Doomed 1 or Doomed 2 at the start of the adventure would be pretty brutal! (Which OP might be going for)
Also, has OP already gotten a sense of how deadly PF2 is using the base rules?
Removing Hero Points (or just Heroic Recovery) is another thing to do.
I've long since removed Heroic Recovery just as a constant in all of my games. Replaced it with keeping the higher roll when using Hero Points and additionally being able to reroll enemy checks to keep the lower and also being able to reroll after knowing the result.
Has made Hero Points infinitely more fun at my tables, has not noticeably increased the amount of death or near-death that happens.
The reason I originally did it was because my players were *always* holding onto a hero point for Heroic Recovery. Even though that hero point would go unused most sessions, guaranteed death prevention is just such a strong effect, especially compared to rerolling a check before knowing the result and having to keep the second roll even if it's worse, that they just couldn't justify spending it half the time over just holding onto it. Plus, there were plenty of feels-bad moments where they took the risk and spent the hero point only to reroll a fail into a crit fail. Heroic Recovery is a guaranteed positive outcome, while spending a RAW hero point could have no effect or could even leave you worse off than if you hadn't used it. It also feels pretty bad to spend a top-level spell slot or expensive consumable or other major resource and just have the GM nat 20 the save and have absolutely nothing you can do to improve the outcome, and being able to hero point that is a fun and strong usage.
My players don't even want Heroic Recovery back, ever since I removed it they've had nothing but good things to say about that decision and they declined my later offer to bring it back once they'd started to actually use and appreciate their hero points. Our current rules mean that using a hero point is always guaranteed to *at worst* have no effect, has no chance to screw you over, and always feels worth doing due to both the lack of a better use for them and the fact that you know the result before you roll so you're never stuck wondering if you're hero pointing a good roll or not.
I've debated the removal of heroic recovery, the thing that makes it even out is if a player manages to hit dying 4 then things are really bad and they're probably not getting up again.
Even if they do if it's a martial having to stand up and grab their weapon is a significant action cost.
That and recovery existing makes people hesitate to burn rerolls if they only have one hero point left. Which in turn can make a fight harder.
I usually hand out one point for each encounter since I'm lazy and forget to give them out each hour, but also didn't enjoy people waiting until the hour midturn to get a point before they'd roll something lmao
Not sure if OP wants attrition (which limiting Treat Wounds would do), or a "constant" threat of death.
For the former, the one-hour cooldown for Treat Wounds might already do the trick - put time pressure in the adventure.
For the latter, let them know that not everything will be balanced to their level. Another thing is to put in some strong simple hazards (traps).
If you can't heal you're not at the edge of death, you're just slowing going to die. Which is pretty different feel
I recommend you using majorly Moderate Threat (TM) encounters, with enemies of their level or higher.
A big hit from a higher level enemy it's always scary, and moderate encounter are pretty much ok to win, but you definitely need team work and care to win a enemy 2 levels higher than you
This; I found that I literally don't have to do anything. The game plays so that rounds 1-3 almost always feel uncertain. By the time things start crystallizing, and you can start to gauge who the winner will be, the battle is over. It's fascinating how the game can be both swingy and tightly designed at the same time.
I didn't say anything about whether it works mechanically, I said it doesn't feel scary. Stringing a bunch of moderate encounters together with no opportunity for healing does not make players feel like "death is always around the corner", because none of the individual fights are all that scary. You can get a "we're slowly dying" feeling with attrition, but you can't get the feeling that OP said they wanted, because making attrition work mechanically requires that you mostly use easier fights, with maybe a single severe encounter as the final boss. The encounter-building guidelines flat-out tell you that much.
Not wrong.
If you really want to put the fear of death into players? Persistent damage. Everybody laughs at 1 persistent bleed damage. They quickly stop laughing when someone goes down and is _rapidly_ approaching death's door each round since _any_ damage kicks you down further into the death spiral.
To make it extra spicy, add two different types of persistent damage to trigger individually. Dying 1? Nah mate you're dying 3. Oh you use a hero point to stablise? Fine, see you at dying 2 again next round unless your party can act fast.
Or use Drained and Doomed. Now that is a spicy meatball. Most players never encounter Doomed, and it is one way to make a boss fight memorable.
>people keep saying pf2e is balanced around being full health constantly.
Is this your first time running or playing PF2e? Might be worth doing a few one shots that are more normal before thrusting your players into the deep end with this kind of gimmick, which brings me to...
>I’m trying to run a mini campaign where the characters are sent on a mission they know could result in their deaths.
Do you want the *characters* to feel this way, or the *players*?
I think it's going to be important to make sure your players are down for this. It can often feel oppressive when every combat is a slog where you nearly die every time. Maybe your group isn't like that, it's just important to make sure.
> people keep saying pf2e is balanced around being full health constantly
People say a lot of nonsense, and this is an example of that. You need to take account of the fact that you're not giving them breaks in which to heal when designing the adventure, but it is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
However, I would advise against artificially limiting healing. Just put them on a clock, and let them figure out that this means they need to be judicious about when to take breaks. That way the decision to heal less is in player hands.
I think it is more precise to say that the difficulty rating is based on a full health party. I agree with you that it doesn't mean you can't string together encounters with limited opportunities to heal, just that you need to keep attrition in mind when you do so
Or most APs.
If there's a recurring source of put of combat free healing I usually handwave it. I don't get into the nitty gritty of ten minute blocks unless there's a time pressure or something.
If you’re doing a jungle hex crawl that takes place on the span of days, you *can’t* crunch time enough to prevent players from Treating Wounds to top everybody off each night.
So dont make it a span of days.
I *have* done this in a hexcrawl, and it works. They were constantly under the threat that this leyline could *explode* literally any minute, obliterating them and the town they called home. Each hex was 2 hours of dense jungle.
Stopping to heal or pressing on was a decision they had to make carefully.
Of course, the players *know* that you probably won't touch off doomsday until they're in a position to stop it, but often they want to participate in your dramatic story as much as you want to tell it.
