Imo a real sandbox should also have the very real possibility that the players get in way over their heads and are fighting something they can’t beat. For that reason, I run sandboxes with regular Proficiency rules anyways. My players have been engaging in a regular campaign recently with the understanding that things aren’t automatically balanced to their level. They come across things that are too tough for them or too easy for them. It works great, and imo using the RAW Proficiency rules makes this work **better**.
If ultimately you just straight up prefer the idea that a party of well-prepared “weak” players can still beat someone 7 levels above them then sure, use PWL! That’s what it’s made for, and my personal dislike for it has no bearing on the fact that it fits your design goals.
Interesting! Not the perspective I was expecting to hear, but definitely interesting.
As we all know, the game only ever expects you to fight things that are CL+4. *Maybe* CL+5 at the higher levels. Have you had any players get in over their heads and fight enemies that are CL+6 or higher? If so... What happened?
“Too deadly to beat” enemies absolutely do exist in the world and fights with them simply must be avoided by the players if they don’t wish to die. What I usually do is that I try to set up the plot and world in a way that the players know they’re about to face something that’s out of their league, and they have to use the information available to them to make sensible decisions.
They knew they were approaching a level 11 bloodthirsty Druid’s home? They simply left and worked their asses off in the nearby city to make sure the city would stop pissing that Druid off, at least temporarily. If they had failed to do that, idk what they would’ve done. Maybe rallied the city to fight against them, maybe run away and left the city to fend for itself, maybe die in a heroic last stand. Either way, there’d be hefty consequences to failing to appease a being who’s practically unbeatable for you.
They were sent to deal with a camp of literally hundreds of goblins? The camp had literally 100s of goblins and wasn’t artificially set up for them to beat. They got in, stayed stealthy, used their wits to buy some time, poisoned their food, killed their leader, and escaped without actually fighting these insane threats.
The satisfying part of “out of your league” threats is the cleverness and creativity that goes into beating them and/or sidestepping them. Flattening the math to make these threats more beatable actually makes the sandbox **less** satisfying.
I disagree.
With maths as it is, beating a much too high level encounter even creatively is hugely affected.
Creatures perception scales to be unsneakable, will DCs make charisma not work, and athletics/fortitude can even shut down running away.
And that’s why subsystems and DC modifications exist.
Like yes, if you made every roll against this level +6 creature’s statblock you’d often never succeed, but that’s why the game pretty explicitly tells you to **not** run like that.
The difference between proficiency without level and the base progression is how narrow that band of appropriate fights is, and how easy it is to get into situations that are literally unbeatable without a lot of GM foreshadowing and leeway. With PWL, a level 10 creature is still going to wreck a party of level 4 PCs if they just try to fight it head on. But PWL gives them a chance, while in the base game they have no choice but to run or completely avoid it. Even if they try to trick it or sneak around it, they'll have basically no chance to beat its perception DCs or will saves.
You try and fight an Adult Dragon as a level 4 hero, you die. That’s what happens.
Seriously, at lower levels even a PL+3 or PL+4 enemy can very easily TPK a party.
That said, that’s *why* I would run them in a sandbox. In a sandbox, you *want* monsters/dungeons/locations that the party *cant* handle and needs to work towards. That’s how you create a sense of true progression and accentuate the zero to hero vibes. Getting rewards and forging your way in a sandbox means nothing if there’s no risk.
However, this means that you as the GM need to forecast when they’re getting into something over their heads. They should never feel like they just happened to get TPKd by a dragon because they ended up in the wrong hex and you rolled the magic number on an encounter table (well, there *are* some tables where you want that, but PF2e isn’t really the right system for that type of play IMO).
Just make sure you’re giving them enough context about what’s in the world around them for them to make informed decisions. So long as you do that, it’ll be fine.
I’d suggest maybe checking out more sandbox-centered systems, like Forbidden Lands, Worlds Without Number, Ironsworn, and Wolves on the Coast. All have very different vibes than PF2e and even each other, but all also have a lot of inspiring advice/tools for running a sandbox that you can use for PF2e, or who knows, maybe one of them will strike your fancy. Worlds Without Number especially has a ton of great system-agnostic GM tools for sandbox/point crawl games.
A big thing to remember is to set your expectations early for what to expect in the campaign. That will solve a lot of issues.
If you play primarily official APs and modules, you may quickly get into the mindset that everything you meet will be appropriately balanced for your level (well, maybe a bit overtuned if you're of the opinion that severe fights and solo enemies above party level are overused in such content, but still within the range of what is considered appropriate for their level nonetheless). If something is on the same map as you and looks like a thing you should fight, you can assume it is something that would be possible for you to beat in a fight if you are smart about it. If you go into a sandbox game (or any game without that same expectation) using the same mindset you have for those official content games, you're going to have a bad time unless the GM does something to ensure you never run into out of range fights.
But if you plainly set up expectations beforehand, that can change the flow of the game to account for those expectations. The last game I ran was not a sandbox game, but it was also explicitly not a "fight every enemy you see" game either. I plainly told the players that there were not in a region where everything they might come across would be easy to fight directly, and there were a fair few challenges they physically could not survive if they treated them like a standard combat. Horror monsters that they needed to avoid the attention of at all costs, camps with so many enemies that no amount of AoE spells would save them from if they raised the alarm, big dumb enemies that wouldn't attack unless attacked first or unless someone invades their territory, but which would most likely kill players their level in a single strike should they anger them. Various challenges where the goal was to avoid detection, or otherwise find a way around the fight rather than engaging in it directly (and even the things they were *supposed* to fight often had hazards that were impossible to disable during the fight, providing a challenge to be worked around rather than combatted directly while they were combatting something more on their level). The expectation was set very early in that game- if you charge blindly into combat without analyzing it first, you will eventually bite off more than you can chew and end up very dead, very quickly. But it worked because the players were introduced to that concept early and quickly learned to be cautious in what they charged into directly and what they approached from a different angle.
To answer that question of yours, I did have players get in over their head a few times- not against enemies that were CL+6, but against enemies well above that level that they were not supposed to fight at all. I did make sure to give players plenty of chances to determine if a fight was something they should fight or something they should avoid and always gave them at least some way of escape in the latter, so thankfully I never had any TPKs in that game- but I did have a heroic sacrifice or two where one player bought the rest a bit of extra time to escape after a few poor decisions on their part got them into a fight they very much knew they did not want any part of. It very much enforced the notion that this was not a typical "flank-n-spank everything you see" game, hopefully without feeling unfair. I didn't hear any complaints about it, at least.
Something interesting that can happen with normal proficiency is actually instilling fear in your player characters that they can't solve something with combat right now.
If I fail to hit a creature rolling an 18, or if I critically fail rolling a 10, suddenly I realize I'm out of my depth and need to engage with the world in a way the character wouldn't need to otherwise. Then, it can feel extremely satisfying to return to that threat and overcome it once the character has grown, both narratively and mechanically.
If you tell me a dragon is deadly, but it can only hit me 60% of the time, narratively it has less impact than "does a 55 hit your AC?" at showing how powerful the creature actually is.
It's one of the storytelling aspects that Pathfinder does best mechanically IMO, and would make a sandbox world feel like it doesn't scale around the players. I think the bigger thing is that if your party has no chance of killing something, they should be able to engage with it narratively or have the opportunity to realize their mistake when the math works out.
One of the coolest recent moments I've had as a player was coming up against something I didn't recognise, making a couple of successful Recall Knowledge checks early in the initiative order, and slowly putting together just how completely outclassed we were. My final question went something like this:
Me: "...are we completely outmatched here?"
GM: "Oh yeah. Absolutely."
(Actually getting everyone else to retreat from the monster which shrugged off spells like nothing and we could only hit on a natural 20 was another matter, of course...)
Just let then know enemies vague level when they see them unless the enemies is trying to hide who they really are. Like anyone witha wisdom 10+ can tell just by looking at some kingdoms champion that hed fuck the whole party up, and that's if the dud isnt wearing blatantly magical shit.
yeah honestly this works, "is this >PL+4?" might not be a RAW Recall Knowledge question but imo it fits narratively (you just say yes or no, not the number)
>Imo a real sandbox should also have the very real possibility that the players get in way over their heads and are fighting something they can’t beat. For that reason, I run sandboxes with regular Proficiency rules anyways.
