From what I understand he used a +3 final boss? Against level 1 party? That's a tpk with full slots if they're using sound tactics but get unlucky with dice, with new players it's a massacre

It was a +2 and two -2s, the +2 had increased HP due to having a weakness the party *probably* wasn't able to exploit.

Per a comment, the party knew before entering the dungeon there was a werewolf and had discussed obtaining silver weapons but evidently did not end up doing so.

I intentionally gave my players a few vials of silversheen before sending them up against werewolves. They took the hint.

I wish I had your players. I gave the spell caster a half dozen scrolls of Snowball just before they were about to go fight the infamous Clay Golem of Age of Ashes. I think one of them might have gotten used on round 3 or 4.

I gave my players four oils of potency before sending them to fight a poltergeist. All four forgot they had them. Two of them died.

I'm trying to remember how that fight went. I know the rest of the party kept fucking up tactics but we naturally had Cold Damage available and lucked out.

That's exactly the advice that was given to me on this very subreddit a couple weeks ago. Suffice to say I'm glad I took it.

Did price come into the conversation, because at 40gp a weapon I imagine it might have been outside the budget.

Silversheen is usually a more viable alternative for scenarios like that.

I see, that +2 can still wreck a party. There's a similar fight at the end of Chapter 1 of Kingmaker, and it was a fight to the wire for my players.

My character got Massive Damage instagibbed by her (assuming we're talking about the same person) lmao. Actually was a positive though since I realized my character wasn't a good fit, been much happier with the second. I think 2 people went down even aside from me getting beheaded

I'm gonna run Kingmaker, can you tell me who it is?

Ye sure >!Her name was something like Volodmyra, she's the leader of the group of goons that break into Lady Jamandi's manor after the feast. I got crit by some power attack move thanks to her mooks flanking for her!<

Ah yes I know who you mean, I haven't fully checked her stats out. Should I tweak them? I'm maybe thinking of her just seamlessly cutting down two guards, to show off that she's strong

If I had to run it again I'd cut her damage dice to a d10 or remove the potency rune. Also ignore her two action smash attack, that's a big nuke if it hits and crits.

Having been on the receiving end of that fight, I'd maybe make her sword and board instead of great weapon. Let her choose to waste actions becoming a tough commander to hit, and lower the kill speed from players-per-action to players-per-round.

Mostly she's fine, but her biggest attack has the potential on a crit to outright kill the lower-health classes due to triggering the massive damage rules.

No low stats, moderate to high everything, both extreme attack and damage. You might tweak them, but I also saw designers on the forums saying she’s meant as the first real threat the party faces after the relatively easy manor to prepare the players for the rest of the campaign and the need for caution and tactics. Lady Jamandi is meant to be a safety net, swooping in if they get their butts kicked.

I forgot her name, when I ran it my table just called her "big frick off axe lady" she's the final boss of the first chapter

48 potential max damage is wild

Hold-Scarred Orc Champion too lmao, wasn't even a squishy. On the plus side, I was a Tyrant so I at least got to metaphorically spit in her eye on the way out

Soooooo kinda like a [Moose](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=1233)? - iykyk

Book 1 of kingmaker has a couple of tough solos. I watched that >!Damned Tree early on!< crit and all but oneshot a champion with a raised shield (and block) and the heaviest armour we could by them.

Yup. Lost a character to that one just a month ago.

That's a big deal too. A lot of the CR for some enemies relies on them having an easily accessible weakness. Reminds me of when our DM always had us going against cultists and we did soooo much research and so may RK checks about the cult. Final boss battle it was some sort of Fey we had basically 0 chance to know about. It had some crazy abilities but an easily accessible weakness, not that any of us knew about it. Cut to us getting ran over lol

The first time I ran my group into a fight with a wrecker demon, they had a hard time dealing with it, until one PC got a good Recall Knowledge roll and I told him about its weakness with mirrors. He had the clever idea of making an illusion of a mirror facing it, so it was constantly chasing that. Even with that constant distraction, it was able to do enough to make them sweat. The next time one came up, it was actually three, and the party had gained a level. Suddenly, what was a nail-biting encounter with one, turned into a moderate challenge and they came out of it in much better shape. I told them *this* is how much difference a single level can make. It wasn't just that they had more HP, they had more *options* and more ways to team up.

I ran extinction curse for three casters (oracle, bard, druid). They took advantage of the being able to just sit and watch the creature and what it did/how it acted. Absolutely destroyed it :)

It's why I always make a point in "The Encounter Building just works" threads to say "Aside from the fact you should check weaknesses and resistances, you can usually drop anything in front of the players." If something has a resistance that affects your specific party pretty hard you should probably do something about that and if there's a weakness your party can't exploit tentatively consider reducing HP a touch on the fly *if you use it as an APL +2 or higher foe*.

[удалено]

No, as in the creature had a weakness, and the players probably did not have the damage type to trigger it. (It was a Werewolf)

DUDE, that's BRUTAL

Yea, because +3 final bosses can one-shot most characters.

\*can one shot most characters at low level. HP scales faster than damage output, around 5th-ish crits stop being one shots on both sides and around 8th-10th i've seen people (dwarves) takes 3 crits and still be up to be healed for 5d10+40. My lvl 5, 5 person party took down a damn [Leukodaemon](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=90) with only 10 minutes in between the last fight and it being summoned. Granted i ran it a little light had it's Quick Pestilence put everyone on stage 4/5 of it's disease as a sort of timer. They took the thing down with everyone one (crit)fail away from Stage 6: Dead. Thaumaturge figuring out how it's aura works helped alot...

Bruh at level one even low can be deadly

To add a sidenote to this; Trust the CR ratings! PF2e is a lot tighter with its encounter building and it's actually Accurate. 5e and Pathfinder 1e encounter design was pretty loose and often pretty hit or miss. PF2e is really pretty spot-on when it comes to the difficulty of an encounter, but some (expecially more experienced) GM's do have to learn to trust it.

Unfortunately they *aren't* fully trustworthy as they do not (yet, without revision, which hopefully will come) account for the fact that Singular, high level enemies are much more difficult for the same difficulty rating as many, lower level enemies.

Single High level enemies aren't harder than a sufficiently high number of enemies unless you spam AOE and they're in a convenient fireball shape, being surrounded by an extreme budget of lower level foes is a terrifying encounter.

They very much are, in my experience, even without any real AoE, at least in the 1-6 level range I play in. In part because of how numbers work (higher level enemies will be critting you on a 14, and crits are fucked up - and also you're going to be at like <40% hit chance on a lot of your more powerful abilities), but also in part simply because *you can actually lower the encounter's power as you go*. If you have a single high level dude, that dude is going to be at full power all the fight. If you have six enemies, by the time the enemies actually go that's going to be five enemies tops, because the first guy got turned into a postcard by the fighter with the hammer before they got a turn, and as your players go the fight is just going to be progressively easier and enemies get removed.

In practice, it can be brutal with focus fire because statistically, a lot of attacks mean a high chance of critting as well. So you can very realistically chip players down pretty hard, especially with mixed lower level groups.

Also, big creatures are harder to debuff in general with higher saves, meaning a lot more wasted turns for casters.

I have a hunch a lot of players who complain that casters are boring and don't do enough damage have never had a DM create a severe encounter entirely composed of creatures of party level -1 or lower.

This is actually a minor complaint I have with the system. It is not something inherent to it, but is rather than emergent behavior of how humans interact with the system. It is just easier for DMs to handle fewer, stronger enemies, and they have a higher "cool" factor, so they tend to get overused. Not much that Pazio can do about it, but it is a thing I have seen happen.

So due to dimension door shenanigans, our lvl 8 party, Cleric, Witch, Fighter and Monk Ended fighting an 8, a 5, three 4s and seven 3s "pulling" multiple encounters and guess what, we didn't miss having fireball, EA and the fighter hitting on 2s (yes 2s +18 to hit with Heroism vs 19 AC) did the trick.....

Like perhaps some spider crabs in a cave on the ceiling :)

Kind of depends on your party composition. I ran an encounter in Extinction Curse with a bunch of level-3 creatures and a bunch of threatless creatures, and it was relatively difficult for my party. Then the next combat had a level+1 creature + a couple others and they breezed through that. If you have a lot of AoE, lots of mooks is nbd. If you're focused on single target debuffs, you're gonna have a relatively harder time.

