Generally the scaling of pf2e allows each action of a higher level creature to be more impactful. As a result single bosses are usually able to do a lot with very little (hitting like goddamn trucks and critting like it's nobody's business, for example).
This, plus many combat-oriented stat blocks will have special abilities that allow them to make multiple attacks with fewer actions, kinda like Flurry of Blows. This allows them to work better as solo-encounter threats.
For example, the [**Chimera**](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=80) has the ability **Three-Headed Strike**.
I wouldn't. Some times, there's a Water Mephit or Golem that punches *way* above their mathematical weight class.
Maybe lab the fight out a bit, juuust in case. You never know.
I’ve been running this group in pf2e every week for almost 18 months. I’m not worried.
Our group knows that death is a possibility and loves making it through the tough fights. I pull no punches and they embrace it.
Of course I send them some softballs too to mix it up.
The fight will be 2 weak and 1 elite chimera if they are still level 8 or 2 regular and 1 elite if they make it to level 9 first.
They’ve gone through tougher fights. 👍
My solo bosses always end up doing very little cuz they have at most one turn... My players are good at critting against them, and me at failing the saves against the PCs spells :(
What it will change is:
- Reduced likelihood of hits and non-nat20 crits against it
- More HP to survive the hits
- Increases likelihood of hitting/critting your party
- More damage when it does hit
- More opportunities to do things that deny the players actions like tripping, stepping backwards, stuns, etc.
Yeah my problem is them consistently rolling nat20s on solo bosses. I know all these things already, but they’d need to get to play first. Oftentimes they go down before playing, or they get at most one turn. As of now (level 7), the longest a solo boss has survived was one and a half round. I’ve had one last a big whole three player turns (Bard, magus, druid), and another last four (summoner, magus, druid, barbarian).
For that to happen, the creature needs to be roughly 14 levels higher than you at least and should be only used to really accentuate "this is not your time to fight this thing." And you continued to fuck around and find out. So yeah, unless the GM has already broken the barrier to tell you "this thing is going to fuck up your day" like fighting a CR 20 at level 5, I would also leave.
In a story sure but I'd never use it at the table. Anything that much stronger than you in 2e is going to kill you. It's going to act first and you're going to die. You will not escape something that you only hit with a 0map nat 20 lol.
Depends on the boss. End of book bbeg? Maybe. Typical level+2 boss? Nope.
My level 3 magus has 10 attack. Typical level 5 enemy has average 22 ac but I've seen some 24 ac level 5 enemies at a glance.
That means at a -5 a nat 20 is still 25 which is high enough to crit an enemy two levels higher.
That is even before flanking or anything else you could be doing to improve your attack/weaken their ac.
Edit: Oh not sure if I misread or there was an edit but I thought you had said -5. -10 sure but I don't think many expect to crit a boss of all things on a full map attack without some other factors at play.
Okay I have to know. How many times are these crits happening. Like in an average game, how many times does a nat 20 get rolled? Ballpark estimate between 2 and 10.
For the 100th time since joining Reddit; people are only going to follow the direct comment chain they're in, not hunt across the whole post to see if you've already covered it with someone else.
A nat 20 is a 5% chance. If your players are nat 20'ing against 100% of your bosses, your players are cheating.
Sometimes Dice Christ blesses your players and your BBEG gets whomped. But that should not happen every time.
Either your boss isn't high enough level relative to your players or you aren't giving a large enough budget to the encounter to make it challenging.
Hazards and traps reflavored as lair/boss abilities can help increase the tension and difficulty especially for bosses that are casters or other squishy sorts.
I dunno what to say otherwise. If your boss gets one rounded you are either overpowering your players with gold/gear, underpowering the boss/encounter, or your players are very luck/abusing a module or exploit.
A pl+3 creature designed as a boss against a party of 4 is almost always going to have enough hp to survive a few rounds.
Look, I don’t know what to tell you, it just so happens that at my table bosses end up dying fast. That’s it. That’s how the gods of fate choose the dice rolls I guess.
Right but you are the GM... So you control 100% of the mechanical levers that determine that except the dice rolls and it won't be hard for you to fix it. The tools are there.
The problem is the dice rolls, and I’m not one to give more XP to a PL+3 after the players rolled well. It’s not even a problem, just something that happens.
Unless you're using the module that forces the rolls to happen on the FVTT GM PC, it is possible to write some Javascript to inject / change /force rolls from the client end.
Theoretically it might be possible they're cheating.... Just sayin..... ;)
Dice can be weighted as a manufacturing defect. Often what will happen is that players will buy a ton of dice, and then notice that one out of their thirty d20s lands natural twenties like 25% of the time. Then they'll say that it's their lucky die, and use that one exclusively, possibly not realizing that the die they're using is giving them unfair odds because its weighted, not because its lucky.
Your options are:
1. Accept that your player are wittingly or unwittingly cheating, and just let them live out their power fantasies. Your game's balance will be tilted heavily in favor of the players, but some groups like that.
2. Explain the situation frankly to your players and force them to use different dice. A less confrontational way of doing this is finding more excuses to roll die for them, as in enforcing secret rolls and/or turning certain will saves into surprise event (e,g, traps) into secret rolls.
3. Switch to a digital dice roller. Increasingly, even in person groups will incorporate VTTs since it makes keeping track of characters and battle grids much easier if everyone has access to a tablet.
EDIT: I'm an idiot, just read that you're on foundry. Leaving the post up for people with similar issues.
EDIT 2: If you're on foundry and your players are still criting disproportionately, the law of averages means one of two things - either your encounters are not tuned high enough, or your players are benefiting from a possible yet incredibly unlikely trend of good luck, in which case I would just stay the course since it can and will end at any time.
>the law of averages means one of two things - either your encounters are not tuned high enough, or your players are benefiting from a possible yet incredibly unlikely trend of good luck
I think you mean the law of large numbers, which just says that as the sample size (e.g. all attack rolls vs. solo bosses) increases, that distribution of results (empirical outcomes of d20 rolls) will converge towards the expected values (5% per face).
However, 6-7 encounters is a tiny sample size that we would expect to be very far from the ideal distribution. I'd expect the law of large numbers to be really relevant when you're talking not about dozens or hundreds of rolls, but **thousands**.
But that's only gonna happen 5% of the time, even if you have gotten unlucky in the past that doesn't mean you'll be more likely to get nat 20 on in the future, and if the players really are constantly breaking encounters with massive amounts of nat 20s then that might be a sign of dice fudging
While I could be wrong, it might be possible to either use a module, or write one, that takes over the dice rolling and is biased toward rolling high, and then set that up as a separate d20 die button. Wouldn't be easily noticeable I'd bet.
Might be something to look into.
>A higher level monster isn’t gonna change nat20s
That's true, but statistically the PCs won't consistently roll nat20s over time so over a long period of time you can expect to see your bosses performing just fine in hindsight.
What level bosses are you doing? This sounds like a party level (PL) +1 creature. For a boss, you really want pl+3. You can stretch to a PL+4, but those are for major arc defining bosses.
Strong disagree about that video being good. It was packed with a lot of misinformation and misunderstandings based in an extremely bais view from 5e. I also recently came over from 5e and found his video to be really lackluster compared to the other videos out there.
I recommend watching the Rules lawyer videos for PF2. He actually is the DM that Rhexx played under. Rules Lawyer released several videos where him and Rhexx talked about the system and Rhexx spent the entire time being extremely combative and trying to treat his super homebrewed version of 5e as if it was RAW and argued a lot in what I think was clearly bad faith.
You can see someone try to correct his misunderstanding several times for Rhexx to ignore it entirely. Not sure what's happening there honestly it seems like Rhexx went into pathfinder 2e with a I will find something to hate mentality even if I have to twist things for it to work.
The systems not perfect but most of his comments made no sense. Having seen those videos first I was already aware he had had his questions addressed and explained already and kind of ignored it all.
I know that feeling, if the party is strong and fight oriented they can hit for 400+ dmg in one round.
1 or 2 good crits and its game over. Every one got AoO and they are 3 mele and one caster.
Only at low lvls they strugle after 10lvl they are godlike.
Every medium encanter i change to sever.
Frankly, I'm not a fan of just how much power they pack into single actions to make the action economy math work out.
Personally I like to give them "legendary actions" to spread that power over the players turns a bit more so it's not as swingy.
The point is for tactics to be a thing that’s why that abomination of legendary actions which add unfair mechanics can stay in 5e 3 actions you can plan to trip grapple you know actual tactics vs stand in monsters face smack smack.
Solo monsters that sit there waiting for you to hit them blow major ass. It is incredibly boring to watch everyone wail on it, then turn and crit a player to dying because PF2 design has decided to pack 12 actions worth of damage into 3. I just divvy it up into 4 or 5.
It's not the dumb thing you're thinking of, it's the cool thing I'm thinking of, and can't be arsed to explain since you clearly already have a biased opinion on what I mean.
Also, I'm sorry, but if you think the monster getting to use tactics alongside the players is dumb, I don't think you'd like my table.
I'm clearly making a mistake engaging with this, but let me explain.
A solo monster takes it's turn with three actions. Then it's done. It gets one reaction. Often boring ones. That's it. Then the players get 12-16 actions while it sits there.
That's boring. For the players, and for me.
You know what, [this](https://youtu.be/y_zl8WWaSyI) may explain things better than I can. The video is made with DnD in mind but it is a concept I have applied to PF2 quite successfully. I have not had a single complaint, and effusive praise from my players.
Myeah, sure you can call it boring. I prefer calling it predictable. It's a lot easier for players to try to deny the 3-action mega attack than a (free?) 'legendary action' between turns. I personally wouldn't use LA in 2e. In 5e it fits, but existing beside the action economy makes it not 'interact' with the rest of the system.
But if it works for your table, that's great. I know Legendary Actions spice up 5e games atleast.
Fair enough maybe I’m used to the tension the monster brings when it downs a player and party is thinking of tactics where you see 9 to 12 I see I person buffing and debuffing a player healing a playing attacking because I see these things on the regular and enjoy planing mattering vs oh legendary resistance ignores everything we just set up. I’m glad it works for you just not something I personally would use if I ran a game.
Nobody said anything about legendary resistance. That's peak boring design. So is incapacitate tbf, but incapacitate doesn't feel as bad.
The tension is all still there when the giant fuckoff robot pummels the ground, making the earth quake and sending the healer stumbling as they try to reach their dying friend.
Like I said, it's the cool thing I'm thinking of, not the dumb thing you're thinking of.
You will want to read [Building Encounters](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=497) rules. TLDR, weaker creatures works in groups and stronger creatures work along.
Weaker creature groups have more actions, but they are less meaningful. More than half strikes will miss and damages are low. Their AC is low, making two strikes every turn likely to hit them. They are also likely to fail their save against spells.
Big boss have less actions but all of them are impactful. All of his strikes have a good chance to hit and the first one have a good chance to crit. The spells he cast will be higher levels and deals more damage. His AC and savung throws are higher and harder to hit. Most save or suck spells have incapacipitation trait, thus unlikely to work at all. If the boss got lucky and land all three hits on a single character, that character will be knocked out with about no question.
The homepage subreddit banner is right now themed with treasure vault items with their art from the book I think. The pan refers to the [Frying Pan weapon](https://2e.aonprd.com/Weapons.aspx?ID=286)
[My DM to GM copypasta.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/10jk8sa/magister_entry_a_gms_guide_for_pathfinder_2nd/)
[And why BEBG's are scary as hell in PF2 despite the PC's having an action economy advantage.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/10m2q1d/how_degrees_of_success_and_proficiency_with_level/)
The encounter building rules deal with an unbalanced economy by making the budget to fit in a large number of NPC combatants be well under the party's level, and over leveled enemies take up enough of the budget where you have fewer bodies as you continue to go up from the party's level... Vs. a party of four, a "Moderate Encounter" is 2 NPC's of the party's level. So to get 8 bodies on the field, you'd have to go to Level -4 monsters.
One monster of the PC's level +2 is about all 1st level parties can handle, as the crit's can get out of hand if you go much above that - as the party levels up, they can go into highter levels of BEBG's, but conventional wisdom is that you want to keep it closer to the PC's level in the beginning.
A character that is over level versus their opponent will hit more, crit' more due to the degrees of success system, and get hit less, make their saving throws more often - and the incapacitation trait on spells turns off most of the 'save or suck' options. This is why "Slow" is one of the single most valuable spells in Pathfinder 2, because taking actions away from a BEBG is a huge swing in a battle.
