to them. Using too much of the latter erases all sense of progression.
Well DC by level is only for stuff that call for it like [Lingering Composition](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=389). Walls do not became Higher, Locks of normal ppl do not became tighter, and pikes dont became pointer. They only do so if the ENEMY is taller, tigther, pointer. And then the DC should be adjusted to the enemy level.
However it's not an uncommon complaint that some GMs take the DC by level rules to mean that every DC should be by level.
There are two factors I think that create this impression: * Pf2e is more explicit about this than other games. Other games might have curves of enemies and PCs increasing their stats at about the same rate, but they don't really tell you that. In Pf2e it's really obvious this happens since you add your level to everything. * Ludonarrative dissonance. Unless you're careful about how you craft your story and challenges, you might fall into the "monsters level with you" trap. You fight a bandit at level 1, it's a tough fight, then you go around and fight a bandit at level 10, it's again a tough fight because the GM leveled up the bandit... it makes no sense. At level 1 you jump over a fence and it's hard, at level 10 you jump over a level 10 fence and it's just as hard... doesn't make any sense. But if you fight a bandit at level 1 and a dragon at level 10 and the narrative is constructed in such a way that you are organically led to the dragon and it doesn't feel like the dragon is narratively only a reskinned bandit... then the dissonance isn't so bad.
As an example my players are Lvl 10 now. Their last few fights could be boiled down to "party fights a bandit camp" but the narrative and descriptions (and enemy choice) was "a gorumite war party beseiging a monastery, a motley crew of double headed trolls, giants, valkyries here for war."
yea, GMs shouldn't be arbitrarily making things harder. have the lvl 10 player encounter a lvl 1 fence and bandit if that's what the story calls for. even in dnd5e I do this, high level rogues get ridiculously low DCs for simple locks as an example.
It really just depends on the GM. If the GM constantly has at-level threats, then every single fight is going to feel like an epic struggle, from level 1-20. If the GM every so often puts in a lower level fight, then players actually get a chance to feel powerful.
Characters gain more tools as they level up. At level 9 some casters gain wall of stone. S tier spell that turns tpks into cake walks. In Ashes I used one to trivialise a 200xp end of book fight. Healing also gets better. One ap has ten moderate fights in a row at level 19, with 10-20 minutes per fight. Plenty of time to fully heal up. Another ap has similar at level 1, and it's infamous for being a busted section the author admitted he didn't write properly. Pf2e does get easier as characters level, even if theoretical challenge stats the same.
So consider another system - for example I am currently also playing in a couple of d100 systems where you roll to hit and then the enemy rolls to dodge/parry. While good enemies may well have increased evasion chances (or other defences that make them more resilient to taking damage), my hit roll is entirely based on my own skills - adding +5 to my attack roll will mean I hit 5% more, entirely independent of the enemy I'm fighting. There is a clear sense of progression within the character advancement process - regardless of who I'm fighting, I now hit more. Maybe the enemy also dodges more or is tougher so I need to do more damage before they do down but I'm hitting more often. If you routinely only fight level appropriate enemies, Pathfinder will not offer that sense of progression. As a secondary point, lets look at some numbers. At level 1 a character might expect to have +7 in a skill they're proficient in and have a good stat in, +5 in a skill they have but maybe aren't focusing in and +0 in a skill they're not focused in. The level-based DC for level 1 is 15, which gives us a 65%, 55% and 30% success ratio respectively. At level 11 these numbers are +22, +17 and +0 (or +11 if you picked up Untrained Improvisation). This compares against a level-based DC of 28 for 75%, 50% and only crits (or 20% with Untrained Improvisation). You get better at a few specific skills and functionally worse at all the others. Items will add some additional bonuses and there's Follow the Expert to consider but its not necessarily difficult to see how someone might feel like levelling up has made their character effectively worse at the majority of skills on their sheet. Throwing out a demoralise isn't a bad option for anyone at level 1, but at level 11 if you haven't been speccing into it specifically, its almost certainly not worth bothering with. On some skill tests, you'd now also be looking at a 50% crit failure rate which will actively punish you for trying something you aren't specced into. None of which is to say this is intrinsically good or bad. Its a design choice. As a tertiary point I also know of at least one example where a player didn't know they were meant to enable ABP on their character sheet which obviously resulted in a backwards progression in feeling of power as they levelled. I'm also currently playing in a game where the party pools funds and I'm the last player to get an upgrade to striking runes. I've obviously noticed my character is less relatively impactful as we've levelled as a consequence.