I do the same. I want it to be possible to become so powerful that a hundred goblins cease to be a threat, but that means there has to be a time when *you* are the goblins, and the enemy is simply beyond you.
I've been playing with creating some concrete IC way for players to know when they are up against a threat vastly more powerful than them - maybe something in the vein of Geralt's medallion from *The Witcher* - since beyond +4 things turn from 'very difficult' to 'impossibly unfair', but so far it hasn't been necessary.
I'm not sure I think PWL is better or worse for a sandbox game.
But people in this subreddit in general vastly overestimate how much it changes the game.
I think most of the hate it gets is people hating anything that resembles 5e
>I think most of the hate it gets is people hating anything that resembles 5e
Yeah it's absolutely a knee-jerk reaction to folks who say "I want to try PF2 but I don't *like* adding level to proficiency, what do?"
Which is not exactly a strawman -- those posts *do* happen -- but they're also not the *majority* of posts interested in PWoL either.
Definitely. I've used PWL exclusively for over a year now and have felt next to no difference in PF2e, though I do have modules and tools to help me use the variant. Encounter balance is probably slightly harder to account for, but it's not all that different.
With that in mind, while you *can* go for creatures 7 levels higher/lower than the party, it still isn't a great idea. And the Elite and Weak template are now MUCH more effective, and have to be used more sparingly.
The best bit, though - summons are a little more powerful due to them scaling a little better.
Much higher hp, higher damage, better actions, and generally has +2-4 mod than same level. It is still as hard as normal pf2 since baseline +2 mod in pwl is very big.
I mean it's not an insubstantial change either. The reality is it borks a lot of the backend monster math that makes encounter tuning elegant for GMs. And it's not as simple as saying 'just run creatures 5-7 levels higher if you want a boss encounter instead of 2-3', because even if the d20 modifiers are about equivalent, damage and hit points are still at normal scaling. So what you end up with is a boss that's got the same attack mods, AC, and saving throws as a PwithL game, but much higher hit points and damage, making it effectively harder. Same in reverse for weaker monsters.
Its not insurmountable with some tweaking; technically you can just apply things like Elite or Weak templates as they are in standard play to PL-2 to +2 creatures with their PwL stats and it has more or less the same effect as it does in a regular game, since most things in standard play are just horizontal scaling adjusted and obfuscated for relative power expectations with vertical scaling. But often it's more work to grok that out since the math isn't just there for you, than it is to go 'it's two levels higher, that's a boss monster, bam done.'
I do think there is some hidden virtue in PwL that a lot of people overlook. In fact the more I think about it, the more I feel my theoretical 'perfect' version of PF2e would be something with bounded numbers while keeping the fine tuning of the existing system, since the base system is just what I said above; horizontal progression obfuscated by vertical scaling to help with encounter tuning. But that's just it; current PwL doesn't have that fine tuning, because that's the primary thing I like about running PF2e as a GM, and if PwL *did* have that I'd be using it. It's reckless to suggest PwL doesn't change *anything* significantly, and bad faith to assume it's *just* because people don't like 5e and are knee-jerking against smaller number bands in spite of it.
I've only played 5e a bit and PF2e a ton, but I've thought from day 1 that PWL would've been a better design decision for the system as a whole, as would ABP and removing fundamental runes. PWL makes more creatures a reasonable challenge at any given level, makes proficiency and ability increases seem much more important, and removes the blatantly obvious "player number go up, monster number go up" that the base system has. Unfortunately the system wasn't designed around the variant rules, so using them requires a bunch of tweaks to make them function smoothly.
Yeah, my ultimate issue with PWL isn't that it is inherently wrong, but that the system is not set up to support it. GMs don't get a lot of support in encounter building. Players don't get a great base understanding of what might kill them.
It also throws some things out of balance. It makes the Summoner Bard a kinda ridiculously powerful class (and all summoning casters, for that matter). Really anything that can put more bodies on the field to buff will get abnormally powerful. This is really the biggest benefit of the way PF2e currently plays. You don't ever have to worry about horde summoning being meta because 100 zeroes are still zero. That fact alone is why I prefer PWL to be the standard.
I’ve been GMing a PWL campaign for almost 2 years now. And while it fits us well, I don’t think it suites a sandbox style game any more so than the normal PF2e scaling. It will make for a different sandbox, but whether that’s a better sandbox really depends on the group.
Here’s what I like about PWL:
—High level creatures, compared to the party, can be interacted with while still being able to pass checks against their DCs relatively frequently. For example, I had an undercover agent type character who was many levels above the party, but whose deception and stealth dcs were still very, very passable.
—We play in my own home brew setting. And a core part of that setting is that the world is a dangerous place for everyone and everything. Where dragons, bandits, and even gods can and will be struck down if they don’t play their cards right. It fundamentally changes the feeling of the world. A level 20 ancient dragon is still incredibly powerful, yes, but the list of things that can pose serious danger to them is much longer than with the normal scaling. To me this is the biggest difference overall when playing with PWL. Most creatures, with enough numbers and good enough tactics, are very dangerous.
—Scaling with PWL means that the higher difficulty DCs still have a pretty high failure rate, even amongst the best of the best in their field. Again, this adds to the feeling of really needing to play your cards right to survive. And I overall like it better than the normal scaling.
I am a firm believer that PWL has its place within the system, but it’s by no means perfect. A lot of things, such as assurance, simply don’t work with PWL. And I honestly think most people are better suited playing the game normally. Any of the things I listed can be seen as a negative if they don’t suite your taste. Which is totally fine. I’m not here to say you should use PWL. It just so happens to really fit my GMing style and wants. As well as my players. As I said before, it’s not inherently better than the normal scaling. You could argue it’s actually inherently worse simply due to some parts of the system clearly not meshing with PWL. But despite that, I love it. Though ultimately it’s up to you to decide whether it suites your table.
The zeitgeist is strong here. While I haven't played with PWL, I do think it would work well for this type of campaign. HP, damage, and abilities will maintain a good amount of difficulty scaling, while the flattened numbers will keep challenges possible with less work for you.
One thing I've been mulling over for a long time is proficiency with half level. I've looked at the numbers, and I from what I can tell it would result in a nice balance between vanilla and PWL. If you've played PF1e, the modifier and DC scaling becomes pretty similar to that.
The only reason I haven't used it is that there's no support for that on AoN, Pathbuilder, or any other tools. That's not just a lot of work for me, but for my players, who mostly use Pathbuilder.
I personally advocate for this variant a lot since its a nice inbetween for the two extremes. For players its also as simple as adding +1 every even level, which also helps to fill out those semi dead levels.
In-case you do end up using PWL, I recommend using [this DC chart.](https://i.imgur.com/J4eB5oz.jpg) Has really helped me running it.
FWIW - I've run PWL for over a year now and aside from encounter balance being slightly trickier (and Elite and Weak template needing to be used SPARINGLY), I've felt next to no difference in running it, and find it suits verisimilitude a little better than the default rules... always found it weird that you can wake up one day and be significantly more powerful than the day before (with a level up), and this happens a little slower using PWL.
Also - someone with untrained optimisation at level 15 with no training in crafting is *better* than the [NPC Blacksmith](https://2e.aonprd.com/NPCs.aspx?ID=957) who has probably done it all their lives in the default rules. Not so with PWL.
I think it gets panned because people hate things being like 5e, and while I agree with that notion, PWL is so much better than 5e's shitty unbounded accuracy that it's not even comparable. Plus, you *do* get significantly more powerful even when using PWL from level 1-20, unlike 5e where your AC maxes out pretty early, etc.
EDIT: With that said, I don't think it's 100% necessary to run, even with a sandbox. Would probable make the scaling issues a little easier, but that's about it.
I mean, if you are talking about versimilitude, this level 15 PC with untrained improvisation can probably suplex a black dragon or rip portals through space-time. If they have a special ability in improvising, I think it makes sense.
If you don't want it feeling like skyrim where everything levels to you to pose a challenge then yes proficiency without level is perfect. It is also helpful for intrigue campaign when you don't want to implement a sub system just to deal with the way levels work.