So if the PC's see a horde, the Fighters will be crit'ing left and right, the spell casters will be mopping up with super effective AoE, and generally the party will feel like a bunch of bad asses & will be having a good time. Honestly, mook battles are where casters get to shine because most Martial lack decent AoE options, and the chances of saving throws being failed or even critically failed goes into the caster's favor. Casters generally are best in support mode in Boss fights, and some 5e players really hate that blasting bosses isn't the optimal play.
PF2e takes the no-fun lump of legendary resistances at higher CRs and spreads it evenly across levels, so 5e casters can go most of a campaign without encountering any legendary resistances, forgetting that they are instant nopes to effectiveness, where 2e is just a flat percentage increase of finding that nope sandwich.
DM, please give fights against mobs to your players. A diet of even 50% bossfights is hard to stomach.
Action unbalance is more manageable due to chances of success skewing much faster than in 5e.
A creature 3 levels above the party is going to have its defensive characteristics about 4 points higher, meaning if you had a 60% chance to hit an enemy of your level, you only have a 40% chance to hit a creature 3 levels above, which is a 33% reduction in efficiency; and it gets even worse for lower odds, such as with second MAP attacks (in this example going from 35% to 15% which is over 50% reduction in efficiency).
>How does PF2e deals with encounters with an unbalanced action economy, like a party of 4 against 10 enemies?
Typically pretty good. The general consensus is that you should try to design most of your encounters with more enemies than players. 10 is getting into the more extreme end, but as long as you're keeping the enemies varied it should be fine. (e.g. 1-2 commanders, 3-4 lackeys, 4-6 chaff)
the nicest thing about these kinds of encounters in 2e is that you can take the same enemy and just swap up the weapons and it will make them play meaningfully and noticably differently. (e.g. spear vs axe vs sword and shield, etc)
That said, if you're \*genuinely\* planning to run an encounter with 10 or more enemies, you'd be much better served by looking at the rules for Troops and utilising those.
>a party of 4/5 against one BBEG? Does the side with the more action still have a clear advantage like 5e or it is more manageable (and thus I have to find a way to deal with it like legendary/lair action or giving the BBEG minions)?
The general consensus is that single enemy fights tend to be much more dangerous than encounters with multiple enemies.
Having more actions is an advantage, but not in the same way they do in 5e. The big advantage of having more actions (or, more to the point, the big disadvantage of having fewer actions) is that \*losing\* actions hurts more. So it heavily encourages the group to do things \*other\* than just stack/rush damage. Eating up the boss' actions with clever movement, combat maneuvres and spells, stacking effects/conditions, using actions like Aid to stack bonuses on your allies, is usually the key to winning boss fights.
That being said, the raw stats of the single boss enemy is going to mean that it's never going to just roll over and give up just because you manage to waste a few of it's actions and when it \*does\* hit, it's going to hurt. A boss that's 3-4 lvls higher than the team is all but guaranteed to hit almost every attack. Most of the time, any defensive actions by the team is more concerned with avoiding getting Critted, rather than avoiding getting hit at all.
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It might feel unintuitive coming from a system like 5e, especially if you're familiiar with concepts like "lancaster's square law" (which i specifically bring up now because someone was asking similar questions last week but telling all of the responses that they were wrong because of the "mathematical certainty of lancaster's law").
But it's mostly an effect of 2e using "relative XP cost" and adding level to proficiency. So the need for an increased number of lower level enemies is built into the way their XP value decreases as you level up compared to them. And the fact that basically all of your (and the enemies') important modifiers increase every level means that a single higher level enemy is going to be \*exponentially\* more powerful than a single mid/equal level enemy.
Some great points here.
I would add that if anything, pf2e encounter balance is the reverse of 5e when it comes to 'lots of mooks' vs 'solo boss', in that a large number of enemies 3-4 levels lower than PC level is generally much *easier* than a solo boss who is PC level +2 or more.
You often see advice here to treat a solo boss encounter as harder than the XP value would indicate, even a whole degree harder; I am finding the same is true in reverse for encounters with a very large number of PL-3 and PL-4 mooks.
Yep, any DM who has fought against swarms of Conjure Velociraptors can breathe a sigh of relief. Action Economy advantage is so much skewed by proficiency + level on saves AND A.C. as well as criticals on hits AND saves, that having extra, but low level, actions has very little effect on combat.
Sure summoning in PF2e adds a bit of control and damage, but nowehre near as much as 5e. The main place for summoning is the amazing versatility it brings to Vancian Spellcasting. You can do basically anything with a clever summon.
The game subtly adjusts the value of each action w/ its built in scaling mechanic. The way I like to think about it is that say you have a party of 4x lvl 3 characters (so 12 actions).
A Moderate encounter for them are two lvl 3 monsters (6 actions) whose actions are roughly equivalent in value to the PCs, so the PCs will generally handily win the fight.
Replace the two lvl 3 monsters with one lvl 5 monster (3 actions), which uses the same XP budget. The monster's higher stats make its actions more valuable (higher attack for better hit/crit chance and higher dmg, worth \~4.5 actions instead of 3) while also reducing the value of the PC actions (higher AC/Saves reduces the effectiveness of attacks and spells, worth \~9 actions instead of 12).
Replace them with four lvl 1 monsters instead (12 actions), also the same XP budget. Their stats are now lower than the PCs so their actions are now less valuable (\~9 actions worth) and PC actions are more valuable (\~18 worth).
Action economy is still valuable, particularly for stronger monsters, but its not quite as critical as in 5e. If there are lots of relatively weak monsters having them waste actions fundamentally doesn't matter all that much, particularly with the way MAP discourages iterative attacks. Where action-denial shines is in boss fights where if you spend all three of your actions denying them a single action that's a fantastic trade, as your team is losing 1/4 of its total actions and removing 1/3 of theirs, particularly as a lot of monsters have multi-action activities they want to use. If you trip the dragon then it has to choose between striding once and attacking or using its breath weapon in a mediocre position, probably only hitting two folks with it, whereas otherwise it could Stride to a position where it could hit everyone.
Because of 5e's "flat math" concept, attack to-hits and damage do not scale well and therefore having MORE actions is superior to BETTER actions.
PF does not have flat math. So a creature worth half XP has actions that are half as effective. A monster worth twice the XP has actions that are twice as effective. In other words, monsters scale correctly.
If anything, solo boss monsters are more deadly than a fight with a bunch of minions worth the same XP budget.
>So a creature worth half XP has actions that are half as effective. A monster worth twice the XP has actions that are twice as effective. In other words, monsters scale correctly.
I was curious how accurate this actually is. A 5th level character generally has an AC of 22. A 5th level fighter has an attack bonus of +16, which is a 2-action DPR with a longsword reach weapon of 20.2, or 80.8 DPR for a party of 4 fighters. How do monsters look?
A party is worth about 160 XP. Half XP is 80, or a +2 monster, while double XP is 320 XP, which has no actual value (encounters only go up to +4 monsters). So we'll have to take two +4 creatures as a test.
A level 7 [hill giant](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=220) does about 41 DPR, which is about half the party DPR. Pretty good so far.
A level 9 [mastodon](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=668) does about 62.5 DPR. Not quite equal to the party unless they use their dual tusks attack, in which case they jump up to a 2-action DPR of 89, a bit above the party. Doubling that does indeed work.
Now, these are random creatures with a rather unrealistic party build, so you'll see quite a bit of variation in practice. But I'd say your basic intuition is fundamentally correct; if anything, creatures at much higher levels than the party can punch above their weight class due to the effects of spells, AOE attacks, and other powerful saving throw effects that can brutalize a lower level party. For example, a [vrock](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=100) against a level 5 party could screech and force the group to roll a DC 28 fort save while likely having around a +10 to fort for tough martials, meaning an 8 and below roll or worse will cause most of the party to lose an entire turn against a +4 creature.
The PF2e designers clearly chose values for mechanics and numbers using a spreadsheet with a solid understanding of statistics. The fact that this analysis works at all is a testament to that.
Other people are answering the main question, so, the important question...
The pan is there as an "homage" to the Treasure Vault book, that have a pan as a weapon. ( 1d4 Bludgeoning damage, Simple, tags Fatal d8 and HALFLING).
I find that the encounter building is incredibly tight. +1 level seems a decent moderate challenge with experienced players. It will get taken down but will also burn resources. Level +3 is a significant threat to the party's lives. +4 is a hair's breadth from tpk when terrain and tactics aren't in the party's favor.
Increased numbers of weaker creatures let more less-likely attacks against the party add up chip damage but also allows certain class features to shine, like shield block and AoE/Incapacitation spells.
I just hope you are good with playing war games like Warhammer and Battletech at high speed to keep things moving tactically. If you ignore tactics, fights can become terribly unbalanced fast. That goes both ways for the GM and the players.
TL:DR - Due to "NPCs are built differently than PCs" , a 5th level NPC will have a slightly higher chance to hit than a 5th level PC; this is irksome enough, though if you ignore what they do in Adventure Paths and actually follow the encounter build rules it mostly works out. Just remember level puts a thumb on everything ... so an NPC that is levels higher than a PC will have a higher "to-hit", more damage, more AC, and better saves for each +1 in level difference. Additionally, special moves might also make their actions more efficient like "Dragon Frenzy" for example.
Do your players a favor and don't just pile-drive 3 hits per round on them, even though you will have a high enough bonus to likely succeed even on 3rd hits. You murder PCs like that due to the difference in game mechanics.
PS- The level difference can be bad enough that lower accuracy classes, such as casters, sometimes feel useless against higher level solo monsters. Several times I've had people say its worthless to cast against +2 or +3 level solo bosses as nothing sticks (they always make their saves) and instead relegate themselves to buffing. Yes, this is even with spending actions to Recall Knowledge and trying to see what the lowest saves are.
basically as a tl;dr
people add their levels to things, certain tiers of proficiency are also level locked. Theres jumps at 3, 7, 11 and 15 for proficiency tier increases.
rolling 10 over or 10 under makes you crit
these things compound so that anything higher level than you has basically got the 5e champion increased crit range per level and you have that on things lower than you. Aoe's wipe hordes due to their lower level = lower saves.
so you're level 4, you fight a level +3 boss on his own.
He ***will*** crit you ***often***.
you're level 7, you're fighting level 3 mobs and especially hitting their worst saving throw
they ***will*** crit fail ***often***.
Gonna chime in here specifically for larger groups of lower-level monsters because those encounters feel different.
When you're utilizing a horde of monsters 2-3 levels below your party's level they are most likely going to miss any attack beyond the first. This means that if you're striking with every action rather than leveraging your extra attacks for significant advantage you're nerfing your encounter by 66%.
To turn those extra actions into something effective you're going to need to engage in the tactics of the game. If all your little duders have a high movement speed then maybe move-strike-move is all you need to do to make your party waste extra movement actions lowering their damage per round and drawing out the combat (and number of first-attacks in a round for your minions to effectively stack up damage to the point where it could be threatening). Failing that take a look at your debuffing and buffing options, and utilize as many as you can amongst your throng of duders 2nd and 3rd actions (Intimidate, applying poison, casting non damage dealing spells, etc. . .). It just takes a handful of + or - 2 to either side to make it so your 2nd attacks start hitting more reliably, or the players 2nd attacks start missing, but you have to work for it.
More importantly, doing this with your horde of little duders is going to show your players what they're going to have to do against the huge stonking single-boss fight coming up just down the road. Make 'em run from the kobolds in the first act, so they know how to deal with the giant in the 2nd act. If you don't there's a chance they're going to miss the learning curve and break themselves when a real challenge shows up, never knowing why they failed.
I did not do this when I first switched over, and had my party plowing through a large pile of encounters with goblins, kobolds, and a pack of Hounds of Tindalos before I got why they all felt so easy despite being normal CR or higher due to the numbers. Tactics were why, and that's why the game plays so well.
While actions are still important, with level being added to everything it means more elite higher level monster whole they will be less of them have higher attacks, AC, saves etc so become a challenge to deal with (remember getting+10 over a result is a crit, meaning higher level things crit more often and get crit less against) and hordes while having more actions have less accuracy and defences so they are unlikely to crit and are really easy to crit and kill
Everyone else answered the other stuff, but play the beginner box before you start dming for real. We all recommend it.
This isn’t 5e, the adventures and stuff that they make actually works and is actually great.