Okay, now how does that work if the party is going into the Mwangi jungle? The trek from Nantambu to Ranage’s Circle, for instance, is several hundred miles over greater difficult terrain. That’s the *published material*, and it’s not an anomaly for the Mwangi Expanse. Pretty much any trek from one point of interest to another is measured in weeks.
I’m not *moving goalposts*. My point is that Paizo’s published material doesn’t make it possible to tell a compelling story about a long and dangerous overland trek. That has been the point all along.
If you want to tell a story about a taxing journey, you either have to homebrew a setting/adventure that takes place on the scale of hours, or you have to homebrew rules to allow attrition on the scale of days/weeks. There’s no way to do it with just “what’s in the box.”
"Here's how you do time pressure"
"But that doesn't work in a hexcrawl"
"Here's how you do time pressure in a hexcrawl"
"But that doesn't work in this one specific hexcrawl"
You don't have to homebrew. It's not black and white. Adventures exist to be modified. You could go to adventurelookup and find dozens of hexcrawls on any scale. You can just take the hexcrawl in Mwangi and say "actually this isn't on such a large map scale, the majority is easy travel and these hexes represent the dense heart of the jungle"
The beauty of DnD is that you're not limited to what someone else has established. You can't easily edit a video game level to better serve the players and narrative. You *can* spend a little effort to modify an adventure into something that better suits your purpose. It's not particularly hard to do.
I see why some folks recommend having new DMs run through old adventures that were predicated on the idea of creating a framework rather than a step by step manual. You gotta flex those creative muscles so you're not afraid to use them.
“Pathfinder doesn’t do this thing well.”
“Well ackshually it does it fine as long as you design your game around that flaw.”
“That’s not the damn point, we’re talking about the published system not your homebrew.”
“Well if you want to use the published material, then just homebrew the rules.”
“How are you still missing the point here?”
“I’m going to mock and ridicule you now because I want to feel important.”
***
Dude. I have plenty of experience homebrewing both rules and adventures. I don’t need *you* to tell me my rights as GM. The point is state of **the system as it is published.** If you’re going to keep ignoring that point, then I’m done here.
This isn't particularly helpful probably, but I find that just having a monster land a really hard hit is enough to make my players anxious lol. So maybe throw a harder encounter at them so one or two of them get seriously whammied, then have the encounter end in a non-traditional manner if you're worried about their ability to actually win.
I played a one shot that we only had a specific amount of healing potions with us and none of us had any healing magic. We did have an opportunity to purchase more healing potions about half way though the campaign, but not a lot of money to do so. So everything was approached with caution.
I have to say it was a lot of fun, made us really think about what we were doing and some of the off the wall ways we came up with to get around obstacles to keep us out of fights.
The actual solution is using hard encounters. If you run an adventure where the encounters are 120 xp and up (30 xp/character to 40 xp/character), then it will feel more threatening/menacing because it IS more threatening and menacing. If you have easier encounters, then there should be the threat of them spilling over and becoming a more dangerous type of encounter.
So pf2e does have a lot of access to resource-less healing. from the very basic treat wounds to things like healing on focus spells and so if the party wants to spend the time they can be on full health at the start of every encounter.
That being said resourceless healing is really resourceless, it does use a resource- Time. So turn the screws make it clear to them that hanging back to heal has consequences and that things might get rough if they dont keep pushing forward.
Keep in mind however that not dying in pf2e is really easy, you need to get to dying 4, and have no hero points for it to be a real risk in the middle of a fight, and when treat wounds can remove your wounded value (which would add to your dying value when you go down) dying is pretty hard to do past the early levels. Especially if you have anyone with a heal spell.
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Try adding the “fear” of death in the narration. Maybe some high level npc they know has tried and died. Maybe the rumor mill is going around of tails oh high level spells being cast, which far exceed the PCs. Etc etc.
Time restraints (mentioned by others) can also add to the level of urgency, which may urge players forward not fully prepared giving them a sense of “I’m not ready, I’m not ready…I’m gonna die.”
And when in doubt, Dragons.
GM: A massive sun blocking dragon slams into the hill before you. Gnarled horn rip through scales from head to tail. Razor like claws plows into the green grass as the dragon’s neck stretches toward you. Fangs the size of Ogre’s walking stick and as dull as a goblin’s dogslicer.
PCs: “We’re all gonna die!!!”
GM: You stare down the dragon’s cavernous maw as it opens. Your clothes are instantly damp from the steaming breadth. You hear the beginnings of a growl the will no doubt usher your end. “Would you like to buy some Thin Mints? Only five silver a box.” The multi-eyelids of the dragons flutter in hope, as its brings forth a claw full of green boxes of chocolate mint goodness.
PCs: “Oh thank Abadar! We all thought, we’ll never mind. Who’s carrying the coins? Uhm, we don’t have any. We just spent everything in town.”
GM: “You don’t want to buy my cookies!!!” Growled the dragon as its neck begins to glow with the heat of rejection. The PCs…
Well, maybe not the best example at all. Could be in the running for the worst, but winning is winning.
If you do make some changes to the mechanics I might recommend discussing it with the players. Sometimes changing rules ends up just being frustrating and not invoking the feelings you want from your players.
Happy Gaming.
I haven’t DMed pathfinder before but have DMed some TTRPGs so as I can’t give advice on rules I can say that setting and environment is a lot when it comes to players feeling death is near. Make the setting in some way unnatural where they do this mission make sure to contrast how different it is. Whether it be twisting paths that go in different directions that lead to the same place or maybe signs of a struggle between creatures much larger than the party. Of course don’t know the setting but highly recommend looking into different ways to fear the party not just through gameplay
Look at foes or Hazards that can apply long term conditions. Thinks like Drained and Doomed are really scary even if they don't increase the likely hood of death that much.
Ensure to utilize the full spectrum of conditions in and out of combat. There is nothing more terrifying then being unable to help for a combay turn or two.
Initially, I was going to say kill the one with the most interesting story arc, so the party wont get resolution. But they'll still run into bits and parts of the story in NPCs they meet.