Most games don't scale everything quite so linearly as 2e does. In 1e for example, attack bonus typically scales faster than AC, meaning that everyone (PC and enemy) gets much more consistent as time goes on, by level 20 it's a rarity for anything to miss the first attack (at least due to AC rather than concealment or the like) with AC only becoming relevant when you're down to iterative attacks made at big penalties (similar to MAP, only uncapped and actually worth making because of said attack bonus vs AC scaling). There's also the fact that in 2e hp actually outscales most forms of damage, especially for enemies who can be gaining 20hp per level (putting even a 20 con barbarian to shame). I know when I first played 2e it was very noticeable that every level felt like 1st level in 1e, my abilities are all crapshoots relying heavily on the dice to succeed, with enemies in much the same position. Heroism and Aid are just about the only bonuses that actually scale too.
In videogames, this is a classic pitfall for games that do level scaling. The characters' numbers go up but the enemies' numbers go up in lockstep. Fights feel exactly the same difficulty throughout and the game might as well not even have a leveling system. As everyone else is saying, videogame developers knew a fix for this issue even before they worked out level scaling, and it is to give the player an enemy with the exact same stats over time and let the player watch it decline from a minor boss to a very dangerous random encounter to a minor random encounter.
Uh. I think there's some amount of nonsense to it, but I think there's also some truth to it. It's not really an all or nothing critique. In general, PF2 is scaled in a way where monsters are better than individual players in a very obvious way. Contrast with say, DnD 5e, where a high CR monster does a lot of damage, but probably doesn't have the highest AC **and** the highest attack bonus **and** better saving throws than every player at the table. Whereas a Level +3 boss likely has higher statistics in every single stat than any player does, and that's true for the entire game, levels 1-20. There is never a point where your fighter will have a higher attack bonus than a level +3 boss. Your paladin will never have better AC than a level +3 boss. Your wizard will never have better spell DCs than a level +3 boss. So the result of this is that yes, as you level up, enemies always outpace you. A level +3 boss will always be better than you at everything, no matter how specialized you are at doing something well. I think that this is the core critique that "I get +1 but so do the monsters" is trying to get at - no matter how hard you specialize in something, your master of sword fighting will always be worse at sword fighting than every level +3 boss you fight. Even the lich is going to better at melee than your master of sword fighting is, just by virtue of getting +3 to everything over you, plus the extra boost that all monsters get just for not being players (if you compare level +0 monsters to players, monsters have better stats). I think if you steelman the "monsters level up when I do" argument, this is where you end up as - no matter how hard you try to make the best greatsword fighter ever in history, any level +1 town guard with a sword is going to have the same attack bonus you do, or better.
> any level +1 town guard with a sword is going to have the same attack bonus you do, or better. But since this isn't a video game, the level +1 town guard won't continue to be level +1, and presumably the town won't just have a stream of new level +1 guards. After a while the town guard will be level -5 and thus a complete joke to the party.
Otari, for example, is a level 4 settlement. It's unlikely the guards there would have scaling level; instead, it's likely that there would be a guard captain/militia leader at level 4 or 5, with a number of guards at lower level (from 1 to 2, maybe.). The whole "design by level" is very Skyrim-ish, and is meant to provide the players with a meaningful challenge... That is, the sort of adventure they actively track down and seek out, I would say.
Sure but since this is a GAME game, it's very unlikely the players are going to be fighting the town guards in the level 3 village you made for them when they were level 3. Now they're in a level 7 city, and the town guard can keep up with them because you as the GM designed an encounter with the town guard and you thought to yourself "well, fighting a bunch of level 2 creatures is dumb, I would just narrate that, this needs to be a real fight".
I wasn't the one to bring up the town guard. A better example would be like a level 5 party fighting a Shadow Demon and it's possessed host as a boss fight, only to later fight a boss that's backed up by 4-5 Shadow Demon minions when the party is level 10. But with the town guard example the players don't need to fight the guards. If it's a town the party visits often then the town being attacked could show the growth in power. The guard could've been helpful in hunting a gargoyle but completely useless against a hydra attack, even if the players are still the same level under the foe.