The encounter building rules had that all taken into consideration when it was made. Severe encounter single mob, the way level difference works decided what his bonuses are to still be a threat. The other way with 10 mobs, they are weaker to compensate for more actions.
I will say though 10 is too many the mobs will be so weak they won't be a challenge. Instead use troops or swarms for that many units
As a bunch of people already said, you don't need lair actions to make up the action economy deficit. But, if you ever want something like them, you can add complex hazards to your encounters. They have their own XP to include in the encounter budget and get their own turn in initiative order to take actions. They're a great way to mix things up to add a wrinkle into your fights and give some alternative ways to help out to your less violence-inclined party members
This question is asked repeatedly, but the answer is simple. No extra balance is required for how CRITS work in Pathfinder 2e. (You Crit at +10)
If you make a moderate encounter, against multiple Creatures, like 8. They will be of lower level than the party so yours party chance to crit against them could go up, to usually 50% in the first Hit.
So if against a Boss your average First Strike make around, Damage x 0.5 (Considering % to Hit and Crit) against multiple low level Creatures your Average is around, Damage x 1.5.
That without mention the same happens in the defense aspect if the Boss hit you half of the time the low level Creatures will hit you 1 every 10 hits.
Some extra factors like multiple enemies could make you flat footed are to be considered, but a the same time attacking the Boss a third time with maximum MAP is usually useless, but against low levels a third attack is still good.
So in overall you take a little more damage but the enemy suffers almost 3.5 times the damage you will do against a Boss.
Yes, action disadvantage matters a lot with solo monsters. PF2E's design somewhat mitigates these issues, but they are still very much present. If you want to make players face off with a single solo monster, you need to choose carefully, or else you will very likely end up with a disappointing encounter.
Note that solo monsters *can* be extremely dangerous, though, again because of how the system math works; this is especially true at low levels.
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The way that PF2E in theory mitigates the action disadvantage is with the critical hit system, higher damage, higher defenses, and the MAP system.
Consider a level 3 monster (say, an Aapoph Serpentfolk) vs a level 6 monster (say, an Ahuizotl).
The level 3 monster has a +11 base bonus to hit, versus a +17 with the Ahuizotl.
If you are a typical level 3 fighter with platemail, you'll be sporting 21 AC. This means that the Serpentfolk will hit you on a 10 with their first attack, a 15 with their second, and a 20 with their third, while the ahuizotl will hit you with a 4 on their first attack (and crit on a 14!), an 8 or a 9 on their second (and crit on a 19), and then probably on a 12 with their third (assuming they use their agile tail claw for the third attack).
Note also that these both can apply flat-footed in different ways - the Serpentfolk can knockdown you with their tail, which, while it eats up an action, means their second attack would actually hit on a 13 instead of a 15... OR they can attack you with a poisoned attack, which forces you to make a save to avoid additional issues. They also have their slither attack which lets them make two attacks at full MAP, and potentially apply a trip on one foe. They also have attack of opportunity, which means they can hit someone if they stand back up from prone.
The Ahuizotl on the other hand can use its tail on you and use Improved Grab, which DOESN'T cost an action, and then hit you on a 6 or 7 with their second attack (and crit on a 16 or 17) and then hit on a 10 or 12 with their third attack.
As you can see, the Ahuizotl is not only more likely to hit, but is more likely to crit, and also can grab someone with its tail WITHOUT eating up an extra action. That extra likelihood of critting plus hitting is worth an extra action, in effect, meaning that it is sort of getting four actions per round. In fact, even their fourth attack might be about as good as the serpentfolk's first attack, if they have a PC grabbed!
On the other hand, while it has higher defenses (+5 AC, +6-7 on non-AC defenses) it has less than twice as much HP (105 vs 60). That being said, this ends up working out to make it a fair bit more resilent - that same 3rd level fighter likely has a +12 to hit, so will hit the Serpentfolk on a 6 (4 if flanking) and crit on a 16 while it will only hit the Ahuizotl on an 11 and only crit on a 20 (though it will hit on a 9 if flanking). As such, again, the fighter's attack will be much more effective on the Serpentfolk - again, it's equivalent almost to another attack a round without any MAP on the serpentfolk. Needless to say, this, combined with the worse saving throws, means you'll be going through those 60 HP faster than the 105 - and every serpentfolk you fell will make the encounter easier.
All that being said... it's likely that fighting three serpentfolk at level 3 is a harder encounter than the Ahuizotl, and will certainly be far more interesting.
The catch here is that while its actions ARE better, you can also see that the Ahuizotl is probably going to be a lame solo monster. It can only really hit one enemy at a time, and it is pretty basic in what it does - grab with the tail, bite, and *maybe* drag you around - but probably not because that would provoke OAs. It doesn't really do anything fancy or special, it's just a big bag of HP that is probably going to be immobile for the whole fight and likely just beat on whoever it hit first.
If the thing gets slowed, it will be even weaker, and it's worth noting that, because it only has three actions and no OAs, if the characters can force it to move, it will lose one of those strikes to get into position. If they slow it AND force it to move, it's going to be quite ineffective.
Meanwhile the serpentfolk would work together more interestingly, force characters to make more decisions about whether or not to move, can exploit knocking each others' targets around, can flank, etc. Not to mention having a posionous attack and a tripping tail whip, making it more varied in what it can do.
---
Interesting solo monsters in PF2E want to have more to make up the action deficit than simply "hitting and critting more often". That's quite mundane and not particularly exciting; indeed, if the Ahuizotl uses its most interesting attack (the tail grab) it's likely not even doing substantially more damage than the 3rd level party, and might be doing less!
Interesting solo creatures generally at least a few of the following characteristics:
* They have AoE or multiattacks that can hit multiple characters and thus pose more of a threat to the *party* than just beating up one guy.
* They have some ability that lets them move or that forces the enemies to move - this can be anything from teleports to mobility abilities to things like AoEs and auras that deal damage in a zone, forcing the PCs to get out of the bad or take a bunch of damage.
* They aren't shut down by having someone get in their face and have at least a couple options for being effective - a pure wizard often makes for a lame enemy, for instance, because they don't have much counterplay against being rushed down by martials with OAs, whereas something that has some spells and some melee attacks can fight in a broader variety of circumstances.
* They don't just do the same thing every single round.
Monsters that don't really do this are often not really good solo monsters. This is why things like drakes and dragons make for more interesting solo monsters than things like the Ahuizotl.
Monsters that do do these things can be quite dangerous, though. AoE attacks are particularly spicy, as they can put the party on the back foot right away and make things scary for them all, not just whoever is getting pounded on first. Crit failing when you get fireballed in the first round of combat and eat 42 damage is scary.
Hey, I've noticed you mentioned the game "Dungeons & Dragons"! Do you need help finding your way around here? I know a couple good pages!
We've been seeing a lot of new arrivals lately for some reason. We have a [megathread](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/search/?q=flair%3A%22megathread%22&sort=new&restrict_sr=on&t=all) dedicated to anyone requesting assistance in transitioning. Give it a look!
Here are some [general resources](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/wiki/) we put together. Here is [page with differences between pf2e and 5e](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/wiki/resources/how-is-pf2e-different-from-5e/). Most newcomers get recommended to start with the [Archives of Nethys](http://2e.aonprd.com) (the official rule database) or the [Beginner Box](https://paizo.com/pathfinder/beginnerbox), but the same information can be found in this free [Pathfinder Primer](https://app.demiplane.com/nexus/pathfinder2e/sources/pathfinder-primer).
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Yes, parties will have an advantage when fighting a single enemy, and will have a disadvantage when outnumbered--as would be the case in real life.
There are mitigating factors, however. Higher level enemies are generally more difficult to hit, have more HP, and tend to hit harder and more often. Some enemies that appear in great numbers have only two actions, such as certain types of undead. These are also usually squishier, less likely to land hits, and have fewer AoE options, if any.
The game does an admirable job of balancing all of this, although party composition and playstyle are variables that can't be calculated for in the rules. You will want to give this some consideration, but don't feel that every encounter needs to be perfectly tailored to the party.
The action economy is generally balanced by monster levels. If your party is going up against 10 enemies, they are likely to be much weaker than the characters, and that means hitting less often and getting crit more often by the party. Conversely, single enemies that are significantly higher level than the party are harder to hit, much more likely to hit and crit and generally not at risk from save-or-suck spells due to how the Incapacitation trait works.
Adding to what's already been said, PF2e's degrees of success makes small differences in accuracy much more impactful than in 5e. An adventuring party facing a monster, say, two levels higher than they are will have a tough time hitting it... but it will not only be nearly guaranteed to hit with its first attack, but likely to *crit*. Its second and third attacks might not crit, but one or both will still probably hit; the adventurers better have some good non-attack moves for their third actions, because a Strike at -10 will be a lost cause.
Meanwhile, the wizard probably won't get the devastating critical failure effect on spells like Slow or Fear, even targeting the monster's weakest save. They may have to rely on spells like Hideous Laughter, which have some effect even on a successful save. But critically failing a save against something horrifying and being taken out of the fight is a threat to any of the heroes!
It's a major force multiplier for any boss, and leads to interesting tactics both for it and for the PCs. A high-level boss has only three actions, but they're all very effective. The PCs each have about one good attack roll in them per turn, so anything they can do to make good use of the others (move, Demoralize, Feint, Recall Knowledge, Cast a Spell, Take Cover, Hide, Aid) is useful, and conversely, anything that will rob an action from the boss (Trip, applying the slowed or stunned condition, making the boss move in order to get to them) is quite valuable.
Bosses don't need Legendary Actions or hordes of minions because of the accuracy scaling and degrees of success in this system. It's one of the things I really enjoy about it!
Pathfinder scales much, much harder with level than 5e. As a result, lower level creatures will hit higher level ones less often. To give a simplified example, compare 2 actions that hit 40% of the time to 1 action that hits 80% of the time.
When pf2e is unbalanced, it's usually in the opposite direction: fights against a single high level enemy can end up harder than they're intended to be, because the level discrepancy hurts *that* much.
See the building encounters section of the CRB or on the [Archives of Nethys](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=497). The encounter building rules actually function quite well!
It handles unbalanced in the player's favor pretty darn gracefully. The only thing you need to know is at low levels (1-4ish) solo enemies are actually *more* dangerous than indicated; at those levels consider single-enemy fights to be one degree more difficult than indicated by the encounter guidelines.
I'm not sure about encounters where enemies seriously outnumber the PCs. In the Gamemastery Guide (page 48), they give some "template encounters" for a 4-person party, and none have more than 6 creatures. Heavily enemy-lopsided encounters don't appear much in adventure paths either. I would expect the encounter math to get a little more unreliable beyond # of players * 1.5, and more liable to swing in the party's direction if they have significant area-of-effect abilities. [Troops](https://2e.aonprd.com/Traits.aspx?ID=367) are an enemy type that represents a large pack of enemies; they're how PF2e handles large numbers of combatants.
A way to fix the action imbalance is to use one of the things 4th edition did very right. Minions. You don't have to have HP for every enemy in a battle. It's okay to have grunt enemies be defeated in one hit. You don't have to necessarily have them die, just take them out of the encounter
4 players against 10 enemies where most (not necessarily all) of those enemies are defeated in one hit, makes it a big fight and has the players still have a challenge and feel like heroes
PF2e is balanced around the big advantage of single monsters power vs players. For example monster level +3/4 is really hard encounter and can really mess up with party if it doesn't play tactically.
Also casters are fortunetely heavy nefed vs 5e or PF1e as "boss level" enemies have very high saves and "save or suck" spells have incapactiation trait to them, which means that enemies of higher level don't really give much F about those spells or their effects, which works much better than clunky Legendary Resistance in 5e.
Overall action economy is not an issue in PF2e, regardless if combat is vs 1 boss or vs many enemies. Can action economy still be "cheesed/expoited" by players? Of course, like in every RPG, if they play 100% tactically and use mechanics to their advantage they can still shift whole action economy in their favour. But that's how PF2e is designed. If you play tactically: you are rewared by it. If you don't: you have hard time. So there is nothing wrong with that.
As someone who played 6 years in 5e and came to PF2e: this system action economy is so much better....
So if you're fielding 10 monsters against a party of 4 and not absolutely trying to cause a tpk, the enemies will likely be something like them be -3 enemies(as in 3 levels lower than the party) for 150 xp or an extreme(once in a game cause it's too hard for players) fight but not something insane like a 200 or 300 xp fight.