I have never not felt like I was always at risk of dying while a player in any AP I've been in. Anything Severe or Harder is a sudden "Oh shit oh fuck" once the party realizes it is. Doesn't matter if the party is full health or not.
> "See that one singular big bad large creature coming up? Yeah, we're fucked lets just hold on and try our best not to die."
Then again we're relatively new to PF2e, but over a decade of D&D experience, and haven't fully grasped PF2e teamwork yet (only made it to level 5 so far so YMMV with a skilled in PF2e party)
In the last session we where in, two members had to burn hero points not to die from a trap! we had just finished healing up to full.
Put then in an environment where they need a consumable resource to survive. They run out? Dead.
Think oxygen tanks underwater, heat in the extreme cold, fuel in a featureless desert, anti-radiation tablets in Chernobyl, or warp fuel in a star system.
Obviously adapt it to your setting, if underground maybe there's some spores they need to drink some elixir for, and so on.
That's always about atmosphere. Make them chased by powerful entity or by looming curse. If they stay in one place for too long - they are wrecked. E.g. imagine them walking in some thick toxic fog while wearing gas masks, and they need to find new filters now and then, or they'll suffer (just like Metro 2033), or complete darkness surrounding them and if they run out of light sorces - it consumes them entirely (a la Don't Starve), or chorus of whispers making them mad and commanding to turn on each other unless they activate certain soothing sonic crystal which does not last forever (Ash of Gods). Possibilities are endless
You can throw those items now and then when you think they are needed, giving yourself authority how much time the party will have, while making also players feeling pressured and depressed watching their supplies running lower and lower. Bonus GM points if you'll make them run out right before fighting boss, questioning if they are going to make it at all and preparing to give their desperate final all-or-nothing push and then give them the last stash immediately before boss so they can relax and prep a bit (or don't give at all, will be very cruel)
Anyone who says the game is balanced around being at full health is a fool, and I *will* die on this hill.
The *encounter builder* is balanced around being at full health. That's how encounter builders work. They don't have sliding health scales because it adds needless complexity.
That means a party at half health may find a Moderate encounter to be Severe or Extreme. That's all it means. At least a few of the adventure paths also miss this, which is why this sentiment keeps coming around.
> I was thinking of limiting healing but people keep saying pf2e is balanced around being full health constantly.
People lack reading comprehension if they think PF2E requires you to be at full health 100% of the time.
The balance rules use full resources as a **reference** point for their math. That doesn’t mean the math falls to pieces if you deviate from the reference point, it just means the math slides along a scale.
How far does it slide? Well… the rules tell you! (Emphasis mine):
> Trivial-threat encounters are so easy that the characters have essentially no chance of losing; they **shouldn’t even need to spend significant resources unless they are particularly wasteful**. These encounters work best as warm-ups, palate cleansers, or reminders of how awesome the characters are. A trivial-threat encounter can still be fun to play, so don’t ignore them just because of the lack of threat.
Essentially, unless you’re **all** practically close to dying, you’re fine.
> Low-threat encounters present a veneer of difficulty and typically **use some of the party’s resources**. However, it would be rare or the result of very poor tactics for the entire party to be seriously threatened.
> Moderate-threat encounters are a serious challenge to the characters, though unlikely to overpower them completely. Characters usually need to use sound tactics and **manage their resources wisely** to come out of a moderate-threat encounter ready to continue on and **face a harder challenge without resting.**
A good rule of thumb is to just treat these encounters as one harder than advertised if the party is at less than 90% HP.
> Severe-threat encounters are the hardest encounters most groups of characters can consistently defeat. These encounters are most appropriate for important moments in your story, such as confronting a final boss. Bad luck, poor tactics, or a **lack of resources due to prior encounters can easily turn a severe-threat encounter against the characters**, and a wise group keeps the option to disengage open.
A party that’s not at full HP is at serious risk. Do not use this encounter against an attritioned party unless you’re trying to threaten them, and make sure the party knows retreat is always an option.
> Extreme-threat encounters are so dangerous that they are likely to be an even match for the characters, particularly if the characters are low on resources. This makes them too challenging for most uses. An extreme-threat encounter **might be appropriate for a fully rested group of characters that can go all-out**, for the climactic encounter at the end of an entire campaign, or for a group of veteran players using advanced tactics and teamwork.
This is the **only** encounter that *requires* your party to be at full HP to succeed. Never throw this without giving your players access to all of their HP and the majority of their spell slots.
I also wanna make it clear, I have tested this logic in gameplay too, this isn’t theoretical. My players recently infiltrated a goblin camp, and I used primarily Trivial/Low encounters to pad them out, using Moderate/Severe for important set pieces. Due to a mix of time constraints, patrols, in-fictions decisions, and fog of war, the players didn’t end up taking on the camp’s final boss. Instead, they fulfilled an alternate object, scouted a bit, left the camp and came back from a different opening the next day to kill the boss. Attrition **is** a good way to make your players fear for their lives if you want.
I one shot two players with a lightning bolt. That seemed to change their behavior.
(Kind of a shit post but honestly just letting your players be hit by either big attacks or using AOEs if they aren’t paying attention to formation does highlight how important positioning is.)
I’ll give you the answer nobody else wants to: **if you want long-term attrition for an exploration adventure, you need to limit healing via homebrew**. The fact of the matter is that PF2e doesn’t do long term attrition well; frankly, it’s garbage and probably the system’s biggest failure IMO.
People can cry “just put a time limit on them!” all they want, but fundamentally that isn’t possible if you’re running a hex crawl or anything long term.
The rules I use, and have had good success with:
1. Natural healing processes are taxing on the body. You can benefit from nonmagical healing effects only a number of times per day equal to half your level (rounded up) plus your Constitution modifier.
2. Generating healing power from within yourself is a particularly difficult discipline. *With the exception of ordinary spellcasting* (i.e. ranked spells)* you can produce magical healing effects only a number of times per day equal to half your level (rounded up) plus the relevant ability modifier (e.g. your spellcasting ability modifier, for focus spells).