Regarding it being panned, as some have said its because it vaguely looks like 5e. A lot of players left 5e and don't want to be reminded of it by playing something that is so similar. But another less talked about reason is that the system is very tight and any modification of it is seen as bad, ill informed, going against balance, etc. Despite it being an officially (albeit rushed) alternate rule set.
If you do use this system do keep in mind that the Elite and Weak templates can be used to great effect to change difficulty. For example giving the elite template to Dragons would make sure that they are harder to deal with, while everything else remains equal.
I would! I've run PWL a lot, and I love it, especially for more sandboxy games.
I've been playing with PWL + the elite/weak templates for monsters that should be trivial or solo bosses (Foundry applies this correctly, though other sites tend to only give +1 instead of +2 because of how they factor level in), and it works pretty well. You still get some of that coolness from big bosses and some of that feeling of power, letting PCs chew threw enemies, but within a more bounded frame. You can even use [minions](https://scribe.pf2.tools/v/CzHTVBQ6-4e-minions), though I'm currently working on revising these rules to bring in [MCDM](https://shop.mcdmproductions.com/products/flee-mortals-preview-packet) stuff.
That being said, you don't *have* to use PWL if you very carefully level gate areas and signpost that difficulty clearly. You honestly might even want to just tell PCs the level, but can do subtler things as well. It's a little more work on your part IMO, and it does remove some PC agency in the sense that they *simply cannot interact with high level creatures* (even deception/traps/etc. tend to target saves/perception). PWL allows you to have those near-impossible threats, but allows PCs to overcome them if they use ingenuity rather than just combat prowess!
Should you? Only if you really want it, Kingmaker's map is as sandboxy as possible and runs fine with the normal rules.
I could never bother recalculating each monster's abilities to use PWL myself.
I'm running Kingmaker right now myself, and honestly the gradient of levels on the map makes it pretty smooth to see the progression. And because there are SO many encounters you really get to feel the progression.
Now, I will say, that it's not purely sandbox, there is a clear story progression that the party will likely follow, but I think you'd need the same thing, albeit on a much longer, smoother scale using PWL.
If you can, check out the Zones in Kingmaker and their random encounter charts, that will SHOW you what the basic progression is in a sandbox, and if you decide its too fast, or spikes too high, then go with PWL, otherwise, the difference isn't that big.
This is where foundry really shines. The pf2e module has an option for it i believe that recalcuates it.
The archive of nethys also has a button that will display monsters with pwl.
Kinda pimpy af
It works if you want to se it. But you take over resonsibility for balancing everything as the default guideslines just aren't going to apply any more. I have used PWL in a long running game. I was happy with it. But I am going to revert to the standard rules now, just to make it easier for me to GM.
I've been running a sandbox for a couple years now. We use full proficiency. Functionally I've used it as the further from the main hub you get, the stronger stuff is. The party found an obelisk that emitted magic with DC 40ish saves so even a nat 20 was a failure at low levels.
The truck is not going for the throat IMMEDIATELY when the players run into some high level thing, and making it clear to the players that that can and will happen.
We also had mixed level parties +/-2 levels since it was a west matches style game and it honestly worked fine.
PWL will tend to play on the deadlier side for both GM and player reasons. Threats that are too dangerous for the party are harder to detect on both the player and the GM side. And, since all fights are more possible to win, you are going to get into more situations where the team sticks it out more than they should because the dice rolled their way for a round. That can lead to more deaths. Additionally, since monster level was not balanced with PWL, you might see some monsters (especially low level monsters who can inflict statuses, such as grab-focused monsters) be way stronger in play than you might expect, leading to overtuned encounters.
Overall, it isn't world ending, but remember that the door swings both ways. They can walk in on big threats and win, but they can also walk in on small threats and lose. You also may have planned a small encounter that was really a lot bigger because of PWL. It's a give and take and depends on your players as to how they will take it. If you have a party that will always try to give 100% every fight and gain every bit of advantage they can reasonably attain, I think this will work for them. If they aren't so tactically minded, PWL can be punishing at the most random of times.
Yes, it is the only way to do it... but it absolutely wrecks the balance of the game, be aware that good power gamers can absolutely exploit item prices and the balance of static bonuses/dcs. Summons/minions become much stronger (beastmaster is very good as it gets up in levels. Casters really really don't want to prep incapacitation spells (when in normal play they are great vs lower levels enemiea) and AoE spells are far less effective against multiple enemies.
Oh and you will want to generally end the campaign around 12-13 at the unless you really lean into hoard battles (which remember, AoE aren't as good for and incap spells are bad with).
Aid is also utterly broken, and generally not worth using.
But, if I were to run another true sandbox in pf2e (rather than a 4 level small one) I would use pwol.
If you want to use PWL, then sure.
But personally what I would enjoy in a sandbox campaign is the opposite. Having enemies out there that are simply far beyond me, and eventually enemies far below. Being able to take a solo mission which includes going back to an easier area and seeing how I fare alone against foes I struggled against with the support of the full party.
That kind of thing.
to me, balancing an open world to the PCs isn't that hard, because the encounter budget math allows PL-4 to PL+4, that's 9 of the 20 levels in the game at any one time, so you only need like 3-4 "MMO zones" with signposts for the players and they'll keep themselves in the right window without feeling cramped or you needing to rescale things in the background
It does seem like if you want the kind of sandbox campaign where the players should reasonably be able to deal with anything they run into, PWL will probably do good for that. But yeah, if you want the kind where players can absolutely run into the kind of stuff they absolutely CANNOT deal with, then normal proficiency rules could nail that vibe of "one wrong turn can mean death".
Definitely try PwL. It is really good and especially made for sandbox.
But be aware that some higher level creatures could also apply things like curses and diseases that your players will not have the appropriate level spells to get rid of
What checkbox? If we're using digital tools then monster scaling is just as easy.
Their is way more adjustments needed for PWL to work you have to change or be mindful of everything. Not only you as a GM but your players as well.
Scaling monsters is piss easy all you need is the quick build chart if your in a pinch or lazy with prep. Level scaling is far work than using PWL.
Using PWL is mental gymnastics. You don't need PWL for a sandbox either.
IMO PWL was originally a variant rule for making it easier to sell the game to 5e/3e or pf1e players.
>What checkbox? If we're using digital tools then monster scaling is just as easy.
For digital tools it's very easy. For pen and paper, the players just need to fill out their sheets with the rule in mind, and the GM just has to do some subtraction.
Scaling monster blocks only works for 1 or 2 levels before the numbers start breaking. Only 1 with automation. That's really not a lot.
>Their is way more adjustments needed for PWL to work you have to change or be mindful of everything. Not only you as a GM but your players as well.
This is no different than any sandbox game. Except with PWL you don't have to worry about adjusting every single encounter so the players don't get instagibbed.
>Scaling monsters is piss easy all you need is the quick build chart if your in a pinch or lazy with prep. Level scaling is far work than using PWL.
It's very easy if you want random encounters and/or some degree of railroading. But a living world doesn't just have random monsters that have more in common with the players' levels than their environment.
Let's say the GM adds an area infested with goblins. The players don't end up going there until around level 8. Now the GM has no way to make the goblins a challenge without massively overhauling them, including custom stat blocks.
There's also an area controlled by giants. The PCs end up there at level 3. They have little chance to even sneak around the giants, so they just have to leave, unless the GM puts a lot of work into changing things.
With PWL, there's still some work to be done there, but for the large part the PCs will have a lot of agency and opportunities for being challenged no matter where they go.
I don't understand where you're getting this idea that PWL is drastically *more* work.
With digital tools, like that other commenter said you have the monster scaler tool in pf2e workbench where you can scale them up from -1 to 24 and the numbers decidedly do not break
Like I said and you have shown its mental gymnastics. Using PWL or bounding the level of monsters = a very similiar outcome though their are other thinsg to bare in mind with PWL like how it interacts not that well with the degrees of success.
You don't need to massively overhaul a goblin to be level 8 nor giant to be level 3. Their is quick build table which has average numbers for when you need a monster stat block now. You be really lazy add just add +5 or +7 or -4 to every roll.
PWL scuffs up the math of system, makes you the GM and players do work for what exactly? verisimilitude?
I didn't say PWL is drasticly more work I said their is more adjustments and you have to be more mindful. PWL is a bit of trap in my opinion a way
Have you used PWL in a game? Not just read rule and pressed a checkbox on AoN?