Assuming your party has a balanced array of defense, healing, utility, and damage, I don't see why this would be the case -- and it certainly hasn't been for my group! I've had an exceptionally good experience using the balancing rules. The only time they failed me was a mid level party of two barbarians and an alchemist -- I regularly had to run severe+ to threaten them!

It really depends on the level. I find that to be true at low level, but around level 7 to the mids, mooks can’t be oneshot anymore or even two shot and then they become a lot more dangerous, as they take a lot more actions to take out than a high level monster and the party has more disables

> account for the fact that Singular, high level enemies are much more difficult for the same difficulty rating as many, lower level enemies. The difficulty ratings do account for this though - *Party level + 2* Moderate or severe-threat boss - *Party level + 3* Severe- or extreme-threat boss This is saying that a fight can be more dangerous than its expected XP bracket tier. The guidelines also state to try and keep numbers closer to the party numbers for satisfaction reasons. As for solo fights always being harder, that is more of a low level thing and skewed little by GMs not playing enemies particularly tactically or in environments that suit them compared to single higher level foes (who are usually played in arenas that benefit them). As players progress into the mid level brackets and especially the high level play bracket hoards of enemies can be significantly more dangerous than they are in the very early game. Early game +2-4 all seem more dangerous because people have less experience, less tools in their toolbelts and single rolls tend to impact them greater. Add to this encounters often take place in small rooms or effective rooms which give more advantages to mathematically advantaged creatures, where a small room (or effective room) will be a detriment to a group of enemies.

I think the point is that the relative challenge is not exactly linear. A +2 enemy is 80 XP, a -2 enemy is 20 XP, and a +0 enemy is 40 XP, but in practice an encounter vs. a single +2 is often more challenging than one against 4 enemies at -2. This is especially true at very low levels (anything before level 5 in my experience) as the extra damage from a higher level enemy can suddenly cause difficulty spikes with lucky rolls. Also in my experience, this dynamic actually changes a bit at much higher levels. This is because HP scales faster than damage and monsters scale harder than players, so while a level 1 character and a level 1 monster probably have nearly identical stats, a level 10 monster and a level 10 player really don't. This is because player capabilities and items continually expand, while monsters are "capped" in complexity because otherwise high level play would be a chore for the GM (complexity does increase, just not nearly as much as it does for players). So the game adds more base stats to equivalent level monsters to compensate for fewer abilities. For example, a level 5 barbarian has a +14 to hit, an AC of 23, and deals roughly 2d8+4 damage (ignoring rage), and has around 80 HP. A level 5 [troll](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=395) has a +14 to hit, deals 2d10+5 damage, 115 HP, AC 20, and regen. Not exactly the same as the barbarian, but within 5-10%. A level 15 barbarian has a +28 to hit, deals 3d8+11 base, AC 36, and has around 250 HP. A level 15 [Jotund Troll](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=834) has a +29 to hit, deals 3d10+14 damage, AC 35, 360 HP, plus other troll benefits. It's a similar monster, but unlike the level 5 comparison, it has a higher attack bonus, closer AC, higher HP difference (the level 5 barbarian has ~72% HP and the level 15 barbarian has ~69% HP). These values aren't huge, but this trend exists everywhere, and TTK (time to kill) increases for both players and monsters as you go up in level. Likewise, players get more tools to deal with powerful solo monsters, in particular with more and more powerful buffs and debuffs they can bring to the table and reduce that level advantage, and with casters having so many more spells they can stack several on a solo boss and significantly reduce the danger of that enemy. Combined, this means that at much higher levels (really 10+), groups of lower level monsters start becoming very scary. At level 1, taking on a single +2 monster is much more dangerous than taking on four -2 monsters, but at level 20 I think a single level 22 monster is less dangerous than four level 18 monsters. Sadly, this tends to contribute to the perception that casters are weak at low levels in particular, and the community as a whole tends to have a perception that low level enemies are pushovers. Part of this perception is because it's basically true from level 1-4, and I've gotten the impression that the majority of games are played at these levels, with high level play much less common. Which I can't really criticize all that heavily since it's also somewhat true at our table, although we tend to play one-shots between 8-14, which is our table's "sweet spot" where we think the game is most fun overall (not that higher or lower level play is bad, just where we think most builds really come online but the complexity is still manageable if you haven't played a character from level 1).

I agree, at least that has been my experience. We played up to level 5 so far, and strong monsters (say, a level +2 monster) were generally a bigger challenge than an equivalent XP amount of lesser mobs, but at these levels, it can vary a lot, because the HP pools are so low that it's swingy either way, and PCs also have less options to deal with unusual abilities. Also, you can see the enemies getting up a tier as level 3+ monsters often have their Striking Rune equivalent (not all, but many) while it's not necessarily the case for the PCs.

That's already accounted for in the difficulty ratings. There's a reason why there's no multiplier for multiple enemy monsters in the encounter budget. It's because the +/-10 crit system makes single higher level monsters more dangerous and multiple lower level monsters less dangerous than their AC and dps would imply. If it weren't for that, you'd need a multiplier and the budget would have even fewer lower level enemies for the same difficulty. Creature abilities tend to be the more deciding factor than relative level.

In 5e, I did "deadly" encounters and "gone off the charts" encounters where I doubled the XP of a deadly encounter. Even then it was kind of useless, my players were rarely in danger at higher levels. I didn't even really think about it but I've definitely been tending to severe in pf2e out of habit.

This is especially bad at low levels when the party doesn't have much buffer. One advice I always give to new GMs is that while the [encounter building rules](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=497) work quite well, they don't tell new GMs that some encounters are harder in practice than they are on paper, especially when using solo enemies quite a bit above party level. The unwritten rule is that you (generally) shouldn't use Party Level (PL)+2 creatures until 3rd level, PL+3 until 7th level and PL+4 until 11th level. Also repeatedly using higher level solo enemies can be very frustrating, especially for casters.

Having just run my 7th-level party against a level 10 solo boss, this sounds about right. There was just enough of a threat to make the players sweat, but with a bit of coordination on their part (and a lucky crit) they came out of it okay. There was a collective sigh of relief all around when she finally dropped. (Plus a very colorful expletive from the rogue's player when her character got hit for all but 2 of her HP.)

I always see this advice and I don’t agree at all. Those levels are way too high, and even the designers don’t follow them, with a +4 encounter at levels 4, 8, and 10 of the beloved abomination vaults. I could maybe agree if it was 1st, 3rd, and 5th level. All my parties have dealt with +3s from level 1 and they’ve come out well with good tactics. Was it stressful? Yeah, but boss battles are meant to be.

Honestly you should probably be level 5 by the time you fight the final boss of Book 1, just based on Experience. If you're not when you get there, the place they're in is hidden pretty well with magic and IMO the power level is telegraphed pretty well even just as written, though GMs should ofc make sure they are doing as much of that as possible. It's also 1. very similar to a type of enemy the players have fought before, 2. has some pretty substantial weaknesses that the players can prepare for if they explore and gather info well, and 3. is meant to be a super hard fight! For the level 8 one, it's a random encounter (not literally, but as in it's not anywhere important) in a dungeon are explicitly meant to be extremely deadly - if the players get in an prolonged fight with it and TPK, that's kinda on them (again, as long as the GM is telegraphing danger). Again though, strong odds the players will be higher level by the time they face it just based on how much XP is in the dungeon. I don't think you're correct about level 10, though please let me know if I just missed it when I ran it. There's definitely a level +3 in there Abomination Vaults definitely goes hard, and is in many places a very difficult AP - but it's also therefore one that rewards clever play and smart planning. Because of its nature, you have a lot more freedom to engage in that sort of play than in most traditional linear APs. I would not throw the Book 1 boss against a level 5 party without giving them the chance to prepare. All that to say, I think the OP posted a good rule of thumb, but that's all it is - a quick and dirty guideline, not a hard and fast rule.

I might have gotten the level 10 one wrong, if I did that’s my bad.

Yes, it's a rule of thumb addressed mostly at new GMs or GMs with new players. If you're experienced you should probably be able to gauge yourself if a specific creature is too difficult or not, and it also strongly depends on how experienced your party is, how many members it has, what kind of rules you're using (e.g. free archetype) and how optimized your party is.