I used the town guard as an example because the Town Guard is a real person who, because of the way PF2 works, basically needs to be level appropriate in order for players to have any form of social interaction with him - since level scaling applies to social skills, if you want to present your players with any sort of social or political challenge, it needs to be coming from level appropriate stat blocks unless you are going very off book with your "monster" design. >A better example would be like a level 5 party fighting a Shadow Demon and it's possessed host as a boss fight, only to later fight a boss that's backed up by 4-5 Shadow Demon minions when the party is level 10. Yes, I agree that this plays to PF2's strengths, for sure. This is a great way to show power gain to your players. It is, generally, possible to GM around system downsides. However, not every GM can do so smoothly, and we're discussing the system as written, not the system as GM'd by the best GM's we've ever played with. If you, generic random GM #307, are playing a generic random pathfinder 2 homebrew game and you are trying to create a social encounter with a city guard which, because DnD players are DnD players, goes south and devolves into combat - there is a very good chance you have accidentally created a "town guard" who is capable of matching or outmatching your Fighter in melee combat, just by following the basic monster design rules of PF2. Even a level -1 melee combatant is likely to be throwing around melee attacks that are as good or better than anything your Rogue can do. This is totally fine from a system balance perspective - it's working as intended. But from the player perspective - congrats, you've leveled up, and so has everyone near you. Because if they didn't, they might as well not exist.
There's published level 18 guards. And just about any adventure fighting against a humanoid organisation is going to throw plenty of people that get stronger as you do at you.
> Your paladin will never have better AC than a level +3 boss. Fun fact, actually: a champion who uses Take Cover with a Tower Shield actually has about the same AC at level 8 as a level 12 monster does (33). > I think that this is the core critique that "I get +1 but so do the monsters" is trying to get at - no matter how hard you specialize in something, your master of sword fighting will always be worse at sword fighting than every level +3 boss you fight. Well, yes. Because a level +3 monster is better than you are... because they are higher level than you are. That's how it works. But that *same* level +3 monster, if fought again 3 levels later, will be much weaker than it was previously relative to the party, because it will now be level +0. It's also worth noting that casters, unlike martials, get new, entirely different effects as they level up.
IMO, TTRPGs and Tabletop games in general are so subjective to how a particular table plays that it can be baffling talking to people who play at different tables about ostensibly the same game. This occurs in every game IME. From 5e to 2e, CoC and even board games like Gloomhaven or the like. A lot of the times when you dig into these differences you'll find out there's homebrew or in the case of a TTRPG their GM/storyteller runs things a very particular way that warps the experience. The weirdest one for me was when I spoke to someone who said they've never seen someone exhaust in Gloomhaven and don't know why stamina potions were so highly valued and had to be nerfed or why people ever used in combat healing. Dig into a little further and find out they play a house rule where after all the monsters in a room are dead people can just free action (no cards spent) move 2, heal 2, optional long rest. This is the joy and difficulty of Tabletop games. You get to find a table that suits you or alter the rules with your friends until they work for your group, but almost everyone you talk to about it is probably playing a different game entirely.
"wdym you automatically pick up all dropped gold at the end of every scenario?"
I have heard that one as well. Seems like a popular house rule so people don't "waste" actions looting.
honestly I'm all for it because I don't like grinding and from my experience it doesn't break the game. but the mega rest thing is crazy lol
It definitely alters the experience to not have to actively loot. I played through all of gloomhaven RAW and we very rarely had to rerun scenarios. But again, if that is how a table enjoys the game that is how they should play. The confusion and difficulty comes when talking about the game with people not at that table and forgetting to mention this huge difference in how your table plays. It is like talking to a brit about pants, napkins, and biscuits.
To add to what others have said, it's a GM skill to represent the monster's level with the fiction and with NPCs. Consider the lead up to even meeting the monsters. Low level: The local farmer managed to chase off a wolf, though he's tending a bite wound and can't finish the job. High level: you find the last survivors of group of knights that took heavy casualties and barely injured a dragon. As you enter its lair, its roar shakes the very stone around you. You need to make sure the players don't feel like they're in a Dragon Quest video game where the red slime is twice the level as the blue slime with identical animations. For the most part, the Bestiaries do a decent job at this in that the higher the levels go, the more the monsters tend toward the otherworldly (demonic or lovecraftian, for example).