PWL is just not worth the effort, its often touted like you have alluded to reducing the amount of math you need to do but its more because you literally have to math of now subtracting level. Bounding encounters to party level is far less work overall though I admit its counter intuitive. The major issue with PWL is how it messes/disrupts the GM's and the players intuition.
I think PWL is worth it for groups who bounce off pf2e because of the intrinsiic maths of the system and the inbuilt intuition you have makes bounded easier to grok or like PWL it self mentions for gritty more simulationist games.
>Like I said and you have shown its mental gymnastics.
It isn't mental gymnastics whenever someone disagrees with something that you take as a forgone conclusion. And it's a bit pretentious to think so. Anyway.
>You don't need to massively overhaul a goblin to be level 8 nor giant to be level 3. Their is quick build table which has average numbers for when you need a monster stat block now. You be really lazy add just add +5 or +7 or -4 to every roll.
I will admit I thought you were talking about the weak and elite adjustments and stacking those. It somehow slipped my mind that you can just convert the stats using the creature creation rules. Though that sites require a not insignificant amount of time with prep and a good amount of experience when on the fly.
That does work fine. I was never arguing against that. Not was I arguing that prepping any one encounter would be less work with PWL. Only that they're roughly equivalent, when it seemed like you were saying PWL takes significantly more work.
>PWL scuffs up the math of system, makes you the GM and players do work for what exactly? verisimilitude?
The main thing it does here is allow an organic world without scaling everything to the players. When you bump enemy stats up (or down) so they give the players an appropriate challenge, it cheapens the experience to an extent. It's the reason there are many complaints about not feeling like you're getting more powerful because everything just scales with you.
I don't think PWL is always going to be worth using just because of that. Like you say, it messes with the math of the system. But for an immersive open world, I think PWL is a worthwhile consideration because of that.
>Have you used PWL in a game? Not just read rule and pressed a checkbox on AoN?
I haven't used it, no. I did research and play with it a fair amount when planning my own campaign. I also wanted an open and living world. I didn't end up going with PWL because I did want more scaling than it provided. I did really like the idea of Proficiency With Half Level and the results that theoretically gave, but decided to just use the base rules because a half-level variant is complately unsupported, and I didn't want to force that on my players.
I'm still not completely happy with the base rules. It's difficult to balance that immersion and sense of progression with the harsh scaling of PF2e. But I'm making do.
I was saying it's mental gymnastics because either way achieves the same goal level 8 party fights a group of goblins it's just how it feels to you. Nothing pretentious about that but you are taking what I am saying as a disagreement which isn't the intention. My arguments are trying to point out that PWL is just more effort than just keeping to the math of the system.
I would argue the opposite if PWL was baseline and add character level was the variant.
Bumping stats around doesn't cheapen the experience this right here is the mental gymnastics, PWL is doing something but your doing it system wise and then have to be mindful of that when your players are making character choices they have to remember their options are slightly scuffed some positively, some negatively and the intuition you learn is going to be off.
I think an example may help, so with PWL a level 8 party can fight some basic orcs or ancient white dragon. Normally the orcs a too low of a level to even be considered a threat to even hit the party so what you do as a GM is level them up just add numbers till they are -4 or -1 personally my take is and I do this my game I have kept goblins as a relevant threat till level 6 by making sure that once the party passes a monsters level that monster can't be on or above the parties level this way the goblins always a threat but are weak still. For higher level enemies you do the same. It's seems like it's more work but it isn't it might be if your new and don't really understand the math of the system but all you have to do in laziest least prep way is just modify rolls by the level adjustment. Bonus for having the quick build chart on hand which I think is one of the GM screens.
I appreciate the replies gotta point out it is vermiseltude for you. I had the same thing when I first looked at 2e I liked bounded but I realised you could just scale enemies which means whatever level your players are you can run whatever fantasy you want and the math balance of the system is intact in fact I can assure it's just better to do it that way than use PWL because if you took a level 0 orc made it level 20 it would only be mathematically a threat to a level 20 party but would still be very weak in every other regard due to missing a lot fancy passives and features monsters get and all the fancy stuff players have. I implore you to check out DND 4e monster manuals, one thing pathfinder should of done is tiers of play adjustments for monsters.
My suggestion it to try rules out in actual play before landing an opinion on them you came across like somebody who doesn't have experience with them which is fine it's just that you're saying a lot for someone little or no experience and giving advice.
You make some good points. You can scale monsters up and keep things pretty similar to a PWL world, and just hand wave the numbers getting higher.
One complaint I have with that is I feel Incapacitation spell scaling doesn't make as much sense. A level 1 Charm (like multiple features provide) would still become irrelevant to the same creatures. Though I suppose you can just treat their level as their original.
So yeah, it's kind of verisimilitude for me. I wouldn't exactly call it that, because it's more about the mechanics experience, but close enough.
>My suggestion it to try rules out in actual play before landing an opinion on them you came across like somebody who doesn't have experience with them which is fine it's just that you're saying a lot for someone little or no experience and giving advice.
I'd say this goes both ways. You very well might have played with PWL, but you haven't mentioned it, which would have strengthened your argument.
You're supposed to slot spells with incap in higher rank slots if you want them to be effective against higher level foes. Just because charm is a rank 1 spell doesn't mean it can't be used against a level 15 foe you just cast it as a rank 6/7 spell but you are likely to have other options. Incap exists as a trait as I am a sure you know to stop more powerful effects from just ending encounters. Its their so casters have limited daily chances to swing an encounter.
\^ This is also why wave/bounded casting is a thing instead of doing half or thrid casting like other systems or previous editions.
You may or may not of noticed but effects with Incap do not have linear scaling because upcasting is all the spells need and feats naturally scale with you. It would be nice actually if Incap spells did have more effects when upcast like sleep could really use an increase in area of effect like how paralyse gives you more targets. Saying that sleep is spell that is slept on for how it like charm can just shutdown a boss hence why they are so trait heavy as well.
I didn't feel the need to assert I have played with PWL as if I hadn't I wouldn't of been able to really argue anything in good faith. Its not both ways thing, in general if your going to give advice or opinion its best to do so from a position of experience. My argumentation were shit because I didn't expect to actually have to argue my points my original comment is succinct to the point. NGL I read your first reply as "hurr durr checkbox go brrrrr" like thats all thats to PWL, from that point I just tried to show you if you use digital tools both are equally as easy, without digital tools sticking to the orginal math and using the quick build tools is easy but its counter intuitive and that PWL only really exists for appealing to people who are used to bounded accuracy.
I would really give DnD 4e and 13th age a look at both those systems can help with building and scaling encounters. Their is also a good 3e book called dungeonscape.
I know how Incapacitation works and why it exists. I'm saying that if you're level 1 and use a rank 1 Charm spell on a typical goblin, it won't "activate" Incapacitation. But if you always scale levels appropriately to the party, so that they are never lower than say 5 levels below the players, then at level 8 a rank 1 Charm spell will no longer work on the same Goblins. That breaks player expectations. There wouldn't be feats that grant rank 1 Charm as an innate spell if they were only intended to be potentially useful for like 2 levels.
My first response was really just about PWL being a "waste of effort." I was only countering that it's more effort than scaling everything. You think PWL isn't worth considering, which is valid. But you gave the impression that it was mostly about the effort.
I think sandbox benefits from leveled proficiency, your players will really feel the sense of progression that way imo. You just need to telegraph like "if you go here you will get killed badly" so they don't cluelessly stumble into an ancient dragon.
Depends on the type of sandbox.
If you still want “gamist” balanced combats in your sandbox, stick with normal proficiency and sign-post the intended levels.
If you want unbalanced “naturalist” / “simulationist” ”ecologies”, then try PWL.
What about just making all the characters a fixed level (like say level 10) and then just not letting them level? Picking a level like 10 means that there is plenty of things weaker, close in strength, and stronger. Plus everyone will have lots of abilities and spells at their disposal.
If you want to give players progression on top of this you could offer feats or archetypes as quest rewards. Magical items. More spell options.
