At the PF2E subreddit, user Aeolas said very well what the experience of GMing PF2 is like. These points resonate doubly so when it comes to high-level play. Here is their post in full, which prompted a lively discussion: From www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/qbe6cz/the_one_thing_about_pf2e_that_makes_it_impossible/ THE ONE THING ABOUT PF2E THAT MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO GO BACK TO D&D5E IS... The Combat Encounter Design rules. I've no idea what I was missing in my life. I'd played D&D5E since the launch of the core 3 books, and I consider myself a pretty good DM, but never once did the combat design rules there work for me. Instead, I learned to tread into the realm of adjusting numbers on the fly, lifting HP just a little higher to draw out the tension a little longer, letting a minion be quashed a little sooner when it wasn't of use, all in the name of letting my players have fun. But it was work for me, it felt like work, and by the end of my years in 5E, it felt like I was going through all this work, planning encounters haphazardly since I knew I could just adjust it on the fly, just to tell the story that I was eager to tell and that my players were eager for. Few weeks ago, I started Menace Under Otari, and I used the PF2 design rules website. 6 Giant Rats against 6 PCs. Moderate. I did my best. I flanked when I could. And by the end, it felt like a moderate fight. Next up. Giant Spider, and I added 2 spider swarms as per the rules. Again. I did the best I could. My spider swarms covered as many people as they could. My giant spider died to a lucky crit. Once again, it felt... moderately difficult. I didn't realise it until later, when I was reflecting on how the session went, that I realised that I got to have fun in combat. I could actually try my best! Use tactics! Flank! Aim for as many PCs as I could! I'd spent so many years pulling punches and softening blows that I'd forgotten what it really means to PLAY a game. What a blessing!
I think the dragon had a personal vendetta against that one villager. and the villager had a deep hatred for that dragon, given his recklessness in trying to fight it. maybe the dragon called his sister ugly or something.
There's a certain famous fantasy story involving a common person single-handedly taking down a dragon, and I wanted to make a point that that was NOT possible in Pathfinder 2e. In a system where the design allows for reliable encounter balancing, there are some downsides (for some people) as well. A low-level creature is not a threat to a higher-level one! But that also creates a situation where lower-level PCs MUST work together to take down a higher-level foe!
I cheered for that villager when he rolled a natural 20, completely forgetting that it only raises the degree of success by 1 instead of being an automatic hit. Poor fella.
@@Oddigan Yeah, big difference to D&D. An action can actually be completely impossible to succeed at... or impossible to fail since the same goes the other way. All without even needing to go outside of the actual rules.
I think something is lost from making it impossible for a low level character to have any kind of impact on a higher level monster. There are multiple stories based around this kind of event happening. A natural 20 should be a hit. Maybe for half damage or something.
Another excellent video man. I'm shocked by how well you ran 4 level 20 PCs and a Dragon at the same time while juggling all their effects and bonuses.
They try to intimidate the dragon, fail, and then it breathes fire on them. I can just imagine them trying to scare a red dragon by looking tough and then getting toasted for their puny efforts!
Yeah.... so this was obviously awesome; nice showcase of a truly epic fight! I love the full breakdown of all the abilities - definitely a lot of work to setup but I must say I am pumped to play more high level PF2! I will note that it’s up to the GM on whether a creature can use their reaction prior to their first turn in combat. “The GM determines whether you can use reactions before your first turn begins, depending on the situation in which the encounter happens.” Seeing as how the party was clearly prepared and waiting for the dragon, I probably would’ve given Valeros that first round block :)
You are right! This was brought up and I added this to the description. (Love your channel btw! My PF2 Rise of the Runelords group is also at the same point of the AP as you are)
Whoa, that last breath weapon almost turned the tide! When dealing with a higher level creatures, it only takes one turn for things to go south, scary.
Yes! In retrospect it showed that even when the monster was down to ~1% hit points, it was still not a foregone conclusion. Whereas in other systems it probably could've been "called" long before. A string of more bad luck was not out of the question, given its 53 AC!
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG To be perfectly fair, Poog made a really bad play by using goblin song instead of using a 2-action heal on Valeros, who was quite damaged ! But even so, good luck on the dragon could have turned the tide very fast if for example Poog went down at the start of combat. Anyways, really exciting and interesting video !
Back when the lockdowns began I joined an online group of first edition pathfinder and we played for a long time eventually we got to level 14. One really annoying part of the high-level gameplay was people becoming "A jumble of distracting colors" as we called it. All the different buffs and concealments stacked on top of each other were absolutely necessary for survival but it was so tedious to apply them in or out of combat. Add to that myriad of class features and monster abilities a single round of combat sometimes took 3 to 4 minutes to resolve. High-level pathfinder 1e combat is not fun. We switched over to 5th edition d&d to its credit it had none of that tediousness. But it felt like both the characters and enemies were gimped by the concentration mechanic. Also, the simplicity of most of the classes really turned me off particularly. As we continued from level 14 I can't really speak on how low-level play goes. However, the graphs at the beginning of the video didn't surprise me at all. One of the other players said 5e plays like a chess game but all the knights bishops are replaced with castles. It feels like a chess game but all the tactical fun is replaced with simplicity as you brute force all the encounters till you win. I watched a lot of your videos and pathfinder 2e seems very engaging and streamlined. A lot of issues I have with other systems don't seem so bad here. It's safe to say you sold me on this game man good job :D
That rooks analogy is great. Yes, in my experience with 5e combat felt like "brute force," positioning isn't very important, AC and defenses aren't very important, and you need to increase your DPR (or shut down your opponents) so that your enemies' health bars go down earlier than yours. I'm glad that the videos have helped you!! I was a PF1 GM myself for nine years and had similar frustrations as you report, while still preferring its customization and complexity to 5e when 5e landed. I am confident that you'll enjoy the PF2 system since it addresses the limitations of previous systems!
another thing to keep in mind for newer players: you are watching one person not only control one enemy (the dragon), but also four additional player characters, all by himself! that is a lot to keep track of. usually the four heroes would obviously be controlled by their respective players, which makes keeping track of every buff and the overall situation way easier and way less complicated - also keep in mind that five people at the table can remind each other of modifiers and such too, which makes everything flow better.
@@yagamifire7861 You think one person controlling FIVE units at once will be FASTER than them being played individually? Idk how you've come to that conclusion.
I don’t know if it’s having the effect you’re thinking. This video has mostly convinced me that PF2E is too complicated. Too many feats, crazy bonuses, too many rules. Kudos to the Rules Lawyer for keeping track of all that, but I don’t have that kind of study time for a game.
@@stillmattwest I think looking at a game at it's most complicated and delegating that to the rest of the system is a bit disingenuous. This is something you're supposed to build up to, of course it seems like a lot.
@@stillmattwest99% of the time a battle like this would be the result of a year+ of time building up to this level of complexity. The rogue would be used to siding the fighter's opportunity attacks and the cleric player would always remind the GM about the fire resistance. There's a fair bit going on but it's not like you'd have to study for this.
I think that regarding system demostrantion you are the best pf2e creator. Also great job at menaging 4 player and the dragon during the session. Yes there where some errors but the feats-and spells are too many for the Gm to menage alone.
Stellar video as always. One thing that would be great to add is how Flying works in this edition, because it's a major departure from DnD5e AND Pathfinder1e. The fact that you need to spend once action per round in flying (and that hovering often requires a skill check) should be common knowledge (this has a direct impact in the evaluation of mobility feats and flight spells/ancestry feats. There's a lot less "Why I need to be good at jumping/climbing/running since I can just fly?").
Currently level 15 in a 1-20 game; Almost the entire party can fly, and we've fought multiple dragons. No one (including the gm) knew this and we've just been using the Stride action to move since it doesn't specify land speed.
@@jsamue12 Flying is a little more complicated than straight movement rules, if the party can flying consistently, it should be a set of rules that need to be thoroughly known. Flying trivializes a lot of adventuring challenges, so it shouldn't be as effortless and costless as other D20 editions made it to be.
@@jsamue12 It's really not a huge difference for most situations. It's mostly just a big deal if they're standing still and conserving actions. They key sentence is: "If you’re airborne at the end of your turn and didn’t use a Fly action this round, you fall." So if they're "striding" horizontally every round, they just used the wrong word but got the same effect. If they went up or down they missed some movement adjustments (going up is at half speed, going down is double-speed). But if they hovered and didn't do a "stride" or "fly", they should have been down an action (or fallen).
I used to play on/gm/manage a 5e gestalt server that was an absolute mess and wanted to homebrew my own fixes for 5e, but after all the work I've put in, I realized what the creators clearly won't admit, it's unbalanced and a lost cause past level 13! This video is the final nail in the coffin, I'm going to try out pathfinder 2e!