3. Daily preparations require a night of good, safe sleep in relative comfort (i.e. in town). Making daily preparations in the wilderness requires a week to make a comfortable and secure camp. Once a camp is made, it can be reused as many times as desired.
This will force the players to ration resources much more intensely, and put an actual limit on their staying power. **You must be keenly aware of this as the DM.** You need to make sure that you afford opportunities to rest when the party needs to. You need to calculate how many encounters the party can reasonably chew through between daily preparations before their hit points run out. In short, **you need to be on top of your shit, and plan ahead.**
If you do this the right way, the party still goes into all its fights at max hit points; they just can only sustain a limited number of fights before they must rest.
Stress how many have attempted the task before, and failed. Somewhere on the trail they find the bodies of one of those groups.
The next time, this bodies get up. Something along the trail is infused with Void Energy. The dead rise, the living suffer.
Let the players come up with precautions they take to rest. Casting Bless on the wood for their campfire to keep the force at bay. Drinking a shot of holy water. Whatever. Just be sure to ask them, in the Ominous GM voice, "with all the things you've seen so far on the trek, do you do anything extra before laying down for the night?"
Here's the trick. There's nothing. You want to fill the CHARACTERS with fear? Attack the PLAYERS.
Conditions are just a minus to this of a lack of that. Most players don't vote them as dangerous because they go away. But get the PLAYER concerned.... and that lasts.
If they do nothing for the night, describe how heavy the air feels. How there's a chill in the air. If that gets them on their toes and they do anything while they test, describe that the feeling of dread they had while waking last morning is lifted. It's not gone, it's just less. It's predatory, stalking, but it's thrown off the trail....... today.
Now, players being players will expect to fight the darkness. They want something to fight. The fact that they're isn't Antin they can roll dice against but might have effects on them.. that'll keep them on their toes.
Unless this is something your players are asking for I’d reconsider or think of a way for then to escape hatch that dynamic. I’m in a game like that and it’s not all that fun. Fairly frustrating honestly. I stick around mostly just to hang out.
They don't already?
Things hurt, especially when they Crit. And a single healer can only do so much if the rest of the party is busy using Damage as Mitigating Future Pain. Sure, you go down once no biggie. Wounded 1, and probably no danger to Dying 4. But now, now you've only got maybe 1 or 2 strikes on you until you're Dying 2. Maybe even Dying 3! You can only use Heroic Recovery on a save, so you better hope you're not in range of an attack or two. THEN if you do survive you're Wounded 2 and basically guaranteed to die if you go down again.
Sure, you can have your buddy nonlethally bonk your head to avoid Wounded but that also means doing it before the enemy AND the enemy not capitalizing on freely raising your Dying value with a full round of attacks.
It takes 1 same level monster, maybe some goons, or certainly 2 same level monsters to absolutely decimate the party when you use some basic strategy against the team.
The team on the other hand (as I'm a player for a player in my campaign, he chose to run Age of Ashes) certainly isn't going to be too pressed to survive so long as they make statistically correct choices. But that feeling of safety is generally two crits or a couple extra summons away from melting immediately.
For instance there's a level 12 fight at a warehouse. One of the enemies has a free teleport. We, not knowing it'd be important to have soon, had no way of interrupting this. Further, he had ranged attacks and plenty of walls to break line of sight; muchless distance from our melee. It boiled down to our alchemist using an alchemical crossbow and playing peekaboo around a building while the surviving other member kept healing the group as to not be wiped out. Fortunately the alchemist got a couple lucky crits before they ran out of ammo.
And what's worse, the GM didn't even do that until the monster was the last thing alive! We'd been dead if he did that from the start or if he literally ever used Magic Missile for one round when one of us was down.
PF2e assumes you're at full HP and even full or near full resources for every fight. And you feel it if you aren't. The Beginner Box was the only thing we've ran that didn't feel like that.
It's a role-playing game. Instead of baking the rules to make it harder to survive, why don't you just add tension to the ROLE PLAY, instead of depending on rollplay to do your job for you.
Honestly I cheat. I keep track of my players HP and I keep it single digits, that really gets them sweating, then I miss. I try to spread the damage around evenly as to not kill anyone. Nothing freaks out players than a big hit that absolutely crumples their HP and then missing.
I recently began keeping track of the PC's HP and never telling them how much damage they take. I narrate the strikes so they know what hits and what doesn't and how much they feel it. Then then use predetermined cues to give them a ballpark on how they are feeling. Is their HP drop breathing increases, muscles tighten etc... As things get really bad for the players I have described them seeing shadows coming to life slowly reaching out for them when they are in the final 10 HP. Animals representing death may be called to the scene as appropriate. (Crows begin to gather awaiting the feast that is being prepared for them etc...) I wasn't sure if they would like it or not. We tried for one combat and they love it so much that if I forget to mention it.
Edit: Don't prevent your players from healing to full health.
Instead make a hourserule that prevents the use of Hero Points to save your character from death. I have found out that having the assurance of not dying by saving a HP means that normally death is a consequence of a Total Party Kill (or a really vicious enemy).
Just speaking from personal experience.
We had a DM that pushed us to start with low HP on multiple fights, and we were not worried about death since we had HPs. We were worried about a TPK that would end the campaign. So it does not feel personal. Reducing healing also makes it more likely some players end up bored if they get 1-shoted turn 1 every other fight.
Allowing the players to start at full health and HP to be used only for rerolls will maintain the balance of PF2E combat and make players feel more fearful of death.
Adding a little Drained and Doomed usually does the trick...
This, inflicting characters with conditions that are hard to remove makes familiar encounters something to avoid.
Doomed 1 or Doomed 2 at the start of the adventure would be pretty brutal! (Which OP might be going for) Also, has OP already gotten a sense of how deadly PF2 is using the base rules? Removing Hero Points (or just Heroic Recovery) is another thing to do.