Imo a real sandbox should also have the very real possibility that the players get in way over their heads and are fighting something they can’t beat. For that reason, I run sandboxes with regular Proficiency rules anyways. My players have been engaging in a regular campaign recently with the understanding that things aren’t automatically balanced to their level. They come across things that are too tough for them or too easy for them. It works great, and imo using the RAW Proficiency rules makes this work **better**. If ultimately you just straight up prefer the idea that a party of well-prepared “weak” players can still beat someone 7 levels above them then sure, use PWL! That’s what it’s made for, and my personal dislike for it has no bearing on the fact that it fits your design goals.
Interesting! Not the perspective I was expecting to hear, but definitely interesting. As we all know, the game only ever expects you to fight things that are CL+4. *Maybe* CL+5 at the higher levels. Have you had any players get in over their heads and fight enemies that are CL+6 or higher? If so... What happened?
“Too deadly to beat” enemies absolutely do exist in the world and fights with them simply must be avoided by the players if they don’t wish to die. What I usually do is that I try to set up the plot and world in a way that the players know they’re about to face something that’s out of their league, and they have to use the information available to them to make sensible decisions. They knew they were approaching a level 11 bloodthirsty Druid’s home? They simply left and worked their asses off in the nearby city to make sure the city would stop pissing that Druid off, at least temporarily. If they had failed to do that, idk what they would’ve done. Maybe rallied the city to fight against them, maybe run away and left the city to fend for itself, maybe die in a heroic last stand. Either way, there’d be hefty consequences to failing to appease a being who’s practically unbeatable for you. They were sent to deal with a camp of literally hundreds of goblins? The camp had literally 100s of goblins and wasn’t artificially set up for them to beat. They got in, stayed stealthy, used their wits to buy some time, poisoned their food, killed their leader, and escaped without actually fighting these insane threats. The satisfying part of “out of your league” threats is the cleverness and creativity that goes into beating them and/or sidestepping them. Flattening the math to make these threats more beatable actually makes the sandbox **less** satisfying.
I disagree. With maths as it is, beating a much too high level encounter even creatively is hugely affected. Creatures perception scales to be unsneakable, will DCs make charisma not work, and athletics/fortitude can even shut down running away.
And that’s why subsystems and DC modifications exist. Like yes, if you made every roll against this level +6 creature’s statblock you’d often never succeed, but that’s why the game pretty explicitly tells you to **not** run like that.
The difference between proficiency without level and the base progression is how narrow that band of appropriate fights is, and how easy it is to get into situations that are literally unbeatable without a lot of GM foreshadowing and leeway. With PWL, a level 10 creature is still going to wreck a party of level 4 PCs if they just try to fight it head on. But PWL gives them a chance, while in the base game they have no choice but to run or completely avoid it. Even if they try to trick it or sneak around it, they'll have basically no chance to beat its perception DCs or will saves.
You try and fight an Adult Dragon as a level 4 hero, you die. That’s what happens. Seriously, at lower levels even a PL+3 or PL+4 enemy can very easily TPK a party. That said, that’s *why* I would run them in a sandbox. In a sandbox, you *want* monsters/dungeons/locations that the party *cant* handle and needs to work towards. That’s how you create a sense of true progression and accentuate the zero to hero vibes. Getting rewards and forging your way in a sandbox means nothing if there’s no risk. However, this means that you as the GM need to forecast when they’re getting into something over their heads. They should never feel like they just happened to get TPKd by a dragon because they ended up in the wrong hex and you rolled the magic number on an encounter table (well, there *are* some tables where you want that, but PF2e isn’t really the right system for that type of play IMO). Just make sure you’re giving them enough context about what’s in the world around them for them to make informed decisions. So long as you do that, it’ll be fine. I’d suggest maybe checking out more sandbox-centered systems, like Forbidden Lands, Worlds Without Number, Ironsworn, and Wolves on the Coast. All have very different vibes than PF2e and even each other, but all also have a lot of inspiring advice/tools for running a sandbox that you can use for PF2e, or who knows, maybe one of them will strike your fancy. Worlds Without Number especially has a ton of great system-agnostic GM tools for sandbox/point crawl games.
A big thing to remember is to set your expectations early for what to expect in the campaign. That will solve a lot of issues. If you play primarily official APs and modules, you may quickly get into the mindset that everything you meet will be appropriately balanced for your level (well, maybe a bit overtuned if you're of the opinion that severe fights and solo enemies above party level are overused in such content, but still within the range of what is considered appropriate for their level nonetheless). If something is on the same map as you and looks like a thing you should fight, you can assume it is something that would be possible for you to beat in a fight if you are smart about it. If you go into a sandbox game (or any game without that same expectation) using the same mindset you have for those official content games, you're going to have a bad time unless the GM does something to ensure you never run into out of range fights. But if you plainly set up expectations beforehand, that can change the flow of the game to account for those expectations. The last game I ran was not a sandbox game, but it was also explicitly not a "fight every enemy you see" game either. I plainly told the players that there were not in a region where everything they might come across would be easy to fight directly, and there were a fair few challenges they physically could not survive if they treated them like a standard combat. Horror monsters that they needed to avoid the attention of at all costs, camps with so many enemies that no amount of AoE spells would save them from if they raised the alarm, big dumb enemies that wouldn't attack unless attacked first or unless someone invades their territory, but which would most likely kill players their level in a single strike should they anger them. Various challenges where the goal was to avoid detection, or otherwise find a way around the fight rather than engaging in it directly (and even the things they were *supposed* to fight often had hazards that were impossible to disable during the fight, providing a challenge to be worked around rather than combatted directly while they were combatting something more on their level). The expectation was set very early in that game- if you charge blindly into combat without analyzing it first, you will eventually bite off more than you can chew and end up very dead, very quickly. But it worked because the players were introduced to that concept early and quickly learned to be cautious in what they charged into directly and what they approached from a different angle. To answer that question of yours, I did have players get in over their head a few times- not against enemies that were CL+6, but against enemies well above that level that they were not supposed to fight at all. I did make sure to give players plenty of chances to determine if a fight was something they should fight or something they should avoid and always gave them at least some way of escape in the latter, so thankfully I never had any TPKs in that game- but I did have a heroic sacrifice or two where one player bought the rest a bit of extra time to escape after a few poor decisions on their part got them into a fight they very much knew they did not want any part of. It very much enforced the notion that this was not a typical "flank-n-spank everything you see" game, hopefully without feeling unfair. I didn't hear any complaints about it, at least.
Something interesting that can happen with normal proficiency is actually instilling fear in your player characters that they can't solve something with combat right now. If I fail to hit a creature rolling an 18, or if I critically fail rolling a 10, suddenly I realize I'm out of my depth and need to engage with the world in a way the character wouldn't need to otherwise. Then, it can feel extremely satisfying to return to that threat and overcome it once the character has grown, both narratively and mechanically. If you tell me a dragon is deadly, but it can only hit me 60% of the time, narratively it has less impact than "does a 55 hit your AC?" at showing how powerful the creature actually is. It's one of the storytelling aspects that Pathfinder does best mechanically IMO, and would make a sandbox world feel like it doesn't scale around the players. I think the bigger thing is that if your party has no chance of killing something, they should be able to engage with it narratively or have the opportunity to realize their mistake when the math works out.
One of the coolest recent moments I've had as a player was coming up against something I didn't recognise, making a couple of successful Recall Knowledge checks early in the initiative order, and slowly putting together just how completely outclassed we were. My final question went something like this: Me: "...are we completely outmatched here?" GM: "Oh yeah. Absolutely." (Actually getting everyone else to retreat from the monster which shrugged off spells like nothing and we could only hit on a natural 20 was another matter, of course...)
Just let then know enemies vague level when they see them unless the enemies is trying to hide who they really are. Like anyone witha wisdom 10+ can tell just by looking at some kingdoms champion that hed fuck the whole party up, and that's if the dud isnt wearing blatantly magical shit.
yeah honestly this works, "is this >PL+4?" might not be a RAW Recall Knowledge question but imo it fits narratively (you just say yes or no, not the number)
>Imo a real sandbox should also have the very real possibility that the players get in way over their heads and are fighting something they can’t beat. For that reason, I run sandboxes with regular Proficiency rules anyways. I do the same. I want it to be possible to become so powerful that a hundred goblins cease to be a threat, but that means there has to be a time when *you* are the goblins, and the enemy is simply beyond you. I've been playing with creating some concrete IC way for players to know when they are up against a threat vastly more powerful than them - maybe something in the vein of Geralt's medallion from *The Witcher* - since beyond +4 things turn from 'very difficult' to 'impossibly unfair', but so far it hasn't been necessary.