5e seriously utterly falls apart in a lot of ways. They put so much focus on combat that the rest of the system is barebones or non-existent...and at high level even the combat falls apart. It's crazy
Oh I didn't know that delaying your turn ends any sustain spells you got going but it makes sense now that you mention it. Fun fight, rip lv 7 hunter though - that's what happens when you get cocky!
I noticed all the mistakes you made. As a DM, I make a ton of mistakes. When I go back and watch the battles (I record mine and post to UA-cam for fun under a different channel for D&D) I am stunned. I think almost every major battle I forget something.
For people who aren't good at arithmetic, when applying damage/healing, you can shift click the buttons in chat to apply modifiers. So here if an attack does cold damage, select the dragon then shift click the damage button in chat and type 25. It will add it on. For resistances, just use a minus sign.
@@fulvio3211foundry's pathfinder at this point has an (almost) fully implemented weakness/resistance system, so you just click damage/half damage/block/double damage and it calculates properly.
I think a lot of these commenters missed the point, the video seeks to answer the question does high level combat work? It would seem the answer is yes. In that you have the monster being a legitimate threat, the players all getting to use their spells and abilities and it a just works and was easy to set up. Were there tactical decisions or parts of the set up that could have been improved? Sure, but that wasn't really the point.
I liked this one a lot, my main takeaway which wasn't much of a focus for the video was the use of "sanctuary" and other low level spells which provide useful enough niches.
Funny thing is that Sanctuary did sweet FA that encounter, as the dragon immediately got a crit success against the spell nullifying it. It was a good idea, but the Dragon had a strong enough will save to make it a non-factor.
25:44 Precise debilitation does not deal an additional 2d6 precision up front. It reads 'The target takes an additional 2d6 precision damage from your attacks.', which means all her subsequent attacks, until the debilitation wears off at the end of her next turn, deal that additional damage.
Oh I cannot wait, this is gonna be a fun watch. I’m super interested to see what level 20 play looks like, seeing as my group has only just hit level 7 in Agents of Edgewatch xD
I learned 5 about 3 years ago and since then dnd has become a massive part of my life. I play in 3 campaigns every week and dm another. I looked at P2e and saw it as too complex. I mean like there's A LOT of content to remember. But after watching this only halfway through I got it. Yes there's more stuff going on but for the dm it's so much easier to manage. You don't have to remind players what other stuff it going on around them mechanics wise NEARLY as much. Every player and the DM has the stuff they can do and can apply to whats going on without the DM having to interject every 10 secs to try and remember something else. It just seems a lot more harmonious mechanics wise than 5e. I mean people could argue that the looseness of 5e means there's more creativity but I'd disagree. There's rules for basically everything in 2e and if those rules for some reason seem to unreasonably restrict players. Just ignore them. It's just sooooooooo reassuring as a dm that there are rules that I can rely on and not have to make one up every 10 seconds.
One point - you mention that forgetting abilities is a 5e issue, but on several occasions that you yourself highlight, you forgot to apply certain modifiers...so it's not a uniquely 5e issue.
Ya know? I've changed my mind. I think the alchemist is such a weird, unprecedented class that it needs its own demonstration. I plan one! But not sure when it'll be since I have other ideas too I wanna do
Of course this is different from an actual play since you are explaining each bit of mechanics of things happening to viewers. Players on your table wouldn't need all this explanation and the GM would instead be filling the scene with descriptions of what is happening on the battle. This playing experience is only possible if such a "boss" fight lasts. GMs often get frustrated on such fights on DnD5E because most of the fight happens in 2-4 rounds and everything they can do best is shown and combo'd together in the first 2 rounds. Damage scaling with levels is a curve on both systems, but I fear that the party's "damage per round" curve in DnD5e gets much ahead than the big monsters, while PF2e monsters are more calibrated to keep up.
i've been switching from 5e to PF2e and your channel has been such a valuable ressource for me. Even as a seasoned DM of nearly 15 years now, its still so nice to have a dedicated way of seeing specific aspects of a system in action beforehand. Thank you for that!
As someone who's said to not sleep on magic missile for ages now, it's very validating to see it deliver the finishing blow after a succession of misses ;) Also sad we didn't get to see the kamehameha wave go off, but I didn't even think about using haste to reposition while charging the two-turn version. That's a really solid idea (plus it reminds me of Goku using instant transmission to fake out Cell with it lol). I haven't had a chance to run max level combat yet so I was very invested and engaged in this. I'd love to see more higher level content examples, the basics are great for beginners but this more high level tactical play is what I CRAVE when it comes to guides like this. Good job dude.
Glad you liked it!! Yeah I plan to have different stuff for different audiences. Definitely am open to more high-level stuff, though it's a bit demanding lol. When I get inspired again, and I'm sure it'll happen!
Finished a campaign not long ago where one of the other players was a psychic. They really liked to have a heightened magic missile and then amp it. At 9th level they were shooting 9 missile that had +7 instead of +1 for each missile. It was awesome.
I think that Pathfinder 2e is a great game but for one thing. You gain feats or abilities at every level, sometimes several. By the time you hit 20th level, you have around 44 feats. Some are passive abilities that you don't have to remember but you might have a few dozen feats that give you special bonuses or actions (like quick draw) that you will have to remember. So I only played the game a little bit. To anyone reading this that plays PF2E, do you find the volume of feats/abilities a good thing or bad or so-so? I'm just curious if I should persevere.
Long ago but I quite like the number of abilities I have. It makes me feel useful in a lot of situations. I play a recently leveled up to 3 champion Paladin whose religion is basically just nature
Amazing video! Just a correction, there were a few times in which you used their quickened actions to Fly, and Haste is very specific, you can only Stride or Strike, flight not being included in that. Impossible not to make some mistakes while piloting a full level 20 party plus a level 24 dragon, though! Commendable job, loved this video.
Great point. I did some digging because I am sure there is a rules element somewhere allowing you to substitute different movement types (found it - it's Tumble Through). ... And now I'm mildly upset! Yes, Haste specifies the "Stride" action, which indeed is different from the Fly action. This has to be errata'd. Because, by the same token, since some characters with an animal companion can have their companion "Stride or Strike" when it's not Commanded that turn, then a bird companion needs to land on the ground and waddle to move then. Makes zero sense. And I see no value in limiting Haste to only land Speeds. Adding to the video description. This is a first, folks: this Rules Lawyer calls for disobeying an unjust law! >:(
Very well done. This video nicely summed up a lot of my own thoughts on the vast difference in high-level play between PF2 and most other recent D&D-style TTRPGs.
The biggest thing to me that sticks out with high level play in a lot of systems is it turns into rocket tag, just sitting around waiting for someone to either crit an attack roll or crit fail a save so something will actually get through. but that i think is coming more from monster design and stats than the actual system itself which is frustrating. like they were sitting around making monsters and couldnt think of anything more challenging than oh lets give this thing a monstrous AC and just straight immunity to a whole laundry list of damage types and no weaknesses, looking at you lesser death encounter at level 13
Super cool. Lookingfoward to getting back to PF2E. Waiting on the edition update for Kingmaker, so we can keep playing that campaign, just in the new edition. I find PF1E very draining to run.
Yep, I GMed PF1e for 9 years which was great fun, but yes mid- to higher-level play is such a burden on the GM. Even Level 1 characters could get hard to deal with because there are so many subsystems spread out over so many different options that work differently from each other.
In PF 2e the only polymorph spell that could act as a fight ender I can think of is the level 6 spell baleful polymorph, (fortitude save, critical failure effect is to turn the target into a harmless animal in body and mind permanently unless dispelled, failure is to turn the target into an animal for 1 minute and they can use 3 actions on their turn to try to end it earlier with a will save, success is the target is sickened 1 and crit success is nothing happens) but it has the incapacitation trait, so enemies more than twice the spell's level make their roll one degree of success better (a crit failure becomes normal failure, a failure becomes a success and a normal success becomes a crit success) so it CAN turn the tide of the battle, but it will not decide it.
Nope! It has the incapacitation trait, so it only really completely shuts down a monster if they aren't higher level than your spell's effective level. (i.e., a polymorph spell heightened to 9th level could permanently affect a Level 18 creature, but not a Level 19 creature). This Incapacitation trait is explained during Scare to Death at 35:26
Good to know the combat works and is balanced at high level play. Unfortunately other than haste, the wizard really didn't do shit in this fight... not that wizards are bad but just the spells you chose to cast.
I've been running pathfinder for a while now but I struggle with all the rules/feats relating to the social side. I prefer to just roleplay as opposed to keeping a track of the npc states (hostile, helpful, etc) could you do a video to show us how you handle incorporating the rules with traditional role play.
