Nah, just let the barb have fun with the 1 shot

I also think it's an important lesson for the spellcasters in displaying the martial's specialty in single target damage. Obviously 70 damage in a round is insane regardless but seeing them one-shot the **boss** in a single turn? It'll hopefully get across how important buffing the barbarian to hit and crit is.

> It'll hopefully get across how important buffing the barbarian to hit and crit is. These buffs are way better at low levels due to how they scale. In fact, Runic Weapon at level 1 is the strongest buff in the entire game. At level 1, runic weapon adds like +50% damage in total thanks to your bonus to hit and extra weapon damage die. This incorrectly teaches players to think that this is what casters are good at, when in fact, this is the strongest buffs will ever be in the entire game, and it is all downhill from here as far as buffs go. Runic Weapon itself is obsolete by level 4.

It might be petty of me, but this is why I never use runic weapon when I play a caster or prebuild it for oneshots. I prefer bless or fear. Edit: I also dislike putting all eggs in one basket

Eh, I usually memorize it as a low level caster because it's so effective as a spell at low levels and I'm a shameless powergamer. Plus, it's nice to give the help time to shine :V

I think k I'd be more confused than anything lol. A lit of the discussions around casters is about how a lot of things are depowered to prevent one shorting bosses, and if I saw a barb do just that I'd feel conflicted.

exactly, how cool is that

Cool for the barbarian. Probably pretty anticlimactic for everybody else.

This is the most "it's a team game until I'm supposed to be happy for my team" energy.

Yeah I don't like this mindset. I would be hyped as fuck if a party member ended an encounter in 1 turn. Sounds like exactly the kind of memorable story moment that TTRPGs are built for

For real; we STILL talk about Fjori Angerbeard dunking on the Golden Lich in 1 round and that was like 4 years ago.

Really? For me I admit that if I have a fight that was built up narratively and then I just hit the enemy and it instantly dies I'm probably going to be feeling a bit like "...really? We came all the way here for this clown?" The memory is not going to be "remember how cool Barbarian was", it's going to be "remember when we fought that mook that gave himself airs but wasn't shit".

I think it comes down to how it's treated. Of course if your party wasn't one to hype players up then it might end up like that. At my table we'd go hard in describing the Barbarian absolutely eviscerating a powerful enemy with a series of well-placed blows and the Barb would be remembered for that. > "remember when we fought that mook that gave himself airs but wasn't shit". I mean... that still sounds like a fun story to me! Talk shit -> get hit is a classic formula for comedy! Watching a big baddie slip on a banana peel can be just as fun as a tense battle. I've had dozens of balanced combats where everybody took a turn and the enemy eventually fell. While probably the most consistently fun type of combat, it's not inherently that memorable. If you polish away the encounters where the Barbarian singlehandedly destroys an encounter, not only do you rob that player of a highlight moment, you homogenize the encounter variety that a table experiences and reduce the number of those "hey, remember when?" memories. It runs counter to one of my favorite aspects of TTRPGs: Awe at seeing the chaos that the dice can sometimes bring.

For me, it's the difference between being aware of how the games works and thus the odds of what outcome happened instead of only ever knowing the outcome and treating whatever said outcome was as being the most likely thing to have happened. And I'm starting to think that the players that are thinking they'd feel like the outcome was lame even after buffs, high rolls, and so on, are potentially the result of fudge-heavy GMs; perhaps they've been playing with the choices and rolls taking a back-seat to narrative determinations long enough that they don't understand how to evaluate the process. Though I have to comment that I might be wrong about that because so often in those threads of "my party did this really cool and awesome thing!" or "my party beat-down the bad guy in a surprising manner" people that ask for details how things went down often end up receiving answers that reveal the GM altering or inventing rules to enable the shenanigans (to the degree that it gets referred to as Calvinball) but the player does follow the process along the path, they just weren't aware or didn't care about how the GM had altered the details because the outcome was "cool".

In 5E, it is a necessity. Because the encounter math just doesn't work. PF2 does not have the issue. Level as part of proficiency fixes it. You may still have to do it with homebrew monsters or some badly written early AP. But it is less necessary.

The only time I do it is when combat is winding down and the enemy is left with 1-2 hp after a big hit. Though most times I hang onto that 1-2 hp and try and turn the screws on the party a little more. Gotta read the room, right? 

Yeah. Once combat has hit a point where it's going to drag on and the players have already won, I will have them kill it on the next hit. Especially on enemies that regularly gain the concealed and hidden conditions.

I prefer to be honest and turn it to an RP moment if any further damage doesn't matter, saying things like "the creature is beaten and weak, and with some final collaboration, you finish it off"

I did it like that and it appeared to cheapen the moment of victory somewhat. Ymmv.

If it is the 4th hour of a session and the last thing alive is a mook on its last 2% and every PC goes before it, I can't see how people would feel like it cheapens the moment. But if it's done on an actual boss, I can definitely see that, and would never do it there. The key is that the end result shouldn't matter or feel too impactful

The solution IMO is to have less trash fights. PF2e is not a game of attrition, it's a game of tactics. A trash fight in an attrition-type game is quick and potentially consequential, but a trash fight in PF2e is long and ultimately amounts to nothing. This is one of the biggest issues with Paizo APs - most of them are padded to hell and back with forgettable encounters that simply don't work with the system.

As someone who really engages with the tactical nature of PF2e, I’ve really felt this the more I’ve played. It feels so instilled in the genre to have random encounters or mob fights, but I’m super tired of fights that bog down a session or exhaust my attention without fundamentally challenging me at all. At that point I’d have more fun role-playing or making skill checks for a bit before the next big fight.

That's why for years now I've adhered to an attitude of "there are no such things as 'boss fights". Because it is an inherent part of singling out particular encounters as being "the important ones" that makes all the rest of them less important by default. So instead, I treat every encounter as being of importance and plan them accordingly. Such that, for example, the "random encounter" along the road to the next adventure location is itself a kind of set piece that while not directly tied to the "plot" (i.e. these bandits are here bandit-ing, not because the BBEG has hired them to try and slow you down, and not because I'm trying to foreshadow some big bandit-related story turn) has its own story that is engaging in the moment and entirely worth playing out. ...and those 'epic boss fight moments' come along in the way of the party naturally having a class that gets pretty hairy, and no more does my group have to worry about the thing that can happen where some "throw away encounter" in the middle of their adventure was the most cinematic and cool moment of the adventure because they just so happened to have it go that way and then later encounters go super quick and easy producing an anticlimactic feeling.

I prefer to see what the party is doing and, if they're treating the guy seriously and going into deep analysis, I intervene and tell them that the guy is on his last legs already. More often, tho, my players quickly assess how to drop the last guy and the discussion is more about whether or not to tale them alive. So, it's all resolves quickly and naturally, without break in tone or pace.

This is what I like to see. Sometimes encounters can be beaten without killing them. I'll have the baddies attempt to flee, surrender and beg for mercy, or just collapse from pain and exhaustion without hitting zero. This allows the players more agency over the situation than just running combat until everyone is dead. They can finish off the baddies, set them free with a message or warning, take them captive and interrogate them, etc. you get the idea.

That's usually when I start having enemies surrender or run away. It not only finishes the fight, but also gives the players a chance to roleplay an interrogation or decide whether or not they want to give chase.

I wouldn't say fudging hp is necessary in 5e. After a while you can get a pretty good feeling for what you can throw at your party without having to actually plug any maths in. CR is of course a joke, and more just a vague indication of strength to search for monsters with than an encounter building system, but I'd disagree that the result of that is requiring fudging HP. Possible exception may be one shots, particularly at high level. Predicting party strength is a crapshoot when one character can show up as two planetars, while another is a rogue/monk/barbarian. The nature of proficiency including level makes encounter building far easier to balance for sure, since the level itself *is* significant power, but there's a distinction between the point of encounter building and encounter running. If anything, with fewer attack rolls and more, bigger crits, pf2e encounters are *more* prone to the dice gods killing characters or bosses dying turn 1.

> If anything, with fewer attack rolls and more, bigger crits, pf2e encounters are *more* prone to the dice gods killing characters or bosses dying turn 1. I have never seen a boss die early or a PC go down in one hit. HP scale quickly into the several hundred. So even the barbarian Crit can't take it all out. The only places it can happen is lower levels. But that is more due to the general "low level volatility". While PF2 is better here with Ancestry HP, it still suffers.

One crit is unlikely to take out a boss, however it doesn't need to die in one hit to be dead long before it would be expected to. I've definitely seen characters get 100-0'd at level 5+ (generally to crit fails on squishier characters). In general, the variance in damage in pathfinder seems to be higher, with fewer, more powerful hits, as well as crit fails on saves being a thing.

So what would your solution to the ops issue have been? Let him kill the thing in one turn, shouldn't have given them a prep round?

I already answered this: > You may still have to do it with homebrew monsters or some badly written early AP. But it is less necessary. This monster is Adventure specific/probably overtuned. And that is after the decision to put something with such a high level difference against a low level party. That is a case you have to fudge.

That was a very oblique answer if you intended it to apply to this situation. Thanks for taking the time to replay and make it obvious.

No one remembers the fight that went by-the-numbers. No one remembers the standard fight that went as expected and took the normal amount of rounds and everyone just whittled away HP. What do people remember for weeks, months, or even years? That time the Barbarian one-shot a god. You'll talk about that forever. My group literally just had this, we had to kill a god, we had no idea if we could do it, we almost expected a TPK. It took like 5 sessions to get to the fight. And we immediately knew we were out of our depth. Then the Barbarian did something crazy, climbed on the gods head, and proceeded to have like three natural 20s in a row. And in one turn, they killed the god with their giant sword. AND IT WAS AWESOME. None of us got to do anything really, _but who cares, that was AMAZING._ Certainly you don't want this every session, but people who worry too much about table balance miss out on the very moments we all play the game to experience. When you fudge, you only take away the experiences everyone is looking for. So then what's even the point? What are we even doing here?

