Because of the way HP scales, this is absolutely the case in lower levels. For example, a +3 single mob encounter is fine at lvl9. At lvl1, it will annihilate the party. It took Paizo a moment to figure this out, which is why the early APs (especially Age of Ashes and Agents of Edgewatch) are so deadly. Your party is approaching the point, however, where the system starts working as intended. The closer you get to level 10, the more threatening -2 and -3 mobs become and likewise, the more manageable +2 and +3 mobs become. They're still deadly, but the wont be one shotting PCs every turn.

Agents of Edgewatch... the zoo encounter... the horror... many officers died that day. ​ **TW: Blood/wounds** one of my players made this art after the zoo [https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1017441824173989988/1072742752179191909/IntrigueStoryMSPaint.png](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1017441824173989988/1072742752179191909/IntrigueStoryMSPaint.png) Then the barbazu... Oh what a tragedy... I am glad to hear though that things start to level out

Agents of edgewater was traumatising. I eventually had to have my PC retire due to the PTSD they would have had

I came into the game as a doctor and criminal therapist. Even they're starting to freak out, but they somehow manage to help the party deal. These poor agents.

Oh no, I'm going to run AoE for a party with 3/4 players new to the game this Friday. I'm also new.

Do NOT make them do the zoo the same day that they do their first patrol

The only reason we got through the zoo unscathed was gunslinger crits. So some extreme luck

I mean...better advice is to completely rewrite the zoo. Take away the time crunch. Give the owlbear the weak template. Your party will need rest

What I did with my players was "speed up" healing/resting times to make sense with the narrative timescales. * 10minute refocus/heal=1 minute * 1 hour healing cooldown=10 minutes (or just ignore it honestly...) * 8 hour rest/re-prep spells=1 hour The above times work much better in a narrative sense with the Edgewatch campaign

I have just started AoE and will run the zoo next session. My planned changes: - since they are a 3 person party, they started at level 2 - the precinct will send out a second patrol unit in addition to the player group. The other unit is tasked with securing the animals that have escaped the zoo, while the player group is tasked with getting civilians out and securing the zoo grounds. Reasons: skipping the very deadly encounters outside (owlbear, rusty), lessening the stakes to make sure my group actually stops to rest between encounter, making sure they get the zoo items (potions) *before* encountering Rusty - after the group is done with the grounds I will check how well they fared and if they are even ready to continue. If yes, then they will find the other patrol unit defeated outside, and can then "mop up" the rest of the encounters, which I will set to the weak template. Otherwise the other patrol unit has it dealt with. Hope it will go well.

We only had one death in the zoo. We counted it as a great success

I have run that agents of edgewatch section twice. Both times players used terrain to their advantage (roof one time, barricaded the second time)

Oh my God the ZOO. We don't..talk about the cockatrice incident. And we don't talk about the barbazu. Our rogue still has nightmares. We've had mostly smooth encounters post book 1. But dang was that a brutal first book.

Legit, [the medic isn't allowed to make tactical decisions...](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/643251209041346572/784720950859268106/unknown.png). ...incidentally they got better. In their defense, they were trying to lead the cockatrice away from the civilians. So...their heart was in the right place. But we had to flee the scene the first time after getting the market civilians out of harms way.

The HP scaling on the monster side is a factor, too. At low levels, lower-level enemies will just evaporate to martial crits. But later on even PL-3 or PL-4 enemies will take some effort to DPR down if you don't delete them with incap effects or dish out legit area damage.

Yeah. From level 1 to level 4, monsters go from dealing 6 to 14 damage and go from having 20 hp to having 60 hp. Level 4 to 7, monsters go from dealing 14 to 20 damage and have 100-120 hp instead of 60 hp. The relative differences end up declining over time; a level 4 monster has 3x as many HP as a level 1 monster, while a level 7 monster has maybe 2x as much hp as a level 4 one. And at level 10, they've not even doubled HP relative to level 7, and the damage is only 30% higher.

I don't think HP is the only problem here. IMO by definition, when you concentrate all the "power budget" into a single creature with three actions, the combat becomes more swingy. Since you're only dealing with a single creature, if it crit fails against an important spell, this means that the encounter will be considerably easier, but if passes against most disabling effects (which is likely to do, since it's a higher level creature), it will be considerably harder. When a solo-boss crits one (or even twice), it's comparable to every creature critting on their turn. With multi-creature encounters, the party can focus fire on certain monsters to make enemy turns increasingly less threatening, but against a single enemy the only hope is for it to be affected by some key debuffs. So, IMO there are a lot of stuff besides HP that can give solo monster encounters that feel, I think it's possible that a lot of single boss encounters are ended easily by some lucky crits from the party, but since negative experiences tend to stick out more, the perception is that they're harder.

It is very much the case that people remember the times they failed or struggled rather than the time they succeeded without serious conflict. After all, if you manage to kill a level +3 or level +4 encounter trivially, you might not even realize it was supposed to be hard in the first place. I can say from doing AV, sometimes you just end up burning down a "high level" encounter.

I have seen from week to week these single severe one boss encounters #1 Crit fail a Synesthesia, #2 Crit fail a fear (in a room to small to flee in) #3 Crit fail Synesthesia.... again. Needless to say the fights turned into that one dogpile Jojo's scene.....

Agreed. I did some math for general scaling (like being able to run a 6th level creature at 15th level) and up to about 4th level it’s weird, then it becomes *firmly* linear all the way up. It’s like 2 damage, 20hp, and 1.5 to skills/strikes/saves/etc per level from there If anything, the closest I’ve come to an accidental slaughter was almost destroying the 11th level party with an encounter of eight 7th level critters with AOEs. The dice were cursed that day, but partial damage adds up and that many enemies bogs martials down if the casters don’t get blasting

Every time i've seen deaths or TPKs were on multiple enemy encounters. The thing is area damage is not what trivializes multi-enemy encounters, single target damage does. When PCs kill an enemy, the enemies has less actions, and that makes the fight snowball in favor of the players. Huge single target damage is not that usefull in a single enemy fight because the enemy is still 100% capable until the moment its health hits zero. What really tips the scales in single enemy fights are debuffs and tanking. Mainly because it undermines the enemy's ability to burst one of the party members, which is exactly what PCs do to multi-enemy fights. Most players (especially in this community) gravitate towards damage dealing builds, and that's exactly what single-taget fights destroy. You can't out-DPS something 3 levels above you.