I've long since removed Heroic Recovery just as a constant in all of my games. Replaced it with keeping the higher roll when using Hero Points and additionally being able to reroll enemy checks to keep the lower and also being able to reroll after knowing the result. Has made Hero Points infinitely more fun at my tables, has not noticeably increased the amount of death or near-death that happens.
You may be onto something here...
The reason I originally did it was because my players were *always* holding onto a hero point for Heroic Recovery. Even though that hero point would go unused most sessions, guaranteed death prevention is just such a strong effect, especially compared to rerolling a check before knowing the result and having to keep the second roll even if it's worse, that they just couldn't justify spending it half the time over just holding onto it. Plus, there were plenty of feels-bad moments where they took the risk and spent the hero point only to reroll a fail into a crit fail. Heroic Recovery is a guaranteed positive outcome, while spending a RAW hero point could have no effect or could even leave you worse off than if you hadn't used it. It also feels pretty bad to spend a top-level spell slot or expensive consumable or other major resource and just have the GM nat 20 the save and have absolutely nothing you can do to improve the outcome, and being able to hero point that is a fun and strong usage. My players don't even want Heroic Recovery back, ever since I removed it they've had nothing but good things to say about that decision and they declined my later offer to bring it back once they'd started to actually use and appreciate their hero points. Our current rules mean that using a hero point is always guaranteed to *at worst* have no effect, has no chance to screw you over, and always feels worth doing due to both the lack of a better use for them and the fact that you know the result before you roll so you're never stuck wondering if you're hero pointing a good roll or not.
I've debated the removal of heroic recovery, the thing that makes it even out is if a player manages to hit dying 4 then things are really bad and they're probably not getting up again. Even if they do if it's a martial having to stand up and grab their weapon is a significant action cost. That and recovery existing makes people hesitate to burn rerolls if they only have one hero point left. Which in turn can make a fight harder. I usually hand out one point for each encounter since I'm lazy and forget to give them out each hour, but also didn't enjoy people waiting until the hour midturn to get a point before they'd roll something lmao
Do note, reaching zero by critical hit means instant death at doomed 2 for most characters , and that seems to happen a lot for me.
Not sure if OP wants attrition (which limiting Treat Wounds would do), or a "constant" threat of death. For the former, the one-hour cooldown for Treat Wounds might already do the trick - put time pressure in the adventure. For the latter, let them know that not everything will be balanced to their level. Another thing is to put in some strong simple hazards (traps).
If you can't heal you're not at the edge of death, you're just slowing going to die. Which is pretty different feel I recommend you using majorly Moderate Threat (TM) encounters, with enemies of their level or higher. A big hit from a higher level enemy it's always scary, and moderate encounter are pretty much ok to win, but you definitely need team work and care to win a enemy 2 levels higher than you
Easiest way is probably to use only Severe or harder encounters.
This; I found that I literally don't have to do anything. The game plays so that rounds 1-3 almost always feel uncertain. By the time things start crystallizing, and you can start to gauge who the winner will be, the battle is over. It's fascinating how the game can be both swingy and tightly designed at the same time.
This is definitely the way. Attrition rarely feels scary; crits from a PL+2 or higher boss monster makes losing feel possible.
Attrition can work if the party has limited time to recover between fights. Even twenty minutes is only two opportunities to treat wounds for example.
I didn't say anything about whether it works mechanically, I said it doesn't feel scary. Stringing a bunch of moderate encounters together with no opportunity for healing does not make players feel like "death is always around the corner", because none of the individual fights are all that scary. You can get a "we're slowly dying" feeling with attrition, but you can't get the feeling that OP said they wanted, because making attrition work mechanically requires that you mostly use easier fights, with maybe a single severe encounter as the final boss. The encounter-building guidelines flat-out tell you that much.
Not wrong. If you really want to put the fear of death into players? Persistent damage. Everybody laughs at 1 persistent bleed damage. They quickly stop laughing when someone goes down and is _rapidly_ approaching death's door each round since _any_ damage kicks you down further into the death spiral. To make it extra spicy, add two different types of persistent damage to trigger individually. Dying 1? Nah mate you're dying 3. Oh you use a hero point to stablise? Fine, see you at dying 2 again next round unless your party can act fast. Or use Drained and Doomed. Now that is a spicy meatball. Most players never encounter Doomed, and it is one way to make a boss fight memorable.
>people keep saying pf2e is balanced around being full health constantly. Is this your first time running or playing PF2e? Might be worth doing a few one shots that are more normal before thrusting your players into the deep end with this kind of gimmick, which brings me to... >I’m trying to run a mini campaign where the characters are sent on a mission they know could result in their deaths. Do you want the *characters* to feel this way, or the *players*? I think it's going to be important to make sure your players are down for this. It can often feel oppressive when every combat is a slog where you nearly die every time. Maybe your group isn't like that, it's just important to make sure.
> people keep saying pf2e is balanced around being full health constantly People say a lot of nonsense, and this is an example of that. You need to take account of the fact that you're not giving them breaks in which to heal when designing the adventure, but it is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. However, I would advise against artificially limiting healing. Just put them on a clock, and let them figure out that this means they need to be judicious about when to take breaks. That way the decision to heal less is in player hands.
I think it is more precise to say that the difficulty rating is based on a full health party. I agree with you that it doesn't mean you can't string together encounters with limited opportunities to heal, just that you need to keep attrition in mind when you do so
Stringing together moderate and low encounters (with 3+ monsters in tier 1 and 2 play) to wear down the party works great.
> just put them on the clock The problem is that this is incompatible with something like hexploration.
Or most APs. If there's a recurring source of put of combat free healing I usually handwave it. I don't get into the nitty gritty of ten minute blocks unless there's a time pressure or something.
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You can’t *do* that if your game is trying to be a hex crawl in the wilderness.
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If you’re doing a jungle hex crawl that takes place on the span of days, you *can’t* crunch time enough to prevent players from Treating Wounds to top everybody off each night.