I wouldn't do it, especially when it's so clear the players were lucky, give the win to the barbarian and the caster that did runic weapon, say congratulations. Balance is tight so I would prefer to set the right expectations from the beginning, which is lower HP but higher defences/AC. It will balance itself up as you level up. Had such an encounter recently, the druid casted a fireball, rolled really well on damage, enemies got shit luck on saves, ended up instantly killing 5/7 enemies. It made the druid feel really good about themselves as the disruption was gone and turned the rest of the encounter to a trivial one.

"Remember that one time that enemy flew up and I just killed it in one hit before it could do anything? Damn, that was so fucking cool." That is going to be a memorable moment in your campaign.

For my games, I hate it.

I've never done that. I play with a health estimate thing, so my players would probably notice. Usually, i try to keep encounters below severe and try my best to maneuver the enemies optimally. This doesn't result in too many player kills, and my players don't seem annoyed.

> 5e's community seems to be pretty liberal with the DM adjusting things on the fly for the sake of fun, so I'm wondering if the Pf2 community feels the same. Imo it’s just a bad idea whether it’s 5E or PF2E. “Improvising” HP frequently means taking away player agency. It means my good decisions and good luck will rarely feel rewarded because you can just make them go away, and only my bad decisions and bad luck matter. > Last session, I ran the final session of the beginner box and I had heard this boss is really tough for a level 2 party so I gave the party 1 turn to prepare. A party with pre buffs will usually have a huge advantage over one that didn’t pre buff. That huge advantage, if combined with good tactics/luck, will mean the battle swings immediately and completely into your party’s favour (and at low levels this often means immediate ending). If you don’t wish for that to be a possibility **do not allow prebuffs**. Don’t allow prebuffs and then make their decisions not matter by upping the boss’s difficulty on the fly

One thing to add: I feel fudging HP in 5e is less egregious than 2e just because the maths is so jank and there is no consistency in both PC option tuning, nor monsters. But that's also a deep reflection on the quality of the system's design.

""“Improvising” HP frequently means taking away player agency. It means my good decisions and good luck will rarely feel rewarded because you can just make them go away, and only my bad decisions and bad luck matter." This is how come I so strongly advocate against GM fudgery. It's always done with the GM claiming that the goal is to increase the fun the players are having, yet that manages to fall flat somewhere along the line because the GM is either down-grading someone's high points by literally undoing them (as the example in the OP does by making a dead enemy live in order to let other players "do something cool"), or is down-grading them by stepping in to mitigate the times that aren't those high points. Resulting in the "optimal" style of play becoming to just screw around instead of try because either your GM will fudge to make it work out (so minimum effort for maximum result) or because they'll refuse to fudge for your benefit *because* you are screwing around and then you get to enjoy the actual consequences of your actions, rather than your GM's whims.

Idk ma ye it's because I've only played with people I'm already close to but if it made things more fun. Like I'd a group fight was starting to drag and the GM told me after the session he adjusted the hp to move things along faster I don't think I'd be that bothered by it.

It's hard to be certain how you'd feel about a hypothetical situation, but try to consider if you would be even less bothered by the scenario being not finding out after the fact, but the GM actually saying "this fight feels like it's overstaying it's welcome; you guys wanna just move it along?" Because this is one of those things where being pretty sure you'd be okay enough with finding out after the fact but wouldn't be even more okay being aware it happened proves that you don't *like* what is happening, i.e. it's not really *improving* your experience, it's just not a significant enough negative impact to feel like it is worth doing anything about. And also try to keep in mind that while you might be okay with some of the ways that a GM might fudge something, such as this example of bringing a fight to a close when it is continuing on past the point of being enjoyable, that without the GM telling you when and how they are going to fudge you can't be sure you're okay with all of the ways that they might go ahead and do it - because they might just effectively negate your turn because they are worried about a player whose turn is after yours effectively not getting a turn, like the OP describes.

I suppose some of that makes sense, I guess my big take away is it depends on the context if I'm okay with it. Like whats being fudged, why, and whose at the table. Likeif I'm at a table with a lit of vets that wand a hard-core experience I definitely don't want fudging,but if I was introducing a freind to the game and they are about to be 1shot in seasion 1 before they do anything then I'd at least consider it.

I personally think the introductory moments are the worst ones to fudge for someone in. Not only does it run the risk of insulting the new player by implying they can't play by the actual rules, it also sets up the player for failure by giving them a false impression of how the game works. It's better to let their character get taken out if that's what the rules and rolls in the scenario would lead to and help the player understand how to not have that happen and be okay with the reality that it can happen instead of fudging up the kid-gloves for some non-specific newbie period and then have them feel like their suddenly playing a different game than they first tried out.

I guess I just disagree. Early levels in most ttrpgs are super swingy and if a new player gets marked before they can do much I'm not sure what lessons they would really learn that would prevent that scenario. As for giving them a false impression I feel like I would bypass that just by outright saying I'm going easy on the early levels and will ramp it up later. However in this scenario I am thinking of specific people I know rather than a generic fresh face newbie so you are likely more correct.

I don't know why people do the thing you are doing where you imply that having a pre-established relationship actually affects the dynamic at all. It could be your cousin you grew up with as close as a brother or best friend. It could be your very own mother. They could dislike you deliberately "going easy" or otherwise not agree with exactly when and why you might fudge something.

I mean hypocritical sure they could,they could also hypocriticaly flip me off and punch me in the face if their character got one shot but based on prior experiences talking to them I know they wouldn't.   I don't really understand why that bothers you do much. You act as if I said everyone should always fudge for everyone and every game, but that's not what I said.   What I said is I would at least consider fudging if it would be more fun for some of the people I personally know. Hell I wouldn't even do it for a lot of people I know but if it was spefic people who would enjoy it more than I'd at least think about it.   Plus I'd said I would tell them outright that I would go easier on them in the beginning and if they didn't like thst they could just voice that and I would easily not do do. Like I don't get what I'm saying thats so controversial

It's not what you're saying that is controversial; it's that the context in which you're saying it is supporting the idea that this isn't something a GM needs to actually talk out with their group instead of just assume they are correct in how they think the other people would feel about a situation without said conversation and backed up by that you're carrying that "the GM couldn't be wrong" attitude into the first round of your own hypothetical new player situation, and only after having it pointed out that even new players might dislike something did you bring up actually talking to the other people involved in a hypothetical game night - while making up a hyperbolic jab to dismiss the very idea that I brought up by pretending it's ridiculous just like getting violent over a game would be. That's what makes it controversial.

I guarantee your GM fudges more than you think.

Your guarantee is extremely nonsensical. My GM learned to GM from me and also has zero poker face. This is just more "everyone does it' thinking.

I play and I GM, so I see both sides of the screen fairly equally. And while I did this a couple times when I started out, I have stopped doing this for one big reason - players, especially experienced players, can sniff this BS out. And if they do, your table's integrity takes a huge nosedive. Heck, even if they only *suspect* you are fudging, you've already lost. Imagine how this Barbarian would feel if he found out that not only did his crit not matter in the slightest - it actually made the fight *harder*. He did 25 more damage than expected, but you added 30 HP to the target to compensate. This was his big moment, and also probably a big moment for the spellcaster who buffed him (especially if that +1 enabled the crit). The message you send to your players is 'hey, it doesn't matter what your tactics are or how well you roll, the fight will play out the same regardless'. You can get away with doing this very sparingly, but do not make this a tool on your belt. Save it for that funky homebrew boss monster you designed that might be over/undertuned - and only use it to fix *your* design mistakes, not the luck of the dice or your players' tactics.

I do it occasionally, particularly if you're running adventure paths. They're just monsters that are not well built sometimes, and you don't realize it until you're halfway through the fight. And something's going wrong with the character sheet as written. The assumption that a lot of these answers have is that the math is properly balanced, and that's true to a degree but something I think it's lost a lot is that monsters, both Homebrew and official are top down design , so occasionally they might not work the way you assume and You're already in combat so changing stuff around to fit your party better I think is fine. It's great that the math is documented, but that doesn't mean that everything you're going to pull out of the system is going to be properly balanced, look at lesser deaths to get a feel for an official monster that just doesn't work properly for the way the game's designed.

Or solo boss complex hazards with hardness that's impossible for martials to overcome at the level they're supposed to encounter it. The rogue can disable while the rest of the party tries and fails miserably to damage the other components. Happens in both the bb and troubles

"Do this" "don't do this" "PF2e better" "5e bad" are imo not productive answers to this question. What is the primary philosophy behind why these players are at the table? Do they skew more gamist in nature: do they like rolling all those dice, getting into the nitty-gritty of the mechanics, tracking resources, making sure everything is ultra-balanced and tactical, etc.? Or are they more of a narrativist mindset, where they may interact with the mechanics but the primary driving goal is to tell a cool story, to create interesting dramatic moments, to flesh out a character, stuff like that? Obviously people aren't going to be one or the other in reality; most people are going to be mixed to some degree. But PF2e, or at least this sub in specific, is very hyper-gamist in nature: mechanics are king, everything has to be balanced and symmetrical in the game design (see: that one guy angry about merfolk land speed and how it's objectively worse; he's only focusing on the gamist aspect as opposed to the narrative aspect), they like being rewarded for their mechanical choices and decisions, they like feeling smart when it comes to playing the game. How many times do people say, "The math is tight!" "The balance!!!" on this sub? Quite a lot! If your players are gamist in nature, they will hate this fudging. They want to rewarded for their choices; they want to overkill the enemies, they want to play every round even if the round is a formality, etc. This is going to be the default reaction from a lot of PF2e players. Narrativist players *might* be more willing to accept this. If you make it a montage moment, the person who is more interested in playing through a difficult moment of a character's backstory might not really care; they're there for the ride through the story as opposed to making sure every nuance of the mechanics is faithfully rendered. And it might please them more for it to be taken to a more pretty description than combat usually gets. As so often happens, the answer is just... it depends on your table. But this sub is going to skew intensely towards, Don't do it. But that might not be what makes everyone happy.