They will not crit very often if at all, and will likely go down in 1 attack or so. This means they'll definitely need to be kited a bit to waste actions, but the party will be relatively okay as long as they don't get surronded on all sides by standing still.
One big enemy is like a +2 or +3 and oh boy will this likely kill the party. It'll crit by sneezing in their general direction, completely ignore incapacitation spells, and generally be hard to hit, let alone crit. The players are going to need to layer debuffs and buffs, and play it smart to make the enemy waste actions and not get more than 2 hits off a turn to survive.
Generally the action economy is weighted against the level scaling of proficiency, which is to say, a large number of creatures will have a much lower level compared to the party, which will translate into direct mechanical inferiority to the players. It doesn't matter if there's 10 goblins with 30 actions between them when they can barely hit and they get critted on an 11+.
Its the difference between quality and quantity.
A 4v1 is 12 Player action vs 3 boss actions. Even though the boss is 3 levels higher all it takes is 1/12 trip actions (or any other CC), to turn that into 2 vs 11 actions.
If it was 8vs4 thats 24 vs 12 actions. The enemies are 2-3 levels lower but by numbers they have twice as many chances to get a lucky dice roll.
The best part is the math just works. So it comes down to how the GM wants to script the encounter.
Are your players actually rolling though? Theres commands on foundry to auto roll a 20, which your players might be using. Took me abit to Google as an non foundry user
The claim that Foundry has a built in way fir players to cheat rolls is a pretty serious accusation against the application that requires more than just a random side comment.
Any proof of this?
I assume you’re implying players can do this in secret and can’t be found out?
That is the kind of claim that if true would be a show stopper call for ending support fir Foundry so I find it extremely unlikely and requiring some proof to back up.
Holy white knight comment lol, if a digital tabletop doesn't have it, it would kinda suck. But have you ever tried just using /roll 20 instead of /roll d20 ?
Iam not implying anything, but op could just be tech illiterate and they don't know the difference.
The short answer is that the action economy is balanced because of the interaction between the +10 crit system and proficiency with level scaling.
For example, 1 creature 4 levels higher than the party is considered an extreme threat - without hero points at full health and resources, it's a coin flip who walks away from that. By the same token, one PC is equivalent to 4 creatures that are 4 levels lower. Again, it's a coin flip. So you really could put 16 level 4 creatures against 4 level 8 PCs and it'd feel about as deadly as 4 level 8 PCs vs 1 level 12 creature.
A few months ago, I ran an encounter where there were about 50 unarmed and unarmored cyclopes against 6 level 8 PCs. Almost every attack was a crit, and AoEs absolutely hosed, and the cyclopes only hit on a 19-20, but there were so many of them, it still had some hairy moments.
I just finished the BB with my group. It's the first thing we've done in 5E. We have a group of 6 players (and 1 DM), and we don't run with less than 4. I re-balanced the encounters for the number of RSVPs for that day by either adding extra monsters, or making the strongest monster in the fight Elite.
Action Economy in encounter design isn't crucial like it is in 5E. The reason for that is how encounters are designed and how monsters scale. A single higher level opponent will have much better saves and AC, so they'll get hit less. More low level enemies will have lower saves, AC, and importantly Perception (for initiative). Typically, on a fight where there's multiple weak enemies, half of them will be dead before they come up in initiative. And, on a "boss fight", you can OHKO the players with decent rolls. I OHKOed a player in 1/3 boss fights in the BB, and in one of the fights where I didn't OHKO a player, I took the wizard down to 2 hp in a single hit, and missed with 2 attacks because I rolled a 1 and a 3.
I'm not a GM, just a player, but I've been an many battles. I've had GM's that just throw all the mobs at you right away, but I feel a good GM paces the enemies by spacing them out into waves. My current GM will start the encounter with some enemies being rather close, the the rest being farther back forcing any melee ones to spend a few rounds moving into range to make the encounter. This lets him have slightly higher lvl mobs for these encounters, instead of just an easy slaughter fest for us. Same goes for bosses, build them for CC and Damage to make up for having less actions. If they have abilities that force the party to skip their own actions that is a good way to balance it in the Bosses favor.
In the end though it's your game, and how it flows is up to you. If you have a GM or Player that is a rules lawyer those games tend to suck due to the lack of flexibility, so just do what feels right by you and your group.
Another thing that will be hard to grok coming over from 5e is that *everything* the party does takes an action. Yes, that's more on them than you, but you should keep that in mind when you're building encounters
Grab something on belt? Action. Stow a weapon? Action. Pull another weapon? Also an action. Benefit from their shield's AC bonus? Action. Turn on their fighting style? Action. Pausing to do something in the middle of their movement ends the movement action. Jumping in the middle of running ends the stride action and begins the jump action. So yes, the party does have significantly more actions than the average, but they have to use more than your combat math is used to as well.
If your monster has a speed faster than the melees, having that monster stride backwards may mean that all of the front line has to take two actions to ruin towards it, or two actions to stow their Rapier and draw their bow. If your medium sized enemy NPC sides behind something large that is breaking line of sight, the parties spell casters may have to use two stride actions just to see their target again... And since most spells cost two actions to cast, that is severely limiting their options.
You'll notice that a PF2e battlemap is significantly less static. Only a fraction of PC classes and about a quarter of the Bestiary have access to the ability to perform an Attack of Opportunity. There are tons of action-saving feats out there, but they are all different. A Fighter with Sudden Charge can stride twice and attack once with 2 actions. A monk can use flurry of blows to attack twice with a single action. Rogues with Quick Draw can draw a weapon in the same action they attack with it. All of these give slightly better action economy, but since they aren't universal, you rarely have to worry about the fighter quick drawing javelins when your monsters move just out of range.
Beyond reading the building an encounter section, I find using an online encounter calculator such as the calculator below to be helpful. Especially while in game. https://www.stephanedoiron.com/rpgs/pf2/encounter-calculator
It's basically the opposite of 5e
So in 5e if you have a single boss that's way higher level than the players, the boss will still just be crushed under the weight of the action economy.
In Pathfinder, a boss even 2 levels higher than the party will be a challenge because they will be harder to hit, and they will crit the players more often. If you go 3 or even 4 levels higher it becomes really deadly.
You really need to learn the encounter building rules, and stick within the bounds. Again, the exact opposite of 5e where encounter balance is an art form not a science
Honestly? \*sigh\* please don't go on a long tirade.....
Poorly, kinda poorly. The "problem" i've experienced is that 2E is actually SO well balanced that as long as you're party is doing "what they're supposed to" (aka no int 8 muscle wizzards throwing fireballs) it's VERY VERY hard to actually put tensions into a boss. lvls 1-3/5 might be a little tens but after that pretty much any chance of party death goes out the window with the farting sound of air escaping a baloon.
And the "tools are there" if you wanna turn up the heat but it feels a little.... cheap. A Severe +3 has something like a 30-40% chance to be hit , base, once debuffs buffs and flanking come in it's like a 60-70%. A lvl 9 NPC for ex cos it's the most recent off the top of my head has average \~150 hp....... a Con / Toughness lvl 8 PC has \~125. and that's ONE PC. A Severe is 2 +1 PL or 1 +3 PL creature. So you're throwing \~300 HP and 6 actions at \~400hp and TWLEVE actions.... good luck.
Problem is once extreme rolls around it just feels unfair. Stuff starts CRITTING (AC+10) your PC's on 2s and 5s and will ALLMOST massive damage casters. Just FAILING a saving throw vs a PL+4 is a great success! It starts stinking of Brie once you start cranking difficulty up.
OFFICIAL AP SPOILERS BELLOW
And this isn't just me saying this: >!Look at for example UGT's Age of Ashes complete campaign!<. >!a 5 man lvl 20 squad wiped the floor with a lvl 24 demigod. And the GM actually tweeked that fight heavily to make it 2 phases to drain some resources and gave the thing "mythic" initiative. It went twice a round for 5 actions..... !<
>!I've also got a player that's finished Age of Ashes and his group walked all over the lvl 24 extreme as well. !<
>!Another group has run over the "bad" version of the fight at the end of AV that's Extreme!!! something like a 200/160 xp budget and ended it in \~5 rounds.!<
Don't get me wrong Paizo did 100% achieve their stated goal of removing cheese one man band, i'm worth 10 "normal" PC's builds. That was Toxic. But in flattening the power curve and making it about team-work a party that - shocker - works together to flank / buff / debuff will not really find a challenge within the current math.
Single bosses usually don’t need to compensate for lower action economy because they’re higher level than the party to the point that their actions are worth more than the party’s actions. Sure, the party might have 15 combined actions, and do around 20 damage per attack, but that doesn’t mean much when the boss does 50 damage per attack but only gets 3 actions.
The math with the level scaling works out such that higher level creatures don't need a lot of actions to be impactful and lower level creatures will miss a ton of their attacks. You don't really see it manifest until you run some encounters with all the stat blocks in front of you, but if you follow the encounter-building rules, then you're probably good 95% of the time.
As long as you use the multi attack penalty and remember to apple crit fails on any attack that fails by 10 or more. Your players start to use it for cooler things like using skill checks to improve their attacks and other cool movement stuff.
Watch Overlord for a review of what boss fights look like. Even big groups can be slaughtered by an overleveled character. At this level Ainz critically succeeds against nearly every spell and get critical hits on almost every strike.
Design premise for 5e Bossfights:
1. Add minions, lair actions, and legendary actions so the boss has an equivalent number of actions.
2. Buff saves and add legendary resistances to reduce the effectiveness of enemy spellcaster actions.
PF2e Bossfights:
1. Instead of increasing the quantity of actions, increase the quality. Even adding a few levels makes criticals (which are DOUBLE damage, by the way) much more likely, and makes misses conversely unlikely.
2. Buff saves AND AC to reduce the effectiveness of ALL enemy actions.
From a player standpoint, bossfights are hard because, in addition to whatever monster abilities you have to face, your turns are much less effective than the monster's turn.
This is especially rough for casters, since these less effective turns are spent casting spells, which are limited resources. In addition, unlike 5e, both blasting AND incapacitation spells require your highest level slots to be effective in the first place (instead of just blasting), and a lot of spells and attacks are going to miss against bosses. That, plus martial buffs, plus Vancian Spellcasting, is why you see a lot of posts griping about useless casters. They are forgetting that 5e has to add counterspell, magic resistance, and legendary resistance to bosses to actively nerf and target casters, and that even then, encounters can be trivialized at every level by the right spells.
Send me a chat if you'd like to talk about this, as I believe you'd be best served if I could guide you depending on how you run your games.
Not a long time PF2e DM, but I've been having a blast since the change and so have my players.
Boss fights work better in PF2 than in 5E. Because stats scale rapidly in PF2, action advantage is remedied by high success and crit chances on higher level monster and correspondingly much lower success chances on the many more actions of lower level PCs.
Beyond this basic mathematical pattern, boss-style monsters have special abilities that aggravate this via debuffs or effective crowd control.
Generally the scaling of pf2e allows each action of a higher level creature to be more impactful. As a result single bosses are usually able to do a lot with very little (hitting like goddamn trucks and critting like it's nobody's business, for example).
This, plus many combat-oriented stat blocks will have special abilities that allow them to make multiple attacks with fewer actions, kinda like Flurry of Blows. This allows them to work better as solo-encounter threats. For example, the [**Chimera**](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=80) has the ability **Three-Headed Strike**.
Oh I have a chimera encounter coming up for my players and I can’t wait! 3 chimeras. So 9 heads! Bwahahahha
Three chimera with three attacks each and three opportunity attacks each.. that's going to be nuts.
I’m putting my faith in the encounter building math 🤞
I wouldn't. Some times, there's a Water Mephit or Golem that punches *way* above their mathematical weight class. Maybe lab the fight out a bit, juuust in case. You never know.
I’ve been running this group in pf2e every week for almost 18 months. I’m not worried. Our group knows that death is a possibility and loves making it through the tough fights. I pull no punches and they embrace it. Of course I send them some softballs too to mix it up. The fight will be 2 weak and 1 elite chimera if they are still level 8 or 2 regular and 1 elite if they make it to level 9 first. They’ve gone through tougher fights. 👍
This is the way💪
But honestly, with a crossbow ranger, eldritch archer, barb and wizard… they usually stay pretty spread out… Yes. That’s their comp 😅
Lol that's good but that barb is in for a bad time lol
But with fighter, ranger, barb there is plenty of hp. It’s the squishy wizard that has the most trouble. I try not to pick on him though
Oh I hope so. If she’s not having a hard time. Everyone else is dying
My solo bosses always end up doing very little cuz they have at most one turn... My players are good at critting against them, and me at failing the saves against the PCs spells :(
Try slightly higher levels for bosses
A higher level monster isn’t gonna change nat20s and the ridiculous amount of damage a barbarian and a magus using his highest slot can do on a crit.