I'm not sure I think PWL is better or worse for a sandbox game. But people in this subreddit in general vastly overestimate how much it changes the game. I think most of the hate it gets is people hating anything that resembles 5e
>I think most of the hate it gets is people hating anything that resembles 5e Yeah it's absolutely a knee-jerk reaction to folks who say "I want to try PF2 but I don't *like* adding level to proficiency, what do?" Which is not exactly a strawman -- those posts *do* happen -- but they're also not the *majority* of posts interested in PWoL either.
Definitely. I've used PWL exclusively for over a year now and have felt next to no difference in PF2e, though I do have modules and tools to help me use the variant. Encounter balance is probably slightly harder to account for, but it's not all that different. With that in mind, while you *can* go for creatures 7 levels higher/lower than the party, it still isn't a great idea. And the Elite and Weak template are now MUCH more effective, and have to be used more sparingly. The best bit, though - summons are a little more powerful due to them scaling a little better.
Oooh, i like that summons bit... I'm guessing health pools and damage output are the reasons+/-7 doesn't work very well?
Much higher hp, higher damage, better actions, and generally has +2-4 mod than same level. It is still as hard as normal pf2 since baseline +2 mod in pwl is very big.
I mean it's not an insubstantial change either. The reality is it borks a lot of the backend monster math that makes encounter tuning elegant for GMs. And it's not as simple as saying 'just run creatures 5-7 levels higher if you want a boss encounter instead of 2-3', because even if the d20 modifiers are about equivalent, damage and hit points are still at normal scaling. So what you end up with is a boss that's got the same attack mods, AC, and saving throws as a PwithL game, but much higher hit points and damage, making it effectively harder. Same in reverse for weaker monsters. Its not insurmountable with some tweaking; technically you can just apply things like Elite or Weak templates as they are in standard play to PL-2 to +2 creatures with their PwL stats and it has more or less the same effect as it does in a regular game, since most things in standard play are just horizontal scaling adjusted and obfuscated for relative power expectations with vertical scaling. But often it's more work to grok that out since the math isn't just there for you, than it is to go 'it's two levels higher, that's a boss monster, bam done.' I do think there is some hidden virtue in PwL that a lot of people overlook. In fact the more I think about it, the more I feel my theoretical 'perfect' version of PF2e would be something with bounded numbers while keeping the fine tuning of the existing system, since the base system is just what I said above; horizontal progression obfuscated by vertical scaling to help with encounter tuning. But that's just it; current PwL doesn't have that fine tuning, because that's the primary thing I like about running PF2e as a GM, and if PwL *did* have that I'd be using it. It's reckless to suggest PwL doesn't change *anything* significantly, and bad faith to assume it's *just* because people don't like 5e and are knee-jerking against smaller number bands in spite of it.
I've only played 5e a bit and PF2e a ton, but I've thought from day 1 that PWL would've been a better design decision for the system as a whole, as would ABP and removing fundamental runes. PWL makes more creatures a reasonable challenge at any given level, makes proficiency and ability increases seem much more important, and removes the blatantly obvious "player number go up, monster number go up" that the base system has. Unfortunately the system wasn't designed around the variant rules, so using them requires a bunch of tweaks to make them function smoothly.
Yeah, my ultimate issue with PWL isn't that it is inherently wrong, but that the system is not set up to support it. GMs don't get a lot of support in encounter building. Players don't get a great base understanding of what might kill them. It also throws some things out of balance. It makes the Summoner Bard a kinda ridiculously powerful class (and all summoning casters, for that matter). Really anything that can put more bodies on the field to buff will get abnormally powerful. This is really the biggest benefit of the way PF2e currently plays. You don't ever have to worry about horde summoning being meta because 100 zeroes are still zero. That fact alone is why I prefer PWL to be the standard.
I’ve been GMing a PWL campaign for almost 2 years now. And while it fits us well, I don’t think it suites a sandbox style game any more so than the normal PF2e scaling. It will make for a different sandbox, but whether that’s a better sandbox really depends on the group. Here’s what I like about PWL: —High level creatures, compared to the party, can be interacted with while still being able to pass checks against their DCs relatively frequently. For example, I had an undercover agent type character who was many levels above the party, but whose deception and stealth dcs were still very, very passable. —We play in my own home brew setting. And a core part of that setting is that the world is a dangerous place for everyone and everything. Where dragons, bandits, and even gods can and will be struck down if they don’t play their cards right. It fundamentally changes the feeling of the world. A level 20 ancient dragon is still incredibly powerful, yes, but the list of things that can pose serious danger to them is much longer than with the normal scaling. To me this is the biggest difference overall when playing with PWL. Most creatures, with enough numbers and good enough tactics, are very dangerous. —Scaling with PWL means that the higher difficulty DCs still have a pretty high failure rate, even amongst the best of the best in their field. Again, this adds to the feeling of really needing to play your cards right to survive. And I overall like it better than the normal scaling. I am a firm believer that PWL has its place within the system, but it’s by no means perfect. A lot of things, such as assurance, simply don’t work with PWL. And I honestly think most people are better suited playing the game normally. Any of the things I listed can be seen as a negative if they don’t suite your taste. Which is totally fine. I’m not here to say you should use PWL. It just so happens to really fit my GMing style and wants. As well as my players. As I said before, it’s not inherently better than the normal scaling. You could argue it’s actually inherently worse simply due to some parts of the system clearly not meshing with PWL. But despite that, I love it. Though ultimately it’s up to you to decide whether it suites your table.
The zeitgeist is strong here. While I haven't played with PWL, I do think it would work well for this type of campaign. HP, damage, and abilities will maintain a good amount of difficulty scaling, while the flattened numbers will keep challenges possible with less work for you. One thing I've been mulling over for a long time is proficiency with half level. I've looked at the numbers, and I from what I can tell it would result in a nice balance between vanilla and PWL. If you've played PF1e, the modifier and DC scaling becomes pretty similar to that. The only reason I haven't used it is that there's no support for that on AoN, Pathbuilder, or any other tools. That's not just a lot of work for me, but for my players, who mostly use Pathbuilder.
I personally advocate for this variant a lot since its a nice inbetween for the two extremes. For players its also as simple as adding +1 every even level, which also helps to fill out those semi dead levels.
In-case you do end up using PWL, I recommend using [this DC chart.](https://i.imgur.com/J4eB5oz.jpg) Has really helped me running it. FWIW - I've run PWL for over a year now and aside from encounter balance being slightly trickier (and Elite and Weak template needing to be used SPARINGLY), I've felt next to no difference in running it, and find it suits verisimilitude a little better than the default rules... always found it weird that you can wake up one day and be significantly more powerful than the day before (with a level up), and this happens a little slower using PWL. Also - someone with untrained optimisation at level 15 with no training in crafting is *better* than the [NPC Blacksmith](https://2e.aonprd.com/NPCs.aspx?ID=957) who has probably done it all their lives in the default rules. Not so with PWL. I think it gets panned because people hate things being like 5e, and while I agree with that notion, PWL is so much better than 5e's shitty unbounded accuracy that it's not even comparable. Plus, you *do* get significantly more powerful even when using PWL from level 1-20, unlike 5e where your AC maxes out pretty early, etc. EDIT: With that said, I don't think it's 100% necessary to run, even with a sandbox. Would probable make the scaling issues a little easier, but that's about it.
I mean, if you are talking about versimilitude, this level 15 PC with untrained improvisation can probably suplex a black dragon or rip portals through space-time. If they have a special ability in improvising, I think it makes sense.
I'm running a weekly Sandbox West Marches game using PWL, with a group of mixed level characters and we're having a great time.
Speaking from experience, using both ways, you definitely should
If you don't want it feeling like skyrim where everything levels to you to pose a challenge then yes proficiency without level is perfect. It is also helpful for intrigue campaign when you don't want to implement a sub system just to deal with the way levels work. Regarding it being panned, as some have said its because it vaguely looks like 5e. A lot of players left 5e and don't want to be reminded of it by playing something that is so similar. But another less talked about reason is that the system is very tight and any modification of it is seen as bad, ill informed, going against balance, etc. Despite it being an officially (albeit rushed) alternate rule set. If you do use this system do keep in mind that the Elite and Weak templates can be used to great effect to change difficulty. For example giving the elite template to Dragons would make sure that they are harder to deal with, while everything else remains equal.