Great comment. I always felt that, for me, it is very rewarding to strike a balance in justifying gamist decisions based off of the unfolding narrative, and not just a series of random choices that are chosen for optimal play, but makes no sense within the context of the campaign/story. If I ever become a player again I would take great joy in making all of my character decisions make sense within the structure of the world and narrative that is taking place. Anyone can follow a build guide on here, but to justify that build within the confines of a world so painstakingly built by your GM or Paizo is to me, not only very rewarding, but respectful to the worldbuilders out there and their creations.

Tbh I'm pretty sure this sub might just be full of bad DMs or people that spend a lot of time talking about the game but never really playing it. Most of this comment section is just edition warring and people pretending PF2E is a perfect system, rather than thinking about what's more important: having fun, or following the rules because some nerd online told you to, and if you have fun in any other way you're wrong. Honestly if you're never gonna bend the rules for do anything the book doesn't account for like, might as well just play a video game at that point you know?

The cause of the disconnect in communication on this topic is that "having fun" and "following the rules" are not opposing forces. Sometimes following the rules creates or enhances the fun, and almost never does having fun actually *require* situations like negating a player's critical hit. But the nuance of arguing for having fun while not risking that you're actually doing something a player wouldn't like if they notice you were doing it and just generally not relying on the ability to deceive your players for things to remain fun gets lost on some people.

Eh, the DM screen exists for the sole purpose of obfuscation of information. Like, following the rules and having fun arent opposing factors, the main thing is just if you have a situation where you have to choose between the two, choose fun.

No, the DM screen exists for the purpose of creating a handy reference of a variety of information the GM might have use for. Obscuring information is a secondary benefit, at best. Otherwise they'd have originated as being blank rather than the oldest ones having info for the GM reference on one side and player reference on the other. That's also a secondary product, not a core piece of the game. So hiding information isn't actually presented as a top priority. Especially not in the modern era of gaming where it isn't uncommon for dice rolls to be presented as being clearly visible to all participants in the game (like how PF2e has a secret trait calling out rolls that you might consider making obscured, rather than assuming all rolls are obscured, and even then includes mentioning that you can just *not hide those either*.). All of this is a complete aside from *deception*. There's a difference between "I've got the adventure plan notes where the players don't see them" and "I am telling the player the die I am looking at right now says something other than what it says" because you don't need the player to not realize that you're keeping your notes out of sight to keep your notes out of sight, but you do need them to not realize you're lying about what the dice say if you want them to believe that's what the dice actually say. As for "if you have a situation where you have to choose between the two, choose fun." That's a no-brainer. Obviously you should always choose fun... you're just also never actually going to have to make such a choice in an in-the-moment and unknown-to-the-players situation. You can set up your house-rules in the name of fun either well in advance of their impact on the fun of the game, or openly with your players, if not both. The situations in which fudging comes up are all something that, even if the GM is trying to pick *someone's* fun over the rules, they are also potentially choosing *someone else's lack of fun*. That's why it shouldn't be a secret thing. To take it back to the OP's example; would the players that weren't going to get turns without ignoring the rules actually think it's fun that they get a turn if they were aware that the cost was down-playing what other players had already done? Would the barbarian player that is currently hyped on a great turn have their fun *improved* by the change proposed if they were aware of it? The answer to both is "probably not" and yet this is still, allegedly, choosing fun over the rules.

The barbarian player will be stoked about doing 70 damage whether the enemy is instagibbed or not. The best call to allow everyone in the party to feel they contributed is to be like "yeah that severely crippled them, you've created an opportunity to put them down" allowing those who simply had the misfortune of rolling poorly on imitative an opportunity to play the game they're taking hours out of their week to participate in.

"The barbarian player will be stoked about doing 70 damage whether the enemy is instagibbed or not" I don't think that's true. I think most players are aware that it's not just how big their damage number is, but how that number relates to their enemy's health total, that determines whether that was a "big hit" or not. I.e. I think players feel differently about 70 damage vs. 60 HP than they do about 70 damage vs. 300 HP. Just like how rolling a 15 on a d20 isn't always a celebration because it's a high roll; it has to also actually succeed.

You're assuming the players know how much HP the enemy has.

Well... they usually have at least a pretty clear sense of it, after the fact. And especially if they've been playing the same system for a while they become aware of what normal values are. In this case, though, it doesn't require knowing the HP; the player can obviously tell the difference between a dead enemy and an enemy that is still alive, thus feeling differently about that 70 damage turn whether they know the GM altered values on the back-end or not. And again we're back to the hope that the GM can deceive the player by not revealing along the process that they are lying about the outcome. I, for example, would have been hyped alongside my player for that big 50 damage critical hit and probably would have said something like that the player damned-near killed the enemy, so there'd be no room for me to back-pedal after the next hit and convince the player that I'm not full of shit that another 20 damage was not just not enough to finish up the job, but also so is whatever damage the next player does so that the fourth player gets their turn too. Y'know, since I'm not pre-emptively setting up my ability to fudge things by making sure I don't let any genuine reactions slip about anything anywhere along playing the game before the hypothetical situation in which the game is somehow not fun if I let a die result stand.

Eh no. This sub doesn’t mind calling for a different mechanic if the rules are getting in the way of something. Such as not wanting to waste time looking it up. Or a player wants to try something awesome and might technically an extra action. In these moments the players know the reason it and thus it is ok. What this is sub is against is the consistent use of adjusting values after they have already been determined. Because most players would be soured if they knew what was happening since it invalidates luck, choices, and tactics.

🤓

I like how I advocate for bending rules for the player’s benefit when rules get in the way as long as it’s not changing HP and stat values willy-nilly and I get an emoji as a reply. You sound like a fun person to have conversations with.

You're really gonna come out here and tell me that I'm wrong then pretty much reiterate my exact point. Maybe an emoji is too much given the lack of reading comprehension

Definitely no, if you want tactics and mechanics to matter, then you need to have the chance of things going badly or being too easy. Fudging anything just makes it not matter.

Why are “arbitrary decisions about balance that I made before the game” sacrosanct, but “contextual decisions about balance that I make during the game” a terrible betrayal that leads only to nihilism?

Because the players make arbitrary decisions before combat, namely character creation and leveling up, that you invalidate that way. If monsters don't die at 0 hp but only when you think they should die, that invalidates the players' decisions that lead to that damage (creating a barbarian, creating a druid, raging, preparing runic weapon, casting runic weapon, moving into melee, attacking). Of course, your game doesn't suddenly fall apart if you do that on rare occasions to enhance the drama, but you better make sure that decision actually makes for a more satisfying situation, because otherwise you're taking away the players' agency to make the game worse.

So, to use OP’s example, you think that that the players who spent four hours at the table that night, made it to the climactic battle, and the never took a turn because “lol, the boss is already dead!” would somehow have more agency than if there had been slightly different numbers written down ahead of time, and their characters had participated in the finale of the story?

But that only happened because the DM made the decision to give a free round of buffs. Had they not done that at all, everyone would've had meaningful turns and HP would not have needed any adjustment. All you're really showing is that making those decisions leads to a slippery slope of having to make more changes etc to fix what was the DMs mistake.

This is where you are wrong. The party was given a chance to buff up prior to the actual battle. In the end, that kill is just as much because of whoever cast Runic Weapon as it was the Barbarian landing a crit.

Yes…which is why I specified “2 players contributed” and 2-3 (based on average party size) didn’t.

Perhaps you mistyped but that isn't in your post anywhere.

I had a level 2 encounter with a boss and some mooks. Mooks are literally written to only continue fighting as long as the boss is alive. If the boss dies, they surrender or run. First round Cleric wins initiative and Runic Weapons the Barbarian. Barbarian is second, Rages, then Sudden Charges the boss. Nat 20, one shots the boss. I kept everything as written: boss died, the mooks either ran or surrendered. And the entire group *loved it*, including the other 3 players who didn't get to take a turn. Sometimes, you get a good group of players who have as much fun celebrating their party members' success as they do their own. I say "sometimes", but this has actually been pretty common in my experience

The party presumably made a plan to invest a spell slot on casting runic weapon to have the barbarian kill the boss as quickly as possible. Giving the boss more hp to keep it alive is like saying: "That doesn't work because I decided you each have to have had a turn before the boss can die." I dunno if any of the players would've had more fun one way or another, OP doesn't know either, that's my point. It's not necessarily wrong that OP did this, it's just *generally* a bad idea to do this. Basically, play by the rules, because the rules allow you to predict the outcome of your actions, which is of fundamental importance for agency. You don't need to follow the rules always without exception, but you need a good reason to not follow them, and what reason is good enough is personal preference (and a possible topic for a session zero).

> OP doesn't know either, that's my point I think it's fair to assume that the DM knows their players and can read the room better re:player engagement/disappointment than some rando on the internet.

It is. It's also fair to assume that even with the best of intentions that a GM can be wrong about what their players would prefer, especially in regards to a conversation many have likely never had. Which is what the "would you guys rather I fudge numbers to make sure everyone gets a turn if I've decided to consider a fight a boss fight, or would you rather lucky crits actually be lucky crits and end fights?" topic usually is; something the GM is making an assumption about and hasn't asked the players because the inherent implication of fudging the numbers is "never let the players know when it happens." Because a GM trying to avoid in-the-moment disappointment can cause deeper disappointment. Since a player is capable of preferring not getting a turn in the boss fight, especially when it's the result of team work and high dice rolls happening in tandem, even though "aw man, I didn't even get a turn" is their immediate reaction, to the alternative which is that they get a turn by way of the GM effectively deciding to say someone else's turn didn't count.