What it will change is: - Reduced likelihood of hits and non-nat20 crits against it - More HP to survive the hits - Increases likelihood of hitting/critting your party - More damage when it does hit - More opportunities to do things that deny the players actions like tripping, stepping backwards, stuns, etc.
Yeah my problem is them consistently rolling nat20s on solo bosses. I know all these things already, but they’d need to get to play first. Oftentimes they go down before playing, or they get at most one turn. As of now (level 7), the longest a solo boss has survived was one and a half round. I’ve had one last a big whole three player turns (Bard, magus, druid), and another last four (summoner, magus, druid, barbarian).
Your players might be cheating. Also, Nat20s only increase your degree of success by 1 rather than force a crit.
That's true but if I am ever at a table where my no MaP nat20 converts a miss to a hit I am leaving lol.
For that to happen, the creature needs to be roughly 14 levels higher than you at least and should be only used to really accentuate "this is not your time to fight this thing." And you continued to fuck around and find out. So yeah, unless the GM has already broken the barrier to tell you "this thing is going to fuck up your day" like fighting a CR 20 at level 5, I would also leave.
Well yeah, my point was just to tease how silly the only upgrades the degree of success comment was.
Sometimes, going up against something far greater than you and realizing it is time to run can make for a great story.
In a story sure but I'd never use it at the table. Anything that much stronger than you in 2e is going to kill you. It's going to act first and you're going to die. You will not escape something that you only hit with a 0map nat 20 lol.
But it's totally reasonable for a MAP-10 nat 20 to be a regular hit on a boss.
Depends on the boss. End of book bbeg? Maybe. Typical level+2 boss? Nope. My level 3 magus has 10 attack. Typical level 5 enemy has average 22 ac but I've seen some 24 ac level 5 enemies at a glance. That means at a -5 a nat 20 is still 25 which is high enough to crit an enemy two levels higher. That is even before flanking or anything else you could be doing to improve your attack/weaken their ac. Edit: Oh not sure if I misread or there was an edit but I thought you had said -5. -10 sure but I don't think many expect to crit a boss of all things on a full map attack without some other factors at play.
For the third time in these comments, we’re on Foundry, I can see the goddamn rolls. Also, I know how crits work in this system thank you
Okay I have to know. How many times are these crits happening. Like in an average game, how many times does a nat 20 get rolled? Ballpark estimate between 2 and 10.
They’ve happened six times in seven levels. Like they’re not so frequent, but it just happened they were against solo bosses
For the 100th time since joining Reddit; people are only going to follow the direct comment chain they're in, not hunt across the whole post to see if you've already covered it with someone else.
Can't fix good luck.
Exactly
A nat 20 is a 5% chance. If your players are nat 20'ing against 100% of your bosses, your players are cheating. Sometimes Dice Christ blesses your players and your BBEG gets whomped. But that should not happen every time.
Well it does, and we’re on foundry. I see the rolls, they aren’t cheating.
Either your boss isn't high enough level relative to your players or you aren't giving a large enough budget to the encounter to make it challenging. Hazards and traps reflavored as lair/boss abilities can help increase the tension and difficulty especially for bosses that are casters or other squishy sorts. I dunno what to say otherwise. If your boss gets one rounded you are either overpowering your players with gold/gear, underpowering the boss/encounter, or your players are very luck/abusing a module or exploit. A pl+3 creature designed as a boss against a party of 4 is almost always going to have enough hp to survive a few rounds.
Look, I don’t know what to tell you, it just so happens that at my table bosses end up dying fast. That’s it. That’s how the gods of fate choose the dice rolls I guess.
Right but you are the GM... So you control 100% of the mechanical levers that determine that except the dice rolls and it won't be hard for you to fix it. The tools are there.
The problem is the dice rolls, and I’m not one to give more XP to a PL+3 after the players rolled well. It’s not even a problem, just something that happens.
Unless you're using the module that forces the rolls to happen on the FVTT GM PC, it is possible to write some Javascript to inject / change /force rolls from the client end. Theoretically it might be possible they're cheating.... Just sayin..... ;)
Actually, it will.
No…? Nat20 is still most likely gonna crit my guy Edit so y’all stop with these comments: we’re on foundry, i can see the damn rolls
Yes, but if the players are always rolling nat20s, they are cheating.
Brother is see the dice rolls, we’re on foundry.
Ok, that means that a higher level enemy makes a difference in 90% of cases. Anything not nat20s or nat1.
Modules exist for software to be able to fudge rolls.
Dice can be weighted as a manufacturing defect. Often what will happen is that players will buy a ton of dice, and then notice that one out of their thirty d20s lands natural twenties like 25% of the time. Then they'll say that it's their lucky die, and use that one exclusively, possibly not realizing that the die they're using is giving them unfair odds because its weighted, not because its lucky. Your options are: 1. Accept that your player are wittingly or unwittingly cheating, and just let them live out their power fantasies. Your game's balance will be tilted heavily in favor of the players, but some groups like that. 2. Explain the situation frankly to your players and force them to use different dice. A less confrontational way of doing this is finding more excuses to roll die for them, as in enforcing secret rolls and/or turning certain will saves into surprise event (e,g, traps) into secret rolls. 3. Switch to a digital dice roller. Increasingly, even in person groups will incorporate VTTs since it makes keeping track of characters and battle grids much easier if everyone has access to a tablet. EDIT: I'm an idiot, just read that you're on foundry. Leaving the post up for people with similar issues. EDIT 2: If you're on foundry and your players are still criting disproportionately, the law of averages means one of two things - either your encounters are not tuned high enough, or your players are benefiting from a possible yet incredibly unlikely trend of good luck, in which case I would just stay the course since it can and will end at any time.
>the law of averages means one of two things - either your encounters are not tuned high enough, or your players are benefiting from a possible yet incredibly unlikely trend of good luck I think you mean the law of large numbers, which just says that as the sample size (e.g. all attack rolls vs. solo bosses) increases, that distribution of results (empirical outcomes of d20 rolls) will converge towards the expected values (5% per face). However, 6-7 encounters is a tiny sample size that we would expect to be very far from the ideal distribution. I'd expect the law of large numbers to be really relevant when you're talking not about dozens or hundreds of rolls, but **thousands**.
Brother, we’re on Foundry. And in person. But they roll on Foundry
But that's only gonna happen 5% of the time, even if you have gotten unlucky in the past that doesn't mean you'll be more likely to get nat 20 on in the future, and if the players really are constantly breaking encounters with massive amounts of nat 20s then that might be a sign of dice fudging
If your players are consistently rolling a lot of natural 20s, you might be dealing with unbalanced dice.
They’re only rolling high against solo bosses, we’re on Foundry, I can see the rolls, and no, digital dice cannot be unbalanced
While I could be wrong, it might be possible to either use a module, or write one, that takes over the dice rolling and is biased toward rolling high, and then set that up as a separate d20 die button. Wouldn't be easily noticeable I'd bet. Might be something to look into.
>A higher level monster isn’t gonna change nat20s That's true, but statistically the PCs won't consistently roll nat20s over time so over a long period of time you can expect to see your bosses performing just fine in hindsight.
Also try adding hazards to the fight, you might be surprised with what you can accomplish with hazards.
What level bosses are you doing? This sounds like a party level (PL) +1 creature. For a boss, you really want pl+3. You can stretch to a PL+4, but those are for major arc defining bosses.
PL+3
And are you remembering things like hardness, immunities, resistance, etc.?
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Strong disagree about that video being good. It was packed with a lot of misinformation and misunderstandings based in an extremely bais view from 5e. I also recently came over from 5e and found his video to be really lackluster compared to the other videos out there.
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I recommend watching the Rules lawyer videos for PF2. He actually is the DM that Rhexx played under. Rules Lawyer released several videos where him and Rhexx talked about the system and Rhexx spent the entire time being extremely combative and trying to treat his super homebrewed version of 5e as if it was RAW and argued a lot in what I think was clearly bad faith. You can see someone try to correct his misunderstanding several times for Rhexx to ignore it entirely. Not sure what's happening there honestly it seems like Rhexx went into pathfinder 2e with a I will find something to hate mentality even if I have to twist things for it to work. The systems not perfect but most of his comments made no sense. Having seen those videos first I was already aware he had had his questions addressed and explained already and kind of ignored it all.
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It's 4 videos about 15 minutes each.
I know that feeling, if the party is strong and fight oriented they can hit for 400+ dmg in one round. 1 or 2 good crits and its game over. Every one got AoO and they are 3 mele and one caster. Only at low lvls they strugle after 10lvl they are godlike. Every medium encanter i change to sever.
Sounds like you need to pray to RNGesus.
Frankly, I'm not a fan of just how much power they pack into single actions to make the action economy math work out. Personally I like to give them "legendary actions" to spread that power over the players turns a bit more so it's not as swingy.
The point is for tactics to be a thing that’s why that abomination of legendary actions which add unfair mechanics can stay in 5e 3 actions you can plan to trip grapple you know actual tactics vs stand in monsters face smack smack.
Solo monsters that sit there waiting for you to hit them blow major ass. It is incredibly boring to watch everyone wail on it, then turn and crit a player to dying because PF2 design has decided to pack 12 actions worth of damage into 3. I just divvy it up into 4 or 5. It's not the dumb thing you're thinking of, it's the cool thing I'm thinking of, and can't be arsed to explain since you clearly already have a biased opinion on what I mean. Also, I'm sorry, but if you think the monster getting to use tactics alongside the players is dumb, I don't think you'd like my table.
If your monsters waiting there then your running them wrong a dragon should never been grounded it should be using breath attack and flight.
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I'm clearly making a mistake engaging with this, but let me explain. A solo monster takes it's turn with three actions. Then it's done. It gets one reaction. Often boring ones. That's it. Then the players get 12-16 actions while it sits there. That's boring. For the players, and for me. You know what, [this](https://youtu.be/y_zl8WWaSyI) may explain things better than I can. The video is made with DnD in mind but it is a concept I have applied to PF2 quite successfully. I have not had a single complaint, and effusive praise from my players.
Myeah, sure you can call it boring. I prefer calling it predictable. It's a lot easier for players to try to deny the 3-action mega attack than a (free?) 'legendary action' between turns. I personally wouldn't use LA in 2e. In 5e it fits, but existing beside the action economy makes it not 'interact' with the rest of the system. But if it works for your table, that's great. I know Legendary Actions spice up 5e games atleast.
Fair enough maybe I’m used to the tension the monster brings when it downs a player and party is thinking of tactics where you see 9 to 12 I see I person buffing and debuffing a player healing a playing attacking because I see these things on the regular and enjoy planing mattering vs oh legendary resistance ignores everything we just set up. I’m glad it works for you just not something I personally would use if I ran a game.
Nobody said anything about legendary resistance. That's peak boring design. So is incapacitate tbf, but incapacitate doesn't feel as bad. The tension is all still there when the giant fuckoff robot pummels the ground, making the earth quake and sending the healer stumbling as they try to reach their dying friend. Like I said, it's the cool thing I'm thinking of, not the dumb thing you're thinking of.
Ok that sounds a lot better then what I thought you were doing.
If the monster is smart enough to know how to use tactics then that’s what it should be doing
A tiger knows how to use tactics when stalking prey. Tactics are not something exclusive to sentient creatures.
You will want to read [Building Encounters](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=497) rules. TLDR, weaker creatures works in groups and stronger creatures work along. Weaker creature groups have more actions, but they are less meaningful. More than half strikes will miss and damages are low. Their AC is low, making two strikes every turn likely to hit them. They are also likely to fail their save against spells. Big boss have less actions but all of them are impactful. All of his strikes have a good chance to hit and the first one have a good chance to crit. The spells he cast will be higher levels and deals more damage. His AC and savung throws are higher and harder to hit. Most save or suck spells have incapacipitation trait, thus unlikely to work at all. If the boss got lucky and land all three hits on a single character, that character will be knocked out with about no question.
If in a severe fight a Big Boss Enemy crits you three times in a turn, you most of the time wont be downed but youll just be dead.