That's a great question but I'm actually less "sure" about how to adjudicate the RP rules. My hot take is that Rule Zero always applies, and the rules should be seen as aids, not rails. Also, there is a danger of saying there's a "right way" of how to adjudicate roleplaying when by nature it truly is up to the GM, and how to rule in concrete situations is left nebulous (by choice) by the designers. It is something I've already thought of. If I see an angle to approach it, I would like to cover it.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG that makes sense. Would you consider streaming a game you gm. Maybe even just one session. Would love to see how you handle a group and their shenanigans.
A small correction during the part where the dragon breathes fire down. Valeros already had a +3 status bonus taken into account for his result of 40, so his +4 status from Poog should have made hsi roll 41, replacing the herosim bonus.
As a beginner, I loved this. I'm very keen to see you do similar clips exploring various tactics (e.g. illusionist, gymnast, alchemist, thaumaturge, etc.)
The dragon messed up… Never divide your attacks… The cleric was invisible so he had a hard time targeting the cleric he knew there was a powerful spellcaster in the group he should’ve concentrated all of his tax on the wizard until the wizard was dead then move onto the cleric if the cleric was visible for the rogue because the rogue was the squishiest… Never divide up your attacks kill the party as quickly as possible
Dragons', especially red dragons, though smart, are very arrogant. With the fighter constantly goading it and taunting it, it makes sense that it would try to teach him a lesson. Sure, it's not "optimal", but in the mind of an Ancient Red Dragon, losing to a bunch of worthless humans and goblins is completely impossible
Ancient Red Dragon, didnt live that long or get that big or old being gullible or stupid. Has an Int scorn of 20+, meaning hes smarter then over half the population....yet why would he not once think to snatch/grab the wizard and swallow him whole..or grapple the wizard with his claws,etc... play BBEG as his stats dictate and the party would be craping there pants. Instead your plsying it like its a mindless MMO Boss mob...arg musr follow taunt mechanics blah blah..pfft
My guess is no - the party would have to be well prepared and have a bit of luck. The game is engineered such that things above a certain level aren't really meant to be thrown against X level party. The rules explicitly say to avoid monsters more than 4 levels above or below the party. (Fortunately it's easy enough to adjust stats of preexisting statblocks, so low-level creatures aren't automatically made useful to the GM because the party has become higher level.)
This was great! Although it's better _by a mile,_ I still wouldn't say PF2e bypasses the D&D problem of high-level parties punching above their weight class. Even though the numbers put the dragon above the party, they had access to high-level tchochkes, spells, and an opportunity to prepare and adapt - this more than leveled the playing field. The party really handed this great wyrm its ass. Also, as a side bonus, these videos showcase Foundry VTT's implementation of the system quite nicely. It does, however, irk me whenever you count and input HP by hand - there are buttons for that under each damage roll. They take into account when the target is resistant to the damage type being applied, and there's even one for blocking which reduces the damage by Hardness and applies the rest to the target's HP and shield HP. EDIT: Something that worries me about potentially taking PF2e to high levels is how the tightness of the math makes it difficult to use lower-level monsters. This might not affect all campaigns, but I can imagine myself struggling with a campaign where the party has to deal with balors and pleromas every week. In 5e, single boss monsters become pushovers far too easily, but the opposite is also true - a double-digit number of lower-CR monsters can still threaten a high-level party because action economy is overwhelmingly more important in a bounded accuracy system. I've heard good things about Proficiency Without Level rules in PF2e: that they make encounters 5e-style (i.e. single entities are easy, being outnumbered is deadly), but that the outcomes aren't as random and unpredictable as 5e. Still, the damage and hit point numbers all seem designed with a super-tight 4-levels-below-or-above range in mind, so I'm hesitant to play around with them.
At high levels, a well-prepared party is stronger than an "Extreme" boss by the rules. At the lowest levels, my guess is that it is weaker than an Extreme boss, since the boss can so easily knock out a character and cause a spiral effect. I'm aware of those buttons, but I'm a keyboard lover admittedly. Also, fire damage came up a LOT here and I don't think those buttons consider fire resistance. (Do they? If they do this would be a great feature.) If you haven't tried the default PF2 rules yet, I recommend trying them before trying a variant rule. Personally I found that that Proficiency Without Level made monsters feel more samey, because the tightness of the math meant that everything needed an 11 or 12 to hit and I found monsters less interesting, ymmv. I guess most players would like the feeling under the default rules of being more powerful than creatures they struggled with previously, and that they like the drama of encountering a boss. Again, ymmv. PF2 also offers rules for Troops - special creatures that follow their own rules to simulate many lower level creatures. But yes, admittedly PF2 assumes an exponential power curve (double in power every 2 levels) as players level up, so it tells a different type of story. The advantage is that the GM has tools to anticipate the power of an encounter when they want to.
While The Rules Lawyer covered things nicely, I wanted to second the use of Troops, as a GM doing some high level PF1 Adventure Path conversions. Level -5 and -6 could maybe be used as standalone enemies, but they'd be worth 7.5 and 5 xp apiece, continuing the system math. They'd be good for taking the Aid action for bigger monsters, showcasing that their sheer numbers matter. Otherwise good for meat puppets the PCs can feel good cutting down. If you want masses of lower level enemies to actually be a threat, though? Troops. Take an existing troop and modify.
@@malkyn9998 I did apply 5xp and 7.5gp to Level -6 and -5 monsters a couple times, and found that in those instances the encounter building system still seemed to work (building an encounter where they were 0xp almost caused a TPK, and after I adjusted, the 5/7.5 amounts seemed to reflect the actual feel of the encounter)
You say they kicked its ass and yes they won but as we saw a few more dice rolls not going their way or if the dragon had really focused Poog instead of spamming its breath every chance it could have been a very different story. Not to mention they knew what they were going into, got to pre-buff and even with that this was a rocky fight with plenty of chances for things to go wrong.
Amazing work on this one! This has been a great series. I know it's been a hot minute since we discussed on reddit, but I think more videos like these would be great split into a 'beginner/introductory' video and an 'intermediate' video. The beginner/introductory video could be 5-10 minutes and focus on the narrative of the combat and how the various actions and abilities affect the narrative of the fight and then the intermediate video could be longer and focus on the tactical decisions the 'players' made. That way you can get twice the content out of your well made footage. Keep up the great work!
It's a good idea. I had planned to make this video a beginner friendly vs a beginner "un"friendly but I thought it would be too much. The latter would be me reacting and commenting to the 1st video. But then this video became pretty explanatory already. How I'll do it is I think I'll have more beginner friendly videos that are clear from jump (incl. the title), and split things up into tiered playlists as I have more videos.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG I completely agree that you made the right choice here with this high level video. Fights like this are meant to be the culmination of a lot of play. The playlists will help a lot for sharing with newcomers. Thanks again for all of the hard work!
Could a 20lvl wizard take on an ancient dragon by themselves using everything they can but by themselves? I mean it should be something like 50/60% success chance against these at 19lvl but I would like to know how it actually goes.
1v1 combat in these sorts of tactical miniature based games doesn't quite work out according to the level balancing charts. They are clearly made for groups. Technically, yes, a PC and the same level as a monster should have a 50/50 shot at killing it, but that really depends on what monster. I think a level 3 Fighter would have a greater than 50/50 chance at beating a Dire Wolf, for example, because it's built around physically attacking and using its Pack Attack ability. A level 3 Wizard might be in way more danger. They need someone to distract the Dire Wolf from bearing down on them.
You do a great job of showing how great PF2e is! I spent weeks homebrewing huge swaths of revisions to 5e to fix so many things that bothered me. Since I started learning PF2e, I've found that they ended up with many of the same things I came up with...all that wasted effort, should've just come straight to Pathfinder 2e...
This is great! I know you only run this and 5E, but if you'd run a similar combat using 2E or even another old school system, I really think you could impact a big group of players like me! 👍
Ah! I actually have veerry little experience with pre-3E D&D, though I grew up reading the rules in the 80s. And I want to have more experience. So I'm probably not the best person right now to do such a vid. But I'm curious as to what makes you want to see such a vid? Because I'm a person who avidly reads books and thinks about the history of the TTRPG hobby, and I have yet to run videos I plan on doing that touch on older versions of D&D.
This is a good video. I will say that a lot of Adventure Paths are overturned and I find myself often needing to adjust encounters or even certain monsters. Sometimes an AP's author will create a unique creature that doesn't quite follow the system guidelines (like having really high AC, and all saves are high, and HP is high, and it does a lot of damage AND it has a high attack bonus for it's level), and set them at a level lower than what they should be considering. But that isn't a problem with the system itself, just something new DM's running Adventure Path's need to keep in mind.