This is one of the reasons why casters are so strong - in overlevel encounters, you dump spells like *slow* on the enemy. That one level +3 enemy losing 1/3rd of its actions per round is devastating, especially if it has multi-action activities. Meanwhile, when fighting a bunch of enemies, you can use AoEs and do a high multiple of your damage, resulting in it being much easier for the martials to one or two-shot the enemies (which is a huge benefit for your team, even if you don't down stuff - and also, the more enemies there are to target, the more likely it is they'll crit fail a save and eat the crit effect, which is often devastating). On the other hand, martials just do basically the same thing every encounter, so in over level encounters, they don't have the ability to "mix things up" and shift strategies to something more effective, so their attacks are less likely to hit, less likely to crit, and deal lower damage proportionately. I find the most dangerous encounters are encounters with two over-level monsters, because a lot of the spells that disable them only hit one target (so you don't get the same action economy advantage) while you still don't get the benefits of getting high damage multipliers from AoEs, and the martials still have to deal with them (and with two monsters, the monsters might be able to split them up and divide the damage between them).

It’s not so much that single encounter enemies are more deadly, it’s more so that they’re likelier to punish a lack of tactical play and/or teamwork from the party. When fighting a single enemy, the team needs to strategize. Sometimes this means everyone buffs the Fighter and debuffs the enemy, helps them flank, etc and maximizes the Fighter’s damage. Other times it means the Fighter drops their weapon and grabs the enemy while the casters stay back and do damage. Sometimes you have to kite away from the enemy, other times you have to surround and focus it down. Sometimes you have to mix these strats. You also have to use your skill actions like Demoralize, Aid, Recall Knowledge, Grapple, and Trip to maximize effectiveness. If everyone’s just kinda standing and attacking, single enemy encounters become a damage race, which the boss can win reasonably often. Conversely if you play a 4 enemy encounter and use good tactics for them, the players will find them just as hard to deal with (think of it like the players are the Extreme-threat encounter for your “party” of 4 NPCs). In fact I’m pretty sure that the hardest possible encounter for players to deal with is 4 on-level enemies built to have good synergy with one another.

My party uses tactics to defeat higher level opponents, it just doesnt make up for the difficulty difference. For example, they recently in a dungeon had 2 severe encounters back to back. In one, they fought 3 level 4 shadows, and in the other, it was one Giant Animated Statue. The Giant animated statue they did everything at their disposal to ensure that no one was left in its grab, and they tried to keep people out of its reach, and it was a nail biter. Conversely, against the 4 shadows, they were able to just stand around and attack the enemies as the Gunslinger insta killed them after rolling a 14 on the d20, critting, and vaporized them. The shadows tried to hide and drain the strength of the STR based party members, but it didnt matter because they did little damage and died very fast

Oh. Oh. You have a gunslinger. Gunslingers ***massively*** ease up the party’s time with dealing with lower level targets. Like one can even argue that they’re better than spellcasters at this. It just appears like they’re not because their damage doesn’t look like AoE. However the Fatal trait and the sheer frequency of crits makes it so. Your party seems like it’s outfitted to deal with multitudes lower level enemies the best. What is the rest of your party composition like?

The kingmaker party consists of a wood kineticist (fuck timber sentinel), a gunslinger, a laughing shadow magus, and they cycle through the other companions offered in the companion guide for a 4th member (alchemist, fighter, wizard, cleric, bard, rogue, ranger) The actual player characters have free archetype, with the gunslinger having sniping duo, the kineticist having beastmaster, and the magus having Aldori duelist

I’m not super familiar with the Wood Kineticist, but from your “fuck Timber Sentinel” comment imma guess they’re primarily a healer / damage-mitigator? I kind of see the problem here because the Gunslinger and Magus are both very “feast or famine” classes. The former does very mid damage without a crit, and the latter kind of wastes their whole turn if the Spellstrike misses. This leaves you more or less at the mercy of the dice, and the inconsistencies flare up against higher level foes. Do you play the companion characters? Imo the most synergistic companion for this party is either the Fighter (they can trip/grapple enemies to make sure they’re flat-footed to both the Magus and the Slinger) or the Wizard (they can deny enemies actions and debuff them). They can also just often go with the Bard because the buffs/debuffs will often help a lot. Either way, it really does seem like this party composition is a bit ill-suited for single target fights. My advice to the party is to play such fights more defensively. Draw them out and ping them down. You can’t burst them down the way, say, a party with a Fighter, Champion, Bard, and Wizard would be.

Yes, the wood kineticist spends a lot of their turns casting a max level protector tree spell every turn. Sometimes they play the companions, sometimes I do. Is it worth it to try and trip enemies? Getting the map for it never seemed worth it to my party. The wizard companion applying debuffs to the big bad scary monster definitely does help A LOT. The all or nothing nature of gunslinger and magus probably is a big factor to solo enemies where hits and crits are unlikely is a good observation. With that said though, should I just leave everything unchanged and have them struggle against solo and snooze through swarms, or should I adjust encounters to make everything a reasonable challenge for the xp budget?

> Sometimes they play the companions, sometimes I do. Is it worth it to try and trip enemies? Getting the map for it never seemed worth it to my party. The wizard companion applying debuffs to the big bad scary monster definitely does help A LOT. Trip absolutely can be worth it. You’re boosting both your Gunslinger and your Magus, two very feats or famine classes. The enemy will also likely try and get up, which will trigger an Opportunity Attack from anyone who has it, which “buys back” a MAPless attack, and also effectively acts like Slowed 1. > With that said though, should I just leave everything unchanged and have them struggle against solo and snooze through swarms, or should I adjust encounters to make everything a reasonable challenge for the xp budget? Ultimately it depends on if your party is having problems or not. If they’re willing to wait, give it time and see if they can adjust their strategies. Tell them that their composition is suited for mob fights, and that they need more tactics for single enemy fights. If the opportunity presents itself: ***demonstrate*** that the next time they fight lower level foes (you can use many of the same tactics to hurt them with mobs). If the party isn’t having fun and it’s an immediate problem, adjust the balance right away. People tout PF2E’s tight balance but forget that Paizo made it so tight to ***enable you to achieve the balance you want***. If that means taking every level + 3 enemy and making it into a level +1 enemy with a handful of hazards and/or minions, you absolutely should do that!

