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.
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Is there anyone in the party that is Trained in Medicine? If so, let them find Healer’s Tools. The Treat Wounds activity can be used by anyone at least Trained in Medicine with Healer’s Tools in the inventory for out-of-combat resourceless healing once per hour per healed character, more often if you take certain skill feats, and in combat (doctor’s visitation & combat medic) with some others.
Pathfinder 2e that the party is going in with full HP, balance wise, so granting your party time to heal up between fights and to Refocus is important.
Something that has been frustrating the party throughout the beginner box is that very few of the “iconics” are trained in medicine. Feiya the Witch is, and she comes with Soothe and Battle Medicine, but none of the other pregens the players chose are trained in medicine (NB that Feiya’s player was absent yesterday). However, I will say that going into the fight with the rat, the players were all at or very nearly full health. The beginner box doesn’t have a lot of time pressure, so I’ve been letting the players go up to Otari to long rest and buy healing stuff whenever they need to.
I’ve never run the beginner box, but I’ve done several PF2e APs.
As written, a lot of the encounters are hard. Many many encounters are tpk bait if the player’s don’t play optimally; without perfection, a bit of bad luck can turn the tide.
I don’t like to fudge things mechanically for the players, but I do play the enemies dumb much of the time, especially like, animals. Even then, there’s quite a few encounters I’ve looked over, and applied the ‘weak’ template to some enemies during my prep.
The balance on PF2e is great, but razor thin at times. This does mean that you should be able to follow the math on enemy level vs party level fairly easily, and see how rough you want the encounters to be.
Also, I’ll ditto the other comment, that having someone with the medicine skill is invaluable. I’ve never used the iconics, but it does seem weird that you said so few have the medicine skill.
I’m never sure how people find this adventure difficult. The first floor was an absolute cakewalk for my players who used the medicine skill after every fight. The second I nerfed to adequated challenge levels for a 3-person party and it actually felt like a game. But as long as the Cleric didn’t go mel it also wasn’t actually hard.