It's been a while since I made this, but I recall the Rogue needing quite a high roll to hit even on her 1st Strike. Also, her reaction depended on Valeros landing a hit so there was some importance to focusing to Aid him as well
Coming in late but I wanted to point out that this combat only took an hour! Compared to every other high level fight I've been in that's really good. Even if you added some time for table chatter or less prepared players, this is very smooth.
I was just missing cold spells :p and playing around the cold weakness. Even ray of frost would have taken the dragon down. And maybe basic 3gp frost vials with cold splash even on hit failure are 26 dmg in this case.
This would have been way better, if you had gotten people to play the characters, and you just just dmed and narrated why they could do the things they do.
Interesting and well done. I do think that the complexity and time spent skyrockets a bit if not using a VTT. Playing in person with pencil and paper as I do at level 20 is probably still a bit much. But it certainly works better than 5E at high level in general with less swing and need for additional tools and adjudication / fiat.
I ran 5e for 8 years and all my campaigns went from 1 to 20. This was four full campaigns in that time. And high level play was not fun for me or the PCs by the end. It was exhausting the amount of effort required by the DM to build something effective against a group of level 20 PCs (and the problem started happening from 10ish depending how optimized the party was) and it often boiled down to one-hit kills to have any semblance of threat. Nice to see it seems to actually work in pf2. Keen to try it out now (switched to pf1 two years ago).
52:45 pretty sure Ezren could not dismiss (1 action) + summon draconic legion (3 actions) neither are strikes nor strides :) If im wrong i would love to hear why! :D
You forgot that the Ezren's time stop would have made him lose the effects of poog's blessing of defience spell, as effects on you still tick down inside of time stop, and blessing of defiance only lasts for one round.
sure, high level play is functional in PF2E, which is more than can be said of other systems it still doesn't work very well, though TTRPGs just need to take inspiration from other games and provide mechanics for retiring adventurers. Hit whatever milestone where the game's fun threshold is, and now the adventurer gets retired and you get a new one. This has been the most successful way I have seen to avoid the pitfalls of high level play - just avoid lingering in that space.
The thing that really struck me in this video was how even with just a single person trying to play all four characters and the monster, remembering all of their abilities and trying to keep track of them all, it still felt fairly simple. I imagine if this was a group, each controlling only their own characters, it wouldn't really seem complex at all which I think is great.
Honestly, when you were talking about throwing a single level 24 monster at the party, I was really hoping for a Frumious Jabberwocky; the Dragon makes sense (especially by being easily comparable to other systems) but is a tiny bit disappointingly generic. Still a great video and demonstration though. It definitely highlights how the game is much less "rocket-tag" at high levels than 5e and especially PF1 (where the first successful attacker can usually win in a single round); and how little extra balancing or homebrew you have to do to make things work. I do have to say though that I think some of the balance issues of high-level play, at least in PF1 (I'm not really a 5e guy, so I don't know that too well), are greatly exaggerated IMO. I haven't had a particularly hard time making some pretty successful epic and boss encounters for my game; it mostly just takes a good understanding of the system and the capabilities of your players, and if you're willing to put a good chunk of time and effort into building custom enemies it actually becomes pretty easy (although, still not as easy as PF2 makes it). Honestly, the biggest balance problem of PF1 is all about disparity among the party members (which still seems at least a little alive here, but not nearly as bad). It's easy to make monsters or groups that challenge any individual character, but with the complexity and depth of character building (the one thing that PF1 still has over 2e by far) the difference between a well-built character and a poorly-built (or even average) is HUGE. Anything that can challenge a powerful martial character (especially Barbarians or Fighters) will usually be able to effortlessly solo the rest of the party, and anything that the other party members can reasonably take out is going to get completely curb-stomped by the top player. This is only compounded when the strongest character is also played by the tactically best player (and is why our fighter is planning on swapping to a weaker character soon, as his current one, while awesome, is just so much more powerful than every other member of the party).
I was worried about high level play seeming too complicated so erred toward a more basic monster. Also, I thought it would be fun to raise the question "Who does dragon fights better" given that D&D has dragon in its title (this was an original title idea). I don't think this will be the last high level combat however. I GMed PF1 for nine years, and yes I agree the disparity within the party can be an issue. I ran Rappan Athuk to about Level 21, and some party members had attack bonuses about 12 to 15 higher than others. I had to make a spreadsheet calculating each character's DPR to come up with my own homebrew versions of monsters, and regularly had to increase the CR of monsters by 5 or 6 levels. And still sometimes the players would come up with something, or a single die roll or two would decide the fight. So it ended up being a lot of work for an okay amount of reward, while I found the ratio to be much better in 2e.
I think choosing the dragon is a good option to show the difference between say PF2E and DnD 5e. In DnD 5e dragons are a complete joke and super lame. I have had 2 5E campaigns where I ran an ancient dragon RAW and a level 10 party basically killed the dragon. It took a while but the party never was in proper danger. A third time I mildly homebrewed an ancient blue dragon and the fight got more intense, but the fight also lasted an ungodly amount of time. By the end when the final blow on the dragon came, my players were not cheering but rather relieved that the encounter was finally over. So I think this definitely showed that a dragon is actually a viable option and a terrifying monster to throw at even a higher level party and I really liked how it showcased the fact that you can easily adjust the monsters and there are good and clear rules on how to do it, making the GM's life way easier.
Round 3 the dragon flies away and comes back when their buff spells have worn off in 10 minutes. Players recast defensive spells. Dragon flies away again and comes back 10 minutes later. Rinse and repeat until spell slots all used up or players stop casting buff spells.
You want high level play, try the playets guide to immortality from 1986. It doesn't get much higher than godlike. Too high? Try the master set it covers levels 26-36. "But my system only goes to level 20", you say. The companion rules cover 15-25 and you can stop when you get too powerful. 1st and second edition had no upper limit and even has a module for level 100 characters. Stop launching forward with newer editions when its been done better decades ago.
i mean, this fight worked just fine. but what was the cost of it working - what had to give way in order for it to be functional? the dragon had such high checks against the heroes' layered defenses that those defenses basically didn't exist. i don't think the dragon failed a single check? they may as well not be in the game and that's certainly better than 5E's shrugging at the matter and just letting layered defenses invalidate encounters, but it isn't exactly wonderful to get into high level play and see that the only way the game can work is to completely turn-off certain choices you made that the game told you would mean something
You should not still be a "Murder-Hobo" by lvl.20. You should have a domain; a keep with some vassals, or some other responsibility within the realm. This is not the same as "retiring" a character, you have merely moved into the Domain/Patron level of gameplay. You have small issues in your lands taken care of by other adventurers (parties of low-level PCs), you marshal your armies to deal with larger threats. Half of the reason "high level play falls apart" is because we have forgotten the foundation of the game is that of the WARGAME.
Love your videos and your excellent explanations of pf2e’s balanced, challenging and exciting games play at all levels. Been playing for 2 years now and it is so much better than d&d5e.
@TheRulesLawyerRPG THanks for the vid! At 22:52 Merisiel is at 5ft, the dragon is at 10ft and Valeros is at 0ft - does pf2e flanking not care about the elevation?
Dnd5e high level play is difficult with a single Boss because of action economy ... offset by Legendary and Lair actions - I don't see how this is balanced in PF2e except by the Boss monster doing a lot of AOE or single damage since it has no more attacks, or by being difficult to hit and so mostly avoiding crits ... ?
So, it seems you allowed the PCs to to use their Hasted actions to Fly. The text says only Stride or Strike, not Fly. RAW this fight would have been tougher, as the dragon would have a significant action economy boost.
24:17 Each character has one reaction per TURN? I am sure he meant per combat round. I didn't know the rules, but one reaction on each individual turn sounds too busted. I guess in a not staged fight, the dragon would flee at some point, and plan his revenge on these adventurers. On the other hand, the adventurers plan a raid on the dragon's hoard to vanquish this thread forever.
"At all times there are three possibilities from your D20 roll." Tell that to the poor villager who nat 20'd the dragon and had him no sell the attack.
I was a DM for over 20yrs, I ran a campaign that ran for 5yrs that ended when my players were about lvl 34, and only because I didn't know what else to do, they were demigods by then and I really didn't want to deal with any more god related quests to be honest lol, most of the time they won the fights, but some of them they had to escape to survive, 4e and 5e mess up the game so much.
I'm assuming the math is designed for a four person party. What about different numbers of players? Three player parties, six player parties, all different numbers?
In my experience it generally works out - there isn't any having to account for greater action economy of more creatures like in 5E. For a six person party, you just have +50% worth of monsters compared to what you'd put up against a four person party.
55:00 bruh go back to your lair and plot your revenge! silly wyrm, the dude litarelly threw you to the ground, nearly cut off your left ankle and summoned an army of dragons
At the PF2E subreddit, user Aeolas said very well what the experience of GMing PF2 is like. These points resonate doubly so when it comes to high-level play. Here is their post in full, which prompted a lively discussion:
From www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/qbe6cz/the_one_thing_about_pf2e_that_makes_it_impossible/
THE ONE THING ABOUT PF2E THAT MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO GO BACK TO D&D5E IS...