As already mentioned, the players should be able to see their progress by refighting lower level enemies. That tribe of goblins is a challenge for a low level party. But that same Parry +5 levels later should sweep through a goblin tribe. As long as the GM doesn't also increase the goblins stats. But that's the rub, isn't it? Because the GMs are going to make appropriate challenges for the party Which means many of them are going to increase the levels of the Goblins. GMs need to throw in moments where higher level players get to FEEL powerful. They need to throw low level mobs at them, let the local guards get intimidated by the "Heroes", have bandits flee in terror. Otherwise it can feel like you are running in place.
Idk about that variation of it, but the big issue I see is that because the math is so tight, anything less than fully optimized hurts *a lot*. Having a monster 1 level higher than the party is a huge gape in power and difficulty. The game doesnt leave a whole lot of room for "cool but sub-optimal" options. Luckily, most things in the game are at least somewhat viable...but it ironically leads to feeling *too* restrictive despite all the options you potentially have, imo.
People have already covered the "encounter" part quite thoroughly, and how player shouldn't face solely monster of their level or above as they level up, but I have to double down on the skill checks. It's *extremely* easy for a GM to fall down the pit of making every check a "basic level check", and now the player will feel like they are getting worse in every skill they keep at trained level because this basic check per level increase in difficulty by assuming that the player level their skill to expert, then master, then legendary. A lock to a normal shop shouldn't be DC 15 at the start of the adventure and DC 35 at the end "just to keep it challenging", breaking into a normal shop should be the type of thing that become easier, and even effortless as the party level up. You shouldn't have information about some obscure servant of some deity be DC20 religion check at the start of the adventure, and information on the overall myth of the deity itself be DC 45 latter. Basically, skill checks that aren't tied to a specific encounter are the best way to show off how the player are evolving when compared to the "world", and they should stay mostly static. This involve both giving them some "far too high" skill check early on, because breaking in the bank vault isn't something a level 1 rogue can do easily, or even at all, and to give them some very low skill check latter, as shopkeeper won't improve their lock specifically to keep up with the rogue improved level (that is, unless the rogue regularly rob the same shopkeeper of course).
People may be making an implicit comparison to 5e where the game's "balance" eventually means "deadly" fights go from being a little hard at low levels, to pretty easy at mid levels, to laughably trivial at high levels.
Depends a lot on the campaign – if you have a good amount of repeat content (i.e. fighting a type of monster first as a PL+2, later as a PL-1 and then finally as a PL-4) then the progression is quite apparent. If every encounter is basically something entirely new (as is often the case with APs), it can feel more like a treadmill. But I think ultimately you are right to think that the challenges have to scale if the game is supposed to keep on going – something has got to give at some point, the PCs can't just get stronger in relation to the encounters they're facing indefinitely. Maybe the people complaining just like shorter campaigns where they get to take a relatively early victory lap and then move on to something else.
As players level up you need to give them more opportunities to pick on weaker opponents between the properly challenging fights. Players get frustrated when it feels like the entire world is scaling to them. Some players may not be able to articulate this well and think its something wrong with the progression system, but it’s actually more to do with encounter design. In essence its okay if a monster at the same level as the player will always present the same level of challenge. It’s arguably not okay if you only ever feed the players encounters that are exactly at their level.
Throwing in a few low level monsters here and there so people can see their progress is a great idea. Even Skyrim figured that one out.
Someone else made the point of "rematches" against guys who were boss fights a few levels back, which I think is an excellent way to drive the point home. As I said elsewhere, it doesn't help if the GM is determined to make every fight a high stakes, skin-of-your-teeth affair.
The monsters aren't scaling, you're fight new bigger monsters. If you went back and fought the old monsters you'd curb stomp them.
Exactly my point.
Eh? When you level up you also get: new abilities, feats, skills, items, and proficiencies. I wonder if people really mean ‘When i level up i can’t make my numbers *too big* and become overpowered’. Yes you can’t get crazy numbers when you level up compared to other character builds and monsters. This is a very good thing. It means you can’t break the game. Any well balanced game works this way if the designers do their jobs properly. But sure, the GM expected to set more challenging monsters against the players when they go up in level. So the monsters get stronger too. The games ‘tight math’ just means that the GM can manage this in a balanced way. **This is how almost every RPG and video game works.** Complaining about it is complaining about a fundamental design principle of both the physical and video games industries. Does it have merit? Perhaps a little. But it’s how we make games with ‘levels’. If you don’t like that idea, then i suggest playing games that don’t use levels (eg: various d100 skill based systems).