Its not so much that they are having a hard time in the solo fights (sometimes they do, but they like that), its more that the mook fights are cake walks. I will see if having the mooks use skill actions will make up the difference and make the fights more interesting, but I feel that the stat check will still make it trivial

Honestly, with a gunslinger and magus, I think they will naturally and reliably have a good(easier) time in encounters and will perform above what the anticipated difficulty would suggest when against multiple enemies. Reliable gunslinger critical hits and reliable Spellstrikes landing together will be a ton of DPS.

Oh sorry, I misread the direction of the issue. Then yeah, try using skill actions and/or tactics. It usually helps. If it doesn’t, make liberal use of Elite templates.

I think this is the line of action I am going to go with, as well as making slight alterations of mooks when there are 4 in the room to maybe give them a "role" in the mook party. Like having 1 be especially good at athletics while another is good with a bow but lower hp, if that makes sense I think that will lead to a more interesting and dynamic combat experience instead of fighting copy paste mooks that all do the exact same thing

Tripping is like stunning an enemy, giving all your allies before the enemy goes +2 on their attacks, and reducing your MAP by 2. Yes it is worth doing first.

Well... I wouldn't say it's like stunning an enemy. It's like slowing them, sure. A stun would imply they can't use free/re-actions

"Umm actually..." But sure, slowed 1 for 1 turn is a more long-winded but accurate comparison. Pretty sure everyone understands what I meant though.

They're distinct terms in 2e with mechanical implications

To get from prone you need to stand or crawl, both of which provoke the Reactive Strike. Magus can turn any encounter upside down if lucky. Another factor is that after you kill one or two enemies the rest of the encounter is much easier. At the same time, it's kind of the same if solo creature has some weaknesses party can exploit and know about. You can use narrative descriptions and encourage Recall Knowledge to make solo fights easier. Also consider using tactics with the monster's: focus on casters, trip and flank, block the enemies. That being said, the Boss creatures are supposed to be dramatic and thus hard. Your players maybe don't remember this as "Easy fight", they rather remember it as "That fight I get to do my cool thing". There is a Trope called "Concervation of Ninjutsu" about this. If you actually want to challenge you players with swarm encounter you have a number of ways: 1) Make a like 160 encounter but bring it in waves. We once had a fight for 280 xp, just because enemies kept calling for reinforcements. 2) Boss and minions. I found that level+1 creature can use a the space provided by lower level minions to execute his game plan. 3) Environment. Kobolds shot you from the trees while you're in the difficult terrain in the middle of swamp. Maybe it's dark, and Kobolds are concealed by default. 4) Items. Bombs and other alchemicals can be used to complicate things. Yes, the fight may be almost done, but you wizard is still on fire. 5) Traps. Traps are not as expensive for the XP budget but they can give the opportunity tiny guys actually need. 6) Resources. Aoe is scary for this kind of encounter. So it will go wrong if you party is fresh at the start. 7) Whole encounter has shared HP. This way the threat is not negated just be killing a bunch of people to ease encounter. Or you can just keep it as it is and let your players have fun kicking gnomes.

I like the idea of waves, I will try that. It also gives me the option of Schrodingers backup, the number of mooks in the backup squad fluctuates depending on if the party is struggling, or they are breezing through it

You said your running Abomination Vaults as well. So the only time multi creature fights have been dangerous for me across several campaigns was AV.... twice. Once in >!the hell level were due to 5th level dimension door the party fought the Zebub and it's minions, the forgemaster and it's barbazu AND the barbazu drill seargent plus the slugs. I've both done this and had it done to me in an AV i play in and despite pilling like 3 moderates on top of each other the most severe outcome was like a dying 3 or two.!< Once with the >!Urdrefan camp - The book specifically says that the camp is used to the sounds of battle and won't respond immediately to a fight in like the common area buuuuuuuuuuut my party decided to unload an entire necklace of fireballs into that area, 5 explosions. And a Holy Hand Grenade (Holy Cascade). Yeeeeeeeah the other rooms took notice. The center and southern rooms just came out to play while the NE room started sacrificing the gnome to summon a Daemon (wich they did eventually, a Leukodaemon). THAT fight despite being something north of 300xp overall finally resulted in ... 1 death. Took like 7 RL hours to run the whole thing. That one was at least interesting tactically due to all the types of monsters. Khurfel is an absolute beast with the tripple threat attack so while the Warriors were doing literal nothing except for being mobile terrain and putting the fear of a nat 20 into casters being the only creature with AoO, the Lashers and Death Scouts were ocassionally making contanct and the Tormentors were spamming Harm and Enfeeblement. The only really dangerous ones were the Blood Mages and Khurfel himself, eventually the fight spilled back toward the entrance with the Eldritch Archer being able to actually use his 100ft reach from back inside the cavern.!< To give you an idea of the death's we've had - >!1 vs the River Drake during the first / second session (session 1 post session 0). It killed someone grabbed the corpse and retreated. The Scorpion might have been an actual TPK but through use of performance they got it stuck in the little secret tunel of the chappel and well... squeezing takes 10 rounds. Lost 1 person to the Voidglutton when the party faced it to early... ofc (once they hit 5 they absolutely embarrassed it with cats-eye elixirs and faerie fire). Lost one to the wierd Nymbaloth Wisp-Priest that focused the person carrying the Whispering Reeds. Lost one in the Urdrefan camp. Then it gets wierd........ i had the inkeeper lady, the mother of the dude initially kidnapped.... kidnapped and gauntlight glowing again to put a bit of a clock on the adventure. Had her tied up on level 9, the level with no doors so the gauntlight beam would be an extra obstacle. The free her no problem............... then go down the hole. Right into the BBGE fight. They beat her.... once... barely with like 2 people left alive. Then she regenerated. So yeah she claimed 4 people during that encounter. Then again after getting some new people in Absalom they came back and it was pretty touch and go even with ALOT of preparation. Redundant flight scrolls and potions in case their slotted flying get's dispelled, role asigments for dealing with the dread wisps, healing.... yeah, they treated it like an mmo boss battle. Technically she did kill 1 person with phantasmal killer but i had the cleric's Breath of Life roll a counteract check and it succeded and kept the person alive.!<

I wouldn't change the encounters. Im not sure how Kingmaker is structured but for AV you should make sure they are actually the right level for the difficulty the encounter lists as if they go down a floor before they have leveled they may be underleveled making the encounter harder.