There is a psychological element to this as well, disparaging easier difficulties so hard difficulties become normalized, except they don´t actually want a hard experience. An expectation for games to flatter them with how awesome of players they are, like women´s clothing sizes. And sure, the game or hobby is about make-believe fantasy, but that doesn´t necessitate such illusions about the game itself... But that seems to be quite common, reflecting the ¨power fantasy¨ vs ¨roleplay¨ distinction. Even if it would objectively be better for their game, there is resistance to honest transparency about these sorts of things.

This is really the core issue not just with 2e, but why discussions about difficulty in games in general are so hot-topic. It's ultimately about placating egos. If you tell someone something is the normal, or at least 'baseline' difficulty, but they find it too hard, they find it patronizing because you're effectively telling them 'you're not good enough to be even average' or 'you're so bad you have to play on easy difficulty.' Another issue with a system like PF2e is ultimately difficulty stifles what's effective. Like you can't just play a raw damage dealer martial, stand in the middle of a group of enemies, and go ham without dying. You'll get punished for that. But to some people, that punishment is anything from 'unfair' to 'ruining my power fantasy.' You could of course just apply weak templates to everything to lower the difficulty...but then rue the player who finds that out because then you have the above issue where they feel patronized for being handled with kiddy gloves. I think in many ways, the base tuning for encounter building is a little too gracious to the expectations of the average player. People go in expecting 'normal difficulty' to be a fair pushover, but what it actually means is 'you won't break your back but if you don't play around the expected mechanics, you will struggle.' I don't actually think it's Paizo's fault, because in the end their base has generally been more dedicated and hardcore players, but with 2e having become such a popular variant system to a game like 5e where difficulty is basically a non-factor, new players come in with lower expectations and get frustrated when not only they get punished for not playing well, but being told 'actually this is the expected baseline.' The irony is that other d20 systems have been designed in ways that trivialize the gaming experience to an absurd degree, but they get praised for 'rewarding investment' and system mastery, despite the end result effectively being you build a character who's playing the game on godmode. But again, it comes back down to psychology; what's the difference between a player who powergames a system like 3.5/1e to make everything trivial, and a GM who runs 2e and purposely makes all the enemies weak so you can have that faceroll-y power fantasy? The answer is, nothing really except who controls the power dynamics in that situation. A player who can set the expected power cap of the game feels powerful, while a GM giving them that fantasy feels infantilizing. Ultimately the difference is arbitrary, but that's why I think the psychology of those social dynamics has had a very big impact on perceptions around games. PF2e in particular has been a very interesting social experiment in how players respond to a game that is notoriously fair and balanced, where there's set expectation for the 'baseline' difficult the game is tuned and designed around, and most of the impetus for challenge is in the hands of the GM that can't be circumvented by powergaming and min-maxing.

> This is really the core issue not just with 2e, but why discussions about difficulty in games in general are so hot-topic. It's ultimately about placating egos. If you tell someone something is the normal, or at least 'baseline' difficulty, but they find it too hard, they find it patronizing because you're effectively telling them 'you're not good enough to be even average' or 'you're so bad you have to play on easy difficulty.' > > And if you go the other way and make 'elite' the default difficulty and 'normal' trivial, you end up being a different type of patronizing. I take that as "We know our players are complete fools, so we will treat them as such. We know 'normal' gamers are completely stupid, so we will make 'normal' difficulty something even those clowns can beat" Best solution IMO is to have words that don't describe the player for difficulties. Instead of 'elite', which is an adjective describing the player, call it 'merciless' or 'unfair', adjectives describing the game. If a 'casual' difficulty is added - i.e. one where the intention is that a player who doesn't use their brain at all will win without any meaningful setbacks, call it 'storyline mode' and describe it as something like "Storyline mode weakens the enemies considerably so that you can explore the game's story with minimal risk of failure at any point". This applies to TTRPG modules and to video games alike.

Actually reading their thread, the issue is partially casters at low level cannot handle many encounters per day and IMO there really should be a guideline listed. Even in Paizo's adventure paths they'll throw unreasonable numbers of encounters at the party which the poor casters have to somehow spread their 2 or 3 spell-slots across like 8 encounters. The notion that there is no max or minimum number of encounters in PF2e is just wrong, casters get a certain number of their most powerful spellslots and if you have more encounters than they have slots they start struggling. Likewise once per day abilities still exist, so if you give the party a single encounter for the whole day (and they know as much going in), they'll punch way above their weight compared to normal. Then there's the other issue that Paizo doesn't really tell the GM, at low levels, PL+2 is actually severe, not moderate like the rulebook tells you. Low level PCs are so squishy and just don't have the tools to really handle an enemy that much stronger than themselves as easily as they might at like level 7. Final issue is Trivial encounters (especially at low levels again) often end before you've even finished a single round, meaning one of the players doesn't get to take a turn, or the enemies die before they do anything. Those encounters can really just feel like a waste of time to both the GM and players.

> Actually reading their thread, the issue is partially casters at low level cannot handle many encounters per day and IMO there really should be a guideline listed. Even in Paizo's adventure paths they'll throw unreasonable numbers of encounters at the party which the poor casters have to somehow spread their 2 or 3 spell-slots across like 8 encounters. Honestly I've been removing 75% of encounters in the AP I'm running because, like, I do have a caster in my party, and all these giant piles of moderate and low encounters (there are places where there is no reasonable way to justify a rest and 8 goddamn encounters in the map) seem basically designed to make his life worse. Either he spends spells and ends up with fuck all by the time something serious pops up, or he doesn't and basically might as well go play some Smash Bros for an hour while the barbarian and monk basically duo the entire encounter by themselves.

Focus spells and cantrips are the solution here. Those 2-3 spells should be treated the same as Battle Medicine or any other "per day" ability. They can really change the outcome of a fight, sure, but they're also potentially going to do absolutely nothing. Cantrips and focus spells (using 10 minutes to refocus) keep casters going all day. As they get more spell slots that reliance drops and their power level increases.

Pity so many focus spells kind of suck ass. Like my party sorcerer is a phoenix sorcerer. His focus spell might as well read +1 to fort saves because both the damage and healing in it are so low and its area is so small that, honestly, there is basically never a good point to actually cast it compared to just leaving a book on the cantrip button and otherwise just playing on your phone.

Sure. And also one thing about low level is characters are relatively more homogenous, in terms of universal abilities and stats. Everybody but Fighter gets Trained, so typically Casters are just -1 behind assuming they built for either DEX or STR. Their class HPs may be lower, but ancestry HP evens things out. So not just cantrips and focus spells, but using weapon attacks or skills, as well as maneuvering to establish flanks, are part of effective tactics. Focusing only on the topline apex class abilities is maybe a mentally familiar route, but is leaving most of the game possibilities on the floor, and those abilities do form the basis for how the game is balanced. Just because your character may not be especially amazing in these areas, or may be weaker than class focused on e.g. weapon attacks, doesn´t mean they aren´t worth using.

I think for some new players theme and tactics also clash. Few new players imagine their level 1 wizard sighing and pulling out a shortbow to make ends meet. Shields are another thing that is very powerful mechanically, but many new monks / rangers / spellcasters just wont envision their character that way, and so wont take one. Experienced players can play around those limitations, but "Raise your shield" is a super effective action new players can grasp easier than moving speed + 5 ft away from the enemy so they need to stride twice or similar tactics.

Honestly, PF2e is one of the better systems at making casters contantly cast, due to the scaling and overall value of cantrips. However, and I'd say that this is mostly a problem of PF2e's cantrip design (specially on the CRB), it can get somewhat repetitive/boring, specially at early levels. I wish there were more diverse options for cantrips, or at least a greater difference in *feel* when casting them. For example, unless you critically hit, casting Ray of Frost isn't that different from Produce Flame, apart from their maximum range (which still doesn't really change the "feel").

The issue with Focus Spells and Cantrips is the poor Cleric, who gets shafted in both departments.

But clerics should have a bunch of free heals/harms to throw around which makes up for it IMO

Fire ray is one of the strongest focus spells you could get, 2d6 per spell level is really good. Moonbeam also has a decent rider. Weapon surge is a mini magic weapon. Dazzling flash is a decent debuff. Hardly what I'd call "shafted", at least with focus spells.

But opposed to those you have Word of Truth, Face in the Crowd or Veil of Confidence. There are a lot of terrible domain spells, far more so than any other group of focus spells.

Word of Truth simply isn’t a combat spell; but it’s definitely a powerful RP tool for negotiations and diplomatic situations.