The Combat Encounter Design rules. I've no idea what I was missing in my life.
I'd played D&D5E since the launch of the core 3 books, and I consider myself a pretty good DM, but never once did the combat design rules there work for me. Instead, I learned to tread into the realm of adjusting numbers on the fly, lifting HP just a little higher to draw out the tension a little longer, letting a minion be quashed a little sooner when it wasn't of use, all in the name of letting my players have fun. But it was work for me, it felt like work, and by the end of my years in 5E, it felt like I was going through all this work, planning encounters haphazardly since I knew I could just adjust it on the fly, just to tell the story that I was eager to tell and that my players were eager for.
Few weeks ago, I started Menace Under Otari, and I used the PF2 design rules website. 6 Giant Rats against 6 PCs. Moderate. I did my best. I flanked when I could. And by the end, it felt like a moderate fight.
Next up. Giant Spider, and I added 2 spider swarms as per the rules. Again. I did the best I could. My spider swarms covered as many people as they could. My giant spider died to a lucky crit. Once again, it felt... moderately difficult.
I didn't realise it until later, when I was reflecting on how the session went, that I realised that I got to have fun in combat. I could actually try my best! Use tactics! Flank! Aim for as many PCs as I could! I'd spent so many years pulling punches and softening blows that I'd forgotten what it really means to PLAY a game.
What a blessing!
Some minutes into the fight, it seems I've got massive respect for the amount of care you've put into terrorizing that one level 7 villager.
I think the dragon had a personal vendetta against that one villager. and the villager had a deep hatred for that dragon, given his recklessness in trying to fight it. maybe the dragon called his sister ugly or something.
There's a certain famous fantasy story involving a common person single-handedly taking down a dragon, and I wanted to make a point that that was NOT possible in Pathfinder 2e. In a system where the design allows for reliable encounter balancing, there are some downsides (for some people) as well. A low-level creature is not a threat to a higher-level one! But that also creates a situation where lower-level PCs MUST work together to take down a higher-level foe!
I cheered for that villager when he rolled a natural 20, completely forgetting that it only raises the degree of success by 1 instead of being an automatic hit. Poor fella.
@@Oddigan Yeah, big difference to D&D. An action can actually be completely impossible to succeed at... or impossible to fail since the same goes the other way. All without even needing to go outside of the actual rules.
I think something is lost from making it impossible for a low level character to have any kind of impact on a higher level monster. There are multiple stories based around this kind of event happening. A natural 20 should be a hit. Maybe for half damage or something.
Another excellent video man. I'm shocked by how well you ran 4 level 20 PCs and a Dragon at the same time while juggling all their effects and bonuses.
Thanks! Just know that I did a lot of planning and note-taking for this tho
Man I just got really invested in this fictional battle run by one person
They try to intimidate the dragon, fail, and then it breathes fire on them. I can just imagine them trying to scare a red dragon by looking tough and then getting toasted for their puny efforts!
Yeah.... so this was obviously awesome; nice showcase of a truly epic fight! I love the full breakdown of all the abilities - definitely a lot of work to setup but I must say I am pumped to play more high level PF2!
I will note that it’s up to the GM on whether a creature can use their reaction prior to their first turn in combat.
“The GM determines whether you can use reactions before your first turn begins, depending on the situation in which the encounter happens.”
Seeing as how the party was clearly prepared and waiting for the dragon, I probably would’ve given Valeros that first round block :)
You are right! This was brought up and I added this to the description.
(Love your channel btw! My PF2 Rise of the Runelords group is also at the same point of the AP as you are)
Whoa, that last breath weapon almost turned the tide!
When dealing with a higher level creatures, it only takes one turn for things to go south, scary.
Yes! In retrospect it showed that even when the monster was down to ~1% hit points, it was still not a foregone conclusion. Whereas in other systems it probably could've been "called" long before. A string of more bad luck was not out of the question, given its 53 AC!
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG To be perfectly fair, Poog made a really bad play by using goblin song instead of using a 2-action heal on Valeros, who was quite damaged ! But even so, good luck on the dragon could have turned the tide very fast if for example Poog went down at the start of combat. Anyways, really exciting and interesting video !
@@chancylegtron1747 I think you're right. I think I lost sense of what was optimal there in order to get "in character" lol
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG to be fair, that's a valid way to play the game and should be (is) acceptably within balance tolerance
Back when the lockdowns began I joined an online group of first edition pathfinder and we played for a long time eventually we got to level 14. One really annoying part of the high-level gameplay was people becoming "A jumble of distracting colors" as we called it. All the different buffs and concealments stacked on top of each other were absolutely necessary for survival but it was so tedious to apply them in or out of combat. Add to that myriad of class features and monster abilities a single round of combat sometimes took 3 to 4 minutes to resolve. High-level pathfinder 1e combat is not fun. We switched over to 5th edition d&d to its credit it had none of that tediousness. But it felt like both the characters and enemies were gimped by the concentration mechanic. Also, the simplicity of most of the classes really turned me off particularly. As we continued from level 14 I can't really speak on how low-level play goes. However, the graphs at the beginning of the video didn't surprise me at all. One of the other players said 5e plays like a chess game but all the knights bishops are replaced with castles. It feels like a chess game but all the tactical fun is replaced with simplicity as you brute force all the encounters till you win. I watched a lot of your videos and pathfinder 2e seems very engaging and streamlined. A lot of issues I have with other systems don't seem so bad here. It's safe to say you sold me on this game man good job :D
That rooks analogy is great. Yes, in my experience with 5e combat felt like "brute force," positioning isn't very important, AC and defenses aren't very important, and you need to increase your DPR (or shut down your opponents) so that your enemies' health bars go down earlier than yours.
I'm glad that the videos have helped you!! I was a PF1 GM myself for nine years and had similar frustrations as you report, while still preferring its customization and complexity to 5e when 5e landed. I am confident that you'll enjoy the PF2 system since it addresses the limitations of previous systems!
another thing to keep in mind for newer players: you are watching one person not only control one enemy (the dragon), but also four additional player characters, all by himself! that is a lot to keep track of.
usually the four heroes would obviously be controlled by their respective players, which makes keeping track of every buff and the overall situation way easier and way less complicated - also keep in mind that five people at the table can remind each other of modifiers and such too, which makes everything flow better.
Yes but that should also necessarily massively slow down the speed of everything as well
Which is a main problem with high level combat
@@yagamifire7861 You think one person controlling FIVE units at once will be FASTER than them being played individually? Idk how you've come to that conclusion.
I have loved every single one of these, and I cannot wait for people to see how effective level 20 gameplay is in PF2E. Keep up the good work sir!
I don’t know if it’s having the effect you’re thinking. This video has mostly convinced me that PF2E is too complicated. Too many feats, crazy bonuses, too many rules. Kudos to the Rules Lawyer for keeping track of all that, but I don’t have that kind of study time for a game.
@@stillmattwest I think looking at a game at it's most complicated and delegating that to the rest of the system is a bit disingenuous. This is something you're supposed to build up to, of course it seems like a lot.
@@stillmattwest99% of the time a battle like this would be the result of a year+ of time building up to this level of complexity. The rogue would be used to siding the fighter's opportunity attacks and the cleric player would always remind the GM about the fire resistance. There's a fair bit going on but it's not like you'd have to study for this.
I think that regarding system demostrantion you are the best pf2e creator. Also great job at menaging 4 player and the dragon during the session. Yes there where some errors but the feats-and spells are too many for the Gm to menage alone.
Stellar video as always. One thing that would be great to add is how Flying works in this edition, because it's a major departure from DnD5e AND Pathfinder1e. The fact that you need to spend once action per round in flying (and that hovering often requires a skill check) should be common knowledge (this has a direct impact in the evaluation of mobility feats and flight spells/ancestry feats. There's a lot less "Why I need to be good at jumping/climbing/running since I can just fly?").
Currently level 15 in a 1-20 game; Almost the entire party can fly, and we've fought multiple dragons. No one (including the gm) knew this and we've just been using the Stride action to move since it doesn't specify land speed.
@@jsamue12 Flying is a little more complicated than straight movement rules, if the party can flying consistently, it should be a set of rules that need to be thoroughly known. Flying trivializes a lot of adventuring challenges, so it shouldn't be as effortless and costless as other D20 editions made it to be.
@@jsamue12 It's really not a huge difference for most situations. It's mostly just a big deal if they're standing still and conserving actions. They key sentence is:
"If you’re airborne at the end of your turn and didn’t use a Fly action this round, you fall."