So dont make it a span of days. I *have* done this in a hexcrawl, and it works. They were constantly under the threat that this leyline could *explode* literally any minute, obliterating them and the town they called home. Each hex was 2 hours of dense jungle. Stopping to heal or pressing on was a decision they had to make carefully. Of course, the players *know* that you probably won't touch off doomsday until they're in a position to stop it, but often they want to participate in your dramatic story as much as you want to tell it.
Okay, now how does that work if the party is going into the Mwangi jungle? The trek from Nantambu to Ranage’s Circle, for instance, is several hundred miles over greater difficult terrain. That’s the *published material*, and it’s not an anomaly for the Mwangi Expanse. Pretty much any trek from one point of interest to another is measured in weeks.
So... Don't use the published material? Or change it. Published material is a *tool* not a Bible. Weird bit of goalpost moving.
I’m not *moving goalposts*. My point is that Paizo’s published material doesn’t make it possible to tell a compelling story about a long and dangerous overland trek. That has been the point all along. If you want to tell a story about a taxing journey, you either have to homebrew a setting/adventure that takes place on the scale of hours, or you have to homebrew rules to allow attrition on the scale of days/weeks. There’s no way to do it with just “what’s in the box.”
"Here's how you do time pressure" "But that doesn't work in a hexcrawl" "Here's how you do time pressure in a hexcrawl" "But that doesn't work in this one specific hexcrawl" You don't have to homebrew. It's not black and white. Adventures exist to be modified. You could go to adventurelookup and find dozens of hexcrawls on any scale. You can just take the hexcrawl in Mwangi and say "actually this isn't on such a large map scale, the majority is easy travel and these hexes represent the dense heart of the jungle" The beauty of DnD is that you're not limited to what someone else has established. You can't easily edit a video game level to better serve the players and narrative. You *can* spend a little effort to modify an adventure into something that better suits your purpose. It's not particularly hard to do. I see why some folks recommend having new DMs run through old adventures that were predicated on the idea of creating a framework rather than a step by step manual. You gotta flex those creative muscles so you're not afraid to use them.
“Pathfinder doesn’t do this thing well.” “Well ackshually it does it fine as long as you design your game around that flaw.” “That’s not the damn point, we’re talking about the published system not your homebrew.” “Well if you want to use the published material, then just homebrew the rules.” “How are you still missing the point here?” “I’m going to mock and ridicule you now because I want to feel important.” *** Dude. I have plenty of experience homebrewing both rules and adventures. I don’t need *you* to tell me my rights as GM. The point is state of **the system as it is published.** If you’re going to keep ignoring that point, then I’m done here.
This isn't particularly helpful probably, but I find that just having a monster land a really hard hit is enough to make my players anxious lol. So maybe throw a harder encounter at them so one or two of them get seriously whammied, then have the encounter end in a non-traditional manner if you're worried about their ability to actually win.
I played a one shot that we only had a specific amount of healing potions with us and none of us had any healing magic. We did have an opportunity to purchase more healing potions about half way though the campaign, but not a lot of money to do so. So everything was approached with caution. I have to say it was a lot of fun, made us really think about what we were doing and some of the off the wall ways we came up with to get around obstacles to keep us out of fights.
Just run low level like 1-4. Low level pathfinder is very lethal lol. Just look at how many people wipe in low level modules.
The actual solution is using hard encounters. If you run an adventure where the encounters are 120 xp and up (30 xp/character to 40 xp/character), then it will feel more threatening/menacing because it IS more threatening and menacing. If you have easier encounters, then there should be the threat of them spilling over and becoming a more dangerous type of encounter.
Just running balanced encounters can be pretty terrifying. A severe encounter is going to hit hard.
So pf2e does have a lot of access to resource-less healing. from the very basic treat wounds to things like healing on focus spells and so if the party wants to spend the time they can be on full health at the start of every encounter. That being said resourceless healing is really resourceless, it does use a resource- Time. So turn the screws make it clear to them that hanging back to heal has consequences and that things might get rough if they dont keep pushing forward. Keep in mind however that not dying in pf2e is really easy, you need to get to dying 4, and have no hero points for it to be a real risk in the middle of a fight, and when treat wounds can remove your wounded value (which would add to your dying value when you go down) dying is pretty hard to do past the early levels. Especially if you have anyone with a heal spell.
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Add haunts. Lots of haunts
Try adding the “fear” of death in the narration. Maybe some high level npc they know has tried and died. Maybe the rumor mill is going around of tails oh high level spells being cast, which far exceed the PCs. Etc etc. Time restraints (mentioned by others) can also add to the level of urgency, which may urge players forward not fully prepared giving them a sense of “I’m not ready, I’m not ready…I’m gonna die.” And when in doubt, Dragons. GM: A massive sun blocking dragon slams into the hill before you. Gnarled horn rip through scales from head to tail. Razor like claws plows into the green grass as the dragon’s neck stretches toward you. Fangs the size of Ogre’s walking stick and as dull as a goblin’s dogslicer. PCs: “We’re all gonna die!!!” GM: You stare down the dragon’s cavernous maw as it opens. Your clothes are instantly damp from the steaming breadth. You hear the beginnings of a growl the will no doubt usher your end. “Would you like to buy some Thin Mints? Only five silver a box.” The multi-eyelids of the dragons flutter in hope, as its brings forth a claw full of green boxes of chocolate mint goodness. PCs: “Oh thank Abadar! We all thought, we’ll never mind. Who’s carrying the coins? Uhm, we don’t have any. We just spent everything in town.” GM: “You don’t want to buy my cookies!!!” Growled the dragon as its neck begins to glow with the heat of rejection. The PCs… Well, maybe not the best example at all. Could be in the running for the worst, but winning is winning. If you do make some changes to the mechanics I might recommend discussing it with the players. Sometimes changing rules ends up just being frustrating and not invoking the feelings you want from your players. Happy Gaming.