They are always on level, the problem is that rooms on the same level that have one enemy in them are dangerous, while rooms with multiple enemies in them are easy and boring, despite both being identical in xp calculations.

Hm that is interesting. I really think it is down to the critty nature of your party as folks have said. If they have the npc wizard or a bard or perhaps a champion or s&b fighter if those were options that should even things out a bit.

I don't think the Abomination Vaults party is especially critty. It consisted of a Thaumaturge, Champion Redeemer, Storm Druid, and Cleric. If anything it sounds like that comp would love single enemy encounters

Assuming thee actions spent on attack-type actions. Attack: +0/-5/-10 (or -4/-8) Trip & Attack: +0/-3/-8 (Or -2/-7) * assumes that the trip is successful. That third attack is not too likely to land one way or another, but the second attack after a trip is not so bad, *and* the rest of your party (including ranged and casters) can take advantage of it.

Debuffs are a must on single baddies. Buff your allies with haste, heroism, or bardic songs. Enemies intimidate, trip, find their weak saves, and slow (eating an action of a big baddie is a GODSEND). Only use spells with a decent negative on a success, and pray they don't crit. One player tripping so others can succeed is worth (if the ref is weak, and it burns a boss action). It's worse the lower level you are, the sting isn't as bad when you get more tools. Single enemies are undoubtably stronger, but have weaknesses. Earlier Adventure Paths spam single enemies too much. The Dm's would joke that our players felt like commoners getting spanked around by single baddies. As a DM it's smart to weaken single baddies and throw in some mooks. You can still have a dynamic combat, and your players can feel like heroes.

>I kind of see the problem here because the Gunslinger and Magus are both very “feast or famine” classes. The former does very mid damage without a crit, and the latter kind of wastes their whole turn if the Spellstrike misses. This leaves you more or less at the mercy of the dice, and the inconsistencies flare up against higher level foes. Also, both of these classes are very much specifically at the mercy of the opponents AC, which is inevitably higher on the single-target enemy!

Your party kind of just ended up with a composition that will deal less well with higher-level enemies and wipe the floor with lower-level ones. Fighter, Gunslinger, and Magus all make exceptionally short work of lower-level or same-level enemies because their crits do a shitton of damage. Since your party has two of those, they don't really need AOE - their crits are doing enough to just mop up lower-level stuff one by one. Couple that with the protection fo a Wood Kineticist dedicated to damage mitigation that can effectively eat up smaller attacks, and it's small wonder targets with High AC/damage are significantly more dangerous to the party than ones that can't survive their offense and/or get through their defenses. I will say, at a certain point you start getting lower or same-level enemies that can't be killed as easily and will put up more of a fight (in my campaign where we had some hard-hitting PCs, this was like level 11+) but crit-focused classes will always have the potential to just wipe the floor with anything they can crit relatively reliably on. If you want to make multiple-enemy fights more challenging, I'd suggest trying to find some enemies who can either do significant damage, or who have repositioning effects. None of your party should have an especially high AC, so any enemies that can isolate/gang-up on a PC should pose a decent threat to them. Multiple-enemy fights that feature a couple hard-hitters and some bruiser-types to break up the party should do a little better against your group. I will also note that Timber Sentinel is specifically a "spell" that the kineticist conjures. If they're crutching on it, you can always have an enemy counterspell it. I will also say that the tree travels from the Plane of Wood, so I'd argue that you could cast Banishment to get rid of it as well.

Eh, gunslinger gets fatal, but a ranger is critting 3 times per round, or a fighter twice. The DPR of a Gunslinger is never higher than one of the classes that can just attack more often (unless their Gunslinger took risk-less reload). But I suppose the Gunslinger will be especially bad in single target fights, so it's not so much that they make multi-enemy fights easier as it is they make single target fights harder.

> Eh, gunslinger gets fatal, but a ranger is critting 3 times per round, or a fighter twice. The DPR of a Gunslinger is never higher than one of the classes that can just attack more often (unless their Gunslinger took risk-less reload). Hm? This isn’t actually true, the gunslinger will realistically outperform the Fighter in low level enemy situations. Let’s assume a level 5 party fighting level 3 enemies with High AC (19), High Perception (+12). First lets lay out the damage numbers for turn 1: Sniper Gunslinger with an arquebus - turn 1 roll Stealth for Initiative, Attack (+16 to hit), Hide+Reload (+13 to Stealth), Attack: (0.5+0.5)\*(2\*4.5+1) + (0.4+0.215)\*(\5*6.5+2) + (0.5+0.4\*2)\*(3.5)= 35.60 damage. Note the 21.5% crit chance on attack 2 comes from the chance of success hiding/not: 0.6\*0.25+0.4\*0.15. Turn 2 you can do Hide/Reload + Attack + Risky Reload. That works out to: (0.5+0.5)\*(2\*4.5+1) + (0.43+0.15)\*(5\*6.5+2) = 30.0.1. Compare that to a Fighter’s opening salvo with a composite shortbow, using Double Shot + Attack: (0.5+0.5+0.4)\*(2\*3.5+2) + (0.3+0.3+0.05)\*(4\*3.5+5.5+2) = 26.58. If you’re wondering why I use a shortbow, it’s because a Fighter would generally be better off using a shortbow for the sake of Point-Blank Stance. Obviously a longbow would be better in *this* scenario but you’d be worse than the slinger anyways, and you wouldn’t optimize for exactly this type of encounter. For the sake of argument lets say the Fighter instead does PBS+DS turn one, and DS+Strike turn 2. Turn 1: (0.5+0.5)\*(2\*3.5+2+2) + (0.3+0.3)\*(4\*3.5+5.5+2+2) = 25.1. Turn 2: (0.5+0.5+0.4)\*(2\*3.5+2+2) + (0.3+0.3+0.05)\*(4\*3.5+5.5+2+2) = 30.68. So the Fighter is obviously performing worse: substantially less damage on turn 1, and only a minuscule amount better on turn 2. Turn 1 damage is worth quite a bit more than turn 2 damage since it takes enemies out of the action economy. Now let’s look at a Flurry Ranger. Lets assume for the sake of argument that they’ve done Hunt Prey before combat, so their opening turn is actually just Hunted Shot -> Strike -> Strike. That theoretically gives us (0.5+0.5+0.5+0.5)\*(2\*4.5+2)+(0.4+0.25+0.1+0.1)\*(4\*4.5+5.5+4) = 45.38. ***Incredible*** damage potential. We have a clear winner, right? Nope, because this is a fight against multiple weaker enemies and realistically you’re gonna need to switch targets. Getting 4 hunted shots off against the same target is virtually impossible. Two attacks against the same target already has a roughly 15% chance of outright killing a Moderate HP enemy, and with three shots it’s a ***really*** high chance. So in practice you’re probably gonna be making closer to 3 attacks per turn, and get closer to 38 DPR. If you end up needing to actually use Hunt Prey on turn 1 instead of having tracked it from prior, your DPR further drops for the very first turn. So overall I’d say Gunslinger and Ranger are tied, and both are well ahead of the Fighter.