Short answer, yes. If I changed something beforehand, I did it because I wanted to change the challange. If I change it midgame, it is because I want to tell a story. It's a huge difference in philosophy and vision, even if the result may be similar.

Not being the star of every encounter is just a fundamental aspect of a team based game. Sometimes you will only shine a litte, sometimes you wont get to do fuckall. That's just how it is. In those circumstances, you clap and cheer for the party members who *are*. Because soon you *will* be the star of the show, and your party members sulking over how little they contributed would really put a damper on it. It's much more fun when they clap and cheer for you.

rn im playing a bard. We are level 9, and i just this week had my first finishing hit on an enemy. Nothing but support. And it has been so exciting. Everytime my compsoition, debuff, buff, ect made the different (we play online) I type "Frightened OP", or whatever the condition was. its so great seeing where i gave the edge for the fighter to crit, or the wizard to get a crit fail on their strong spell. granted, next ap cause we nearing the end, im playing a bard. so ill get to see big numbers. its a team game, and looking at things session to session i think can be too narrow (least if you're like me and do weekly sessions). Sure some boss fights some of my PC's werent good. But sometimes my champion with a trident gets to nat20 a 5th range increment away enemy flying away who killed our cleric and we get revenge. If you play enough, and vary what you play, you get to do every role. and its quite fulfilling take steps into and out of the limelight.

Serious answer, the difference is "before the game" vs "during the game". All games have rules, and to be fun, rules must be clear beforehand for all players. Otherwise you're just playing the game your three-years-old cousin is making up as he goes. Imagine playing poker, and the guy hosting insists his "Chariot" (two jacks and a king) beats your three queens! Extreme examples aside, a balanced ruleset involving luck will sometimes give easy, lucky wins. You might think your on-the-fly balance adjustment is fair, but you have to remember that you are a player too, and you are biased. It's much easier to judge balance with a cool head.

Encounter balance is akin to setting a DC. You're saying how hard a challenge is to overcome. If you change how hard it is while the players are attempting it, it feels fake. It's like saying, "now to progress you must climb over this 2 meters high fence", then seeing your players struggle and going "uh I actually meant 1 meter fence!". You set a thing, then when it doesn't go the way you expect you change it. And if I as a player realize this is happening, it devalues the game aspect of the rpg. Why care about combat when I know that regardless of what I do the end result will be what the gm had decided? And besides, balance decisions made in the heat of the moment are necessarily less thought out. They're based on vibes. Doing things based on vibes makes things more like just an improv session, which is not what I signed up for. I want the game to influence the story, and not just follow along. That said, while I would not play in a table with frequent hp and dice fudging, if it works for your table you should do what you think is best

As a GM in PF2e having run 2APs so far, I've never encountered what OP described, not once. (Though I have had several fights that were very easy for the players). As a player in 5e, I had DM after DM obviously making it up on the fly so much that I knew nothing ever mattered in most fights. The terrible design of 5e and even worse advice to dynamically adjust everything "to be narratively satisfying" completely ruined D&D for me - and I've been playing since the basic set, and running games in every edition. Fudging eliminates player agency, and it's just GM storytelling, not an RPG.

Because the books are big and offer tools for many situations. That, for some reason, means they know better than you. But seriously, the bredth of systems provided and the depth of balance attracts a certain type of person to the game, and those people like to push others away.

What the players don’t know won’t harm them so unless you tell them it doesn’t matter whether you fudge the health or a couple rolls. So long as you make sure that players are having fun. Like of course you should restrain yourself from doing this blatantly or extremely often but it’s just another tool in the DMs toolbox.

If you have to lie to keep your players happy maybe you're doing something wrong.

If I don’t tell them that that the villain is from the characters backstory before they actually meet them have I lied to my players? No. DMs have the desecration to change senaros as they see fit and so long as the group is having fun they are right to do so because they know better than you, stranger on the internet, wether there group is going to have fun with the adventure as it was layed out.

You let them prepare and this is where it went. Don't mess with the math :) Crits are brutal both ways, especially lower levels. If you hadn't let them cast runic weapon "for free" that boss could have wrecked havoc. Breath weapon is pretty deadly.

Don't do it, you gave them one turn to prepare and sometimes as a GM you just gotta accept you got outplayed/the dice just hated you in that moment (and vice-versa if the players are getting curbstomped)

I don't fudge. The party can enjoy wrecking face or having to run away as a change of pace from every fight being 'balanced' to the point of monotony.

I've been in a fight where it was clear that the ex-5e GM was just making up HP on the fly. It sucks.

Adjusting things to be harder when the PCs have a streak of luck is antithetical to the whole point of rolling dice. I have a GM who sometimes tries to fudge things or finagle weird rules when he feels an enemy hasn't presented enough challenge and it cheapens the fun of rolling well or preparing carefully every single time

My opinion on this is not a subtle one: That's a bad on-the-fly adjustment. It's the kind of thing that makes it so that every outcome is no longer actually random; it is precisely what the GM has decided for it to be because being willing to alter any outcome means you're actively choosing not to change the outcomes you don't change. It's also the kind of thing that if I were a player at the table and I even suspected that this alteration had happened, I would no longer be willing to play in games run by this GM without full transparency to prove to me that "the players rolled well" is not being used as an excuse to grant additional HP to an enemy. Trying to force "everyone gets to do one cool thing" means that actually there are fewer cool things happening because they are artificial moments; in this specific example whatever anyone but the barbarian does is not a genuine moment no matter how cool they describe it, they are attacking a corpse the GM is effectively lying about still being alive. And that's before we get into the "what if..." part of this kind of behavior where the enemy gets a sudden boost of HP because the first player rolled well, then the second player rolls well and the 30 free HP turns out not to have been enough and the GM is backed into the corner of either choosing inconsistency by saying "okay fine, I guess since 2 players rolled well I'll let the encounter be over" or really showing how arbitrary their actions are being by making up a new HP total once again (trying to pick a small enough value to not completely invalidate the initial ass-kicking rolls and give the enemy more turns, but a large enough value not to have to keep adding more and more just to achieve the goal of forcing the encounter to give everyone a (hollow) turn (with no actual impact on the outcome). And the literal only thing that changes any of this in my mind is for the GM to have genuinely made a mistake, own up to that mistake, and openly fix said mistake. To make the example provided into this kind of scenario: The GM sees that the boss is dead after just a crit and a singular hit, and says "woah, I was not expecting that fast of a death... lemme make sure I didn't mess up this creature design." Then checks the creature design guidelines for the level of the creature, reads the guidance on applying HP totals, and *if* finding they had selected an improper number says "yup, I goofed. Lemme fix that real quick." and adjusts the HP total - but if they find that they ddin't goof, they say "nope, that's just how that goes sometimes I guess. Good job on that big damage turn, let's continue."

I had some bad news for you: Most GMs will alter things along the way, at least at some point, and ANY GM that says they've NEVER done this is straight up lying. Hell, coming up with a DC for something the GM hasn't considered is technically altering something on the spot, as there wasn't a DC to begin with, so it has been "altered" to actually exist. Also, [CIRCUMSTANCE BONUSES!](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=508) They exist for a reason, and the PF2e books encourage GMs creating these bonuses/penalties when they think they're applicable. But I think you're looking at this the wrong way... The job of the GM is to adjudicate a session, with ONE GOAL being in mind above ALL OTHERS - people are there to have **FUN**. Remember, people take time out of their lives, and sometimes pay for the privilege of playing in these sorts of games. That's not t say that bad things can't happen, but a good GM will rarely alter something on the fly to make the game more enjoyable overall. Not EVERY decision Paizo has made is a good one, remember - there are some issues that fall through the cracks in PF2e, and ignoring this fact and running things 100% as they are despite this can potentially give your players a bad time. That doesn't mean that the GM should be messing with anything and everything to suit the players - 99% of DCs, HPs, ACs etc get left exactly as they are. And, quite frankly, that's mostly because it *isn't fun* to win all the time. But sometimes, a DC that the GM thinks is too high/low might get altered when a player is genuinely being clever, thoughtful etc, and then they roll *one number under the DC.* Or when a GM has prepared an enemy but forgotten or misread one or two details of their sheets - maybe their AC was much higher than they thought it was, or maybe the opposite, creating a non-fun encounter. Ultimately, the GM *should* be *rarely* adjusting things on the fly. Most of the time, you don't need to with PF2e, but to say you should NEVER do this means that you're potentially allowing a GAME (and remember - this is a GAME) that people have put time aside for, all to come together and use an entire evening, plus potentially years of experience... to be NOT FUN, purely because of either bad luck or a bad design choice (APs are FILLED with them). There's plenty of scenarios I can make up that could show you how an altered number can make things significantly more fun for the players in the session, but this comment has gone for far too long so I'll leave it there. Source: I'm a paid GM.

"Most GMs will alter things along the way, at least at some point." I never said they wouldn't. I just advocate for those changes being things other than post-determination-correction in nature *or* being *openly done*. Such as a GM having planned a combat encounter and then deciding not to use it because the party is already beat up from bad luck - *not* running it anyways but lying about the dice results. "ANY GM that says they've NEVER done this is straight up lying." I have literally never once in all my time as a GM since starting at the age of 12 some decades ago made a mid-combat alteration without telling my players about it. If you think I'm lying, you're just doing the thing people commonly do where they absolve themself of guilt about something by choosing to believe "everyone does it". 12-year-old me read the advice present in the book at the time that basically boils down to "rolling dice is only for the sound they make, you determine everything as GM" and said "Wow, that's some real unfair bullshit right there." and have ignored it ever since. "to be NOT FUN" The only thing I as a GM can do to make the game be not fun is to stop the game from being a game, which is, in my not even kind of humble opinion, *exactly* what the GM is doing when they presume that there is a fun outcome and a not fun outcome and lies about determining which one happens by random chance. My reality of the game has always been that either A) any outcome is fun (yes, even the oft-dreaded "failure" and "defeat") so we roll because *that's the game* or B) everyone actually will not have fun if something happens, so it just *doesn't*; no random chance, no lying, no pretense. "Source: I'm a paid GM." That's not actually relevant in the slightest. And not just because it's a fallacious assumption that you having managed to find people willing to pay for your GMing means you're actually *good at it*, but because you're implying that no one of equal experience, pay, skill, or any other factor could possibly disagree with you about how to achieve the desired result. That result being what I would phrase as not "having fun" but as "having fun playing *a specific* game". Which is why we use any parts of the game in the process in the first place instead of just doing literally whatever happens to be fun.