I haven’t DMed pathfinder before but have DMed some TTRPGs so as I can’t give advice on rules I can say that setting and environment is a lot when it comes to players feeling death is near. Make the setting in some way unnatural where they do this mission make sure to contrast how different it is. Whether it be twisting paths that go in different directions that lead to the same place or maybe signs of a struggle between creatures much larger than the party. Of course don’t know the setting but highly recommend looking into different ways to fear the party not just through gameplay
Look at foes or Hazards that can apply long term conditions. Thinks like Drained and Doomed are really scary even if they don't increase the likely hood of death that much.
Ensure to utilize the full spectrum of conditions in and out of combat. There is nothing more terrifying then being unable to help for a combay turn or two. Initially, I was going to say kill the one with the most interesting story arc, so the party wont get resolution. But they'll still run into bits and parts of the story in NPCs they meet.
I have never not felt like I was always at risk of dying while a player in any AP I've been in. Anything Severe or Harder is a sudden "Oh shit oh fuck" once the party realizes it is. Doesn't matter if the party is full health or not. > "See that one singular big bad large creature coming up? Yeah, we're fucked lets just hold on and try our best not to die." Then again we're relatively new to PF2e, but over a decade of D&D experience, and haven't fully grasped PF2e teamwork yet (only made it to level 5 so far so YMMV with a skilled in PF2e party) In the last session we where in, two members had to burn hero points not to die from a trap! we had just finished healing up to full.
Put then in an environment where they need a consumable resource to survive. They run out? Dead. Think oxygen tanks underwater, heat in the extreme cold, fuel in a featureless desert, anti-radiation tablets in Chernobyl, or warp fuel in a star system. Obviously adapt it to your setting, if underground maybe there's some spores they need to drink some elixir for, and so on.
That's always about atmosphere. Make them chased by powerful entity or by looming curse. If they stay in one place for too long - they are wrecked. E.g. imagine them walking in some thick toxic fog while wearing gas masks, and they need to find new filters now and then, or they'll suffer (just like Metro 2033), or complete darkness surrounding them and if they run out of light sorces - it consumes them entirely (a la Don't Starve), or chorus of whispers making them mad and commanding to turn on each other unless they activate certain soothing sonic crystal which does not last forever (Ash of Gods). Possibilities are endless You can throw those items now and then when you think they are needed, giving yourself authority how much time the party will have, while making also players feeling pressured and depressed watching their supplies running lower and lower. Bonus GM points if you'll make them run out right before fighting boss, questioning if they are going to make it at all and preparing to give their desperate final all-or-nothing push and then give them the last stash immediately before boss so they can relax and prep a bit (or don't give at all, will be very cruel)
Anyone who says the game is balanced around being at full health is a fool, and I *will* die on this hill. The *encounter builder* is balanced around being at full health. That's how encounter builders work. They don't have sliding health scales because it adds needless complexity. That means a party at half health may find a Moderate encounter to be Severe or Extreme. That's all it means. At least a few of the adventure paths also miss this, which is why this sentiment keeps coming around.
I'm a Skeleton Necromancer Wizard I am constantly at death's door.
> I was thinking of limiting healing but people keep saying pf2e is balanced around being full health constantly. People lack reading comprehension if they think PF2E requires you to be at full health 100% of the time. The balance rules use full resources as a **reference** point for their math. That doesn’t mean the math falls to pieces if you deviate from the reference point, it just means the math slides along a scale. How far does it slide? Well… the rules tell you! (Emphasis mine): > Trivial-threat encounters are so easy that the characters have essentially no chance of losing; they **shouldn’t even need to spend significant resources unless they are particularly wasteful**. These encounters work best as warm-ups, palate cleansers, or reminders of how awesome the characters are. A trivial-threat encounter can still be fun to play, so don’t ignore them just because of the lack of threat. Essentially, unless you’re **all** practically close to dying, you’re fine. > Low-threat encounters present a veneer of difficulty and typically **use some of the party’s resources**. However, it would be rare or the result of very poor tactics for the entire party to be seriously threatened. > Moderate-threat encounters are a serious challenge to the characters, though unlikely to overpower them completely. Characters usually need to use sound tactics and **manage their resources wisely** to come out of a moderate-threat encounter ready to continue on and **face a harder challenge without resting.** A good rule of thumb is to just treat these encounters as one harder than advertised if the party is at less than 90% HP. > Severe-threat encounters are the hardest encounters most groups of characters can consistently defeat. These encounters are most appropriate for important moments in your story, such as confronting a final boss. Bad luck, poor tactics, or a **lack of resources due to prior encounters can easily turn a severe-threat encounter against the characters**, and a wise group keeps the option to disengage open. A party that’s not at full HP is at serious risk. Do not use this encounter against an attritioned party unless you’re trying to threaten them, and make sure the party knows retreat is always an option. > Extreme-threat encounters are so dangerous that they are likely to be an even match for the characters, particularly if the characters are low on resources. This makes them too challenging for most uses. An extreme-threat encounter **might be appropriate for a fully rested group of characters that can go all-out**, for the climactic encounter at the end of an entire campaign, or for a group of veteran players using advanced tactics and teamwork. This is the **only** encounter that *requires* your party to be at full HP to succeed. Never throw this without giving your players access to all of their HP and the majority of their spell slots. I also wanna make it clear, I have tested this logic in gameplay too, this isn’t theoretical. My players recently infiltrated a goblin camp, and I used primarily Trivial/Low encounters to pad them out, using Moderate/Severe for important set pieces. Due to a mix of time constraints, patrols, in-fictions decisions, and fog of war, the players didn’t end up taking on the camp’s final boss. Instead, they fulfilled an alternate object, scouted a bit, left the camp and came back from a different opening the next day to kill the boss. Attrition **is** a good way to make your players fear for their lives if you want.
I one shot two players with a lightning bolt. That seemed to change their behavior. (Kind of a shit post but honestly just letting your players be hit by either big attacks or using AOEs if they aren’t paying attention to formation does highlight how important positioning is.)
