cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/631499

So, I’ve been running the PF2E beginner box, which is like a tutorial adventure, for a group of 5 people (we play as long as at least 3 show up). The players had the option of playing any of the pregen “iconic” characters for Pathfinder. So far, we’ve had a fighter, witch, monk, swashbuckler, and summoner. Of those, only the witch has any sort of healing, and the witch player couldn’t make our session last night.

The players went into this room that is meant to be like an optional miniboss (but there isn’t really a way for them to have known that). The miniboss is this fire elemental rat that is supposed to teach you how “persistent damage” works. It’s a very tough fight, and the elemental has a lot of defensive options like a cloud of smoke around it. Eventually the rat killed two party members (the swashbuckler and the monk), and one more (the fighter) went unconscious but didn’t die. The last player (summoner) got chipped down to like 3 HP but was able to drag the fighter out of the fight to safety.

I think it was a good learning opportunity for the players that you need to be tactical and work together in PF2e, since they basically just all tried to attack the rat in melee. It also shows the value of having support characters in the party.

Going forward we are going to complete the beginner box, the two players who lost their PCs are going to play new pregens (bard and investigator). I’m hoping the players don’t get too disillusioned with PF2e because it is very difficult at times.

I’d love to hear other Pathfinder GMs’ thoughts. I’m still new, so it’s possible I was doing something wrong, but I think I ran that fight the way it’s meant to be run.

  • PriorProject@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I think it was a good learning opportunity for the players that you need to be tactical and work together in PF2e, since they basically just all tried to attack the rat in melee. It also shows the value of having support characters in the party.

    This feels like the crux of it to me. A string of melee attacks is frequently not the optimal path. If you feel like everyone learned good lessons, moving on with replacement characters seems totally reasonable. But another approach if folks are still feeling confused about the encounter might be to rerun it outside the campaign canon just as a wargame. I wouldn’t do this frequently, but when learning a system that demands tactical acumen, it can be helpful:

    • Reveal the full stat block of the monster so people can all discuss its strengths and weaknesses (OOC, as players trying to “win the game” rather than as characters in-world… this is not usually the way to maximally enjoy a TTRPG, but it can be a useful learning technique when engaging with an rpg that has significant tactical/wargaming elements you’re struggling with).
    • Look at the success/failure thresholds for various melee and spell attacks to see what is likely to work well.
    • Look at saves and resistances. Were there unexploited weaknesses the party could have employed?
    • Think about action economy and action denial. Were there actions and abilities the characters could have used to deny actions to the boss that are more important than the actions spent on the denial.
    • I know this isn’t a party with a lot of traditional support characters, but did they sleep on abilities that provide buffs or debuffs? Everyone has access to flatfooted via flanking and most classes have access to some kind of buff/debuff abilities.
    • Talk about recall knowledge, how it’s the in-game mechanism that turns actions into tactical knowledge of strengths and weaknesses. Tell them how you plan to run recall knowledge as a GM, what they can expect to gain from it and what the risks of failure are. It’s an essential tool in the game, but one of the rare areas that’s underspecified in the ruleset and leaves room to be interpreted in much more useful or much less useful ways. If this is a crew that struggles with hidden info and is just not knowing how to get started analyzing an encounter with a monster they don’t know much about, consider temporary house rules around recall knowledge that are “broken” balance-wise to help them get their feet under them faster. Offer a free successful recall knowledge at the start of a spooky combat. Or offer to roll recall knowledge in the open and to give no info rather than incorrect info on critical failure (not raw, if I recall correctly). Do these things for 3 or so sessions and then re-evaluate whether they’re still necessary. A very strong recall knowledge could certainly be abused by players with strong tactical analysis skills, but it may be just what weaker players need to strengthen up to do the basic tactics assumed in pf2e balance.
    • Try the encounter with a couple different party comps. Can the original comp do better when played optimally? Or is the thing that pushes you toward success fixing the party comps to open up more options. Avoid over-optimizing party comp on one monster though. You want to be able to target a variety of weaknesses whether that is low ac, some particular bad save, denying big impactful actions, or buff stacking.
    • Take note of key improbable dice rolls as well. If some big ability or spell gets wasted against the odds, that’s bad luck and it happens. It might still represent optimal play even if it doesn’t work out.
    • You can do some of this wargaming alone as well if you want, and can relay your lessons learned to the party. But a wargaming one-shot with everyone might let everyone explore a bunch of ideas quickly and share their lessons learned.
    • When you stop learning from a combat, feel free to stop it early and try a different config rather than rolling it out to the bitter end for no reason.

    However you proceed, happy gaming.

    • bionicjoeyOP
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      1 year ago

      That is a really cool idea! Rerun the fire rat fight but in the holodeck! I’ll ask them if it’s something they are interested in.

      I think in terms of party comp, a big part of the issue was that all four PC’s are mostly melee based. The fighter has a bow, and the summoner has E-Arc, but both would rather be bashing the enemy in melee if they could. And that was a big problem with this rat because it has an aura where everyone that approaches it has to succeed a pretty tough Fort save or become Sickened 1.