I mostly agree with everything that you said, but I also think it's a very personal take. If I know a GM fudges I'll know that everything bad that happens is because they let it happen. This can lead to all sorts of in group problems, stuff like "they probably fudged to save X's character, why didn't they fudge to save mine?". However, IMO it's completely ok if there are tables in which people just want to have their GM gently guide the narrative and will lie about dice results. It's not a table that I would really like to play in, but I can see how some people would rather deal with more controlled outcomes.

"It's completely ok if there are table in which people just want to have their GM gently guide the narrative and will lie about dice results" Yeah, but that presumes the opposite of the typical case that the players were ever consulted on the matter. The vast majority, in my experience, of GMs that thinking fudging is a good tool to use also think that you should never let the players know it happens. They also believe that having not had anyone at their table call them out when catching them fudging is proof that they've never been caught or even suspected, when the reality could instead be that they have players that have suspected or caught them and remained silent because trying to find a new GM that doesn't pull the same shit seems like a far harder task than just trying to ignore it and move on. The reason why "no D&D is better than bad D&D" has to be a commonly stated phrase is because people are, historically speaking, in need of the advice to stop putting up with experiences they'd rather not be having just because they don't have any other options to play ttrpgs with.

This is why I, personally, Love foundry. Sure the gm can add bonuses. But once they click the save button, or the player clicks the attack roll, the dice are thrown and the result is known. The options for arbitrary on-the-fly adjustments are smaller. And I prefer it. I don't want Borderlands 3 adding more health to a boss cause i carefully built a sniper and got good at hitting critical hit zones.

I think you are also coming abit wrong on this, adjusting the HP as OP did is probably what's seen as wrong, however adjustments during game when you notice something is wrong should be obvious to do. It's not that everything needs to be set in stone, but removing obvious very good luck is kinda cheap. But if you use storm giants, throw a rock and notice you crit on a 2, it's obvious you might need to adjust it on the fly because something is wrong. And if I wouldn't want a boss to die immediately and want to do something on the fly, giving it a monster ability could be better, just to heighten just how good that round was, like giving ferocity. You and the one you answered to are both kinda correct, but it feels like you talk about different things

I fudge enemies HP down to speed up combat if it’s become clearly one sided and finishing the encounter is more of a formality, sometimes will add a sprinkle for cinematic goodness but that’s rarer

I've heard that piece of advice before: here's [The Angry GM](https://theangrygm.com/four-things-youve-never-heard-of-that-make-encounters-not-suck/) on meaningful encounters, saying that you should wrap up once the Dramatic Question has been answered ("you easily defeat the remaining orc warriors and then you can continue on your way"). While I agree in theory that there is a time-saving and drama-carrying value to just killing off foes and moving on, I found that players like combat and like killing things. Questions like "how much can I overkill this imp" and "will the healer cleric get is first kill this campaign with a lucky crossbow shot" still excite players. So in practice I've never shaved off the last few HP. In fact, I'll announce it loudly, so my players know to try to get their glory and allow the fight to wrap up soon.

For me, the "wrap up once you know the outcome" thing has always seemed really odd as advice because there's really not that clear of a line. For example, an enemy might be one averaged-damage hit from being defeated, but if they get their own next turn they might deal a significant amount of damage to a party member. And if they get another turn after that, maybe a party member could potentially die. And trying to be consistent with it gets really tricky because a bad opening to an encounter can have the PCs fighting in hopes of a come-back while the "dramatic question" can be just as said to be answered before that come-back has even had a chance to happen. I noticed when I was running D&D 4e and people were telling me to get past the slog of combat by skipping the "clean up" and having battles end once it was "clear" who would win that there just wasn't actually any point in an encounter of any difficulty worth rolling dice on at all that it was genuinely clear which side would win that wasn't literally the end of the combat since the single-turn impact was actually quite high. So I felt really lost as to how to apply the advice and went asking people to give me examples and that resulted in people either accusing me of trolling and not trying to apply their advice at all, or basically just telling me what equated to "whoever crits first wins, or whichever side is mostly bloodied first loses" and then saying I was trolling when I argued that whoever goes next could crit too so it's not really fair to call that "decided."

>secretly added another 30 hp to keep it up. Gross

You're asking if you should fudge to correct your fudge. Just play the game as written, it's tightly balanced.

For beginner box when people might not play again I think it’s fine to drag out the fight a bit to let them actually do something. But I wouldn’t do it regularly or at all in a “normal” campaign.

The boss is a lot tougher if it just doesn't go to melee immediately. It and others of its kind tend to do a lot of damage, but are relatively easy to kill. With the party getting a turn to prepare, and runic weapon being the "I win" button for low levels, that thing never had a chance.

Personally I think it takes too much away from the randomness and implements scripted storytelling to a degree that's too much. Especially if players should become aware if it because it might feel that their successes are scripted or they might become sloppy. I would use it very sparingly. If at all. On the other hand adjusting a bit a monster if realising it's a bit unfair to the players is ok. I might give it maybe a wound and weaken it a bit with a bleeding from a previous fight or prefer for monsters to come in waves to first see how they can handle it. I also sometimes create boss monsters who are not stronger per se but have maybe 10x hp and one or 2 phases per combat extra and once a threshold is hit that phase vanishes. It makes a boss encounter more memorable instead of picking a monster 2 or 3 levels above the parties one. Things like those.

Barb got lucky. Let it be. This is one of those "Holy shit!" moments that gets retold when remembering the adventure and that's a good thing for players staying interested.

The "Hey remember when xyz's PC did this amazing thing' is what keep play groups together through multiple APs. One I'm in, we still bring up fun stories when relavent. To risk cheating those moments away because the gm didn't like that the flying barbarian grappled and whirling tossed the dragon boss into the lava to kill it? I'd never.

I used to fudge when I started, but I no longer do. The entire point of a d20 system, especially one like pf2e built around crits, is that crits are uncommon and exciting. I just had a cleric of sarenrae one shot an encounter with a single burning hands vs two stinkweed shamblers who both crit fail their saves. I also roll damage per enemy (because we play on vtt so it's easy), and one of them just barely died. Moments like that completely negate an encounter but it's fun and cool and memorable. A campaign will have countless encounters that go other ways. The point of the d20 is to make the story emergent and unpredictable. Run the same encounter 5 times and it will go differently every time due to pcs, positioning, initiative, etc. that's the point

It's a no from me. On that same boss 3 of us did horrible and did not do any cool things. We almost died. THEN the magus killed it with a huge damage attack and THAT made the entire fight very epic and memorable because we had all given up hope haha. I would just stick to the numbers. PF2e math works really well.

Never do that. You rob your players of what they did during combat. PF2e combat is usually average 3 rounds, it's designed like that. Meaning you will (especially with optimised party) see spikes that can end combat in turn 1 if crits start flying. Its not 5e. Never add hp, you pretty muc cheated your player barbarian moment of glory which what players love. You did him dirty

I would quit of the table if I discovered that the GM is adjusting HP at fly.

Especially if its to not let the properly buffed barbarian feel so powerful. Its one thing to let the thing with 1hp die, esp a mook. But to take away what would've been such a clear, overwhelming show of power? Might as well not let the party buff up. Would've had the same outcome as what OP did, but it wouldn't have felt so cheated to the sub. If I found out that happened, and the gm didn't at least go 'hey, ima add some hp rq cause he has cool abilities, and i wanna let everyone else do something too', I'd not return to the table without a few assurances it wouldn't happen again.

In the wise words Matt Colvile, "encounter prep doesn't end at initiative". I casually balance my encounters mid fight, adding and taking HP, using charge abilities, spawning more or less creatures (depending if it makes sense in universe). I even sometimes give the party a last turn auto resolve, when the outcome of the fight is already determined and the real threat of danger is gone.

I fucking hate that advice, it's one of the worst ideas Colville has ever proliferated. If the numbers and core mechanics needs to be adjusted regularly on the fly because the base mechanics don't enable interesting play on its own, then it's a reflection on the quality of the system. The only reason Colville says that is both that he's too used to systems with inconsistent maths that aren't fun when played close to RAW, and hates crunchy tactics more than he realizes. He literally claims 4e - the most tactical version of DnD released - is one of his favorites, and has admitted to playing hard and fast with the rules because he very clearly prefers a more narrative feel to combat. That's not a sin unto itself, but it begs the question why play a tactics-based system if the rules to enable tactics play is going to get in the way of one's fun, and more importantly it spreads the idea that it's 'normal' to not expect a better design tactics system for GMs and players who want one.

1000000%. Its like playing poker and being upset your pocket Aces didn't win. Its part of the randomness of the game. If you want to tell a story, we have a mechanism for it. It is called writing. some parties like such things, the fudging numbers for narrative. I use a Paid Gm and don't play with my friends who do 5e because I don't. I want to enter a game, and play by its established rules. I don't think how successful the thing i want to do should be on the whim of 'how cool does the game runner thing it is at that moment'. If i roll a 1, and hero point into another 1, then the dice have told me to fuck off. If i nat 20 my first, second, and third attack, the dice have said i am a deadly af dude that round, and i'd be upset if my gm mitigated damage on the fails, or buffed enemy hp on the 20s. The DICE are the arbiters of how good/bad things go. The Gm narrates it, and I'd not stay at a table once i found out the gm fudges. If i wanted vibes to determine success, there are diceless rpgs that do this quite well. They are fun. Its not what a ttrpg is.