So if they're "striding" horizontally every round, they just used the wrong word but got the same effect. If they went up or down they missed some movement adjustments (going up is at half speed, going down is double-speed). But if they hovered and didn't do a "stride" or "fly", they should have been down an action (or fallen).
The monster ease of use here makes me quite jealous, as a 5e DM.
a single dragon isn't hard on 5e either
A single dragon wouldn’t challenge a level 20 party either, unless you homebrew the heck out of it
I used to play on/gm/manage a 5e gestalt server that was an absolute mess and wanted to homebrew my own fixes for 5e, but after all the work I've put in, I realized what the creators clearly won't admit, it's unbalanced and a lost cause past level 13! This video is the final nail in the coffin, I'm going to try out pathfinder 2e!
Dungeon World. You might just find your groove.
ua-cam.com/video/jKfzU9vOQKg/v-deo.html&ab_channel=DaveThaumavoreRPGReviews
5e seriously utterly falls apart in a lot of ways. They put so much focus on combat that the rest of the system is barebones or non-existent...and at high level even the combat falls apart. It's crazy
I've already put in a merge request to fix the avatar not being 2 actions. It'll be fixed in the next version.
Awesome. You guys do great work!
Oh I didn't know that delaying your turn ends any sustain spells you got going but it makes sense now that you mention it. Fun fight, rip lv 7 hunter though - that's what happens when you get cocky!
Or... deciding to go out in a barbecue...
I noticed all the mistakes you made. As a DM, I make a ton of mistakes. When I go back and watch the battles (I record mine and post to UA-cam for fun under a different channel for D&D) I am stunned. I think almost every major battle I forget something.
its tabletop...mistakes are part of the game lol.
For people who aren't good at arithmetic, when applying damage/healing, you can shift click the buttons in chat to apply modifiers. So here if an attack does cold damage, select the dragon then shift click the damage button in chat and type 25. It will add it on. For resistances, just use a minus sign.
WOW! As a Foundry DM this is the most helpful comment in here :D thanks for the heads up!
Thank you very much for this essential tip!
Thank you, I am dyscalculic and I really prefer systems where you can just add/subtract without making the math yourself
@@fulvio3211foundry's pathfinder at this point has an (almost) fully implemented weakness/resistance system, so you just click damage/half damage/block/double damage and it calculates properly.
I think a lot of these commenters missed the point, the video seeks to answer the question does high level combat work? It would seem the answer is yes. In that you have the monster being a legitimate threat, the players all getting to use their spells and abilities and it a just works and was easy to set up. Were there tactical decisions or parts of the set up that could have been improved? Sure, but that wasn't really the point.
I liked this one a lot, my main takeaway which wasn't much of a focus for the video was the use of "sanctuary" and other low level spells which provide useful enough niches.
Funny thing is that Sanctuary did sweet FA that encounter, as the dragon immediately got a crit success against the spell nullifying it.
It was a good idea, but the Dragon had a strong enough will save to make it a non-factor.
25:44 Precise debilitation does not deal an additional 2d6 precision up front. It reads 'The target takes an additional 2d6 precision damage from your attacks.', which means all her subsequent attacks, until the debilitation wears off at the end of her next turn, deal that additional damage.
Ah! Good catch. Added to the Video Description.
Oh I cannot wait, this is gonna be a fun watch. I’m super interested to see what level 20 play looks like, seeing as my group has only just hit level 7 in Agents of Edgewatch xD
I learned 5 about 3 years ago and since then dnd has become a massive part of my life. I play in 3 campaigns every week and dm another. I looked at P2e and saw it as too complex. I mean like there's A LOT of content to remember. But after watching this only halfway through I got it. Yes there's more stuff going on but for the dm it's so much easier to manage. You don't have to remind players what other stuff it going on around them mechanics wise NEARLY as much. Every player and the DM has the stuff they can do and can apply to whats going on without the DM having to interject every 10 secs to try and remember something else. It just seems a lot more harmonious mechanics wise than 5e. I mean people could argue that the looseness of 5e means there's more creativity but I'd disagree. There's rules for basically everything in 2e and if those rules for some reason seem to unreasonably restrict players. Just ignore them. It's just sooooooooo reassuring as a dm that there are rules that I can rely on and not have to make one up every 10 seconds.
There are also Games like Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous to get you in the general feel of mechanics.
"You don't have to stop your campaigns at level 10" dunked on em
One point - you mention that forgetting abilities is a 5e issue, but on several occasions that you yourself highlight, you forgot to apply certain modifiers...so it's not a uniquely 5e issue.
To be fair, here he played 5 roles simultaneously: the dm, and 4 pc's
great fight , thank you . Can you do the next fight with an alchemist on the roster ? i want to understand how to play the class
Hmm, I'll put that subject on the list. Not sure exactly in what format I'd address it tho
Ya know? I've changed my mind. I think the alchemist is such a weird, unprecedented class that it needs its own demonstration. I plan one! But not sure when it'll be since I have other ideas too I wanna do
Of course this is different from an actual play since you are explaining each bit of mechanics of things happening to viewers. Players on your table wouldn't need all this explanation and the GM would instead be filling the scene with descriptions of what is happening on the battle. This playing experience is only possible if such a "boss" fight lasts.
GMs often get frustrated on such fights on DnD5E because most of the fight happens in 2-4 rounds and everything they can do best is shown and combo'd together in the first 2 rounds.
Damage scaling with levels is a curve on both systems, but I fear that the party's "damage per round" curve in DnD5e gets much ahead than the big monsters, while PF2e monsters are more calibrated to keep up.
I'm sure this was fun to make. Pathfinder is so good, you can play it Single player lol
I'm pining for the CRPG that incorporates PF2e as a system, and which also lets me play PF2e as a Roguelike!
There was excellent use of Foundry's features in this demonstration of combat.
Thanks, make sure to tune in/watch my next video which premieres today
i've been switching from 5e to PF2e and your channel has been such a valuable ressource for me. Even as a seasoned DM of nearly 15 years now, its still so nice to have a dedicated way of seeing specific aspects of a system in action beforehand. Thank you for that!
Can you detail which Foundy modules you are using? I am thinking of ditching Roll20, your setup is BOSS!
That's my next video! (Make sure to subscribe if you haven't hehe)
As someone who's said to not sleep on magic missile for ages now, it's very validating to see it deliver the finishing blow after a succession of misses ;)
Also sad we didn't get to see the kamehameha wave go off, but I didn't even think about using haste to reposition while charging the two-turn version. That's a really solid idea (plus it reminds me of Goku using instant transmission to fake out Cell with it lol).
I haven't had a chance to run max level combat yet so I was very invested and engaged in this. I'd love to see more higher level content examples, the basics are great for beginners but this more high level tactical play is what I CRAVE when it comes to guides like this. Good job dude.
Glad you liked it!! Yeah I plan to have different stuff for different audiences. Definitely am open to more high-level stuff, though it's a bit demanding lol. When I get inspired again, and I'm sure it'll happen!
Finished a campaign not long ago where one of the other players was a psychic. They really liked to have a heightened magic missile and then amp it. At 9th level they were shooting 9 missile that had +7 instead of +1 for each missile. It was awesome.
this was a great fight. all edge-of-your-seat, all the time.
I think that Pathfinder 2e is a great game but for one thing. You gain feats or abilities at every level, sometimes several. By the time you hit 20th level, you have around 44 feats. Some are passive abilities that you don't have to remember but you might have a few dozen feats that give you special bonuses or actions (like quick draw) that you will have to remember. So I only played the game a little bit. To anyone reading this that plays PF2E, do you find the volume of feats/abilities a good thing or bad or so-so? I'm just curious if I should persevere.
Long ago but I quite like the number of abilities I have. It makes me feel useful in a lot of situations. I play a recently leveled up to 3 champion Paladin whose religion is basically just nature
Amazing video! Just a correction, there were a few times in which you used their quickened actions to Fly, and Haste is very specific, you can only Stride or Strike, flight not being included in that. Impossible not to make some mistakes while piloting a full level 20 party plus a level 24 dragon, though! Commendable job, loved this video.
Great point. I did some digging because I am sure there is a rules element somewhere allowing you to substitute different movement types (found it - it's Tumble Through).
... And now I'm mildly upset! Yes, Haste specifies the "Stride" action, which indeed is different from the Fly action. This has to be errata'd. Because, by the same token, since some characters with an animal companion can have their companion "Stride or Strike" when it's not Commanded that turn, then a bird companion needs to land on the ground and waddle to move then. Makes zero sense. And I see no value in limiting Haste to only land Speeds.
Adding to the video description. This is a first, folks: this Rules Lawyer calls for disobeying an unjust law! >:(
Very well done. This video nicely summed up a lot of my own thoughts on the vast difference in high-level play between PF2 and most other recent D&D-style TTRPGs.