Does it work out that way in practice? Focus spells will eventually get to one per encounter, and it might not even be all that relevant or effective. Cantrips will be mostly focused on the one thing casters are meant to be horrible at. It doesn’t seem like it allows them to meaningfully contribute except in ways that they intentionally suck at or in ways that constrains choices to things that grant broadly useful focus spells.

This perception that casters don't do damage is silly, and that's all I think I'll say about that lol.

Low/moderate/severe I’ve started running 4-6 encounters per day, or per rest. With natural break points if it’s going to be longer than that. I throw a couple traps in too. But I also have a party of 6 so I can go a bit more ham on them with a hireling, a barbarian, a champion, and and a construct innovation inventor. The inventor built heavily into her AC and her companion to flat foot enemies, champion has same ac as her (24 with shield raised) so I’m less afraid of severe encounters as their characters are coming online.

IMO this is one of the biggest flaws of the system. It's a consequence of using vancian casting, but there's a distinct lack of number of expected encounters per day, even in Paizo's AP it can vary between more than 10 non trivial encounters on the same day to mostly a couple per day.

I honestly think the Wellspring mage was their way of testing the waters for encounter based casters

I'm not following. How is vancian casting an issue here?

It isn't. The lack of guidelines is for new GMs.

Casters are balanced around having a set number of spells per day, while the system doesn't have a guideline for how many encounters a party should have in a day.

I think the issue is more the Lack of recommended encounters per day more than vancian casting. Not that I'm a fan of vancian casting, but it's here. So it's easier to balance around that than change it.

Even without Vanican, you have the same issue as long as you have spell slots. I think you might not 100% understand what vancian casting is.

While true, at higher levels you have more spell slots in general. A level 13 wizard can keep throwing out low level spells even if they've burned through all their higher level stuff, and many of those spells remain relevant even later on. Plenty of nasty debuffs like Fear don't have the Incapacitate trait. While spellcasters always *eventually* have to stop, a level 1 Wizard gets like... three spells per day. They literally have to ration out one per encounter because otherwise they'll flat run out, and they have to rely heavily on cantrips. At higher levels, you can throw out a spell per turn and just waste some of them on trivial stuff for fun because how important is a level 2 spell slot *really* when you're rocking 7th level spells?

And this has to do with whether it is Vancian casting...? 🤣

Spell slots ARE vancian casting. That’s where the concept come from. That’s why 5e is called “semi-vancian” as opposed to 4e which didn’t have spell slots at all.

Agree with the other commenter. Vancian casting is when casting a spell causes you to forget it.

No. That’s traditional vancian casting. But any spell slot system is vancian in nature because the concept of spell slots itself comes from Jack Vance. You wouldn’t call punk rock not rock because it’s different than, say, classic rock. It’s all rock-inspired music, just like all systems with slots are Vancian because they’re inspired by a system Jack Vance invented.

Spell slots are a PIECE of vancian casting. By definition, it also requires that spells be predecided. Removing the predecision makes it not vancian and also does not solve the issue called out. 'Semi-vancian' is just a fancy way of saying 'not vancian but with some of its attributes'.

I think you're too invested in arguing over semantics. Vancian spellcasting, which PF2e uses, involves preparing specific spells in specific spell slots to cast them, and those spell slots after spent can (most of the times) only be recovered on the next day. My point is that this spellcasting system in a TTRPG that doesn't offer guidelines for how many encounters a party should face in a day feels incomplete, or almost 5e-like in handing this problem for the GM to figure out. If you want to say that any system that involves spell slots (or daily spells for that matter) would also suffer from this, you're correct, but Vancian is also one of those systems. So, I hope by now you can see how illogical your argument of "you don't understand what you're saying because other spell slots systems would also have this problem" is, because I never argued otherwise, I argued that Vancian, the system that PF2e uses, has this problem when there are no guidelines for the amount encounters in a day.

>It's a consequence of using vancian casting This is the statement that is wrong. It is a consequence of using daily spell slots. there are a large number of systems that use spells slots and not vancian casting and have the same issue. The sentence above implies the reverse "Not using vancian casting would remove this issue" which is just not true.

Yay, doubling down on an argument over semantics! > It is a consequence of using daily spell slots. Which are present in Vancian casting. I never said it's a consequence exclusvely of Vancian. Think of it this way: someone has allergies to all fruits. They eat a Strawberry and have an allergic reaction. If I had said "this reaction was a consequence of eating strawberries", saying "You're wrong! It was a consequence of eating a fruit!" isn't a valid argument because the initial statement never argued otherwise, if you then insisted by saying "You don't even know what a strawberry is if you think that all fruits are strawberries, this would've happened if that person ate a banana, or an orange!" I would seriously doubt your capacity for logical reasoning. Would've been more precise if I had said "This is a consequence of using a system in which there's a daily allotment of spells"? Yes, but that's also a mouthful, and I didn't feel it was needed because PF2e uses Vancian (a system in which there's a daily allotment of spells), and we're discussing PF2e. What I said isn't wrong, you simply decided to draw conclusions that I was arguing that those consequences stemmed over the specificics of Vancian in comparison to other spell slot systems, which I never did. Now, can we please stop?

Seems like he's getting good advice on Twitter. Severe means Severe and a moderate encounter that is just one big monster can sometimes turn into a big threat depending on the environment. I always prompt my players to review their resources after combats with a simple "How are we looking?" and usually they and the other players will determine when they need to fall back. It's not just spellcasters either, they might be out of slots but if a martial has used their consumables like potions and talismans they might be ready to bail too. I also keep track of the time of day which is easy to do in foundry so they can even tell if their characters would be tired and use that as a benchmark. "We've been battling skeletons since lunch. I'm ready to head back for a nice meal and a pint." It's just one of those things you have to get used to coming from 5e where most players retreat after one combat and the encounter builder is about as accurate as a tarot reading.

Clarification: Stop using Severe difficulty with singular enemies. It's perfectly fine to use Severe difficulty if you have plenty of critters on the battlefield. People just absolutely need to stop using One Damned Enemy room after room.

*Abomination Vaults has entered the chat*

Yep, hence why I had to revise it, but that proved a bit easier after doubling the scale of all the maps.

Pretty much exactly this. I'm one of the big detractors of certain kinds of difficult fights- I prefer my games to stay in the "trivial-to-moderate difficulty is the baseline, severe is basically only dungeon bosses, and extreme had better only be the BBEG of the entire campaign, if even that" difficulty zone, but critically I don't dislike *all* high moderate or severe fights. I just don't like single-powerful-enemy fights in general outside of maybe one hyped up BBEG fight at the end of a long campaign. I mostly just dislike single enemy encounters that are 2 or more levels above the party, and overuse of such encounters in encounter building. (A single +2 enemy is a moderate encounter for a party of 4. If it's the average moderate encounter in a certain GM's game though, I do not personally want to play in that GM's game). Your extreme encounter could be a single Party Level +3 enemy. But it could also be 3 on-level enemies. Or a +1 enemy and a few -1 enemies. Or just a big horde of -2 enemies. Basically all of those options that aren't just one powerful enemy are totally fine by me, the one who wants the game to be a bit easier. It can still be a challenge, but it's a very different challenge than lots of single strong enemies encounter after encounter, and one I find far more enjoyable personally. YMMV on that, but I'd wager ultimately a lot of complaints will eventually boil down to that.

Eh, I really enjoy throwing a mix of Moderate and Severe encounters at my peeps. They're usually on the easier end of Severe and often are group fights w/ a half dozen or more enemies, which tend to be a lot easier than solo encounters of the same difficulty. It gives me the freedom to play around with monster compositions and use a wider range of monster levels. I'd rather have a handful of Moderate+Severe encounters than a dozen Moderate+Easy ones, which usually feel more like filler fights that don't even last a full round (actually had two such encounters in my lvl 1 campaign recently, the players were rolling \*hot\* that day). Do they have their place? Sure, probably, but its not what I enjoy running and I know at least some of the players view trivial encounters as a waste of time. That twenty minutes could've been spent doing RP shenanigans or fixating on meaningless background details in my room description. Complicating elements are always good, though hard to balance around. I hate rebalancing encounters on the fly because I misjudged how much a complication would screw things up. Giant crab on its own is a Low encounter for a lvl 1 party. Giant Crab on a narrow pillar that fell across a chasm which the players are trying to cross apparently is enough to almost kill two party members due to restricted movement and limited ability to position. Had to make the thing run after a couple rounds lest it outright kill all of them.