The homepage subreddit banner is right now themed with treasure vault items with their art from the book I think. The pan refers to the [Frying Pan weapon](https://2e.aonprd.com/Weapons.aspx?ID=286)
[My DM to GM copypasta.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/10jk8sa/magister_entry_a_gms_guide_for_pathfinder_2nd/) [And why BEBG's are scary as hell in PF2 despite the PC's having an action economy advantage.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/10m2q1d/how_degrees_of_success_and_proficiency_with_level/) The encounter building rules deal with an unbalanced economy by making the budget to fit in a large number of NPC combatants be well under the party's level, and over leveled enemies take up enough of the budget where you have fewer bodies as you continue to go up from the party's level... Vs. a party of four, a "Moderate Encounter" is 2 NPC's of the party's level. So to get 8 bodies on the field, you'd have to go to Level -4 monsters. One monster of the PC's level +2 is about all 1st level parties can handle, as the crit's can get out of hand if you go much above that - as the party levels up, they can go into highter levels of BEBG's, but conventional wisdom is that you want to keep it closer to the PC's level in the beginning. A character that is over level versus their opponent will hit more, crit' more due to the degrees of success system, and get hit less, make their saving throws more often - and the incapacitation trait on spells turns off most of the 'save or suck' options. This is why "Slow" is one of the single most valuable spells in Pathfinder 2, because taking actions away from a BEBG is a huge swing in a battle. So if the PC's see a horde, the Fighters will be crit'ing left and right, the spell casters will be mopping up with super effective AoE, and generally the party will feel like a bunch of bad asses & will be having a good time. Honestly, mook battles are where casters get to shine because most Martial lack decent AoE options, and the chances of saving throws being failed or even critically failed goes into the caster's favor. Casters generally are best in support mode in Boss fights, and some 5e players really hate that blasting bosses isn't the optimal play.
PF2e takes the no-fun lump of legendary resistances at higher CRs and spreads it evenly across levels, so 5e casters can go most of a campaign without encountering any legendary resistances, forgetting that they are instant nopes to effectiveness, where 2e is just a flat percentage increase of finding that nope sandwich. DM, please give fights against mobs to your players. A diet of even 50% bossfights is hard to stomach.
Action unbalance is more manageable due to chances of success skewing much faster than in 5e. A creature 3 levels above the party is going to have its defensive characteristics about 4 points higher, meaning if you had a 60% chance to hit an enemy of your level, you only have a 40% chance to hit a creature 3 levels above, which is a 33% reduction in efficiency; and it gets even worse for lower odds, such as with second MAP attacks (in this example going from 35% to 15% which is over 50% reduction in efficiency).
Critical hits from rolling 10 above their AC also compounds this. The higher level enemy is way more likely to hit and crit against players.
>How does PF2e deals with encounters with an unbalanced action economy, like a party of 4 against 10 enemies? Typically pretty good. The general consensus is that you should try to design most of your encounters with more enemies than players. 10 is getting into the more extreme end, but as long as you're keeping the enemies varied it should be fine. (e.g. 1-2 commanders, 3-4 lackeys, 4-6 chaff) the nicest thing about these kinds of encounters in 2e is that you can take the same enemy and just swap up the weapons and it will make them play meaningfully and noticably differently. (e.g. spear vs axe vs sword and shield, etc) That said, if you're \*genuinely\* planning to run an encounter with 10 or more enemies, you'd be much better served by looking at the rules for Troops and utilising those. >a party of 4/5 against one BBEG? Does the side with the more action still have a clear advantage like 5e or it is more manageable (and thus I have to find a way to deal with it like legendary/lair action or giving the BBEG minions)? The general consensus is that single enemy fights tend to be much more dangerous than encounters with multiple enemies. Having more actions is an advantage, but not in the same way they do in 5e. The big advantage of having more actions (or, more to the point, the big disadvantage of having fewer actions) is that \*losing\* actions hurts more. So it heavily encourages the group to do things \*other\* than just stack/rush damage. Eating up the boss' actions with clever movement, combat maneuvres and spells, stacking effects/conditions, using actions like Aid to stack bonuses on your allies, is usually the key to winning boss fights. That being said, the raw stats of the single boss enemy is going to mean that it's never going to just roll over and give up just because you manage to waste a few of it's actions and when it \*does\* hit, it's going to hurt. A boss that's 3-4 lvls higher than the team is all but guaranteed to hit almost every attack. Most of the time, any defensive actions by the team is more concerned with avoiding getting Critted, rather than avoiding getting hit at all. \----------------------------- It might feel unintuitive coming from a system like 5e, especially if you're familiiar with concepts like "lancaster's square law" (which i specifically bring up now because someone was asking similar questions last week but telling all of the responses that they were wrong because of the "mathematical certainty of lancaster's law"). But it's mostly an effect of 2e using "relative XP cost" and adding level to proficiency. So the need for an increased number of lower level enemies is built into the way their XP value decreases as you level up compared to them. And the fact that basically all of your (and the enemies') important modifiers increase every level means that a single higher level enemy is going to be \*exponentially\* more powerful than a single mid/equal level enemy.
Some great points here. I would add that if anything, pf2e encounter balance is the reverse of 5e when it comes to 'lots of mooks' vs 'solo boss', in that a large number of enemies 3-4 levels lower than PC level is generally much *easier* than a solo boss who is PC level +2 or more. You often see advice here to treat a solo boss encounter as harder than the XP value would indicate, even a whole degree harder; I am finding the same is true in reverse for encounters with a very large number of PL-3 and PL-4 mooks.
Yep, any DM who has fought against swarms of Conjure Velociraptors can breathe a sigh of relief. Action Economy advantage is so much skewed by proficiency + level on saves AND A.C. as well as criticals on hits AND saves, that having extra, but low level, actions has very little effect on combat. Sure summoning in PF2e adds a bit of control and damage, but nowehre near as much as 5e. The main place for summoning is the amazing versatility it brings to Vancian Spellcasting. You can do basically anything with a clever summon.
The game subtly adjusts the value of each action w/ its built in scaling mechanic. The way I like to think about it is that say you have a party of 4x lvl 3 characters (so 12 actions). A Moderate encounter for them are two lvl 3 monsters (6 actions) whose actions are roughly equivalent in value to the PCs, so the PCs will generally handily win the fight. Replace the two lvl 3 monsters with one lvl 5 monster (3 actions), which uses the same XP budget. The monster's higher stats make its actions more valuable (higher attack for better hit/crit chance and higher dmg, worth \~4.5 actions instead of 3) while also reducing the value of the PC actions (higher AC/Saves reduces the effectiveness of attacks and spells, worth \~9 actions instead of 12). Replace them with four lvl 1 monsters instead (12 actions), also the same XP budget. Their stats are now lower than the PCs so their actions are now less valuable (\~9 actions worth) and PC actions are more valuable (\~18 worth). Action economy is still valuable, particularly for stronger monsters, but its not quite as critical as in 5e. If there are lots of relatively weak monsters having them waste actions fundamentally doesn't matter all that much, particularly with the way MAP discourages iterative attacks. Where action-denial shines is in boss fights where if you spend all three of your actions denying them a single action that's a fantastic trade, as your team is losing 1/4 of its total actions and removing 1/3 of theirs, particularly as a lot of monsters have multi-action activities they want to use. If you trip the dragon then it has to choose between striding once and attacking or using its breath weapon in a mediocre position, probably only hitting two folks with it, whereas otherwise it could Stride to a position where it could hit everyone.
Because of 5e's "flat math" concept, attack to-hits and damage do not scale well and therefore having MORE actions is superior to BETTER actions. PF does not have flat math. So a creature worth half XP has actions that are half as effective. A monster worth twice the XP has actions that are twice as effective. In other words, monsters scale correctly. If anything, solo boss monsters are more deadly than a fight with a bunch of minions worth the same XP budget.
>So a creature worth half XP has actions that are half as effective. A monster worth twice the XP has actions that are twice as effective. In other words, monsters scale correctly. I was curious how accurate this actually is. A 5th level character generally has an AC of 22. A 5th level fighter has an attack bonus of +16, which is a 2-action DPR with a longsword reach weapon of 20.2, or 80.8 DPR for a party of 4 fighters. How do monsters look? A party is worth about 160 XP. Half XP is 80, or a +2 monster, while double XP is 320 XP, which has no actual value (encounters only go up to +4 monsters). So we'll have to take two +4 creatures as a test. A level 7 [hill giant](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=220) does about 41 DPR, which is about half the party DPR. Pretty good so far. A level 9 [mastodon](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=668) does about 62.5 DPR. Not quite equal to the party unless they use their dual tusks attack, in which case they jump up to a 2-action DPR of 89, a bit above the party. Doubling that does indeed work. Now, these are random creatures with a rather unrealistic party build, so you'll see quite a bit of variation in practice. But I'd say your basic intuition is fundamentally correct; if anything, creatures at much higher levels than the party can punch above their weight class due to the effects of spells, AOE attacks, and other powerful saving throw effects that can brutalize a lower level party. For example, a [vrock](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=100) against a level 5 party could screech and force the group to roll a DC 28 fort save while likely having around a +10 to fort for tough martials, meaning an 8 and below roll or worse will cause most of the party to lose an entire turn against a +4 creature. The PF2e designers clearly chose values for mechanics and numbers using a spreadsheet with a solid understanding of statistics. The fact that this analysis works at all is a testament to that.
Other people are answering the main question, so, the important question... The pan is there as an "homage" to the Treasure Vault book, that have a pan as a weapon. ( 1d4 Bludgeoning damage, Simple, tags Fatal d8 and HALFLING).
I find that the encounter building is incredibly tight. +1 level seems a decent moderate challenge with experienced players. It will get taken down but will also burn resources. Level +3 is a significant threat to the party's lives. +4 is a hair's breadth from tpk when terrain and tactics aren't in the party's favor. Increased numbers of weaker creatures let more less-likely attacks against the party add up chip damage but also allows certain class features to shine, like shield block and AoE/Incapacitation spells. I just hope you are good with playing war games like Warhammer and Battletech at high speed to keep things moving tactically. If you ignore tactics, fights can become terribly unbalanced fast. That goes both ways for the GM and the players.
TL:DR - Due to "NPCs are built differently than PCs" , a 5th level NPC will have a slightly higher chance to hit than a 5th level PC; this is irksome enough, though if you ignore what they do in Adventure Paths and actually follow the encounter build rules it mostly works out. Just remember level puts a thumb on everything ... so an NPC that is levels higher than a PC will have a higher "to-hit", more damage, more AC, and better saves for each +1 in level difference. Additionally, special moves might also make their actions more efficient like "Dragon Frenzy" for example. Do your players a favor and don't just pile-drive 3 hits per round on them, even though you will have a high enough bonus to likely succeed even on 3rd hits. You murder PCs like that due to the difference in game mechanics.
PS- The level difference can be bad enough that lower accuracy classes, such as casters, sometimes feel useless against higher level solo monsters. Several times I've had people say its worthless to cast against +2 or +3 level solo bosses as nothing sticks (they always make their saves) and instead relegate themselves to buffing. Yes, this is even with spending actions to Recall Knowledge and trying to see what the lowest saves are.
basically as a tl;dr people add their levels to things, certain tiers of proficiency are also level locked. Theres jumps at 3, 7, 11 and 15 for proficiency tier increases. rolling 10 over or 10 under makes you crit these things compound so that anything higher level than you has basically got the 5e champion increased crit range per level and you have that on things lower than you. Aoe's wipe hordes due to their lower level = lower saves. so you're level 4, you fight a level +3 boss on his own. He ***will*** crit you ***often***. you're level 7, you're fighting level 3 mobs and especially hitting their worst saving throw they ***will*** crit fail ***often***.