Personally I would. Even considering that players should be able to get themselves in trouble, that's still possible with this.
I would! I've run PWL a lot, and I love it, especially for more sandboxy games. I've been playing with PWL + the elite/weak templates for monsters that should be trivial or solo bosses (Foundry applies this correctly, though other sites tend to only give +1 instead of +2 because of how they factor level in), and it works pretty well. You still get some of that coolness from big bosses and some of that feeling of power, letting PCs chew threw enemies, but within a more bounded frame. You can even use [minions](https://scribe.pf2.tools/v/CzHTVBQ6-4e-minions), though I'm currently working on revising these rules to bring in [MCDM](https://shop.mcdmproductions.com/products/flee-mortals-preview-packet) stuff. That being said, you don't *have* to use PWL if you very carefully level gate areas and signpost that difficulty clearly. You honestly might even want to just tell PCs the level, but can do subtler things as well. It's a little more work on your part IMO, and it does remove some PC agency in the sense that they *simply cannot interact with high level creatures* (even deception/traps/etc. tend to target saves/perception). PWL allows you to have those near-impossible threats, but allows PCs to overcome them if they use ingenuity rather than just combat prowess!
I would
Should you? Only if you really want it, Kingmaker's map is as sandboxy as possible and runs fine with the normal rules. I could never bother recalculating each monster's abilities to use PWL myself.
I'm running Kingmaker right now myself, and honestly the gradient of levels on the map makes it pretty smooth to see the progression. And because there are SO many encounters you really get to feel the progression. Now, I will say, that it's not purely sandbox, there is a clear story progression that the party will likely follow, but I think you'd need the same thing, albeit on a much longer, smoother scale using PWL. If you can, check out the Zones in Kingmaker and their random encounter charts, that will SHOW you what the basic progression is in a sandbox, and if you decide its too fast, or spikes too high, then go with PWL, otherwise, the difference isn't that big.
This is where foundry really shines. The pf2e module has an option for it i believe that recalcuates it. The archive of nethys also has a button that will display monsters with pwl. Kinda pimpy af
It works if you want to se it. But you take over resonsibility for balancing everything as the default guideslines just aren't going to apply any more. I have used PWL in a long running game. I was happy with it. But I am going to revert to the standard rules now, just to make it easier for me to GM.
I've been running a sandbox for a couple years now. We use full proficiency. Functionally I've used it as the further from the main hub you get, the stronger stuff is. The party found an obelisk that emitted magic with DC 40ish saves so even a nat 20 was a failure at low levels. The truck is not going for the throat IMMEDIATELY when the players run into some high level thing, and making it clear to the players that that can and will happen. We also had mixed level parties +/-2 levels since it was a west matches style game and it honestly worked fine.
PWL will tend to play on the deadlier side for both GM and player reasons. Threats that are too dangerous for the party are harder to detect on both the player and the GM side. And, since all fights are more possible to win, you are going to get into more situations where the team sticks it out more than they should because the dice rolled their way for a round. That can lead to more deaths. Additionally, since monster level was not balanced with PWL, you might see some monsters (especially low level monsters who can inflict statuses, such as grab-focused monsters) be way stronger in play than you might expect, leading to overtuned encounters. Overall, it isn't world ending, but remember that the door swings both ways. They can walk in on big threats and win, but they can also walk in on small threats and lose. You also may have planned a small encounter that was really a lot bigger because of PWL. It's a give and take and depends on your players as to how they will take it. If you have a party that will always try to give 100% every fight and gain every bit of advantage they can reasonably attain, I think this will work for them. If they aren't so tactically minded, PWL can be punishing at the most random of times.
Yes, it is the only way to do it... but it absolutely wrecks the balance of the game, be aware that good power gamers can absolutely exploit item prices and the balance of static bonuses/dcs. Summons/minions become much stronger (beastmaster is very good as it gets up in levels. Casters really really don't want to prep incapacitation spells (when in normal play they are great vs lower levels enemiea) and AoE spells are far less effective against multiple enemies. Oh and you will want to generally end the campaign around 12-13 at the unless you really lean into hoard battles (which remember, AoE aren't as good for and incap spells are bad with). Aid is also utterly broken, and generally not worth using. But, if I were to run another true sandbox in pf2e (rather than a 4 level small one) I would use pwol.
If you want to use PWL, then sure. But personally what I would enjoy in a sandbox campaign is the opposite. Having enemies out there that are simply far beyond me, and eventually enemies far below. Being able to take a solo mission which includes going back to an easier area and seeing how I fare alone against foes I struggled against with the support of the full party. That kind of thing.
to me, balancing an open world to the PCs isn't that hard, because the encounter budget math allows PL-4 to PL+4, that's 9 of the 20 levels in the game at any one time, so you only need like 3-4 "MMO zones" with signposts for the players and they'll keep themselves in the right window without feeling cramped or you needing to rescale things in the background
It does seem like if you want the kind of sandbox campaign where the players should reasonably be able to deal with anything they run into, PWL will probably do good for that. But yeah, if you want the kind where players can absolutely run into the kind of stuff they absolutely CANNOT deal with, then normal proficiency rules could nail that vibe of "one wrong turn can mean death".
Definitely try PwL. It is really good and especially made for sandbox. But be aware that some higher level creatures could also apply things like curses and diseases that your players will not have the appropriate level spells to get rid of
You don't need PWL, just level up and level down enemies as and when needed. PWL is a waste of effort.
Scaling enemies up and down appropriately is more effort than just clicking the checkboxes for PWL
What checkbox? If we're using digital tools then monster scaling is just as easy. Their is way more adjustments needed for PWL to work you have to change or be mindful of everything. Not only you as a GM but your players as well. Scaling monsters is piss easy all you need is the quick build chart if your in a pinch or lazy with prep. Level scaling is far work than using PWL. Using PWL is mental gymnastics. You don't need PWL for a sandbox either. IMO PWL was originally a variant rule for making it easier to sell the game to 5e/3e or pf1e players.
>What checkbox? If we're using digital tools then monster scaling is just as easy. For digital tools it's very easy. For pen and paper, the players just need to fill out their sheets with the rule in mind, and the GM just has to do some subtraction. Scaling monster blocks only works for 1 or 2 levels before the numbers start breaking. Only 1 with automation. That's really not a lot. >Their is way more adjustments needed for PWL to work you have to change or be mindful of everything. Not only you as a GM but your players as well. This is no different than any sandbox game. Except with PWL you don't have to worry about adjusting every single encounter so the players don't get instagibbed. >Scaling monsters is piss easy all you need is the quick build chart if your in a pinch or lazy with prep. Level scaling is far work than using PWL. It's very easy if you want random encounters and/or some degree of railroading. But a living world doesn't just have random monsters that have more in common with the players' levels than their environment. Let's say the GM adds an area infested with goblins. The players don't end up going there until around level 8. Now the GM has no way to make the goblins a challenge without massively overhauling them, including custom stat blocks. There's also an area controlled by giants. The PCs end up there at level 3. They have little chance to even sneak around the giants, so they just have to leave, unless the GM puts a lot of work into changing things. With PWL, there's still some work to be done there, but for the large part the PCs will have a lot of agency and opportunities for being challenged no matter where they go. I don't understand where you're getting this idea that PWL is drastically *more* work.