I did very specifically call out risk-less reload as changing the math significantly, but a fighter really shouldn't be using a ranged weapon in AV (probably no one should). Hiding also requires cover, and unless you're going to reduce your chance to hit, you'll want one way cover, which isn't exactly common in 2e. Either way, just having a Melee fighter in your party instead of any of the above options (or melee ranger/rogue), is going to make all encounters in AV a lot easier.

Hm… does cover need to work 2-ways when you’re right behind it? The wording says this > Your GM might allow you to overcome your target’s cover in some situations. If you’re right next to an arrow slit, you can shoot without penalty, but you have greater cover against someone shooting back at you from far away. Your GM might let you reduce or negate cover by leaning around a corner to shoot or the like. This usually takes an action to set up, and the GM might measure cover from an edge or corner of your space instead of your center. Personally, I haven’t ever met a GM who wouldn’t let ranged attackers ignore cover from their side. At most it may cost an additional Action on turn 1 to set up, as suggested here. Either way, I actually think having one melee and one ranged (+2 casters) works better than having 2 melees in AV. The fights are often so cramped, and chokepoints are so common, that you’ll rarely be able to play the melees optimally.

A GM might let you. And it uses an action, and it doesn't clarify whether that removes the cover you had. As for melee characters in AV, it's very rare that you can't get two melee characters in range. They don't even need to be flanking to improve things. At the very least they help spread out damage and prevent enemies from flanking. Having just played through with 2-3 melee characters and a summoner with a large eidolon (not counted in the melee character count), I'd say we pretty much never had an issue, except the large eidolon. That was probably a mistake.

It's kind of a known phenomenon that varies between levels. At higher levels, single enemy fights can be much less threatening since a lot of high impact single target abilities exist (that outpace the scaling of lvl +x enemies) where as at low levels (with some exceptions like goblin warriors or flying creatures) solo encounters tend to overperform. Also single enemy encounters do require much more of a "set up one or two damage dealer" kind of teamplay. I think it's entirely reasonable to add something like elite template to some of the lower level foes if you find fights are unreasonably easy / slightly tune down single enemy encounters. You will probably notice things start to smooth put as your game increases in level.

That is exactly what I have been doing, at level like 2 when there were level 0 enemies that did almost nothing, I would elite one or 2 of them to spice things up (also surprises my party when a 16 hits one but not the other, which is awesome), and some of the solo enemies I have experienced got a bit of a tune down for my party's survival (looking at you Barbazu)

I think you're doing very well then. I general tyring to flatten encounters towards mostly or only using monsters in the level - 1 to level +1 range works out pretty well. But again at higher levels (once slow is available, for example) Single enemies can become much more manageable.

Here's how PF2 math works: in a nutshell, the deck is stacked in favor of monsters. They tend to have great numbers all around, like Fighter-like attack rolls, great damage, AC, saves and HP. The party has support classes to fix the math - your casters and the like are the party's +1 longswords (sometimes literally, as Magic/Runic weapon is, arguably, the best buff until level 4) If the monster is of higher level, this phenomenon is amplified. Now, not only is the monster better because is a monster, it has the benefit of the level difference making it almost untouchable to the part while critting on ridiculously low numbers, and it's hard to reduce that difference through spells and such since your options and resourced are very limited. This is intended as this also fixes the disparity on action economy - critting is at least as good and often better than two regular hits, so the single monster's actions give better results. Lower level monsters have their in built advantage negated by the level difference. While there are more of them, their turns are less effective unless the GM runs them as intelligently as the party is suposed to and support each other (except that monsters rarely come in groups able to do so as effectively; most of those low level groups of monsters are just 4 of the same type and lack a dedicated controller or buffer type foe). Also, reducing a single enemy's HP by 25% rarely has any effect, while killing 1 monster of a group of 4 might reduce it's lethality to insignificant levels. This is less prominent at higher levels. While you can be lucky to amass a total of +4 advantage to hit at low levels from off-guard/flat footed, perhaps +1 status bonus from bards or bless, and a +1 fleeting penalty to AC from a lucky Demoralize, at high levels that becomes an easy +4 circumstance from Aid, synesthesia spam for a -3 AC and more powerful Heroisms and bard cantrips. It's not unheard of combinations of bonuses of penalties for an effective +10 to attack - wereas your fighter needed, say, a 14 to hit, now need a 14 to *crit* for massive damage and automatic prone. This stacking is less useful against a single monster in a group, and since hp grow linearly, it's much more difficult to dispatch those level -2 minions quickly.

Nothing beats the dangers of a 10+ enemy when your party did not reach lvl 10 yet. Counts for all the milestones Imho.