WotC: An adventure in hell!
Me: Oooooo
WotC: ... for level 1-13
Me: ???????????
Seems really complex to do at the table
The biggest thing to me that sticks out with high level play in a lot of systems is it turns into rocket tag, just sitting around waiting for someone to either crit an attack roll or crit fail a save so something will actually get through. but that i think is coming more from monster design and stats than the actual system itself which is frustrating. like they were sitting around making monsters and couldnt think of anything more challenging than oh lets give this thing a monstrous AC and just straight immunity to a whole laundry list of damage types and no weaknesses, looking at you lesser death encounter at level 13
Super cool. Lookingfoward to getting back to PF2E. Waiting on the edition update for Kingmaker, so we can keep playing that campaign, just in the new edition. I find PF1E very draining to run.
Yep, I GMed PF1e for 9 years which was great fun, but yes mid- to higher-level play is such a burden on the GM. Even Level 1 characters could get hard to deal with because there are so many subsystems spread out over so many different options that work differently from each other.
2e is great, nice to high monsters are actual threats. Is polymorph a fight ending spell like it is in D&D?
In PF 2e the only polymorph spell that could act as a fight ender I can think of is the level 6 spell baleful polymorph, (fortitude save, critical failure effect is to turn the target into a harmless animal in body and mind permanently unless dispelled, failure is to turn the target into an animal for 1 minute and they can use 3 actions on their turn to try to end it earlier with a will save, success is the target is sickened 1 and crit success is nothing happens) but it has the incapacitation trait, so enemies more than twice the spell's level make their roll one degree of success better (a crit failure becomes normal failure, a failure becomes a success and a normal success becomes a crit success) so it CAN turn the tide of the battle, but it will not decide it.
Nope! It has the incapacitation trait, so it only really completely shuts down a monster if they aren't higher level than your spell's effective level. (i.e., a polymorph spell heightened to 9th level could permanently affect a Level 18 creature, but not a Level 19 creature). This Incapacitation trait is explained during Scare to Death at 35:26
Good to know the combat works and is balanced at high level play.
Unfortunately other than haste, the wizard really didn't do shit in this fight... not that wizards are bad but just the spells you chose to cast.
Also worth noting said Haste absolutely won them the fight. Having that extra action really came in handy.
Yea everything other than aid, attack, heal, and fire resist did virtually nothing because the chance of effecting the dragon was so low.
I've been running pathfinder for a while now but I struggle with all the rules/feats relating to the social side. I prefer to just roleplay as opposed to keeping a track of the npc states (hostile, helpful, etc) could you do a video to show us how you handle incorporating the rules with traditional role play.
That's a great question but I'm actually less "sure" about how to adjudicate the RP rules. My hot take is that Rule Zero always applies, and the rules should be seen as aids, not rails. Also, there is a danger of saying there's a "right way" of how to adjudicate roleplaying when by nature it truly is up to the GM, and how to rule in concrete situations is left nebulous (by choice) by the designers. It is something I've already thought of. If I see an angle to approach it, I would like to cover it.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG that makes sense.
Would you consider streaming a game you gm. Maybe even just one session. Would love to see how you handle a group and their shenanigans.
A small correction during the part where the dragon breathes fire down. Valeros already had a +3 status bonus taken into account for his result of 40, so his +4 status from Poog should have made hsi roll 41, replacing the herosim bonus.
In short, "Fighter and Cleric duo dragon while Rogue and Wizard watch."
As a beginner, I loved this. I'm very keen to see you do similar clips exploring various tactics (e.g. illusionist, gymnast, alchemist, thaumaturge, etc.)
Tormenta20 is pretty similar to pathfinder now that i think about it
Ah, say more?
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG
I made some research in Tormenta20, and it seens T20 was make by people how like pathfinder.... so some inspiration was takend
As someone who just got into PF2. This was an amazing display.
That damn Sinistar sfx.
My nightmare as a child haha
Positive comment
Took me a few sittings, but thank you. You have sold me on pf2 even more.
Glad the video helped you decide!!
The dragon messed up… Never divide your attacks… The cleric was invisible so he had a hard time targeting the cleric he knew there was a powerful spellcaster in the group he should’ve concentrated all of his tax on the wizard until the wizard was dead then move onto the cleric if the cleric was visible for the rogue because the rogue was the squishiest… Never divide up your attacks kill the party as quickly as possible
Dragons', especially red dragons, though smart, are very arrogant. With the fighter constantly goading it and taunting it, it makes sense that it would try to teach him a lesson. Sure, it's not "optimal", but in the mind of an Ancient Red Dragon, losing to a bunch of worthless humans and goblins is completely impossible
@@tfraenckel true I did not take that into account that’s a good point
Ancient Red Dragon, didnt live that long or get that big or old being gullible or stupid. Has an Int scorn of 20+, meaning hes smarter then over half the population....yet why would he not once think to snatch/grab the wizard and swallow him whole..or grapple the wizard with his claws,etc... play BBEG as his stats dictate and the party would be craping there pants. Instead your plsying it like its a mindless MMO Boss mob...arg musr follow taunt mechanics blah blah..pfft
Do you think this party could deal with Treerazer at CR25? I am interested in how PF2 would handle demon lord fights, after running WOTR in PF1.
My guess is no - the party would have to be well prepared and have a bit of luck.
The game is engineered such that things above a certain level aren't really meant to be thrown against X level party. The rules explicitly say to avoid monsters more than 4 levels above or below the party. (Fortunately it's easy enough to adjust stats of preexisting statblocks, so low-level creatures aren't automatically made useful to the GM because the party has become higher level.)
This was great! Although it's better _by a mile,_ I still wouldn't say PF2e bypasses the D&D problem of high-level parties punching above their weight class. Even though the numbers put the dragon above the party, they had access to high-level tchochkes, spells, and an opportunity to prepare and adapt - this more than leveled the playing field. The party really handed this great wyrm its ass.
Also, as a side bonus, these videos showcase Foundry VTT's implementation of the system quite nicely. It does, however, irk me whenever you count and input HP by hand - there are buttons for that under each damage roll. They take into account when the target is resistant to the damage type being applied, and there's even one for blocking which reduces the damage by Hardness and applies the rest to the target's HP and shield HP.
EDIT: Something that worries me about potentially taking PF2e to high levels is how the tightness of the math makes it difficult to use lower-level monsters. This might not affect all campaigns, but I can imagine myself struggling with a campaign where the party has to deal with balors and pleromas every week. In 5e, single boss monsters become pushovers far too easily, but the opposite is also true - a double-digit number of lower-CR monsters can still threaten a high-level party because action economy is overwhelmingly more important in a bounded accuracy system. I've heard good things about Proficiency Without Level rules in PF2e: that they make encounters 5e-style (i.e. single entities are easy, being outnumbered is deadly), but that the outcomes aren't as random and unpredictable as 5e. Still, the damage and hit point numbers all seem designed with a super-tight 4-levels-below-or-above range in mind, so I'm hesitant to play around with them.
At high levels, a well-prepared party is stronger than an "Extreme" boss by the rules. At the lowest levels, my guess is that it is weaker than an Extreme boss, since the boss can so easily knock out a character and cause a spiral effect.
I'm aware of those buttons, but I'm a keyboard lover admittedly. Also, fire damage came up a LOT here and I don't think those buttons consider fire resistance. (Do they? If they do this would be a great feature.)
If you haven't tried the default PF2 rules yet, I recommend trying them before trying a variant rule. Personally I found that that Proficiency Without Level made monsters feel more samey, because the tightness of the math meant that everything needed an 11 or 12 to hit and I found monsters less interesting, ymmv. I guess most players would like the feeling under the default rules of being more powerful than creatures they struggled with previously, and that they like the drama of encountering a boss. Again, ymmv.
PF2 also offers rules for Troops - special creatures that follow their own rules to simulate many lower level creatures.
But yes, admittedly PF2 assumes an exponential power curve (double in power every 2 levels) as players level up, so it tells a different type of story. The advantage is that the GM has tools to anticipate the power of an encounter when they want to.
While The Rules Lawyer covered things nicely, I wanted to second the use of Troops, as a GM doing some high level PF1 Adventure Path conversions. Level -5 and -6 could maybe be used as standalone enemies, but they'd be worth 7.5 and 5 xp apiece, continuing the system math. They'd be good for taking the Aid action for bigger monsters, showcasing that their sheer numbers matter. Otherwise good for meat puppets the PCs can feel good cutting down. If you want masses of lower level enemies to actually be a threat, though? Troops. Take an existing troop and modify.