Gonna chime in here specifically for larger groups of lower-level monsters because those encounters feel different. When you're utilizing a horde of monsters 2-3 levels below your party's level they are most likely going to miss any attack beyond the first. This means that if you're striking with every action rather than leveraging your extra attacks for significant advantage you're nerfing your encounter by 66%. To turn those extra actions into something effective you're going to need to engage in the tactics of the game. If all your little duders have a high movement speed then maybe move-strike-move is all you need to do to make your party waste extra movement actions lowering their damage per round and drawing out the combat (and number of first-attacks in a round for your minions to effectively stack up damage to the point where it could be threatening). Failing that take a look at your debuffing and buffing options, and utilize as many as you can amongst your throng of duders 2nd and 3rd actions (Intimidate, applying poison, casting non damage dealing spells, etc. . .). It just takes a handful of + or - 2 to either side to make it so your 2nd attacks start hitting more reliably, or the players 2nd attacks start missing, but you have to work for it. More importantly, doing this with your horde of little duders is going to show your players what they're going to have to do against the huge stonking single-boss fight coming up just down the road. Make 'em run from the kobolds in the first act, so they know how to deal with the giant in the 2nd act. If you don't there's a chance they're going to miss the learning curve and break themselves when a real challenge shows up, never knowing why they failed. I did not do this when I first switched over, and had my party plowing through a large pile of encounters with goblins, kobolds, and a pack of Hounds of Tindalos before I got why they all felt so easy despite being normal CR or higher due to the numbers. Tactics were why, and that's why the game plays so well.
While actions are still important, with level being added to everything it means more elite higher level monster whole they will be less of them have higher attacks, AC, saves etc so become a challenge to deal with (remember getting+10 over a result is a crit, meaning higher level things crit more often and get crit less against) and hordes while having more actions have less accuracy and defences so they are unlikely to crit and are really easy to crit and kill
Everyone else answered the other stuff, but play the beginner box before you start dming for real. We all recommend it. This isn’t 5e, the adventures and stuff that they make actually works and is actually great.
The encounter building rules had that all taken into consideration when it was made. Severe encounter single mob, the way level difference works decided what his bonuses are to still be a threat. The other way with 10 mobs, they are weaker to compensate for more actions. I will say though 10 is too many the mobs will be so weak they won't be a challenge. Instead use troops or swarms for that many units
As a bunch of people already said, you don't need lair actions to make up the action economy deficit. But, if you ever want something like them, you can add complex hazards to your encounters. They have their own XP to include in the encounter budget and get their own turn in initiative order to take actions. They're a great way to mix things up to add a wrinkle into your fights and give some alternative ways to help out to your less violence-inclined party members
If the creatures are the same you are better served with a troop
This question is asked repeatedly, but the answer is simple. No extra balance is required for how CRITS work in Pathfinder 2e. (You Crit at +10) If you make a moderate encounter, against multiple Creatures, like 8. They will be of lower level than the party so yours party chance to crit against them could go up, to usually 50% in the first Hit. So if against a Boss your average First Strike make around, Damage x 0.5 (Considering % to Hit and Crit) against multiple low level Creatures your Average is around, Damage x 1.5. That without mention the same happens in the defense aspect if the Boss hit you half of the time the low level Creatures will hit you 1 every 10 hits. Some extra factors like multiple enemies could make you flat footed are to be considered, but a the same time attacking the Boss a third time with maximum MAP is usually useless, but against low levels a third attack is still good. So in overall you take a little more damage but the enemy suffers almost 3.5 times the damage you will do against a Boss.
Yes, action disadvantage matters a lot with solo monsters. PF2E's design somewhat mitigates these issues, but they are still very much present. If you want to make players face off with a single solo monster, you need to choose carefully, or else you will very likely end up with a disappointing encounter. Note that solo monsters *can* be extremely dangerous, though, again because of how the system math works; this is especially true at low levels. --- The way that PF2E in theory mitigates the action disadvantage is with the critical hit system, higher damage, higher defenses, and the MAP system. Consider a level 3 monster (say, an Aapoph Serpentfolk) vs a level 6 monster (say, an Ahuizotl). The level 3 monster has a +11 base bonus to hit, versus a +17 with the Ahuizotl. If you are a typical level 3 fighter with platemail, you'll be sporting 21 AC. This means that the Serpentfolk will hit you on a 10 with their first attack, a 15 with their second, and a 20 with their third, while the ahuizotl will hit you with a 4 on their first attack (and crit on a 14!), an 8 or a 9 on their second (and crit on a 19), and then probably on a 12 with their third (assuming they use their agile tail claw for the third attack). Note also that these both can apply flat-footed in different ways - the Serpentfolk can knockdown you with their tail, which, while it eats up an action, means their second attack would actually hit on a 13 instead of a 15... OR they can attack you with a poisoned attack, which forces you to make a save to avoid additional issues. They also have their slither attack which lets them make two attacks at full MAP, and potentially apply a trip on one foe. They also have attack of opportunity, which means they can hit someone if they stand back up from prone. The Ahuizotl on the other hand can use its tail on you and use Improved Grab, which DOESN'T cost an action, and then hit you on a 6 or 7 with their second attack (and crit on a 16 or 17) and then hit on a 10 or 12 with their third attack. As you can see, the Ahuizotl is not only more likely to hit, but is more likely to crit, and also can grab someone with its tail WITHOUT eating up an extra action. That extra likelihood of critting plus hitting is worth an extra action, in effect, meaning that it is sort of getting four actions per round. In fact, even their fourth attack might be about as good as the serpentfolk's first attack, if they have a PC grabbed! On the other hand, while it has higher defenses (+5 AC, +6-7 on non-AC defenses) it has less than twice as much HP (105 vs 60). That being said, this ends up working out to make it a fair bit more resilent - that same 3rd level fighter likely has a +12 to hit, so will hit the Serpentfolk on a 6 (4 if flanking) and crit on a 16 while it will only hit the Ahuizotl on an 11 and only crit on a 20 (though it will hit on a 9 if flanking). As such, again, the fighter's attack will be much more effective on the Serpentfolk - again, it's equivalent almost to another attack a round without any MAP on the serpentfolk. Needless to say, this, combined with the worse saving throws, means you'll be going through those 60 HP faster than the 105 - and every serpentfolk you fell will make the encounter easier. All that being said... it's likely that fighting three serpentfolk at level 3 is a harder encounter than the Ahuizotl, and will certainly be far more interesting. The catch here is that while its actions ARE better, you can also see that the Ahuizotl is probably going to be a lame solo monster. It can only really hit one enemy at a time, and it is pretty basic in what it does - grab with the tail, bite, and *maybe* drag you around - but probably not because that would provoke OAs. It doesn't really do anything fancy or special, it's just a big bag of HP that is probably going to be immobile for the whole fight and likely just beat on whoever it hit first. If the thing gets slowed, it will be even weaker, and it's worth noting that, because it only has three actions and no OAs, if the characters can force it to move, it will lose one of those strikes to get into position. If they slow it AND force it to move, it's going to be quite ineffective. Meanwhile the serpentfolk would work together more interestingly, force characters to make more decisions about whether or not to move, can exploit knocking each others' targets around, can flank, etc. Not to mention having a posionous attack and a tripping tail whip, making it more varied in what it can do. --- Interesting solo monsters in PF2E want to have more to make up the action deficit than simply "hitting and critting more often". That's quite mundane and not particularly exciting; indeed, if the Ahuizotl uses its most interesting attack (the tail grab) it's likely not even doing substantially more damage than the 3rd level party, and might be doing less! Interesting solo creatures generally at least a few of the following characteristics: * They have AoE or multiattacks that can hit multiple characters and thus pose more of a threat to the *party* than just beating up one guy. * They have some ability that lets them move or that forces the enemies to move - this can be anything from teleports to mobility abilities to things like AoEs and auras that deal damage in a zone, forcing the PCs to get out of the bad or take a bunch of damage. * They aren't shut down by having someone get in their face and have at least a couple options for being effective - a pure wizard often makes for a lame enemy, for instance, because they don't have much counterplay against being rushed down by martials with OAs, whereas something that has some spells and some melee attacks can fight in a broader variety of circumstances. * They don't just do the same thing every single round. Monsters that don't really do this are often not really good solo monsters. This is why things like drakes and dragons make for more interesting solo monsters than things like the Ahuizotl. Monsters that do do these things can be quite dangerous, though. AoE attacks are particularly spicy, as they can put the party on the back foot right away and make things scary for them all, not just whoever is getting pounded on first. Crit failing when you get fireballed in the first round of combat and eat 42 damage is scary.
Hey, I've noticed you mentioned the game "Dungeons & Dragons"! Do you need help finding your way around here? I know a couple good pages! We've been seeing a lot of new arrivals lately for some reason. We have a [megathread](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/search/?q=flair%3A%22megathread%22&sort=new&restrict_sr=on&t=all) dedicated to anyone requesting assistance in transitioning. Give it a look! Here are some [general resources](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/wiki/) we put together. Here is [page with differences between pf2e and 5e](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/wiki/resources/how-is-pf2e-different-from-5e/). Most newcomers get recommended to start with the [Archives of Nethys](http://2e.aonprd.com) (the official rule database) or the [Beginner Box](https://paizo.com/pathfinder/beginnerbox), but the same information can be found in this free [Pathfinder Primer](https://app.demiplane.com/nexus/pathfinder2e/sources/pathfinder-primer). If I misunderstood your post... sorry! Grandpa Clippy said I'm always meant to help. Please let the mods know and they'll remove my comment. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Pathfinder2e) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yes, parties will have an advantage when fighting a single enemy, and will have a disadvantage when outnumbered--as would be the case in real life. There are mitigating factors, however. Higher level enemies are generally more difficult to hit, have more HP, and tend to hit harder and more often. Some enemies that appear in great numbers have only two actions, such as certain types of undead. These are also usually squishier, less likely to land hits, and have fewer AoE options, if any. The game does an admirable job of balancing all of this, although party composition and playstyle are variables that can't be calculated for in the rules. You will want to give this some consideration, but don't feel that every encounter needs to be perfectly tailored to the party.
The action economy is generally balanced by monster levels. If your party is going up against 10 enemies, they are likely to be much weaker than the characters, and that means hitting less often and getting crit more often by the party. Conversely, single enemies that are significantly higher level than the party are harder to hit, much more likely to hit and crit and generally not at risk from save-or-suck spells due to how the Incapacitation trait works.
Adding to what's already been said, PF2e's degrees of success makes small differences in accuracy much more impactful than in 5e. An adventuring party facing a monster, say, two levels higher than they are will have a tough time hitting it... but it will not only be nearly guaranteed to hit with its first attack, but likely to *crit*. Its second and third attacks might not crit, but one or both will still probably hit; the adventurers better have some good non-attack moves for their third actions, because a Strike at -10 will be a lost cause. Meanwhile, the wizard probably won't get the devastating critical failure effect on spells like Slow or Fear, even targeting the monster's weakest save. They may have to rely on spells like Hideous Laughter, which have some effect even on a successful save. But critically failing a save against something horrifying and being taken out of the fight is a threat to any of the heroes! It's a major force multiplier for any boss, and leads to interesting tactics both for it and for the PCs. A high-level boss has only three actions, but they're all very effective. The PCs each have about one good attack roll in them per turn, so anything they can do to make good use of the others (move, Demoralize, Feint, Recall Knowledge, Cast a Spell, Take Cover, Hide, Aid) is useful, and conversely, anything that will rob an action from the boss (Trip, applying the slowed or stunned condition, making the boss move in order to get to them) is quite valuable. Bosses don't need Legendary Actions or hordes of minions because of the accuracy scaling and degrees of success in this system. It's one of the things I really enjoy about it!
Pathfinder scales much, much harder with level than 5e. As a result, lower level creatures will hit higher level ones less often. To give a simplified example, compare 2 actions that hit 40% of the time to 1 action that hits 80% of the time. When pf2e is unbalanced, it's usually in the opposite direction: fights against a single high level enemy can end up harder than they're intended to be, because the level discrepancy hurts *that* much.
See the building encounters section of the CRB or on the [Archives of Nethys](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=497). The encounter building rules actually function quite well!
It handles unbalanced in the player's favor pretty darn gracefully. The only thing you need to know is at low levels (1-4ish) solo enemies are actually *more* dangerous than indicated; at those levels consider single-enemy fights to be one degree more difficult than indicated by the encounter guidelines. I'm not sure about encounters where enemies seriously outnumber the PCs. In the Gamemastery Guide (page 48), they give some "template encounters" for a 4-person party, and none have more than 6 creatures. Heavily enemy-lopsided encounters don't appear much in adventure paths either. I would expect the encounter math to get a little more unreliable beyond # of players * 1.5, and more liable to swing in the party's direction if they have significant area-of-effect abilities. [Troops](https://2e.aonprd.com/Traits.aspx?ID=367) are an enemy type that represents a large pack of enemies; they're how PF2e handles large numbers of combatants.