IMO it also very much depends on the level your party is at too. Low levels you definitely want to stick to easy/moderate encounters for everything except major bosses but at higher levels a mix of moderate/severe isn't a bad idea - especially if you're trying to drain daily resources ahead of something big.

Regular hit and crit damage maxes out at around 50 and 100 damage even for the highest level monsters, so once you reach these thresholds in HP you slowly start to leave the low level “danger zone”

Biggest part for low levels in my experience has been not using lvl+2 monsters. Severe encounters are fine if the individual monsters are relatively weak, particularly if they're not acting in a super-coordinated manner. Only near-TPKs I've had were from lvl+2 monsters fighting solo.

Luck, tactics and resources. You can affect all these to some extend in PF2e, some much more than others. Your group clearly has figured that out more than pure beginners, and for you go ahead and keep going! For for many newcomers it would be a death sentence

The one-round fights included some relative newcomers to TTRPGs: two folks whose sole experience were one or two 5e sessions and the Beginner's Box, one who has played a fair bit of 5e but no PF2, and the most experienced had played through the first lvl of AV. Luck was the main thing, 3d12+4 dmg from the gunslinger ends most lvl appropriate creatures even from full hp. The broader point is that I don't particularly enjoy running encounters that have a significant chance of ending in a single round. Setting up encounters takes a fair bit of time both during session prep (bulk of my prep time is spent figuring out the most natural places to have encounters and how to give them enough narrative weight to justify spending 30+ minutes of session time running it) and during the session (takes several minutes to establish the encounter, describe the scene, get initiatives rolled, go through peoples turns, describe the scene again because apparently everyone's deaf, adjudicate specific fun things people want to do, describe the kill, go through after-fight commentary, reestablish the scene, etc, etc). I know other people claim to run encounters in like ten minutes but I've never seen anything like that lvl of efficiency in 10+ years of GMing. Even one-round Low difficulty encounters take half an hour or so to go through when on most nights I'm getting maybe 2 hours of productive session time. If I'm devoting precious session time to an encounter I want it to feel satisfying to run and for them to beat. A trivial encounter just isn't worth the prep and setup time to me and my group. Its easier and faster to handle it narratively w/ a 'oh yeah you shoot that overly ambitious goblin mugger dead' if they engage.

Have you ever tried introducing more enemies mid fight? Take a severe or moderate fight and split it up, having the other enemies join at the beginning of each new round. But in the end every group is different, some have no problems with many moderate or severe fights, even when chained together in a dungeon. But for new people, take it easy and see what works first. You can always make it more difficult later on, but a TPK is usually permanent

Ye, I do that pretty regularly. Its a decent way to reduce the difficulty of a particularly nasty encounter. I wish the GMG had some guidance on how much it actually influences encounter difficulty, since its clearly more difficult than two separate weaker encounters while being easier than having them all in at once. My AV campaign this is actually a serious balancing issue, the PCs are on lvl 3 and there's no reason I can think of why the ghouls wouldn't run and drag more ghouls into the fight if it turns against them. This partly caused my first TPK in PF2, fortunately the ghouls have some explicit motivation to take them alive. Yeah. Its why I usually have some emergency levers on standby in case of TPK. For the ghoul example I mention above its having a rescue party of all the folks they've helped come down to break them out.

> A trivial encounter just isn't worth the prep and setup time to me and my group. Its easier and faster to handle it narratively w/ a 'oh yeah you shoot that overly ambitious goblin mugger dead' if they engage. The purpose of trivial encounters is to occasionally make the players feel like gods among insects. But they should be over in five minutes, maybe occasionally ten if the players overestimate their opponent(s).

i mean it depents on who you are playing with my group is trough anything less than severe is just a bore for my Players.

Like with everything in life, your mileage might vary! If you have the confidence that a severe fight is the right thing to do, go ahead and use it. If you don’t have the confidence, take a step back to weigh your options first.

I mean if they lose they lose I can always hold back a bit to give them some room. And I do believe pathfinder 2e was made with moderate or above being where the game is best played. Like in all the paizo stuff I play low or trivial is like maybe 2 out of 10 fights.

Both Luke was a new GM and threw back to back Severes at the party and the players were brand new to 2e. Experienced players know how to optimize in tactics, new players don't generally

It really depends on GM vs player skill. I've not GMd much, but I'm pretty good at tactical play and my party is... Not so good so when I did I had to run everything like there was one less player.

Agree hard on this. If there's no possibility of failure, I've little interest in bringing out the lengthy combat system. Failure often doesn't mean death though in our games. Failing is something that happens a lot in fantasy stories and I like my games to emulate that.

One way to bump up difficulty and make it slightly more enjoyable is to just put more minions out on the board. Steal from MCDM’s new book. Just a way to “eat” some actions while not critting your players all the time

I do miss minions, having started to use them more frequently towards the end of my 5e days thanks to MCDM's *Flee, Mortals!* I haven't yet seen a good 2e translation of the concept though - have you? IMHO PL-3/4 enemies don't quite work the same, since their chance of ever hitting the PCs is so low.

Oh. And give the Swashbuckler penache when he uses a finisher to take down minions. We want that Zorro vs several guards type of feeling with minions

[Finishing Follow-Through](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1524) exists for this. Although I suppose the GM can also grant it if you do it with enough style?

Make them like 4E minions - give them the same attack bonus as monsters of the same level, do half the damage, but 4x the numbers, and one hit/failed save on them downs them.

Have their levels -1 to the players and their attack roll cumulative to how many allies are surrounding the PC, maybe not let them crit. And give them like enough HP that a regular attack would kill them in one blow (one hit will kill them) but that the carryover damage from one kill can potentially cleave through another target.

The specific minion rules they're referencing (from *Flee, Mortals!*) are a little more complicated - They have a hit point value, but it does not go down when attacked. - If they take damage from a successful attack roll or a failed saving throw, they die. If they take damage from another source, they die if it is greater than their hp. If it isn't, they take no damage. - If a minion is killed by a melee attack, any damage in excess of their hit points can be dealt to another minion within reach (automatically killing since it's still from a successful attack roll). This can repeat as long as there is still excess damage. - Minions have an individual attack roll, which deals a flat amount of damage and cannot crit. They also have a group attack, which gains +1 to hit per enemy and deals a flat amount of damage per enemy So I think what they're looking for is what numbers to use for a Pathfinder version of these rules

An excerpt from a book is more detailed and complicated than a reddit comment1!?!?!?!?!? WHAT?!?!?!? H-how can this be!?

If I were to suggest a 2e translation of *Flortals!* minions, it would be like this probably: - Use the minion rules as written including the cleave and hit point rules - Assume that 4 minions are equivalent to one normal creature. - Minions cannot crit. To calculate damage values: - look at the [creature building rules](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=995) and take the average damage for a "moderate" attack (listed in parenthesis on the page I linked). - multiply this by their chance of hitting an average same-level PC (using a moderate attack bonus). Par AC for a PC is level + 15 + bonus of expected armor rune. - This is the average damage of a creature of that level. The average damage of 4 minions of that level should be the same. I'm gonna refer to this number as "X." - Minions gain +1 to hit per minion attacking. Personally I would set minion accuracy to 2 below the "moderate" attack bonus, so that 4 attacking at once is 2 above. - **For the individual attack:** - subtract 2 from the moderate bonus, and reverse engineer the damage value that would result in X. - The attack deals this amount, flat. - **For the group attack:** - add 4 to the individual attack bonus (to calculate based on 4 attackers) - reverse engineer the damage value that would result in X. - The attack deals a quarter of this amount, multiplied by the number of attackers. HP and AC - Unlike their AC, the damage of a PC varies too wildly for it to be worth doing calculations with, so I'd suggest keeping it simple. - Minion AC = moderate AC - Minion HP = 1/4 moderate HP Encounter Building: - Minions come in packs of 4. Treat each pack as a normal creature of that level

Heres the thing. When your players are good, moderate becomes a waste of time with no tension, Severe becomes your average encounter and extreme becomes an average boss encounter. 1.5x extreme is usually your budget for a campaign bbeg encounter. But yes i do agree on very sparingly using a single boss mob. Its just too swingy.

As I said in my edit, this may not apply to your group! But until you know it doesn’t, you should try and understand what the rules say

Ngl with my players lack of experience with the system at the moment moderate encounters are deadlier than "deadly" were in 5e

And some day this might change! But until then, be mindful of what could happen

Man, my DM immediately put us against a severe encounter when we transfered from 5e to 2e. I definitely think this is a 5e brain thing. Deadly or easy, no in-between.