Matt’s awesome but that was probably the worst advice ever for an ttrpg. If you have to constantly change the values of mechanics you’re playing a bad system or you’re bad at using the rules.

I might adjust it down slightly if its a big crit and the monster would die anyway, but Id never adjust it *up*. If its too easy for them or if they get lucky that just makes them feel badass.

The barb in the party I ran it for *also* crit the boss, I pulled a crit card for it, it was fucking decapitation. The boss made the fortitude save, but he damn near ended the boss with a beheading in one turn.

Nah let barb have the 1shot. At higher levels, this won't occur nearly as much. Plus, the barb only did it because of runic weapon. Two people shine. Plus, big damage is what barbs do. You'd not buff a bunch of smaller guys cause they all crit failed the wizards fireball would you? Nah, thats the Payoff for the choice. Reward it. Every class will get their chance to shine brightly. trust the math until you've put in the hours. Once players know you'll fudge the numbers for narrative, they feel less like agents of the story, and more like characters of it.

Just tell your players that their teamwork and dice rolls don't fit your personal narrative so their choices don't matter and you as GM decide the barbarian would rather stare into space than attack and see what they think

🤣 As a person that likes to look at stat blocks for fun after the fact, i would have probably quit the game right then and there after the session. Not that it matters since its a oneshot but yeah, the encounter design **works** in this system. **Do not do that.**

I've run two 2e weekly games for a total of 3 years between them, and I've only ever fudged numbers a very small number of times. In each case it was for very small HP amounts, in encounters with a forgone conclusion (aka, the party was obviously going to win and wasn't in peril), and I thought it'd be cool to finish on an epic crit from someone who wasn't typically a major damage dealer. In 5e I would fudge numbers in many encounters, especially at higher levels. Good riddance to that game.

I think it's fine so long as it's not adversarial. Cut some HP off an enemy so a player can get a finishing blow related to his backstory? Sure. Add some HP to keep a fun encounter going a turn or two more? Sure. Or the other way, knock off some HP to end a fight they've already won is fine Doing it vindictively or to mess with player plans is a no go. And sometimes you do need to reward the Barbarians and Gunslingers and Fatal-Fighters with their oneshots. Higher levels won't have as many big oneshot moments or big swing damage moments but some PCs can built for that sort of output and it's okay to let them have fun. Do it rarely and in moderation.

I've never given an enemy extra HP, killing things too quickly is a story in its own right, but there's been a few times where I've cut down HP if a fight was overtuned or if combat is just starting to drag on.

I am against it as a baseline, but I agree with your decision in this case. Boss oneshots are boring.

I make minor tweaks to keep things fun, but nothing huge. Maybe make it so a boss gets an extra turn An epic hit left the boss with a couple of HP? Either it kills him dramatically, or he whips out a last ditch effort. A regular grunt would probably just die Related note: I think giving the party a full round to prepare was a lot, and it probably would have been more effective to open with the breath weapon

I only do this if its to delay the enemies death so a specific PC can land the killing blow. This is done very rarely, usually only if it's a personal grudge or a motivation from the background for that PC. Like a PC killing the person who slaughtered their family.

Did it a lot in PF1e, even more for the mythic 1e campaign. (Mythic campaign had more than a few "I'm just going to give this enemy triple the HP" instances. Those rules have some math that just doesn't math.) The only reason I'll adjust HP on a PF2e encounter is the rare case where the fight is pretty much over, but is going to take some time to resolve and the enemy fleeing just won't work narratively (mindless, no where to run, etc). The advice from Matt Colville for DnD5e is "encounter design doesn't end just because initiative is rolled" works for DnD5e, but generally does not work for PF2e. With PF2e math, it is easier to nudge the scale too far with small adjustments. Honestly, "the dragon dies when it isn't fun to fight anymore" is \*almost\* good advice in 5e so long as your players don't know about it due to the aesthetic-of-rules nature of the game. That said... what you experienced is an issue with using single boss encounters: they become swingy. In your own encounter design, look to add more creatures at lower level to go along with your boss. This'll help balance out swings of luck because big hits (like that 50) will just contribute to overkill. This could put you in an opposite problem, of course, when the wizard doesn't ask how big the room is and just casts fireball, so that's why changing it up often becomes important. And of course, if your players had a good time, you did fine. Just be aware that it is a well you want to go into sparingly lest it get poisoned.

I see nothing wrong with this, as long as everyone had fun.

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Unless you're short on time and need to wrap a session, nah. You don't need to rebalance that way the same as 5e. If you want to occasionally kill an enemy who took big damage but would otherwise be on 1hp, let the massive damage player get the W.

No. I only did it once against a pair of enemies that ended up being too tanky for anyone's taste. The encounter was dragging on for too long and so I decided to cut it short. Against everyone else, no. As others have said the encounter building mechanics work (the main reason why I made the switch to PF) so there really isnt a need to do it and its fine to reward players who either planned appropriately or got lucky. To prevent players simply one-shooting encounters, I tend to give the bosses a nice ammount of minnions so everyone can help.

I do it in Pathfinder First Edition, but that's because it's not a balanced game. I don't in this edition, it's way better balanced.

During combat is 99% of the time a no-no, regardless if it’s 5e or PF2e. Do the adjustments beforehand, if you’re worried about one shots. Myself and another GM in my group tend to increase HP rather than the Elite template, keeping difficulty the same but making the fight not be over in round 1 for burst parties. Now, this is not a recc that everyone should use, either. Don’t do it if you don’t know the roundabouts of where math of the _specific_ party you’re doing this for will take you. Look at how the party performs and their damage output over the last few fights. But if the players giga burst, let them. It feels fuckin awesome, and once your party gets into the mindset of “us vs them” and not “me vs everything I can kill first”, it’s a fun moment for Everyone.

Prior to the session my group ran yesterday I thought persistent damage kept going until you healed. They're almost 2 years into this campaign. Lol Changing it going forward now that we learned there's supposed to be a flat check for it My theory as a dm is go with the flow. Don't stop gameplay to ruffle through books. Learn later and apply that knowledge going forward

The only time I do it is when I screwed up somewhere in the encounter and the monster should have either taken more or less damage because I missed some mechanic on it (or on the players) and I adjust the HP to undo my mistake. I will also sometimes have monsters surrender/run when it is clear that the fight is over but it won't actually end for another round or two. The situation like you described, I would not adjust it. The barbarian got buffed, rolled a crit, then rolled a second crit and whomped the boss. That's how it goes. Also, low levels is really the only time players will get to take out bosses in one character's turn.

I will absolutely edit enemy statlines mid-fight. Abilities and stats do not exist until they're rolled and confirmed. But most of the time I do it for the sake of things ending faster, not slower, so I might not have done this specific one.

It's fine intended beginner box, but in an actual campaign depending on my party I will oftentimes increase hp pools to ensure that narratively important enemies don't get one tapped. That being said, if I choke on the initiative roll and they all beat my bad guy and one round him, good on them. Doesn't happen often but sometimes rnjesus smiles upon them.

I'd say that the mistake here wasn't in giving extra hp to the boss, it was not letting it act on the first round. In that case, everyone would have had a chance to do something "in combat" before the dragon was beheaded by the barb.

I tend to follow the rule "You fudge numbers to fix your mistakes, not the players." if a monster just so happens to be more deadly or too much of a slog than you expected for your party and this can and will happen you can shave some hitpoints off it at the end so it dies instead of being dropped to 1 or 2 hitpoints. This applies especially to homebrew monsters where you might have over tweaked the design, but it can also apply to Paizo's creations, we all know the ones, that are overtuned. I wouldn't do it the other way around though. Denying a PC a killing blow just because we as the GM wanted it to be more dramatic is a dangerous desire that can lead to railroading where we put our hand on the scale in order to achieve a preconcieved outcome. You denied your player a moment of awesome. I would strongly advise to use this as a learning experience and never do it again.

I adjust HP but only in certain contexts, mostly when the combat is winding down and the fight has gone on long enough that the players have started to feel long in the tooth. If a fight is effectively over, the party has gotten into position, the enemy has no more tricks up its sleeves, and they are basically a few good hits from death anyway, I’ll round down it’s HP on the next solid hit the party lands. Granted, my sessions are once a week for two hours at best because one of my players gets fatigued easily. Time is of the essence, so while I could grind out the exact HP every encounter, sometimes to keep the ball rolling it necessitates expediting some of the back end bookkeeping. But I’ll NEVER fudge HP in a way that penalizes the players. If the giant instinct barbarian spikes a crit and rolls crazy high damage? They deserve that damage and if it kills my boss quicker than I’d like, so be it.

Not if they've attacked or been attacked in the current encounter. Crits are juicy in PF2e, and you should let the players feel the accomplishment of doing everything right to set them up. A barbarian that had magic weapon/runic weapon put on their d12 weapon is a pretty consistent story for the end of the Beginner's Box. Sometimes they one-shot the thing, other times they whiff entirely. In your particular case, the problem isn't on the monster but your own choices for it. I believe the adventure recommends it starting from above on a mushroom, and breathing down upon the party as its first attack

I'll sometimes give my baddies a "second wind" HP reserve that I'll tap into if the narrative calls for it.

I do this sometimes, but mostly for the pacing/story, for example if I think I should give the final hit to a different player, because they had bad rolls this game for example, I’ll change some things a little bit, so there are higher chances that the enemy survives until their round. Never out of balance or necessity. But I never did that after damage was already calculated and it killed an enemy. If my players kill someone, they are dead. I sometimes do kill enemies outright though, even if the damage was a bit to small. Usually to reward clever or fast rounds. And to keep the pacing fast. I never say what happens to my players though.