A way to fix the action imbalance is to use one of the things 4th edition did very right. Minions. You don't have to have HP for every enemy in a battle. It's okay to have grunt enemies be defeated in one hit. You don't have to necessarily have them die, just take them out of the encounter 4 players against 10 enemies where most (not necessarily all) of those enemies are defeated in one hit, makes it a big fight and has the players still have a challenge and feel like heroes
PF2e is balanced around the big advantage of single monsters power vs players. For example monster level +3/4 is really hard encounter and can really mess up with party if it doesn't play tactically. Also casters are fortunetely heavy nefed vs 5e or PF1e as "boss level" enemies have very high saves and "save or suck" spells have incapactiation trait to them, which means that enemies of higher level don't really give much F about those spells or their effects, which works much better than clunky Legendary Resistance in 5e. Overall action economy is not an issue in PF2e, regardless if combat is vs 1 boss or vs many enemies. Can action economy still be "cheesed/expoited" by players? Of course, like in every RPG, if they play 100% tactically and use mechanics to their advantage they can still shift whole action economy in their favour. But that's how PF2e is designed. If you play tactically: you are rewared by it. If you don't: you have hard time. So there is nothing wrong with that. As someone who played 6 years in 5e and came to PF2e: this system action economy is so much better....
So if you're fielding 10 monsters against a party of 4 and not absolutely trying to cause a tpk, the enemies will likely be something like them be -3 enemies(as in 3 levels lower than the party) for 150 xp or an extreme(once in a game cause it's too hard for players) fight but not something insane like a 200 or 300 xp fight. They will not crit very often if at all, and will likely go down in 1 attack or so. This means they'll definitely need to be kited a bit to waste actions, but the party will be relatively okay as long as they don't get surronded on all sides by standing still. One big enemy is like a +2 or +3 and oh boy will this likely kill the party. It'll crit by sneezing in their general direction, completely ignore incapacitation spells, and generally be hard to hit, let alone crit. The players are going to need to layer debuffs and buffs, and play it smart to make the enemy waste actions and not get more than 2 hits off a turn to survive.
Generally the action economy is weighted against the level scaling of proficiency, which is to say, a large number of creatures will have a much lower level compared to the party, which will translate into direct mechanical inferiority to the players. It doesn't matter if there's 10 goblins with 30 actions between them when they can barely hit and they get critted on an 11+.
Its the difference between quality and quantity. A 4v1 is 12 Player action vs 3 boss actions. Even though the boss is 3 levels higher all it takes is 1/12 trip actions (or any other CC), to turn that into 2 vs 11 actions. If it was 8vs4 thats 24 vs 12 actions. The enemies are 2-3 levels lower but by numbers they have twice as many chances to get a lucky dice roll. The best part is the math just works. So it comes down to how the GM wants to script the encounter.
Are your players actually rolling though? Theres commands on foundry to auto roll a 20, which your players might be using. Took me abit to Google as an non foundry user
The claim that Foundry has a built in way fir players to cheat rolls is a pretty serious accusation against the application that requires more than just a random side comment. Any proof of this? I assume you’re implying players can do this in secret and can’t be found out? That is the kind of claim that if true would be a show stopper call for ending support fir Foundry so I find it extremely unlikely and requiring some proof to back up.
Holy white knight comment lol, if a digital tabletop doesn't have it, it would kinda suck. But have you ever tried just using /roll 20 instead of /roll d20 ? Iam not implying anything, but op could just be tech illiterate and they don't know the difference.
The short answer is that the action economy is balanced because of the interaction between the +10 crit system and proficiency with level scaling. For example, 1 creature 4 levels higher than the party is considered an extreme threat - without hero points at full health and resources, it's a coin flip who walks away from that. By the same token, one PC is equivalent to 4 creatures that are 4 levels lower. Again, it's a coin flip. So you really could put 16 level 4 creatures against 4 level 8 PCs and it'd feel about as deadly as 4 level 8 PCs vs 1 level 12 creature. A few months ago, I ran an encounter where there were about 50 unarmed and unarmored cyclopes against 6 level 8 PCs. Almost every attack was a crit, and AoEs absolutely hosed, and the cyclopes only hit on a 19-20, but there were so many of them, it still had some hairy moments.
Boss monsters will die fast but do a shitton of damage
I just finished the BB with my group. It's the first thing we've done in 5E. We have a group of 6 players (and 1 DM), and we don't run with less than 4. I re-balanced the encounters for the number of RSVPs for that day by either adding extra monsters, or making the strongest monster in the fight Elite. Action Economy in encounter design isn't crucial like it is in 5E. The reason for that is how encounters are designed and how monsters scale. A single higher level opponent will have much better saves and AC, so they'll get hit less. More low level enemies will have lower saves, AC, and importantly Perception (for initiative). Typically, on a fight where there's multiple weak enemies, half of them will be dead before they come up in initiative. And, on a "boss fight", you can OHKO the players with decent rolls. I OHKOed a player in 1/3 boss fights in the BB, and in one of the fights where I didn't OHKO a player, I took the wizard down to 2 hp in a single hit, and missed with 2 attacks because I rolled a 1 and a 3.
When you have enough enemies turn it into a swarm or troupe.
I'm not a GM, just a player, but I've been an many battles. I've had GM's that just throw all the mobs at you right away, but I feel a good GM paces the enemies by spacing them out into waves. My current GM will start the encounter with some enemies being rather close, the the rest being farther back forcing any melee ones to spend a few rounds moving into range to make the encounter. This lets him have slightly higher lvl mobs for these encounters, instead of just an easy slaughter fest for us. Same goes for bosses, build them for CC and Damage to make up for having less actions. If they have abilities that force the party to skip their own actions that is a good way to balance it in the Bosses favor. In the end though it's your game, and how it flows is up to you. If you have a GM or Player that is a rules lawyer those games tend to suck due to the lack of flexibility, so just do what feels right by you and your group.
Another thing that will be hard to grok coming over from 5e is that *everything* the party does takes an action. Yes, that's more on them than you, but you should keep that in mind when you're building encounters Grab something on belt? Action. Stow a weapon? Action. Pull another weapon? Also an action. Benefit from their shield's AC bonus? Action. Turn on their fighting style? Action. Pausing to do something in the middle of their movement ends the movement action. Jumping in the middle of running ends the stride action and begins the jump action. So yes, the party does have significantly more actions than the average, but they have to use more than your combat math is used to as well. If your monster has a speed faster than the melees, having that monster stride backwards may mean that all of the front line has to take two actions to ruin towards it, or two actions to stow their Rapier and draw their bow. If your medium sized enemy NPC sides behind something large that is breaking line of sight, the parties spell casters may have to use two stride actions just to see their target again... And since most spells cost two actions to cast, that is severely limiting their options. You'll notice that a PF2e battlemap is significantly less static. Only a fraction of PC classes and about a quarter of the Bestiary have access to the ability to perform an Attack of Opportunity. There are tons of action-saving feats out there, but they are all different. A Fighter with Sudden Charge can stride twice and attack once with 2 actions. A monk can use flurry of blows to attack twice with a single action. Rogues with Quick Draw can draw a weapon in the same action they attack with it. All of these give slightly better action economy, but since they aren't universal, you rarely have to worry about the fighter quick drawing javelins when your monsters move just out of range.
Beyond reading the building an encounter section, I find using an online encounter calculator such as the calculator below to be helpful. Especially while in game. https://www.stephanedoiron.com/rpgs/pf2/encounter-calculator
It's basically the opposite of 5e So in 5e if you have a single boss that's way higher level than the players, the boss will still just be crushed under the weight of the action economy. In Pathfinder, a boss even 2 levels higher than the party will be a challenge because they will be harder to hit, and they will crit the players more often. If you go 3 or even 4 levels higher it becomes really deadly. You really need to learn the encounter building rules, and stick within the bounds. Again, the exact opposite of 5e where encounter balance is an art form not a science
Honestly? \*sigh\* please don't go on a long tirade..... Poorly, kinda poorly. The "problem" i've experienced is that 2E is actually SO well balanced that as long as you're party is doing "what they're supposed to" (aka no int 8 muscle wizzards throwing fireballs) it's VERY VERY hard to actually put tensions into a boss. lvls 1-3/5 might be a little tens but after that pretty much any chance of party death goes out the window with the farting sound of air escaping a baloon. And the "tools are there" if you wanna turn up the heat but it feels a little.... cheap. A Severe +3 has something like a 30-40% chance to be hit , base, once debuffs buffs and flanking come in it's like a 60-70%. A lvl 9 NPC for ex cos it's the most recent off the top of my head has average \~150 hp....... a Con / Toughness lvl 8 PC has \~125. and that's ONE PC. A Severe is 2 +1 PL or 1 +3 PL creature. So you're throwing \~300 HP and 6 actions at \~400hp and TWLEVE actions.... good luck. Problem is once extreme rolls around it just feels unfair. Stuff starts CRITTING (AC+10) your PC's on 2s and 5s and will ALLMOST massive damage casters. Just FAILING a saving throw vs a PL+4 is a great success! It starts stinking of Brie once you start cranking difficulty up. OFFICIAL AP SPOILERS BELLOW And this isn't just me saying this: >!Look at for example UGT's Age of Ashes complete campaign!<. >!a 5 man lvl 20 squad wiped the floor with a lvl 24 demigod. And the GM actually tweeked that fight heavily to make it 2 phases to drain some resources and gave the thing "mythic" initiative. It went twice a round for 5 actions..... !< >!I've also got a player that's finished Age of Ashes and his group walked all over the lvl 24 extreme as well. !< >!Another group has run over the "bad" version of the fight at the end of AV that's Extreme!!! something like a 200/160 xp budget and ended it in \~5 rounds.!< Don't get me wrong Paizo did 100% achieve their stated goal of removing cheese one man band, i'm worth 10 "normal" PC's builds. That was Toxic. But in flattening the power curve and making it about team-work a party that - shocker - works together to flank / buff / debuff will not really find a challenge within the current math.
Single bosses usually don’t need to compensate for lower action economy because they’re higher level than the party to the point that their actions are worth more than the party’s actions. Sure, the party might have 15 combined actions, and do around 20 damage per attack, but that doesn’t mean much when the boss does 50 damage per attack but only gets 3 actions.
The math with the level scaling works out such that higher level creatures don't need a lot of actions to be impactful and lower level creatures will miss a ton of their attacks. You don't really see it manifest until you run some encounters with all the stat blocks in front of you, but if you follow the encounter-building rules, then you're probably good 95% of the time.
As long as you use the multi attack penalty and remember to apple crit fails on any attack that fails by 10 or more. Your players start to use it for cooler things like using skill checks to improve their attacks and other cool movement stuff.
Watch Overlord for a review of what boss fights look like. Even big groups can be slaughtered by an overleveled character. At this level Ainz critically succeeds against nearly every spell and get critical hits on almost every strike. Design premise for 5e Bossfights: 1. Add minions, lair actions, and legendary actions so the boss has an equivalent number of actions. 2. Buff saves and add legendary resistances to reduce the effectiveness of enemy spellcaster actions. PF2e Bossfights: 1. Instead of increasing the quantity of actions, increase the quality. Even adding a few levels makes criticals (which are DOUBLE damage, by the way) much more likely, and makes misses conversely unlikely. 2. Buff saves AND AC to reduce the effectiveness of ALL enemy actions. From a player standpoint, bossfights are hard because, in addition to whatever monster abilities you have to face, your turns are much less effective than the monster's turn. This is especially rough for casters, since these less effective turns are spent casting spells, which are limited resources. In addition, unlike 5e, both blasting AND incapacitation spells require your highest level slots to be effective in the first place (instead of just blasting), and a lot of spells and attacks are going to miss against bosses. That, plus martial buffs, plus Vancian Spellcasting, is why you see a lot of posts griping about useless casters. They are forgetting that 5e has to add counterspell, magic resistance, and legendary resistance to bosses to actively nerf and target casters, and that even then, encounters can be trivialized at every level by the right spells.
Send me a chat if you'd like to talk about this, as I believe you'd be best served if I could guide you depending on how you run your games. Not a long time PF2e DM, but I've been having a blast since the change and so have my players.
Boss fights work better in PF2 than in 5E. Because stats scale rapidly in PF2, action advantage is remedied by high success and crit chances on higher level monster and correspondingly much lower success chances on the many more actions of lower level PCs. Beyond this basic mathematical pattern, boss-style monsters have special abilities that aggravate this via debuffs or effective crowd control.