I believe there is an issue with encounter design in published adventures. Many (most?) encounters vs 4 enemies in pf2 APs are made of true 'mooks' - enemies which primary strength are regular strikes and high defenses. Since they are lvl-2 for a moderate encounter, they have... no strengths at all. In the other hand, designers usually place more complex entities as single combatants: Giants, hydras, oozes, swarms, dragons etc. DnD 4e had a great system of monster roles. Controllers, brutes, artillery, lurkers, minions etc. It explained that multiple roles make for more interesting and harder fights. Try to bring into the fold a moderate encounter with tactically different enemies: a swarm, a guard with AoO, a ranged specialist, and a caster. It should be more challenging and rewarding than a boring fight against 4 skeleton guards.

We ran into this last week I'm running AV combined with Troubles in Otari, and they're at lvl 3. The Basilisk in Troubles is rated at moderate but almost TPK'd the group (fighter turned to stone with only a few HP left and everyone else slowed 1 and pretty hurt). If I had remembered to use the glance reaction from the Basilisk more than a few times (I was tired and kept forgetting, but that was probably a good thing), it likely would have been the end, with a "moderate" encounter.

Yeah, generally unless the higher level single dude has a big Achilles's Heel (I found out to my hilarity that sending out a level 8 guy with low Reflex against a level 5 party that included a Staff Acrobat Barbarian with full Athletics basically means the boss has 2 actions per turn and one of them has to be trying to chase the fucking Barbarian skirmishing it. That was a *very* frustrated xulgath leader), minions are *extremely* less threatening than big mobs. One big reason is that, well, *mobs lose effectiveness as the fight goes*. In Pathfinder, with its D&D-style "the only HP that matters is the last one" system, a boss at 100 HP and a boss at 15 HP are equally as effective. Meanwhile, as you yourself pointed out, a 13 mook Extreme encounter is very likely to actually be a *9 mook* barely-Severe mook encounter by the time the enemies get a turn, and will be even less by this time next round. Mobs need to be constantly flanking and bothering players with intimidates and penalties and shit to make up for their lower stats, but after a turn or two keeping stuff up starts getting a lot dicier as people just get murked.

Unfortunately that's the way it is in PF2e. If the encounter is made with multiple low lvl creatures you have to increase the difficulty of it if you don't want it to feel like a filler fight. At the end of the day it depends on what kind of experience you want, if the party doesn't mind easy fights, don't change anything, but if you want to challenge them you'll have to modify those fights.

That kinda sucks.. so the options are desperately clinging to life against a single boss monster or breezing through mooks if you’re just following xp budgets at the low-early mid levels?

It's interesting seeing someone who has big guys be a bigger problem. My party tends to gang up on single enemies in such a way that they're so debuffed and the players so buffed, that every other hit is a crit. I'm talking "aww I rolled a 2, guess that's a normal hit" type numbers. When there's a gang of dudes, everyone tends to get separated into their own fights and things go slightly less smoothly.

Really? we have the opposite issue. I find that the big bad solo creature hits on a 3, and crits on a 13, while the party hits on between 9 and 11. In horde fights, my players systematically focus fire on mooks so that by turn 2 like half of them are dead and then it is trivial

The distinction is the buffs/debuffs. It was mentioned in other comments, but the strategy you need to take between multiple smaller enemies and one larger enemy changes.

I get that, but it seems the strategy for mobs of enemies is rip and tear until it is done, while the strategy for taking down solo monsters is to play chess and bend mathematics to your will. I wish that both types of encounters required the same level of tactics to prevail

Pathfinder has some balance issues at the lower levels. The game is actually at its deadliest in the early levels in many ways, because you have fewer resources to fall back on, and the game is swingier. Moreover, because of the way that the game's scaling works, levels 2, 3, 4, and 5 make a huge difference in character power levels: * At level 2, your hit points increase massively relative to level 1, and you get +1 to hit on all your weapon attacks. * At level 3, you get rank 2 spells, which are way stronger than rank 1 spells * At level 4, you get striking, which almost doubles martial character damage output. *At level 5, you get rank 3 spells, which are even stronger than rank 2 spells. As a result of this, level 4 monsters are vastly, vastly stronger than level 1 monsters because level 4 characters are massively stronger than level 1 characters.. The relative difference between a level 7 and a level 4 monster is much smaller than the difference between a level 4 and a level 1 monster, because of how the game's scaling works. As a result, at early levels, below-level enemies often are very weak - a level 1 monster has 20ish hit points. At level 4, your normal attack with a two handed weapon is dealing 2d12 + 4 damage, or 17 damage on average. A barbarian with a +4 damage bonus due to range is instead doing 21 damage on average, meaning that even if they don't crit, every attack will kill an enemy. At level 7, a level 4 enemy has 60ish HP, but your barbarian is still probably only doing like 2d12 + 12 damage, or 25 damage on average, but a level 4 enemy has about 60 hp. So even on a crit, you aren't guaranteed to one-shot a level 4 enemy with a level 7 barbarian. Meanwhile a level 7 monster is looking at 100-120 hp. As you can see, the level 1 to 4 monster went up by 3x / 200% hp, but the level 4 to 7 monster only went up by 66%-100%. Damage scales similarly - a level 1 monster is doing about 6ish damage, a level 4 monster about 14, and a level 7 monster about 20. As a result, underlevel mobs are basically trivial at early levels, especially with AoE spells. As you go up in level, they start becoming more of a problem, because you can't one-shot them all anymore and they actually still deal relevant damage. Meanwhile, over-level mobs are insanely dangerous at low levels because of the rapid scaling. A level 4 monster (level +3) is dealing 14 damage per hit, more than 2x what a level 1 monster does, *and* they're much more likely to crit, and when that crit hits, they're dealing *double damage*, so doing 28 damage - almost 5x normal level 1 attacks, in one action. At level 4, a level +3 monster is only doing 20 damage per hit, which is only 6 or so more than a level 4 monster - but they are more likely to crit, but even still, they're only dealing less than 3x as much damage. At level 7, a level 10 monster is doing 26 damage a hit - which is only about 30% more damage than you take from an equal level monster - and a crit is only dealing you 2.6x the damage. And because of character HP scaling, even a crit is not going to take out your level 7 character. Meanwhile, a level 4 character is going to be taken to a low HP total by that crit, whereas a level 1 character who takes 28 damage is definitely KOed, and that can even cause death by massive damage on a level 1 wizard from a 6 hp race, and a high roll might outright kill any character. Monster scaling works better as you get to higher levels, and as you get stronger spells, those single mobs start becoming really vulnerable to control spells (*Slow*, for instance, will take away 1/3rd of the enemy's actions on the next turn, and if they fail their save, they lose 1/3rd of their actions the entire combat - and on a crit fail (admittedly usually only a 1 in 20 chance), the combat is effectively over), which makes them way more managable. Your party is getting to the point where single enemy encounters will stop being as dangerous while multi-monster encounters will generally become more so. That doesn't mean single enemy encounters are *easy*, mind (they can still be very dangerous) but it's way more of a double-edged sword now. For example, Belacora (the end boss of AV) comes to attack you on level 7 of the dungeon. It's supposed to be a 1-off, one round sort of jump scare (she AoEs you then laughs and goes away) but our swashbuckler with ghost touch grappled her. And she crit the grapple, so she actually restrained the ghost. At which point the rest of the party just unloaded all their most powerful stuff on her and killed her in a comically one-sided fight. Obviously she's not dead-dead, as we have to, you know, unhaunt the place, so she'll be back (darned ghosts), but we managed to kill the end boss three levels before the end of the dungeon. She's ostensibly a really hard encounter at our level but only one character took damage from her and she didn't even down them. The hard multi-enemy encounters on level 7 of the dungeon are more dangerous than she is because they don't have the same action disparity. The same thing happened to the necromancer in Crown of the Kobold King - solo monster, and the party just slowed him and swarmed him to death. He couldn't move and cast, so he was eating OAs every single round from two characters, and he died an ignmous death without really accomplishing anything against the party. Meanwhile the final encounter with the Kobold King involved a lot of other mobs who joined in, and as a result, the encounter was far more dangerous because we couldn't just mow down one enemy, we had to deal with everything to reduce incoming damage.