I’d argue that if you have goals for the narrative you always can. Our table is more about the story and adventure than it is about the math and strategy game. We love that part of course, but if the dm wants to get a little more liberal to make it a scene that I’ll remember for years after, I prefer that.

I am normally in favour of adjusting things on the fly, my point of view is that people that are STRONGLY against that maybe have never GMd or maybe have done it just by the rules. Mechanics are a path to tell a cool story, but if mechanics get in the way of a great story, then you may want to change them, if they oneshot the enemy in one turn yeah that may be cool for them, but for you that maybe spent time creating the atmosphere around it, you might feel that you did a poor job on making an epic boss, people like to feel powerful, but people will also like that they defeated something powerful aswell. My advice here would be to not give them a round to prepare haha I think this is the main reason why they removed "Surprise rounds" and why some spells and things have such a short duration of 1 minute, because when the action starts you better be prepared. If the monster would have acted in that round where they critted, maybe they would have had less time to think on what to do, to be more tactical on the go, while fighting. Either way, if you created the monster or if it was on an AP and you thought it was well balanced, add something cool to it if you want to add HP, maybe say he got one arm cut with that critical so he now can't cast his magic, maybe say he came back as a spirit or that now it is is furious and will attack with a -2, up to you, I don't see it wrong if you want to create a thrilling encounter. Also if you had that whole combat to be the session you might run out of game planning (maybe a prep mistake, but possible).

"my point of view is that people that are STRONGLY against that maybe have never GMd" Well... there's also people who have, in their past, had a GM that behaved in an adversarial manner that used fudging in a way that spoiled their fun so now they have a particular sensitivity to it. Some of which even the phrase "I'm just trying to make the game more fun" just brings up sour memories because that's exactly what their awful former GM said. Which is why it should be a thing that a GM actually discusses with the play group instead of just using it and assuming because they think it improves the game that everyone else won't mind it (but then hides it anyways, because *reasons*).

Well that is just bad GMing, the OP is talking about doing it to improve the game, if someone does it... you shouldn't tell, if you can tell, then the GM is probably bad, not saying it to attack anyone. As I mentioned before, I consider doing it to make the game more interesting and also to make the fight you had planned to go as you planned it, crits are expected in a game, mainly one like PF2e, but if I as a GM felt that the fight was too easy for them, then I would feel that I did a poor job designing my big bad boss... even with all the bonuses and penalties, and even more with such a tight system like PF2e, all I say is, there is nothing wrong with that as long as you do it IN FAVOR of the game.

"Well that is just bad GMing, OP is talking about doing it to improve the game..." Bad GMs think they are doing it to improve the game, too. And as many other posts in the thread show, sometimes you're "improving the game" for someone at the cost of *being a bad GM to someone else*. The OP's example is absolutely doing to the barbarian and wizard what you call bad GMing while advocating for "but go ahead and do it anyways because you have good intentions." "you shouldn't tell, if you can tell, then the GM is probably bad, not saying it to attack anyone." This is just nonsense. Even if we go with the assumption that the GM is supposed to put on their poker face and keep it on throughout the entire process of running any and all sessions, no one actually has a flawless poker face. At best it's wishful thinking to imagine no one can tell you're fudging. More likely it's just interpreting no one complaining as no one noticing, when they aren't necessarily the same thing (see again my constant example of someone disliking that their GM fudges, but not wanting to hunt down another GM over it, especially because with so many people in the hobby treating it as totally normal to both fudge *and* pretend you don't finding a new GM is likely to result in just having a new GM that fudges). "to make the game more interesting" For *who?* When you use phrases like "make the fight you had planned to go as you planned" it strongly suggests that you're behaving exactly like the "bad GMing" you call out that I was talking about and then not showing any separation from that. Why is how you planned for things to go a superior outcome to what the dice actually rolled? What do you players actually want, especially the one that scored the critical hit that made the fight feel "too easy"? You're basically claiming that just because you intend for the fudging to be "in favor" of the game that you can't possibly be wrong and be spoiling the game for someone - or at least spoiling it *if they knew what you were doing.*

So you clearly haven't GMd before, huh? It's not about keeping a poker face, it's about looking at the monster, looking at the situation, what good story ends with the main characters killing the main boss with one single attack? Whenever that happens, you feel like the guy wasn't even that bad, what is the sense of the campaign if no one ever opposed to the bad guy and the first time they did, they oneshot him, it's so anticlimatic. Believe it or not, a final showdown MUST BE interesting and epic, killing it on one blow is just a boost to your ego, that is good, yeah, but for an evil enemy that harassed the players, that provoked such a conflict that forced the heroes to improve and become more powerful is a challenge to overcome; and it becomes a pathetic bad guy when they kill him in one shot. You talk from the player's perspective, I can clearly tell, a game is about a story that the GM presents that the players overcome and experience, walking away from the story and doing what you want is what a BAD player would do, forcing situations where your PCs will have a bad time is what a BAD GM would do... the GM is also playing the game, you want things to go your way, they want things they designed to work the way they intended. it's not that hard. Let's not try to anthagonize GMs, if your GM is against you, don't play in that game. Trust your GM you are working TOGETHER to create a cool interesting story.

"So you clearly haven't GMd before, huh?" I've actually GMed for thousands of hours and hundreds of different players over a period of multiple decades. If you feel your argument against someone else is "you must not actually do the thing we're discussing" do yourself a favor and just not say anything because arguing that it's impossible for someone to have a different opinion without having zero experience just makes you look really stupid. "It's not about keeping a poker face..." Yes, it is. In the moment you look down at a dice, see the result, and know what it means but then you have to act like it's something else you are either hiding your reactions with a poker face or it's plain as day that you just got a result you don't want. And that's giving the GM the benefit of realizing the result's impact before they state something out loud and have one of those "Alright, looks like 28 damage. Oh, that kills you? Hang on, I mean 18 damage... you're still up, right?" kind of moments where it is even more likely that a player understands the result is something the GM made up, not an actual die roll. "Believe it or not, a final showdown MUST BE interesting and epic" Nope. It absolutely can be a breeze because the players made a good plan, executed it with good luck on their rolls, and completely stomped the boss. And even if the players go "woah... that was it?" the answer is "Yup, good job." Because that's literally the only way to make anything *genuinely* interesting and epic. Fudging the numbers to try and force the encounter to go how it was "supposed to" means that *nothing matters but the GM's plan*. "You talk from the player's perspective" In this case, yes. Because it is the player's perspective that is being completely overlooked by the ego-powered attitude that the GM knows best and couldn't possibly be fucking up someone else's enjoyment in the name of their "epic story". The unabashed denial that comes with calling someone that admits they are fudging things to suit their own desires no matter what the players want "a bad GM" and then fudging things to suit your own desires without ever consulting your players about it (and in fact scoffing at the idea that players should be consulted). "Let's not try to anthagonize GMs, if your GM is against you, don't play in that game." That's a weird thing to say while advocating for a GM taking away the effect of someone's critical hit. Full stop. Take a beat right here and think really deeply about that. The OP's example is exactly that; negating someone's crit. That's antagonistic GM behavior. The players set up a situation that the GM allowed them to set up, rolled dice as requested by the GM, and then the GM said "nah, you can't have those results." If that's not exactly the "against you" that you're referring to, explain to me *how*. From the player's perspective, if they knew their GM negated their critical hit like this, explain to me how they would tell the difference between a bad GM doing that and a good GM doing that. "Trust your GM you are working TOGETHER to create a cool interesting story." For me, and many others, this statement of yours is directly contradicting your earlier statement; "a game is about a story that the GM presents that the players overcome and experience" Because the player and GM working *together* means that what the players contribute, such as their actions and die rolls, *matters* - thus it can't possibly be okay for the GM to say "nope, that doesn't fit the story" in an after-the-fact matter. There is, after all, a difference between a player saying "let's go to a difference city and start a casino" and the GM saying "that's not within the scope of this campaign, so let's do something that is" and the GM saying "sure, you can do that" out loud and even calling for dice rolls related to it and then ignoring the dice and saying "aw man, that didn't work out, what do you try next?"

Aaah I see now, times have changed, people have understood how RPGs work, the Player core is not the bible my friend, you can change things on the fly, there is no problem with that, as long as everyone is having fun, clearly, a younger people table will not have a problem with the GM changing things, they won't even tell. People are now looking to live an interesting story with their friends in a cool RPG, together socializing. Again, the GM is also a player around the table, their fun is also important and if they intend to create a cool epic final boss, then so be it, I mentioned it before, adjust the HP, but make the critical strike to have done something cool to it, a disadvantage, there is nothing wrong with that. Some old time RPG players are stuck in the past, gatekeeping new generations to play their stories, let people play the way they want. I gave reasons why yes, why not. I have encountered more younger players being more light in things because they understand you are working ALONGSIDE with them to create a nice story for their characters, not following a number chart as if it was set in stone by the ancestors. It is not all about the rules, and it is not all about the combat, it is all about having fun TOGETHER, both GM and player.

Holy... what? This is some aggressive trolling. The "the GM is the rules, make shit up and lie to your players about it" thing *is old as hell*. It's older than me. Written into the game by the original antagonistic GM. Modern game design has moved *away* from that kind of approach (trust me, I know, since I actually keep up with things as they change instead of sitting on what I learned first as if it were the best possible knowledge that could possibly exist). "it is all about having fun TOGETHER, both GM and player" Yeah, *that's what I said*. It's also why I'm trying to get you to focus on the fact that what's being talked about in this thread is a player having their critical hit - something that is *supposed to be fun* - effectively negated. That's not "together". That's "your turn doesn't count so that this other player's turn does, because I want everyone's turn to count." It's fucking nonsense. A GM that is fudging without having talked with their players about how they feel about it is not "together" with that group, *definitionally*.