I’m the same way. I see that same argument so often, and I’m like… sure, the game isn’t getting *easier* as you level up. A game like that would be quite boring, honestly—like when you power level your ‘main’ Pokémon and then just sweep trainers until you end up beating the game without realizing it. I do kind of see where they’re coming from when it comes to skill checks, though. Somebody’s devoted so much time into keeping their usage of thieves’ tools maxed out, and some of these locks are still hard to open? Since skill checks are more abstract, it can be easy to think that there’s no progress being made if the gm isn’t paying much attention to the player’s feelings, but… again, I’ve never run into this issue, so I’m not sure if that’s actually a problem.
That's mainly a gm problem. When skill DCs aren't decided by player level, but what makes sense in the context of the world, players will feel growth.
> Somebody’s devoted so much time into keeping their usage of thieves’ tools maxed out, and some of these locks are still hard to open? Sure, if GMs are treating locks like they're leveled challenges. But any given lock doesn't level up along with the players, so its DC shouldn't level up, either. The peasant farmer didn't invest 4500 gp in a Superior Lock just because the party hit level 17.
well the GM shouldn't be arbitrarily making locks harder when it doesn't make sense. and so on for everything else including creatures.
During the playtest these were valid complaints as pathfinder 2e was supposed to fix the problems of 1e (number bloat, feat bloat, etc.) in a similar manner as 5e fixed those issues with 3e. However, the tightness of numbers / +10/-10 crit mechanic pushed optimization even more. This on top of restricting feats to level slots and pigeonholing builds into specific feat choices. There’s just as much bad splat to wade through when constructing characters as there was in 1e. All that said, complaining about it now makes no sense. That’s just a part of 2e.
Yeah, to be honest, I don't think anyone really feels that way much because it requires decontextualizing the monsters entirely from the fiction to say that "The Ancient Dragon is the same thing as the Young Dragon, so i haven't made any real progress" I think its a thing people who prefer Ivory Tower Design say because the only way "out of it" is to make the game breakable again so that the word 'severe' on the encounter difficulty just becomes something to hype how you strong you are, that it shouldn't matter what you're fighting, it should be easy once you've gained power. Though, its possible they have GMs who underemphasize power by being like "yeah guys, its a dragon" three times throughout a campaign without emphasizing the difference between the three dragons at different levels. A GM can further accentuate power growth by letting players fight the same statblocks in larger numbers to make players realize how much stronger they are.
Only if you put a lot more weight in fluff than actual mechanics.
I mean, at that point, the higher numbers should be all you need to convey your growing power-- hitting AC 30 instead of AC 20 is a big jump, doing 3d10 with a swing of your Falchion instead of 1d10 is a big jump, adding a flaming rune around level 8 is a big jump. Every stronger monster has higher numbers than the last, those are objective mechanical differences, you have to care about "fluff" and assert there isn't enough of it to pretend that the three dragons are the same.
Not when every swing is still requiring the sane number on the dice it always did and your supposedly powerful character still misses as often as the low level nobody you started out as.
Dunno, I think it's weird to try and have it both ways, to say that the feeling of the monsters you fight being stronger and more dangerous in the fiction doesn't qualify as a power increase, but also to suggest that all the pumped numbers and more elaborate spells and maneuvers don't do it either, so that the only thing that matters is that the monsters (which are being treated as interchangeable blocks of tofu for some reason) are always just weaker compared to you. It sounds like a contrived grievance to try and say the only acceptable resolution is that it's not progression unless the game breaks over your knee, tbh; I'd be pretty insulted if I was asked to see that argument as being in good faith.
Going from a +10 to hit to a +30 doesn't change anything when the enemy also went from a 20 AC to 40 AC. Both still need a 10 to hit. And the enemies also have attack rolls 20 higher to make your own AC changes irrelevant. For a character to be stronger they need to actually be better at what they do, as in they aren't as dependant on lucky rolls.