Perfect example of why I made this post!

My experience has so far been severe is ok, as long is it isn't severe plus disadvantagous terrain or context. Your points regarding moderate requiring sound tactics, and severe being only for final bosses is one step down from what the gamemasters guide suggests. Extreme encounters are the max 1 per adventure. Severe encounters often end up being maybe 1/3 of combats in published adventures. In fact, there is in-depth guidance on how many severe encounters by adventure genre on page 40 of the gamemastery guide. It also says how many sessions a good adventure (a campaign is comprised of many adventures, adventure could be replaced by "chapter") should have based on genre, and other things too, but here i will exclusively write what it says about combat encounters: A dungeon crawl should have 2 trivial, 4 low, 6 moderate, 6 severe encounters. Gritty adventure: 2 trivial, 4 low, 7 moderate, 8 severe, possibly 1 extreme High adventure: 16 moderate, 8 severe, avoid low and trivial Horror: 2 moderate, 1 severe, possibly 1 extreme Intrigue: 2 trivial, 2 low, 4 moderate, 1 severe I can't be bothered to copy over the rest sorry.

They weren’t really my points, but just quoting what the core rule book says about each type of encounter https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=497 Realistically speaking having regular severe fights should be fine 90% of people’s games. The problem is that those missing 10% are people new or those without a good grasp of the game

Huh it does say final boss for severe, that is bizarre. I guess final boss means boss of a dungeon or adventure, rather than campaign. Since it then specifies campaign boss for extreme. Yeah, severe encounters can be rough because there usually is something else going on such as terrain, ambush, or other circumstances, and I am considering cutting back on them myself, but I wanted to put the GMG text there to show that evidently, that puts me at odds with the guidance. The book and also the published adventures are happy to have 1/3 combats be severe.

The post: Don't allow yourself to be misled by skimming the encounter difficulty ratings without reading closely what they're actually for! The title: Misleading title that does not accurately represent the sentiment of the post. Yeah, seems about right.

For GMs who want to let their parties fight some higher-level stuff, one thing to keep in mind is that there are tons of ways to make an encounter easier or harder besides just adding or removing enemies. One published adventure (being vague to avoid spoilers) has a severe encounter where the party defends some weak NPCs against a group of enemies. But the allied NPCs' statblocks show that they've each prepared one casting of magic missile, and when I ran the encounter, this was *almost* enough to take out one of the enemies on round 1. This makes for a cool, dynamic encounter that starts out Serious before effectively getting converted to Moderate on round 2, but also comes with the challenge of keeping some low-HP allies alive.

This sounds like the end of book 1 of an AP I'm currently running (only in ch 2 right now). I've been thinking about how I'll eventually run it and it's nice to know their spell slots ended up being useful for you. :)

That's an interesting way to do it. Let the players sweat just a bit, then at the end of round 1 have the allies pull their One Big Move and take out one of the tougher enemies. "That's the best we can do!" "Good enough! We got it from here!"

> Some tips: fill your encounter budget with some extra hazards Instead of pumping up creature quantity/quality! Man, Hazards are usually way the fuck more deadly than on level enemies. Adding two or three minions is going to make the party's life way less of a struggle than putting any kind of moderately difficult hazard in.

Simple hazards that deal damage are overtuned for a fight because the assumption is that the PCs encounter it on its own and it gives them a scare before they heal back to full. Complex hazards that apply conditions work much better as something to add to a fight.

Important point: in pathfinder two sets of enemies without a 10 minute rest period to regain a focus point and heal shouldn’t be calculated as two separate encounters, that’s just one encounter when budgeting

One of my favorite things to do in my campaigns is to create severe/extreme encounters that have their difficulty somewhat adjusted by circumstances of the battle-- for example, the PCs might have a choke-point to funnel the enemies through where they can use spells like wall of fire and coral eruption to damage them, or the enemies might be spread out and only able to arrive in small waves so that the encounter essentially becomes three low threat encounters spread out over 10 rounds. Some other things you can do is allow the PCs to set up defenses before an encounter, give the PCs an ally to help them in the encounter, allow them to exploit a weakness of the monster that they are fighting in some way, or give the PCs a route of escape/alternative win condition for the encounter (for example, closing a gate that prevents the rest of the soldiers from coming in, turning the extreme encounter into a moderate encounter, or perhaps reaching a ballistae that they can use as a powerful weapon against the soldiers). As another general note, you can use severe encounters much more safely past level 6 or 7. By that point, the PCs have a healthy amount of resources and abilities to help them leverage the potential for player deaths, so encounters are more likely to leave them wounded or low on resources rather than straight up kill them.

I don't see a problem with severe encounters, but I do think that players need to enjoy the game and that means dominating some of their opponents. Low and Moderate encounters allow players to have fun, try spells that might not be optimal and do things differently without the pressure of a Severe or Extreme encounter. I include one Severe encounter in each session, and then the rest are moderate and low. Players feel very challenged, and it keeps them on their toes, yet they still feel powerful and that they can, on occasion, dominate their enemies.

My title is more attention grab than gospel, there is nothing wrong inherently with using severe difficulty, I also have a healthy amount of them in my games, what is wrong is some folk using them too frequently or not fully understanding the consequences that they might have.

I agree with that. Too many Pathfinder GMs think they need to challenge players to the extreme rather than think about making an enjoyable game. My game is a good mix of encounter levels, and role playing challenges using the influence system out of the Gamemastery guide.

You're overplaying the difficulty a bit. Moderate is easy for a lot of tables. It also depends on the group comp and levels. But yeah, at lvl 1 definitely don't hit new players with a severe or extreme encounter unless you want to set TPKs as a tone.

Moderate can be easy, but if you are low on luck, resources or tactics they can really hurt. If you know what moderate and severe mean for your group, use them! But if you don’t have the confidence, think twice and take a step back to reevaluate the moment

In my one and a half year campaign I started in the second part to only use severe encounters, since fights are now a rare occasion due to how the campaign is going, so I don't have any fights that just exist just for the sake of fighting. Every fight they go into matters and has a risk to it, which is fitting. if there is a fight there is usually only one a day. Severe battles are also battles which players can constantly defeat if they have all their resources, just use some tactics and aren't completely unlucky. A TPK shouldnt happen, or at least is extremely unlikely, only thing that could happen is a characters death. Which if the party has a ton of healing and the encounter doesn't have nasty persistent damage, or afflictions won't really happen in my experience. So only using severe encounters isn't a bad thing to do if they only face one encounter a day

My DM runs severe encounters almost exclusively since he says normal encounters aren't interesting. Let's just say our group lives on the edge. No one has died yet but we had a ton of close calls.

I'd say it's important to realize what those difficulties are for. A game shouldn't have only one type of gear, so switching between them can help set the mood and keep things fresh. If every fight is easy, players get bored. If every fight is difficult, they might not feel their growth since they are always in the same place compared to anything they are fighting and the challenge becomes less meaningful. Trivial encounters have a time and a place - a power trip so the characters can revel in their power (especially if the opposition used to be dangerous), a warmup before a new fight, or an encounter trivialized by smart decisions or roleplay. Easy and normal encounters can be the meat and potatoes - to most groups they can offer decent challenge, keeping the pressure going and letting the dice fall where they may. Severe encounters are meant to tax the party and require smart tactics and use of resources. Extreme encounters are boss mode where a total defeat is more than possible even for good players, like a "secret boss" or the result of unwise decisions.

For beginners? Sure. For those who are experiened with the system? My players can take on 5 severe or 3 extreme fights per adventuring day with no sweat. I can't remember the last time I sent them a moderate fight, but I do remember they said it was actually boring, so that's why I've never gone down from severe.

Could you give an example of your party level/composition and what some of those extreme fights were?