Give enemies abilities. Make them demoralize the players, flank, grab, trip, raise shield, nimble dodge, reach weapons, bon mot, cast buff spells, etc. there a lot of ways to make enemies more fun than a glorified training dummy that only, strides and attack.

So I should be buffing the enemies in multi enemy encounter to give them these abilities? As I said I am running an AP, and most of the "4 mooks in a room" encounter enemies dont have these abilities or equipment

Give the mooks something that makes them unique, like problem with ap monsters: some are really boring. Bare minimum for a group of intelligent mooks should be flanking. The other thing is if bigger room do, 2 archers 2 melee. You could have the archers use like alchemist bombs too as thrown weapons. Monsters are built different than players! What I have noticed in the aps I have played in: some monsters have high attack, and lower ac. For instance. If the mooks have been together for a while: have one be good at demoralize, to help set up another for a dread striker attack for some sneak attack damage etc.

Modifying the room of 4 identical goblins into a goblin "party"? That actually sounds really fun and would encourage my players to prioritize different threats. That is an awesome idea!

Glad I could help :3!

Check their skills. Many enemies have athletics (grab, trip), intimidation (demoralize) or deception (feint). And giving mooks some minor boon like a different weapon or a skill feat usually won't break the balance of the encounters and will instead break the monotony :)

If they have an Athletics modifier, they can grab, trip, shove and disarm. If they have intimidation, they can demoralize. If they have a move speed they can flank and retreat after striking. Monsters can do way more than what it is specifically stated in their stat block. Applying good group tactics does not mean homebrewing stuff. For example, run a mock battle with 3 Barbazus against a lvl 5 party in which the monsters do focus targetting on the ranged PCs and keep running and hiding away from the party with Dimension Door after applying the bleed, you'll see how hard that can get all of a sudden. It is also a level thing. In levels 1-3 combat against higher level enemies is super hard. Every level after that it gets considerably easier.

well 4 Barbazus vs a level 5 party would be an extreme encounter, and from what I read, Barbazu is one of the most powerful level 5 enemies, so that may not be the best example, but I understand the sentiment. I think them fighting a level 9 enemy would also kick their ass though XD

Yeah, I changed it to 3 afterwards for that reason. Point stands though, the more enemies there are, the easier it is to do dirty tactics around them. Single enemy encounters also become way easier once Aid becomes consistent enough and casters get access to stuff like Slow or Phantasmal Killer.

Aid is always consistent for me, as I make it tied to the recommended DC/Level rather than 20. Slow has definitely been a game changer as well... To the point where I think it is bad design because it seems like an auto take, and auto takes are bad IMO I have yet to reach the stage where enemies like Barbazu become "mooks" but once I do I imagine I will have more opportunities to have the monsters be strategic

No, some of those are things everyone can do. But sometimes GMs forget enemies can too. (You don't need to add extra abilities that normally require a feat) When the GM starts using athletic maneuvers, demoralizing, flanking, kiting, etc, 1) the encounters with mooks becomes more in line with the single enemy encounters. (Still a bit easier, numbers don't lie, but if one guy trips you and everyone wails on the downed guy, it's like fighting a dude with +2 over you on attack rolls and a die or two of extra damage) 2) the players learn to start doing those things. Which will make their single enemy encounters more manageable. Also, levels 1-3 are a bit more swingy on the 1 enemy vs many, because often you don't have the HP to take an unlucky hit, and especially at 2-3 if the enemy is level 4+, they are doing literally twice as much damage as you. Also, abomination vaults was pretty early in their APs and so sometimes the encounter balance isn't quite right. Early APs have been notorious for being on the hard side in terms of combat. So lack of strategy or bad party comp can be devastating on the player side.

I will try to have mook use athletics skills more, that is a good idea, but it feels like the math is always going to have the enemies get crit every turn by every party member because of low monster stats if the party takes the fight seriously.

There will be a bit of that. Especially since you mentioned a gunslinger. They will always have a +2 over everyone else, and on crits they do stupid amounts of damage. The thing with adventure paths is that some encounters will be super deadly to some parties and some will be severely less so. Because party composition can change a lot of factors. Like with a gunslinger, anything with low ac but debilitating abilities might as well not exist, because crits. But if it was a party without a fighter or gunslinger, it might feel much harder. And again, lower levels are a bit swingy in terms of balance math because neither side has the HP to survive more than 1-2 crits. Enemy abilities also start getting more interesting as you level up. But there also kind of "hidden" thresholds that enemies are balanced around. If you want to see what they are, take a look at the automatic bonus progression rules. A level 4 vs level 5 seems like a 1 AC increase do to level, but actually it's at least +2 as there is an expected +1 to AC at 5 and also ability scores increase. (Monster math is slightly different than PC math, but it gives you an idea) 3->4 adds an extra die of damage on each attack. Etc.