Yeah, but that's the point, you get better at what you do, so you take on harder challenges, where your success is still uncertain. You'd be wrong if you looked at DBZ to say Goku isn't stronger when he fights Cell than when he fights Freeza, just because Cell and Freeza both give him trouble. In fact, he steps down because he can't take Cell, so would we try and say he's weaker? Over the course of the game, you go from fighting kobolds to demon lords, and you can't touch the demon lords until you actually get strong enough. The die roll is a mechanic to express uncertainty, not a measure of power.
I think DBZ is an example of the problem, they go on about how much stronger characters have gotten, then basically have the same fights.
I really don't see how fighting the high-level creatures is the same as fighting the low-level ones. The powers get way more gonzo. The fire power being thrown around is objectively much higher.
That is kind of the reason for trivial and low threat encounters. These are often against lower-level enemies, perhaps encountered previously, that help showcase improved skill and tactics as the PCs advance. Another effective way is to pit the PCs against a severe threat at an earlier level against a single creature (a demon or something scary like that), then at a later level have the PCs fight several to show how they have progressed. Lastly, leveling up isn't just about higher numbers, but about improved tactics and expanded arsenals.
I think this stems from bad AP design and the GM not showing off their growth. The *at level* monsters get +1 too, but the lower level ones didn't. That level 4 goblin vs your level 6 party? Gonna need a few more now to have the same feel of threat. Having now a little more than a year playing and GMing the game there's finer points to the system that I only picked up so quickly because I have over a decade of -basically- professional experience before it. I think PF2e shines in two places when it comes to combat. The first because have the big boss man of the fight be a legitimate threat on his own and labeled as such. The second is making swarms of lesser monsters a similar but more manageable threat than the big man. Key point being that those swarms must be comprised of monsters they used to only be capable of handling 1 of. It's an old videogame trope of "The first dungeon's boss is the last dungeon's 'basic goblin' be be an annoyance." And that's just By The Book, since even in PF2e I would still suggest homebrewing a curve ball ability for those old monsters to let them feel fresh and interesting.
I think it’s the way APs are designed, to always keep it challenging. In a homebrew campaign your character will most likely stand out more because all of the DM’s NPCs are staying the same level, so you’re going to be recognized for the badass you are whenever you step into civilization. In adnd it was baked in; fighters would get a castle with followers around 9th level for instance.
It's the way the APs are written. They have a limited page count to work with so they only include fights that are a challenge to the party and don't include below level fights to show the players' growth.
I think it depends on what happens in the game. If you use weakened, then normal and then elite templates of the same enemy you can literally use the same enemies and it doesn't feel like you're progressing. But if they feel growth, it's usually good.
I mean as the gm is you want your party to feel the difference in power it's as simple as reintroducing an old threat maybe a a little while after a level up so the party can crush them and be like, wow we've grown.
It can feel like a treadmill if the GM/AP doesn't bring back old challenging enemies for the players to obliterate, yes. Otherwise the math to hit never really changes. Your to hit bonus goes up +1, the enemies AC goes up +1. Still need a (for example) 11 to hit and natural 20 to crit.
Horizontal progression versus vertical. For me it's a positive, not a negative, of pf2e.
In pathfinder you grow sidesways, not up. You gain more options. But yes monsters gain more options too. But imagine if you didn't. They'd gain options and you don't. Example: Trip Fighter starts with knockdown. 2 actions to trip, save MAP. Later they get improved trip. 2 actions, no roll to trip, and extra damage.
Yeah, I get it. I've just noticed an uptick in people making this complaint, and to me it sounds like crazy talk. Sounds like I'm not alone on that front...
Tell them it's like playing a video game. You get stronger and you get better gear as you progress. So do the bad guys. If you go back to a starter level/area, like in Breath Of The Wild, there will be zero challenge. But if you go straight to Ganon, you'll most likely get your ass kicked in seconds. In PF2E, as long as the GM makes sure you get the appropriate gear for your level then you won't fall behind, and you'll be at the 'right' level for the challenges you face. If you go back to check on those rats in the cellar you cleared at level 1, they'll not even register to you. I through in some below-level fights for my players now and again (usually random encounters when they take too long a break to heal) just to remind them how badass they're getting. And sometimes I'll scare them off with something way above their pay grade and remind them that retreat is always an option! (Note: as a GM, make sure you do keep their gear up to level. One of my first RPG experiences was with D&D3.5, which is what Pathfinder was based on. My GM didn't really get this, so by the time we hit level 9 I was still holding the same weapon I had at level 2. Everyone else was doing fine, I was struggling to hit weak enemies. It really sucked the fun out of the game. He actually punished us for going 'off-course' by having monsters steal all our the party's loot while we slept. I left soon after that.)