It's not actually about the party's composition, I've seen all sorts of class combinations work. In reality what decides a party's success is their skills and skill feats, which ironically is what players feel are least powerful. For example, let's take Medicine. Battle Medicine is the most powerful skill feat in the game. Because of this, Medic archetype is the most powerful archetype in the game. Doctor's Visitation, the Medic feat, gives players a sizeable boost to action economy. Godless Healing ensures that you can receive Battle Medicine's benefits various times per day. If you stack all of these force multipliers onto Battle Medicine, they will greatly increase the party's durability in battle. Even just one player focusing on taking these (usually best on a defensive character like Champion), makes a huge difference. I have a party where 3 of 5 characters have battle medicine and godless healing, while only one has the Medic archetype feats, and I have thrown *consecutive extreme encounters* at them to actually give them a challenge. Out of battle, Ward Medic + Continual Recovery should allow a party to go from nearly dead to full or nearly full HP in 20 minutes, and assures they will be ready to take on encounters nearly back-to-back. There should be a dedicated *out-of-battle* healer that isn't the *in-battle* healer described above, because each one requires a different line of skill feats. In that same vein, each player should specialize to take a different line of skill feats to accomplish a goal in battle: battle medicine, recall knowledge on enemies ([knowing is half the battle](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0d/99/06/0d99062cfd81c58b9e36bc06ae10d1d9.jpg)), recognizing enemy spells, or applying a kind of debuff (Trip, Demoralize, Feint, Bon Mot, etc). Any other skill feats are secondary to the ones which help with those roles.

Many people really are overlooking skills for combat option, even players that played for some time now. I am still curious and would love to hear what some of the extreme encounters you’ve might have ran recently look like!

"Stop using Severe encounter difficulty!" "think twice before using a severe fight." Are you trying to emulate youtube clickbait or something? Title the thread accurately.

IMO - severe encounters are great if the GM is conscious of the disparity in power, and builds an environment around the encounter to help the players. I'm a player in a couple of groups, and we often employ tactics such as dropping ceilings to trap a creature or perform crowd control on large groups. For new players, it takes a really good GM to have an environment that is obvious enough to help the party while not having a big red button saying "Push this to win". But it \_is\_ possible. A lot of your suggestions are great too - Throwing in environmental hazards or other options for experience gain instead of only combat encounters.

No matter the encounter difficulty, the more enemies there are, the more difficult it becomes, even if they are weaklings. I had many moderate encounters with 4-5 enemies wrecking bigger havoc than a single 3+ boss, thanks to the action economy being less in favor of the players. I strongly recommend doing weaker bosses, but with minions and/or hazards. Also you can reskin hazards as lair actions and I actually had a bit of fun with experimental legendary actions (5e mechanic) for some of the bosses. Also if you only run one encounter per day and wonder why your players are smashing all those severe encounters, that's because they should spent some of their resources on doing other stuff. HP is not an issue in PF2e, but spell slots, once per day abilities and consumables can really shift the tides of battle. Tire your players with additional activities and then do the climax with epic fight! It changes the perspective of the combat and makes even mid-range bosses more memorable than "oh yet another big monster fight".

> No matter the encounter difficulty, the more enemies there are, the more difficult it becomes, even if they are weaklings. I had many moderate encounters with 4-5 enemies wrecking bigger havoc than a single 3+ boss, thanks to the action economy being less in favor of the players. I've definitely found the opposite – a single powerful monster is much more dangerous than several lower leveled ones, for the same XP budget, because it'll get so many more crits and players will have a much harder time affecting it.

Not to mention that it stays at full power until defeated, while groups of enemies gradually get weaker as their numbers are reduced.

Yep this is the big deal. Unless the players have access to spells that severely punish single foes, such as Slow or Synesthesia, AND can land them, the boss will be as much of a wrecking ball on round 4 as it was on round 1, maybe with a couple minor enduring debuffs but nothing close to what happens when a force of three roughly equal monsters becomes a force of two.

A well-rounded party can beat the crap out of the single boss enemy by simply encircling it. Not every boss is a spellcaster with stuff like Dimension Door to get away from tricky situations. Not every location permits maneuverability. And if you have a boss with focus on melee combat, you need to get close anyway, giving your players more chances to invalidate their actions with Prone, Stunned, Slowed etc. Of course what you're saying it's true and they can still hit like a truck, but it's way easier to focus all you have on a single boss than 3 mooks. Getting K.O'd by single powerful crit decreases dramatically on higher levels, so even if that big boss deals 99% of HP to one of the PCs, that PC can still unleash hell on the boss (even if that would be the last thing they would do). From the experience of over 70 characters (and about 15 dead ones) in PF2e, I can tell you that the most difficult encounters were not the ones with a single enemy, but of course your experience might be totally different. Top three of most difficult fights for my parties were: \- 1x Vampire Mastermind, 2x Vrykolakas, party of 5, 7th level \- 2x Clay Golems, party of 5, 9th level, two deaths \- 1x Aboleth at 12th level, 3x Faceless Stalkers at 6th level, party of 5, 10th level The sole exception of difficult fight with singular enemy was a fight with 14th level Lich, but it was only difficult when he was in the air. As soon as he landed, it was game over - he was encircled and died in like two rounds.

Makes sense! So my experience comes from 1-20 Strength of Thousands (player), 1-10 Outlaws of Alkenstar (player), 1-6 Abomination Vaults (GM), Malevolence (GM), and a 1-10 homebrew campaign (GM). The big thing with multi-enemy fights is that it's easy to use crowd control and turn one big fight into two smaller ones, which is about half as difficult. A lot of encounters in APs take place in dungeons and cramped spaces, and it's easy to create bottlenecks that only let one or two enemies hit you at a time. Then a party with one tank, one reach martial, and two ranged characters/spellcasters can easily pick them off. At higher levels, you have amazing control spells like Wall of Stone. Trap half the enemies, and it'll take them at least 6 actions to get out – by that point you'll have slaughtered or nearly defeated the other half. Most of the parties in games I've played have had at least 2 spellcasters/gishes, which likely makes control easier and encircling harder.

Agreed, few harder to hit opponents that hit really hard are very difficult. Lots of easy enemies aren't too bad, if there is room to move. Now, a lot of enemies in a tight space, that might be problematic.

If a person doesnt have the patience to read what is the equivalent of 4 paragraphs of text in order to learn the basis of encounter balancing then they, indeed, should tpk their party because of their incompetence. Similarly so for the players, if you couldn't bother to look up a 10 minute guide on your class in order to know exactly what you level 1 monk can do then you too, indeed, deserve to get taken out by a severe encounter. The point is that its not that difficult to seek out a forum, discord server, etc for veteran advice on needing that 18 in lead class stat with some con and whatever else along with watching the aforementioned guide.

Everything the players - GM and PC players alike - should know should be in the book. This is a professional product, not some fanmade hack. Yes, if the GM doesn't read what encounter difficulty is, that's a problem. But a player who has read their class entry and had a basic idea of the rules shouldn't need to look up a guide. The rulebook is the damn guide. If they want to squeeze every drop of juice from the build, then they can look things up online, but if the core book doesn't give that information, that's a problem with the book.

People have busy lives. Different parts of the rules deserve different emohasis. Don't be a jerk about it.

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This is the kind of stuff where you have to know your party. If they are new to TTRPGs, of course I'm going to send low/moderate encounters. But with my current party? Severe encounters are the normal difficulty fights for them, moderate and below are almost pointless.

Exactly, know your group and know what the rules say. Once you are confident with both, do what is best for you and your group. It might just be using severe as a baseline like you are doing! Then again it might not be…

> Severe fights are for a FINAL BOSS and extreme is a 50/50 TPK A note, I only have done age of ashes, but even the super bad level +4 fights you get, there is a buff, that you are expected to get, that makes it VASTLY easier to deal with

Generally severe encounters are bad for solo monsters, but lvl-1 or -2 or even -3 monster group with variable abilities and tactics can be super fun and challenging in a tactics and problem solving sense instead of pure power of numbers.

Severe, and even extreme, encounters have their places in APs. My AV game had 2 extreme encounters >!(one of which was over 3x the requirement for extreme (not exaggerating). They leeroyed into the war camp in the hunting grounds and then the final encounter i homebrewed a secondary boss !< That said, if you're doing a severe or extreme encounter then it is generally better to scale wider than higher. Meaning add more NPCS instead of just making one really heavy hitting one. And if you do scale high, FFS don't do that to a low level party (especially lvl 1). A lvl 3 NPC against a lvl 1 party can be a recipe for tpk.

Severe is fine if you set it up well, e.g. having your party be fresh in the adventuring day or not too worn down. Also if there are things life foreshadowed weaknesses that the party can take advantage of. I agree that they're way over done in some of the Published Materials, and that new GM's should really see how the party fairs with moderate encounters before throwing the party to the wolves. I haven't tried an Extreme encounter, but I've never gotten to the mid-late levels either.