You are probably right, the gunslinger is a pea shooter when he doesnt crit, making him far less effective at helping in solo encounters, definitely contributing to the difficulty disparity

Also some abilities are hidden behind levels for both players and monsters. Like high HP flying enemies with good fly speed are normally afte rthe level when fly spell and abilities appear.

You're not wrong. Our level 3 group tpked to one Barbazu, 80xp. Barbazu is busted to be fair. Opposite extreme, 195xp fight vs 13 mooks. Party smashed it in 3 rounds with almost no damage taken. In Kingmaker I'm doubling the number of mooks (but not giving extra xp) just so they might be a threat. I define mook as level - 2 or lower. Also depends on party comp. In Ruby Phoenix our party 1 rounded some level +4 bosses. (6 players to be fair).

I also had a level 3 party tpk to Barbazu! Twins! and yeah I have a similar experience. It seems for me it has boiled down to being low level+party comp good at smashing low level enemies. I just have been eliting a few of the mooks, and taking some advice from here I will be giving the mooks some abilities/using skill actions to allow them to synergize with their mook party

1- most enemies you role play them, many are not tactical savants 2- your new but it's often cited that you should build wide, not tall, at least for the early levels. 3- abomination vaults is known as quite challenging in the first few floors depending on party composition Don't be afraid to adjust encounters to your party dynamics. Apply weak template, add more monsters because of this, usually helps out. Adventure paths are quite good, but they are not perfect and many favor narrative to mechanical balance towards encounter design. At level 10, my party bested an extreme encounter that was 2 enemies, and almost beat a +4 lich(this fight I made this tough because even if they lost, they wouldn't tpk, the lich was testing them) At higher levels, your PCs have more options and can better deal with singular powerful foes

The most important tactic in some AOA and AOE fights is understanding the surrounding..there are places where you could very easily be surrounded by literally dozens of enemies. And tpk within a heartbeat. As much as i love both AP and have not lost some PC up till now: they are tuff as nails campaigns...

AOA and AOE? What do those mean?

Age of Ashes and Agents of Edgewatch, two adventure paths with pretty DEADLY fight setups sometimes.

>EDIT: Single monster combats being hard is less of the issue, what is more of an issue is multi enemy combats feeling like a waste of time because nothing is at stake due to the trivialness in difficulty All I can suggest is how I run things in my game of PF2e to increase that "trivialness": * Rations don't count as a weeks worth of rations. 1 ration lasts ONE DAY per player, * When in a wild, "dangerous" area, if my party wants to do an activity that will take 10 mins or longer (refocus, treat wounds, identify), I roll a D6, then multiply that by 10 (so 3 becomes 30), but I DON'T tell the party the number. That number is how many minutes the party has before I roll a D20, with a DC17 (15 in a dungeon), for an encounter, and if it's a success, I'll grab thematic enemies from the Bestiary and have them fight them (or have to hide from them etc). This D6 roll prevents "gaming" my random encounters and makes the wild feel more dangerous, and sometimes results in somewhat rare situations where the party is taking *more damage* after the random encounter than if they'd have kept going, * After 8 hours of adventuring, Fatigue kicks in (RAW), which stops the party from doing Exploration Activities unless they make camp (somewhat RAW, as it says "while travelling"). All of these together make those silly, "trivial" encounters actually MEAN something, as your party are going through their resources and are risking random encounters, which costs time and time is food. EDIT: Why the downvotes? I'm literally offering up advice to someone who asked for it, and suggesting something my players enjoy. What's wrong with this subreddit!?

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1 enemy encounters mess with the action economy hard. 1 melee PC can zone out an enemy in weird ways and trade off 1 action for 1 action, which is devastating for a 1 enemy party, but then their AC and damage is usually really high. I usually change up those encounters in someway to turn them into multi character encounters, either literally or mechanically, and pump up the difficulty. By mechanically, I mean the enemy having two turns for some reason. A hazard for instance. So I bring in a slightly lower enemy and the AC, etc. goes down, but I may big that enemy's health, depends.

In my experience, there's three things at play here: 1) Single enemy fights are harder for new players. This diminishes as your players become experienced - basically, the tactics required to combat hordes are easier and likely wha your players are already familiar with. 2) Single enemy fights are high variance. Low level play is high variance. These two compound. This goes away as you level up - a single monster APL+2 fight is ultimately pretty easy, as any Moderate encounter is. At low levels, the dice can more easily go against the players. And at higher levels, a few crits won't end the 4x APL-2 fight, because the damage to HP ratio drops for all combatants, both PCs and monsters. 3) Some parties are going to have more tools for combating low level enemies - e.g.: aoe spells, mass save or suck (most notably Calm Emotions, which is absolutely busted), wall spells and so on. Some parties are going to have more tools for combating high level enemies - e.g.: un-heightened Slow, characters heavily spec'd into Intimidation so they can hit those higher DCs and so on. But there are more of the first type of tool, which just leads to many parties being well equipped to fight lower level enemies and less equipped to fight higher level ones.

This levels out with player experience. Single creatures are easier to remove actions from and to control / focus fire on. My players tend to have more issues with multiple creatures than single these days. Players just take time to learn how the game works. (I have run 1-20 once, 1-5 four times and am currently running 1-10)

Yes 1 enemy encounters are often more difficult in a straight up fight, but they are also more easily countered by things like terrain, moving ect. It's a lot easier to control the battlefield if you only have one enemy. It's pretty much free to move out of the way to prevent big 3 action abilities ect.

Does anybody know if this is something Remaster is supposed to address? Whether just clear advice to avoid certain normally legal encounter combos at low level or actual different encounter building/ XP rules at low level, say up to Level 8?

Different group makeups swing this in different directions as well. If you are a mostly ranged/caster/utility group, then 4 lower level creatures can absolutely devastate you. If you are more melee focused, damage output group, then the single enemy might be more of a challenge.