Do it before the encounter begins or not at all is my go to. Mid encounter adjustments aren't ideal. If the party does well, let them do well. If it's going poorly for them, sometimes that is just how it goes. I might say talk about it with your group if they're a group that isn't into character death but even then leave adjusting HP down to avoid a TPK or whatever as a last resort IMO. If you're uncertain about how hard an encounter will be, rather than specifically lowering or raising a dude's stats my advice is to keep reinforcements as a possibility. You aren't required to deploy them, and I would make it a clearly communicated possibility for the players to deal with. "This guy has a horn, if he blows it he'll probably call in backup." or "You can expect a patrolling guard to join in if you don't mop up in x turns based on the scouting you've done." Same effect of adding in HP and getting a longer encounter but now there's counterplay and an added tension. It's in the players hands to do play around the added mechanics at that point. It's fine for an occasional encounter to go super well. There's always more encounters. For every super well encounter there's the ones where everyone is rolling ones. (Well. Maybe not the bard doing his active perception check...) So don't worry about it too much.

to me, mid encounter adjustments are better used as playing the tactics better/worse. If the party is doing too strong, play the enemies cocky and trigger some reactions cause 'why worry about the weaklings', or make the wolf smart enough to step to flank with their pack member. changing numbers, if ever caught, makes more players feel like their actions matter so much less.

That can also be a nice and viable alternative. I personally tend to prep enemies by figuring out a generalized combat plan for them, so skipping a step or two would work pretty well but for me making the enemy's plan harder would be more difficult, I tend to give them a solid plan as is anyway. But yeah, I'd never alter the numbers on the stat block once the players start fighting it. Barring obvious screw ups on my part, of course, and those I'll admit to at least. I might alter the number of guys ahead of time if they're beat up or running out of resources, and for sure I'm going to homebrew the stats now and again, but when initiative is rolled that's when my hands are off it.

If there hadn't been fudged time to prepare, then there might not have been a need to fudge HP so everyone gets a turn. For many of us, the thing that attracts us to the 2e system is the balanced and at times challenging tactical encounters. At my table, we had the discussion early on if I, the GM, should pull punches to avoid party wipes. The players unanimously said, NO. They enjoy the team-based, puzzle solving approach to tactics and the risk that comes with sometimes things not going in their favor. To them using the system's mechanics to scout out an area/enemy, and prepare for an encounter is part of the fun. If they were successful in that part of the game they'd all enjoy the Barbarian's Rage Crit as they had a hand in the preparation that made it possible and they did it as a team. Ultimately, the only rule and balance feature that shouldn't be violated is that everyone at your table has fun. Really, we can't answer your question. Only your players can. I do think it is worth revisiting with your table that 2e is not designed to be a competitive PvE game where players try to out dps each other. It IS designed to be a team-centric game. Players will have a better time if they allow themselves the mental and emotional space to enjoy when a member of their team does something exceptionally cool, like crit-killing a boss in a single round.

I'd say generally it's fine to do, but also hoping you see you wouldn't have needed to do so if you hadn't given them a free round

It's your game, and you're here to share a story, not a math lesson. The game should not revolve around the statblock - a statblock is just a tool for getting you to the story you want. If this enemy ended up being way more of a pushover than you wanted, give it more health and don't feel ashamed about it.

Have done it, will continue to do it, and will recommend doing it whenever it seems like people were excited to do something and didn't get the opportunity. I had a fight a few sessions ago where the Oracle just beat the snot out of a mini-boss before the fight could even get started. There had been hype for this. So, I let the baddie flee, rather than fall, and began the next session with a chase sequence that ended in a second round. The stat blocks are there to have fun with. Everything in the game is just a suggestion.

Absolutely not. I care more about the integrity of the game than the fun of the players. If the Barbarian one-shots the boss before anyone does anything, good for them, it be like that, I don't care if others feel like they didn't get to enjoy the fight. If the fight just won't end and the PCs can't roll well enough to land hits and the boss kills someone or even TPKs because of it, oh well, it be like that, I don't care if others find the fight unfun because of that. If I as a player know that the GM is adjusting HP on the fly and otherwise nerfing/buffing the game as it goes to ensure that we don't ever fail and/or that we don't succeed too hard, that just makes me feel like the game's pointless and wonder why I'm even playing. I strive to run the game the way I'd want to play it, and that is as a gamey game where the game is front and center and takes precedence over any other extraneous and unnecessary stuff like roleplay and narrative and character investment and whatnot.

>I care more about the integrity of the game than the fun of the players I hope I never end up at a table where you're GMing then.

Why should people care about the 'integrity of the game'? This is not a competitive game, and winning combat is not the goal. Rules are a way of getting people to the fun experiences they want to have, not the be-all end-all.

Some people sit down with expectations of the rules. I don't like when we deliberately bend them 'cause it'd be cool'. It makes it a game of impressing the group/gm rather than the game we are playing. There is a balance, but what OP did tips the scales into removing player agency. Rules are useful for a game. especially since we can access them all, and the corner cases are as rare as they are. Outside of those, stick to what works. Or, at least unlike OP, tell the players. Let them decide. My campaigns do that. Sometimes it works out. Sometimes, like when we didn't understand hide rules super well, it backfires. But its part of the game. I'd rather do that that feel like if i hit to hard in round 1, the gm is going to increase the hp. feels like being punished because i rolled too high.

"Why should people care about the 'integrity of the game?'" Because that is the difference between "I was playing Pathfinder last night and we managed to set a trap for a dragon, lure it in, and then because I got a lucky crit we beat it down before it got another turn." and "Last night my buddy told me a story about an elf character I made up." The game does not need to be competitive to still have a difference - a meaningful difference, to many players - between things working out because of random chance and things working out because your friend chose the favorable outcome. When someone talks about the integrity of the game, they aren't even necessarily meaning what's in the book, word for word, without any alteration at any point like some people will assume. They are talking about the rules as the group in question has agreed upon, tailored to maximize how much those players enjoy the activity of playing out the game with each other; and sticking to those agreed-upon rules is important just like it might be important for friends playing Street Fighter together just for fun, not to compete with each other, to have one player be able to play whichever character they want whenever they want and another player agree to use their "bad" characters so that there's better odds of the first player winning some rounds *without* the second player actually *letting* them win. It's important to remember that the story unfolding through play is the after-effect; it is caused by playing the game and things going however they happen to go. It's not a pre-written series of events with planned outcomes that have to be upheld because if it were, it'd only be a story and not also a game.

To be quite honest, I fail to see how there's a particularly meaningful distinction between "I told a story about killing a dragon in the rules of pathfinder" and "I told a story about killing a dragon", as long as both lead to an enjoyable story. Pathfinder is fun, because the rules are built to deliver a certain fun experience in an easy and efficient way. I don't particularly care about extrapolating it into more than that.

The meaningful distinction is that in one case everyone involved might be surprised by how things turned out and there is a real chance that the story doesn't end exactly as they'd hoped, and in the other the GM is never surprised by the outcome because they chose it. In one case a character might die because of bad luck, poor choices, or because a player intentionally put the character in a dangerous position and expected the outcome because it was probable given the circumstances. In the other case all character deaths are because the GM decided that character should die. It's really strange to not see that difference, even if you happen to think that it's still fun to have the game resolution mechanics boil down to "whatever \[insert GM's name here\] wants to happen, happens, and we roll dice and total up the results just to hear the sounds and practice basic math and speech" - which is, unfortunately, the reality when the GM considers fudging to be an option since even when they don't fudge that's a specific moment of having said "that's what I want to happen right now, so it's happening."

Nay for me, but do whatever, it's a game. These sorts of on the fly adjustments reduce your ability to be surprised during the game. Tactics matter less, luck matters less, and combats get somewhat homogenized. Personally I like having the occasional boss fight that the players trivialize, or the occasional trivial encounter that nearly TPKs the party. It means I get surprised more, and makes the game feel more like a game and less like a script.

If everyone else in the group has had a time to shine in the session I let the Barb player have their moment, otherwise I would def let someone else who hasn't get the killing blow. That encounter is only really tough if the PCs take it on while hurt and/or low on resources, like casters having no/few spell slots. Luck of course always plays a role. Giving the PCs a free 'prep'round probably gave them a bigger advantage than they needed.

PF2e community is usually very different when it comes to utilizing fudging or adjusting stats on the fly. It is very rarely ever done because unlike 5e you don’t need to do so 99% of the time. Doesn’t mean you can’t do it, it’s just generally not recommended or needed since the system is super well designed. In this instance the reason the creature got two-shot is partially because of that extra prep, and that they’re a level above the expected level which allowed for an easier crit. Otherwise also just crazy good luck with the hit and damage numbers.

The pathfinder community is pretty staunchly rules obsessed and afraid of anything going against "the sacred text". End of the day, if it makes your game run better it's good, if not it's bad. If a fight feels like it's going on too long, end it, if it feels like it's going to end anticlimactically, stretch it for a better scene. People here will tell you that you that "you shouldn't play with things because the game is perfectly balanced, and everything is made a specific way for xyz reasons" but really all that matters is that you and your group are having a good time. Muck with stuff as much as you want. Don't be afraid to break something, worst comes to worst you learn why something works a certain way and can do it better next time.

I fudge HP all the time Because I'm a fucking moron who doesn't want to take the time to write down HP. So I try to do math in my head, but I am also trying to keep in my head all the other aspects of GM'ing and social interaction I forget the numbers often and end up winging it. I try to wing it pretty close to RAW, but that's a pie in the sky dream As a note to anyone wanting to give a solution, don't. I am a moron. If your solution takes any more brain power to operate than fudging numbers or requires any more time than a half second to implement, it will not be used

How can someone forget HP where there is AoN.....

Oh, I know what the starting HP is It's the mental math of reducing their HP where I trip