    • aegis_sum@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Wow, I might have to steal some of these for my group. We’ve been playing for a while, but I don’t think some players have even seen a stat block before.

  • robolemmy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    If your party is super weak on healing, I’d usually arrange for them to find some healing potions and/or maybe a wand of healing. Then again, the purpose of the beginner’s box is teaching and dying because you didn’t bring a healer is clearly a teachable moment, right?

    • bionicjoeyOP
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      1 year ago

      Yeah for sure. They literally said afterward, “well I guess we shouldn’t let the player who has missed the most sessions also be the only healer!”

  • macniel@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    Yeah tactics is very important in Pathfinder 2e due to its Multi Attack Penalty, 3 Action Economy and different modifiers that don’t stack.

    Having a healer gives also an edge, but so does someone that can stabilize and utilize a healer’s kit and general Healing Potions. My players wanted to just kill the rats and fix up the hole in the cellar at first, but my NPC was insistent that there would be something more big and sinister at work. They returned later to the NPC and asked for healing potions on their own.

    Some players don’t realise that not all NPCs are out to get them but can actually be friendly and helpful at times.

    I am currently running the Beginner Box (and am a beginner GM but a seasoned DM) and we just arrived on the second level, so perhaps we encounter the Cinderrat next time or never, who knows. But my players are already playing very tactical so I don’t think that this encounter will be that hard to beat.

  • julian@pathfinder.social
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    1 year ago

    I am mildly afraid of this myself, as I’ll be running the Beginner’s Box soon for a group of 4 with custom-built characters. All of us have played PF2e a little bit, but not enough to necessarily know what’s a good choice mechanically or tactically.

    • newde@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Yes, the Beginner’s Box was (hilariously) difficult for our group of seasoned 5E players. What definetly didn’t help tho was that one of our players was a alchemist who was strugling to make each round count.

      In other words: stick with the more basis classes if you’re new.

      • julian@pathfinder.social
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        1 year ago

        Absolutely agree. For absolute newbies I tend to nudge them toward playing as Merisiel or something similar for the first oneshot, just so they can get a feel for the basic rules before needing to master their character quirks. We of course had someone who had never played PF insist on playing an Inventor for their first character, and after we finished the oneshot they realized that they’d missed their main class feature the whole time and that’s why they felt so ineffective. Whoops!

  • GaryPonderosa@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    You generally don’t need a lot of in-combst healing, but at least one person should be focusing on the medicine skill for out of combat healing unless you have someone that can heal via focus spells.

    Pf2e generally assumes that everyone has full hit points at the start of each new encounter, so you should either strongly encourage your players to fully heal up between combats or use lower difficulty combats if your runningultiple encounters without a break.

  • The_Lurk@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    That rat was a breeze for my party. The four at the beginning though? They almost got bodied.

  • HeavyMetalHero@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I’m new to PF2E and GMing as well. We ran the beginner box a few months ago and it is a difficult fight. We had the same problems. The party just wanted to blindly attack the whole fight without any strategy. It wasn’t pretty but now they understand how the dying and wounded conditions work.

  • BigWuk@pathfinder.social
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    1 year ago

    I’m not a gm, but when my group played through the beginner box this fight hit us hard too. I think besides what everyone else has said, this encounter is also great at teaching players that they can retreat if things start to go south fast

    • TehT@pathfinder.social
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, one of my groups caught on that the tunnel they came through was full of water that the rat would not follow them through, so when shit hit the fan they bolted :P

  • HubertManne@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Level one is really dangerous because the amount of damage that can be put out compared to character hit points is I think at its most lopsided.

  • seiggy@lemmy.world
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    I’ve run BB 2x now, and both parties immediately figured out “I’m gonna go run in the water since I’m on fire and dunk myself”, only 1 party was super upset that it took an action to drop prone. That group was full of 5e “fan-boys” that were all like “I should be able to drop prone as part of my stride action”. Once they figured out that the water was safe, they just basically killed the rat from a distance using ranged attacks and it was an easy fight for both groups. But then again I did have the rat stop at the waters edge, then it would hide out of LOS behind the pillar, so they had to adjust, and move in and out of the water. It was a fun and interesting fight for both groups, learning how to move around in combat, and corner the enemy in a way that they had an advantage but could avoid the super nasty effects of the enemy.

  • TehT@pathfinder.social
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    1 year ago

    There’s something about rats in the beginner box, I’ve run it four times, twice as a GM and twice as a player. At least one person went down to the rats in the basement or the cinder rat (or both)

    • bionicjoeyOP
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      1 year ago

      The rats in the basement are very numerous, but they have no tactics at all. As long as players manage to figure out the fundamental stuff their class can do, they shouldn’t have trouble with the first fight.

      • TehT@pathfinder.social
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        1 year ago

        I think there’s something mystical about the first encounter of a game that’s specifically made to introduce new players. first two rounds of combat, the only thing that did damage from the player’s side was magic missile from the wizard, their rolls were abysmal, and my rats crit twice.