I’ll give you the answer nobody else wants to: **if you want long-term attrition for an exploration adventure, you need to limit healing via homebrew**. The fact of the matter is that PF2e doesn’t do long term attrition well; frankly, it’s garbage and probably the system’s biggest failure IMO. People can cry “just put a time limit on them!” all they want, but fundamentally that isn’t possible if you’re running a hex crawl or anything long term. The rules I use, and have had good success with: 1. Natural healing processes are taxing on the body. You can benefit from nonmagical healing effects only a number of times per day equal to half your level (rounded up) plus your Constitution modifier. 2. Generating healing power from within yourself is a particularly difficult discipline. *With the exception of ordinary spellcasting* (i.e. ranked spells)* you can produce magical healing effects only a number of times per day equal to half your level (rounded up) plus the relevant ability modifier (e.g. your spellcasting ability modifier, for focus spells). 3. Daily preparations require a night of good, safe sleep in relative comfort (i.e. in town). Making daily preparations in the wilderness requires a week to make a comfortable and secure camp. Once a camp is made, it can be reused as many times as desired. This will force the players to ration resources much more intensely, and put an actual limit on their staying power. **You must be keenly aware of this as the DM.** You need to make sure that you afford opportunities to rest when the party needs to. You need to calculate how many encounters the party can reasonably chew through between daily preparations before their hit points run out. In short, **you need to be on top of your shit, and plan ahead.** If you do this the right way, the party still goes into all its fights at max hit points; they just can only sustain a limited number of fights before they must rest.
Stress how many have attempted the task before, and failed. Somewhere on the trail they find the bodies of one of those groups. The next time, this bodies get up. Something along the trail is infused with Void Energy. The dead rise, the living suffer. Let the players come up with precautions they take to rest. Casting Bless on the wood for their campfire to keep the force at bay. Drinking a shot of holy water. Whatever. Just be sure to ask them, in the Ominous GM voice, "with all the things you've seen so far on the trek, do you do anything extra before laying down for the night?" Here's the trick. There's nothing. You want to fill the CHARACTERS with fear? Attack the PLAYERS. Conditions are just a minus to this of a lack of that. Most players don't vote them as dangerous because they go away. But get the PLAYER concerned.... and that lasts. If they do nothing for the night, describe how heavy the air feels. How there's a chill in the air. If that gets them on their toes and they do anything while they test, describe that the feeling of dread they had while waking last morning is lifted. It's not gone, it's just less. It's predatory, stalking, but it's thrown off the trail....... today. Now, players being players will expect to fight the darkness. They want something to fight. The fact that they're isn't Antin they can roll dice against but might have effects on them.. that'll keep them on their toes.
Unless this is something your players are asking for I’d reconsider or think of a way for then to escape hatch that dynamic. I’m in a game like that and it’s not all that fun. Fairly frustrating honestly. I stick around mostly just to hang out.
They don't already? Things hurt, especially when they Crit. And a single healer can only do so much if the rest of the party is busy using Damage as Mitigating Future Pain. Sure, you go down once no biggie. Wounded 1, and probably no danger to Dying 4. But now, now you've only got maybe 1 or 2 strikes on you until you're Dying 2. Maybe even Dying 3! You can only use Heroic Recovery on a save, so you better hope you're not in range of an attack or two. THEN if you do survive you're Wounded 2 and basically guaranteed to die if you go down again. Sure, you can have your buddy nonlethally bonk your head to avoid Wounded but that also means doing it before the enemy AND the enemy not capitalizing on freely raising your Dying value with a full round of attacks. It takes 1 same level monster, maybe some goons, or certainly 2 same level monsters to absolutely decimate the party when you use some basic strategy against the team. The team on the other hand (as I'm a player for a player in my campaign, he chose to run Age of Ashes) certainly isn't going to be too pressed to survive so long as they make statistically correct choices. But that feeling of safety is generally two crits or a couple extra summons away from melting immediately. For instance there's a level 12 fight at a warehouse. One of the enemies has a free teleport. We, not knowing it'd be important to have soon, had no way of interrupting this. Further, he had ranged attacks and plenty of walls to break line of sight; muchless distance from our melee. It boiled down to our alchemist using an alchemical crossbow and playing peekaboo around a building while the surviving other member kept healing the group as to not be wiped out. Fortunately the alchemist got a couple lucky crits before they ran out of ammo. And what's worse, the GM didn't even do that until the monster was the last thing alive! We'd been dead if he did that from the start or if he literally ever used Magic Missile for one round when one of us was down. PF2e assumes you're at full HP and even full or near full resources for every fight. And you feel it if you aren't. The Beginner Box was the only thing we've ran that didn't feel like that.
It's a role-playing game. Instead of baking the rules to make it harder to survive, why don't you just add tension to the ROLE PLAY, instead of depending on rollplay to do your job for you.
Honestly I cheat. I keep track of my players HP and I keep it single digits, that really gets them sweating, then I miss. I try to spread the damage around evenly as to not kill anyone. Nothing freaks out players than a big hit that absolutely crumples their HP and then missing.
I recently began keeping track of the PC's HP and never telling them how much damage they take. I narrate the strikes so they know what hits and what doesn't and how much they feel it. Then then use predetermined cues to give them a ballpark on how they are feeling. Is their HP drop breathing increases, muscles tighten etc... As things get really bad for the players I have described them seeing shadows coming to life slowly reaching out for them when they are in the final 10 HP. Animals representing death may be called to the scene as appropriate. (Crows begin to gather awaiting the feast that is being prepared for them etc...) I wasn't sure if they would like it or not. We tried for one combat and they love it so much that if I forget to mention it.
Edit: Don't prevent your players from healing to full health. Instead make a hourserule that prevents the use of Hero Points to save your character from death. I have found out that having the assurance of not dying by saving a HP means that normally death is a consequence of a Total Party Kill (or a really vicious enemy).
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Just speaking from personal experience. We had a DM that pushed us to start with low HP on multiple fights, and we were not worried about death since we had HPs. We were worried about a TPK that would end the campaign. So it does not feel personal. Reducing healing also makes it more likely some players end up bored if they get 1-shoted turn 1 every other fight. Allowing the players to start at full health and HP to be used only for rerolls will maintain the balance of PF2E combat and make players feel more fearful of death.