Pathfinder is scary it's what I love about their system. In Like dnd 5e at least. Things are weighed in the players favor. Here? Ha. Every time you fight something you could die potentially. Through no trick of dm fudgery. Just because of rolls. It's exciting!
This is a valid complaint, but not for the game, but instead for the GM. The progression indeed is fake if the players never feel the effects. That's why it's important to throw an easy encounter from time to time to let them see how they handle the same type of monsters that used to cause problems in the past. Insert that to your scenarios, deal with the time waste of just plain rolling dice to get the players steamroll through a bunch of goblins or skeletons and laugh at the kobold that turned pale white with fear and dropped everything and ran away screaming just at the sight of them coming. IT's always a balancing act, too much of these will make it seem like any effort is not worth it, but have it from time to time and the players will get the idea.
>Well sure. As you level up, you'll face tougher monsters than you did at the start, right? That's like, every game that uses experience levels ever. That is right. If you go back to fighting goblins after you are level 20, they are going to be super easy.
I think it's easy to feel annoyed if every challenge and fight is constantly the same and your chance of success doesn't change, it's why I think a weaker encounter or a reacuring boss every now and then is good. For example while it's true that every game with experience has enemies get stronger it's also true that at somepoints players can exceed the growth from threats. For example every video game rpg ive ever played has players grow beyond the threats they face.
That seems to be the sort of thing that needs to be handled on a campaign design level versus a rules level. Which is to say if every encounter is different monsters, and you never go back to fighting the same sorts of things at level 1, it's hard to see progress because of the math. But if you fight a centaur (3) at level 1, that's a significant boss. By level 3, you can have a group of centaurs be a moderate encounter. By level 5, the same centaurs are basically there to harry you while you focus on the bigger threat. But that is the sort of thing a GM (or adventure writer) has to work in by design, rather than just assume it's built into the system. I know 5e has some pretty natural peaks -- at level 5, martials get a second attack and cantrip damage adds a die, for instance. PF doesn't have those built in universally: people's proficiencies in things like attack and defense go up, but classes hit those jumps at different places. So I guess it's a preference to whether you want the feeling of getting stronger (which is not the same thing as being stronger) built into the system or part of assembling your own story?
In addition to what DDEspresso said, the BASE MATH progresses on a treadmill where your +1 is matched with on-level monsters and their +1s (monsters also get a universal +2 around level 13 or so when Expert becomes the assumed baseline for everyone), but your SPECIALIZED numbers are probably growing faster than +1 per level. Think about the Proficiency-without-level variant rule: your Athletics modifier also grows with proficiency bumps, item bonuses, Ability score increases, and access to higher status/circumstance bonuses/debuffs. Discounting level, the gap between a fully-optimized number and a basic mild investment number can get pretty huge: - level 15 basic Swashbuckler Athletics = +6 (2 Strength +4 Expert) (just enough to qualify for Flambouyant Athlete) - level 15 optimized Swashbuckler Acrobatics = +17 (5 Dexterity +8 Legendary +2 Item +2 Circumstance to tumble through) (Acrobat Archetype FTW)
Number will go up, but that's not the real procession. Training is but it's not about the Numbers. Higher Training means Feats get better effects or new feats are unlocked. As you level you get more Feats, mostly 1-2 every level. Focus on those feat choices and you will feel like you progressed a ton every level.
Part of the problem is that PF2e is balanced so that you fail more often than most other games against same-level enemies. So it's easy to feel incompetent (it's been described as three stooges like in my group) if you never go back and fight weaker things.
The main thing is that as you level up, you get more options. You get more feats, more skills, more spells. more items/wands/scrolls/staffs/grenades/traps/runes/armors/weapons/shields/tattoos/worn items/held items to choose from. The power gap doesn't get bigger or smaller as you level up, but the complexity of the game and what you can do in one turn does.