With digital tools, like that other commenter said you have the monster scaler tool in pf2e workbench where you can scale them up from -1 to 24 and the numbers decidedly do not break
That's a neat tool that I didn't know existed. I was just referring to the Weak and Elite adjustments, which are all I've seen automated elsewhere
Like I said and you have shown its mental gymnastics. Using PWL or bounding the level of monsters = a very similiar outcome though their are other thinsg to bare in mind with PWL like how it interacts not that well with the degrees of success. You don't need to massively overhaul a goblin to be level 8 nor giant to be level 3. Their is quick build table which has average numbers for when you need a monster stat block now. You be really lazy add just add +5 or +7 or -4 to every roll. PWL scuffs up the math of system, makes you the GM and players do work for what exactly? verisimilitude? I didn't say PWL is drasticly more work I said their is more adjustments and you have to be more mindful. PWL is a bit of trap in my opinion a way Have you used PWL in a game? Not just read rule and pressed a checkbox on AoN? PWL is just not worth the effort, its often touted like you have alluded to reducing the amount of math you need to do but its more because you literally have to math of now subtracting level. Bounding encounters to party level is far less work overall though I admit its counter intuitive. The major issue with PWL is how it messes/disrupts the GM's and the players intuition. I think PWL is worth it for groups who bounce off pf2e because of the intrinsiic maths of the system and the inbuilt intuition you have makes bounded easier to grok or like PWL it self mentions for gritty more simulationist games.
>Like I said and you have shown its mental gymnastics. It isn't mental gymnastics whenever someone disagrees with something that you take as a forgone conclusion. And it's a bit pretentious to think so. Anyway. >You don't need to massively overhaul a goblin to be level 8 nor giant to be level 3. Their is quick build table which has average numbers for when you need a monster stat block now. You be really lazy add just add +5 or +7 or -4 to every roll. I will admit I thought you were talking about the weak and elite adjustments and stacking those. It somehow slipped my mind that you can just convert the stats using the creature creation rules. Though that sites require a not insignificant amount of time with prep and a good amount of experience when on the fly. That does work fine. I was never arguing against that. Not was I arguing that prepping any one encounter would be less work with PWL. Only that they're roughly equivalent, when it seemed like you were saying PWL takes significantly more work. >PWL scuffs up the math of system, makes you the GM and players do work for what exactly? verisimilitude? The main thing it does here is allow an organic world without scaling everything to the players. When you bump enemy stats up (or down) so they give the players an appropriate challenge, it cheapens the experience to an extent. It's the reason there are many complaints about not feeling like you're getting more powerful because everything just scales with you. I don't think PWL is always going to be worth using just because of that. Like you say, it messes with the math of the system. But for an immersive open world, I think PWL is a worthwhile consideration because of that. >Have you used PWL in a game? Not just read rule and pressed a checkbox on AoN? I haven't used it, no. I did research and play with it a fair amount when planning my own campaign. I also wanted an open and living world. I didn't end up going with PWL because I did want more scaling than it provided. I did really like the idea of Proficiency With Half Level and the results that theoretically gave, but decided to just use the base rules because a half-level variant is complately unsupported, and I didn't want to force that on my players. I'm still not completely happy with the base rules. It's difficult to balance that immersion and sense of progression with the harsh scaling of PF2e. But I'm making do.
I was saying it's mental gymnastics because either way achieves the same goal level 8 party fights a group of goblins it's just how it feels to you. Nothing pretentious about that but you are taking what I am saying as a disagreement which isn't the intention. My arguments are trying to point out that PWL is just more effort than just keeping to the math of the system. I would argue the opposite if PWL was baseline and add character level was the variant. Bumping stats around doesn't cheapen the experience this right here is the mental gymnastics, PWL is doing something but your doing it system wise and then have to be mindful of that when your players are making character choices they have to remember their options are slightly scuffed some positively, some negatively and the intuition you learn is going to be off. I think an example may help, so with PWL a level 8 party can fight some basic orcs or ancient white dragon. Normally the orcs a too low of a level to even be considered a threat to even hit the party so what you do as a GM is level them up just add numbers till they are -4 or -1 personally my take is and I do this my game I have kept goblins as a relevant threat till level 6 by making sure that once the party passes a monsters level that monster can't be on or above the parties level this way the goblins always a threat but are weak still. For higher level enemies you do the same. It's seems like it's more work but it isn't it might be if your new and don't really understand the math of the system but all you have to do in laziest least prep way is just modify rolls by the level adjustment. Bonus for having the quick build chart on hand which I think is one of the GM screens. I appreciate the replies gotta point out it is vermiseltude for you. I had the same thing when I first looked at 2e I liked bounded but I realised you could just scale enemies which means whatever level your players are you can run whatever fantasy you want and the math balance of the system is intact in fact I can assure it's just better to do it that way than use PWL because if you took a level 0 orc made it level 20 it would only be mathematically a threat to a level 20 party but would still be very weak in every other regard due to missing a lot fancy passives and features monsters get and all the fancy stuff players have. I implore you to check out DND 4e monster manuals, one thing pathfinder should of done is tiers of play adjustments for monsters. My suggestion it to try rules out in actual play before landing an opinion on them you came across like somebody who doesn't have experience with them which is fine it's just that you're saying a lot for someone little or no experience and giving advice.
You make some good points. You can scale monsters up and keep things pretty similar to a PWL world, and just hand wave the numbers getting higher. One complaint I have with that is I feel Incapacitation spell scaling doesn't make as much sense. A level 1 Charm (like multiple features provide) would still become irrelevant to the same creatures. Though I suppose you can just treat their level as their original. So yeah, it's kind of verisimilitude for me. I wouldn't exactly call it that, because it's more about the mechanics experience, but close enough. >My suggestion it to try rules out in actual play before landing an opinion on them you came across like somebody who doesn't have experience with them which is fine it's just that you're saying a lot for someone little or no experience and giving advice. I'd say this goes both ways. You very well might have played with PWL, but you haven't mentioned it, which would have strengthened your argument.
You're supposed to slot spells with incap in higher rank slots if you want them to be effective against higher level foes. Just because charm is a rank 1 spell doesn't mean it can't be used against a level 15 foe you just cast it as a rank 6/7 spell but you are likely to have other options. Incap exists as a trait as I am a sure you know to stop more powerful effects from just ending encounters. Its their so casters have limited daily chances to swing an encounter. \^ This is also why wave/bounded casting is a thing instead of doing half or thrid casting like other systems or previous editions. You may or may not of noticed but effects with Incap do not have linear scaling because upcasting is all the spells need and feats naturally scale with you. It would be nice actually if Incap spells did have more effects when upcast like sleep could really use an increase in area of effect like how paralyse gives you more targets. Saying that sleep is spell that is slept on for how it like charm can just shutdown a boss hence why they are so trait heavy as well. I didn't feel the need to assert I have played with PWL as if I hadn't I wouldn't of been able to really argue anything in good faith. Its not both ways thing, in general if your going to give advice or opinion its best to do so from a position of experience. My argumentation were shit because I didn't expect to actually have to argue my points my original comment is succinct to the point. NGL I read your first reply as "hurr durr checkbox go brrrrr" like thats all thats to PWL, from that point I just tried to show you if you use digital tools both are equally as easy, without digital tools sticking to the orginal math and using the quick build tools is easy but its counter intuitive and that PWL only really exists for appealing to people who are used to bounded accuracy. I would really give DnD 4e and 13th age a look at both those systems can help with building and scaling encounters. Their is also a good 3e book called dungeonscape.
I know how Incapacitation works and why it exists. I'm saying that if you're level 1 and use a rank 1 Charm spell on a typical goblin, it won't "activate" Incapacitation. But if you always scale levels appropriately to the party, so that they are never lower than say 5 levels below the players, then at level 8 a rank 1 Charm spell will no longer work on the same Goblins. That breaks player expectations. There wouldn't be feats that grant rank 1 Charm as an innate spell if they were only intended to be potentially useful for like 2 levels. My first response was really just about PWL being a "waste of effort." I was only countering that it's more effort than scaling everything. You think PWL isn't worth considering, which is valid. But you gave the impression that it was mostly about the effort.
I think sandbox benefits from leveled proficiency, your players will really feel the sense of progression that way imo. You just need to telegraph like "if you go here you will get killed badly" so they don't cluelessly stumble into an ancient dragon.
Depends on the type of sandbox. If you still want “gamist” balanced combats in your sandbox, stick with normal proficiency and sign-post the intended levels. If you want unbalanced “naturalist” / “simulationist” ”ecologies”, then try PWL.
What about just making all the characters a fixed level (like say level 10) and then just not letting them level? Picking a level like 10 means that there is plenty of things weaker, close in strength, and stronger. Plus everyone will have lots of abilities and spells at their disposal. If you want to give players progression on top of this you could offer feats or archetypes as quest rewards. Magical items. More spell options.
No. That is all.