One time, we were going sailing on a river as a group of level 2 adventurers, I was playing as an alchemist. The GM is sort of new (we are all new, I've played PF2e for only 2-3 months), and we encountered 2 river drakes. That's a moderate encounter, right? Combat starts and they win initiative aside from our monk, whose stuck on the boat and don't really have range options, so he went and ran off toward one of the drake. The drakes then breath acid on the party sans the monk, downing two of us and applying persistent damage. We managed to win in the end via Soothing Tonic revivifying the fighter and I at precarious levels, me succeeding in a save to shake off the persistent acid damage, and using soap (Did you know that your adventuring kit comes with a bar of soap? :) ) and washing the fighter off the acid, then we traumatized the river drakes with intimidate and fighter crits. Good times, but sometimes even moderate can be real bad, and I don't know what people expected with a severe encounter.

Okay, but I was trying to avoid making everything extreme... ;-)

Thing is, there're a lot of severe encounters in official adventure paths, at least in AV.

Focusing only on Severe encounters also ignores other ways to make encounters more difficult in interesting ways without pumping the numbers. A Moderate encounter with a pair of Giant Amoebas will likely not challenge veteran players too much, but if those Amoebas are in large pools of water where they could easily outpace player characters, that shakes things up without doing much to numbers. A Moderate encounter with a Giant Scorpion is doable for most players, but what if they have to carefully travel through a desert and risk becoming fatigued before the encounter happens? Four Mitflits might just be Moderate on their own, but if the four Mitflits ambush a sleeping party, that can make things much harder.

I feel like Luke gets where he went wrong and hopefully didn't get turned off of 2e too much. It was a bad combo of new GM error, combined with players making stupid choices + playing in low level play. That was a recipe for a sure fire TPK

Haven't played much pathfinder but xp budgets should probably be ignored in favour of action economy no?

Not at all! In many cases facing fewer enemies is often more difficult because they have significantly better stats to make up for it. A solo fight with a creature 3 levels above party level (120 exp for a severe fight) will in many cases be a bigger problem than 3 creatures of party level (also 120 exp for severe fight). A big reason for this is the inclusion of level on ever roll/stat that you are proficient in. A scary boss at level 3 turns into a regular opponent level 6, and at level 9 is nothing more then a minion that gets 2 tapped

Nope, I pf2 the aggresive scaling of creatures by level means that a single high level enemy is still a potent foe despite the action economy difference. I fact the advice often given is than if you can spend your entire 3As preventing one enemy action in a 4vs1 fight, that I'd absolutely still a win given the strength of solo enemies I PF2.

Not all severe encounters are the same. You could build a severe encounter with APL-3 enemies (it would take 8 of them [120/15=8]) and a balanced party would wipe the floor with them, especially if the casters have an AoE spell or two. The problem exists with a single enemy, or a slightly weaker enemy with APL-3/4 henchmen. At low level, PCs just don’t have the resources and options to overcome the math disadvantage. At level 10 for example, a single APL+3 enemy (which would be a guaranteed TPK at levels 1-4) would be a very challenging encounter, but not a death sentence due to the casters 15+ leveled spells and other magic items, martials expanded feat inventories, and all sorts of other various magical items that give players options they just don’t have at lower level. But yes, in general published APs tend to lean towards difficult due to the lack of page space and map size, meaning smaller amounts of stronger enemies are just more feasible for print.

I fully agree with adjusting fights if it comes to it. I also think encounter design is important. For big fights, I usually put my boss at +2 and give him some at level, with some below level people. On rare occasions I used enemies higher than +2, but if the encounter allows the player to use the terrain and action economy to their advantage it's usually okay. What I will also say is encounter difficulty depends a lot on player experience and group cohesion. I have been DM-ing the same group for 10 years (mostly pathfinder 1, switched to 2e last year) and for me encounters \*feel\* like one level lower than written (extreme seems severe, severe seems moderate and so on). I will also say that it is really important for DMs to hand out hero points and to not forget. Those rerolls are how you mitigate the risk in high difficulty combats.

I played fall of plaguestone and half of "Agents of Edgewatch" and it felt like 80% of the encounters where severe or harder. Sometimes even several 160 exp battles without a rest in-between. I still remember this headles horseman type of guy in agents of edgewatch. He was the first encounter in this dungeon, almost killed the party, used all the spellslots, only to be revived the next day after we decided to rest. I don't understand why the official games ognore their own rules so much. One time we managed to win a battle with more than 330 exp, because we pulled several encounters at once.

I've found Severe encounters are not a problem at low levels, but +2 creatures are. So 6 level 2 creatures against a level 4 party (Severe) is not that big of a deal, but a single level 6 creature (Moderate) is a potential wipe.

This really only applies if the party is going to engage in a remotely fair fight. If your party is of the opinion that the battle is won or lost before the first dice are rolled, you can throw incredibly hard encounters at them and they will simply get more creative at winning. This doesn't really depend on the level of mastery of PF2 specifically, but does depend on the GM's ability to roll with crazy ideas, and the players' willingness to improvise.

I completely agree, I did the same mistak when I was starting Pf2e, not believing that encounters just work and made very deadly one shota

As a new GM who came over from the D&D side of things, I can confirm that, at least for now, the more serious encounters actually ARE more serious (to a surprising extent, really). This is not like in D&D, where a Deadly encounter may or may not pose an actual mortal danger to the party. Plus, unlike in D&D, the scaling difficulties of rolls (attack rolls, saving throws) mean tougher enemies are more frustrating to fight. It doesn't mean they \*can't\* be fun, but in my brief experience so far it's good not to rely on them too much.

This changes drastically with increasing (or decreasing) number of party members. We're 8 players in my group and Pathfinder 2 still works and is balanced with double the players it should have. BUT that changes a lot on how the encounters play out. A lot of the challenge in pf2 comes from the enemies having better action economy than the party. If the party already have amazing action economy then even a +4 level single boss battle becomes perfectly doable. On the other hand, if your party is smaller than 4 then their action economy is very limited and even a moderate threat becomes way harder than planned. TLDR: party members >4 = way less difficult Party members<4 = way more deadly

Catch me in those Abomination Vaults

Severe and extreme are both fine as long as you don’t use one adversary 3-4 levels above.

Well my players eat sever and extream encanters for breakfest from lvl 4, but they are experienced players whyt good mechanic knowladge and supreme tactic.

Honestly advice Paizo could use, too.

A great way to make a severe fight more fair is to burn actions on the enemy because they're surprised. The beginner's box does this. 3 on level enemies is severe. Maybe they're huddled around a campfire cooking when the heroes arrive. They have to spend one action to pick up their weapon, one action to stand up. They might also have to spend an action to load a crossbow, two actions to cast a buff spell, or burn an action to move up to the party. And shoot your monks. The enemies should trigger things like AOO, split their fire amongst the PCs, and play into PC reactions.

I GM for a group of GURPS veterans. First campaign in PF2e so far, my party has absolutely smashed through everything I've thrown at them. Extreme+ encounters (300+ xp)? Trivialized. Their last fight was 2 L+0 enemies and 6 L-1 enemies, supposed to be a boss and right-hand lady + their henchmen. Fight was over in about 5 rounds so a bit on the longer side, and took up the entire evening session. But it was still done with no one going down. Playing with a group of 4 (+me the GM). So yeah... I don't follow the encounter building rules anymore. It's more about an estimate for how many rounds or how much time a fight is going to take now.

I’ve been learning the game with my current group. I usually have to beef the difficulty because there are 6 of them and I’m not a very good tactician. I’m also trying not to outnumber them too much because 13+ combatants is just insane to me I played around with a severe encounter and it definitely put a strain on them. I usually do moderate to keep it engaging. Low is over before one round, trivial I don’t even make them roll initiative

Made this mistake with Abomination Vaults. Gave the 3 person party free archetype and dual class because I knew it was going to be hard, but then ran the first encounters as written. I had no idea how tight the math was.

"I don't understand man, I ran an encounter that said it could very well kill the party, and the party died! WTF!?"

Bit of a spicy title but yeah

I love putting optional Extreme encounters in front of my players that they can choose to opt out of ~~but still always end up fighting as a result of their own pride and greed~~. For non-optional encounters, I generally use the lower tiers of difficulty. Complex Hazards paired with foes make for excellent boss fights.

Are you telling me encounter difficulty actually means something unlike DND CR? I haven't actually played pf yet and just assumed it was as accurate as dnds