@@malkyn9998 I did apply 5xp and 7.5gp to Level -6 and -5 monsters a couple times, and found that in those instances the encounter building system still seemed to work (building an encounter where they were 0xp almost caused a TPK, and after I adjusted, the 5/7.5 amounts seemed to reflect the actual feel of the encounter)
You say they kicked its ass and yes they won but as we saw a few more dice rolls not going their way or if the dragon had really focused Poog instead of spamming its breath every chance it could have been a very different story. Not to mention they knew what they were going into, got to pre-buff and even with that this was a rocky fight with plenty of chances for things to go wrong.
Amazing work on this one! This has been a great series. I know it's been a hot minute since we discussed on reddit, but I think more videos like these would be great split into a 'beginner/introductory' video and an 'intermediate' video. The beginner/introductory video could be 5-10 minutes and focus on the narrative of the combat and how the various actions and abilities affect the narrative of the fight and then the intermediate video could be longer and focus on the tactical decisions the 'players' made. That way you can get twice the content out of your well made footage.
Keep up the great work!
It's a good idea. I had planned to make this video a beginner friendly vs a beginner "un"friendly but I thought it would be too much. The latter would be me reacting and commenting to the 1st video. But then this video became pretty explanatory already.
How I'll do it is I think I'll have more beginner friendly videos that are clear from jump (incl. the title), and split things up into tiered playlists as I have more videos.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG I completely agree that you made the right choice here with this high level video. Fights like this are meant to be the culmination of a lot of play. The playlists will help a lot for sharing with newcomers.
Thanks again for all of the hard work!
This series has convinced me that pathfinder is for me.
- The Innkeeper
This account is ridiculously underrated ! Keep up the good work!
Thanks!! Alas I'll never get peak numbers since my focus is probably niche in the greater scheme of things, but comments like this are all I need!
Keep up the good work.
Dang, I did not know Pathfinder 2e had such big numbers
SPOILER
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It does
The Best Spoiler
The dragon uses Draconic Frenzy! (Excel sheet opens and performs logarithm)
Could a 20lvl wizard take on an ancient dragon by themselves using everything they can but by themselves? I mean it should be something like 50/60% success chance against these at 19lvl but I would like to know how it actually goes.
1v1 combat in these sorts of tactical miniature based games doesn't quite work out according to the level balancing charts. They are clearly made for groups. Technically, yes, a PC and the same level as a monster should have a 50/50 shot at killing it, but that really depends on what monster. I think a level 3 Fighter would have a greater than 50/50 chance at beating a Dire Wolf, for example, because it's built around physically attacking and using its Pack Attack ability. A level 3 Wizard might be in way more danger. They need someone to distract the Dire Wolf from bearing down on them.
Can we please get a version of this fight with level 20 5E characters?
You do a great job of showing how great PF2e is! I spent weeks homebrewing huge swaths of revisions to 5e to fix so many things that bothered me. Since I started learning PF2e, I've found that they ended up with many of the same things I came up with...all that wasted effort, should've just come straight to Pathfinder 2e...
This is great! I know you only run this and 5E, but if you'd run a similar combat using 2E or even another old school system, I really think you could impact a big group of players like me! 👍
Ah! I actually have veerry little experience with pre-3E D&D, though I grew up reading the rules in the 80s. And I want to have more experience. So I'm probably not the best person right now to do such a vid. But I'm curious as to what makes you want to see such a vid? Because I'm a person who avidly reads books and thinks about the history of the TTRPG hobby, and I have yet to run videos I plan on doing that touch on older versions of D&D.
This is a good video. I will say that a lot of Adventure Paths are overturned and I find myself often needing to adjust encounters or even certain monsters. Sometimes an AP's author will create a unique creature that doesn't quite follow the system guidelines (like having really high AC, and all saves are high, and HP is high, and it does a lot of damage AND it has a high attack bonus for it's level), and set them at a level lower than what they should be considering. But that isn't a problem with the system itself, just something new DM's running Adventure Path's need to keep in mind.
Great video! Very exciting and I can't wait to get to level 20 to do this myself!
Nice combat, but I feel the rogue was underused by doing more aid then actual roguish things like sneaks and multiple attacks of opportunity.
It's been a while since I made this, but I recall the Rogue needing quite a high roll to hit even on her 1st Strike. Also, her reaction depended on Valeros landing a hit so there was some importance to focusing to Aid him as well
Can you share what mods/Add/whatever that you use for your foundry ? ^^ I really like the combat tracker
Just saw that they were already there ^^
Oh god your spell effects are amazing :D
I'm planning a Foundry video for next week! Subscribe if you haven't yet! =D
Coming in late but I wanted to point out that this combat only took an hour! Compared to every other high level fight I've been in that's really good. Even if you added some time for table chatter or less prepared players, this is very smooth.
I was just missing cold spells :p and playing around the cold weakness. Even ray of frost would have taken the dragon down. And maybe basic 3gp frost vials with cold splash even on hit failure are 26 dmg in this case.
This would have been way better, if you had gotten people to play the characters, and you just just dmed and narrated why they could do the things they do.
I had my 1e fighter down to needing a 2 to hit -10 AC, it made combat predictable.
What kinda stats/level/gear/buffs did the fighter have?
@@dragonic3308 Any 20th level fighter with a Girdle of Giant Fire strength or better, specialization, and a +4 or more sword needs a 2 to hit -10.
Interesting and well done. I do think that the complexity and time spent skyrockets a bit if not using a VTT. Playing in person with pencil and paper as I do at level 20 is probably still a bit much. But it certainly works better than 5E at high level in general with less swing and need for additional tools and adjudication / fiat.
I ran 5e for 8 years and all my campaigns went from 1 to 20. This was four full campaigns in that time. And high level play was not fun for me or the PCs by the end. It was exhausting the amount of effort required by the DM to build something effective against a group of level 20 PCs (and the problem started happening from 10ish depending how optimized the party was) and it often boiled down to one-hit kills to have any semblance of threat.
Nice to see it seems to actually work in pf2. Keen to try it out now (switched to pf1 two years ago).
52:45 pretty sure Ezren could not dismiss (1 action) + summon draconic legion (3 actions) neither are strikes nor strides :)
If im wrong i would love to hear why! :D
Ron why did ezre not use disintigrsate on the dragon the single most damageing wizard spell in the game?
You forgot that the Ezren's time stop would have made him lose the effects of poog's blessing of defience spell, as effects on you still tick down inside of time stop, and blessing of defiance only lasts for one round.
I straight tripled a bosses hp when the caster of the group nearly maxed hit with critical sneak attacked with a spell. So rolling to hit a 10.
sure, high level play is functional in PF2E, which is more than can be said of other systems
it still doesn't work very well, though
TTRPGs just need to take inspiration from other games and provide mechanics for retiring adventurers. Hit whatever milestone where the game's fun threshold is, and now the adventurer gets retired and you get a new one.
This has been the most successful way I have seen to avoid the pitfalls of high level play - just avoid lingering in that space.
The thing that really struck me in this video was how even with just a single person trying to play all four characters and the monster, remembering all of their abilities and trying to keep track of them all, it still felt fairly simple. I imagine if this was a group, each controlling only their own characters, it wouldn't really seem complex at all which I think is great.
So well done! As a relatively inexperienced DM, this definitely takes away the hesitance to consider running high level campaigns using Pathfinder 2e.
Honestly, when you were talking about throwing a single level 24 monster at the party, I was really hoping for a Frumious Jabberwocky; the Dragon makes sense (especially by being easily comparable to other systems) but is a tiny bit disappointingly generic. Still a great video and demonstration though.
It definitely highlights how the game is much less "rocket-tag" at high levels than 5e and especially PF1 (where the first successful attacker can usually win in a single round); and how little extra balancing or homebrew you have to do to make things work.
I do have to say though that I think some of the balance issues of high-level play, at least in PF1 (I'm not really a 5e guy, so I don't know that too well), are greatly exaggerated IMO. I haven't had a particularly hard time making some pretty successful epic and boss encounters for my game; it mostly just takes a good understanding of the system and the capabilities of your players, and if you're willing to put a good chunk of time and effort into building custom enemies it actually becomes pretty easy (although, still not as easy as PF2 makes it).
Honestly, the biggest balance problem of PF1 is all about disparity among the party members (which still seems at least a little alive here, but not nearly as bad). It's easy to make monsters or groups that challenge any individual character, but with the complexity and depth of character building (the one thing that PF1 still has over 2e by far) the difference between a well-built character and a poorly-built (or even average) is HUGE. Anything that can challenge a powerful martial character (especially Barbarians or Fighters) will usually be able to effortlessly solo the rest of the party, and anything that the other party members can reasonably take out is going to get completely curb-stomped by the top player. This is only compounded when the strongest character is also played by the tactically best player (and is why our fighter is planning on swapping to a weaker character soon, as his current one, while awesome, is just so much more powerful than every other member of the party).
I was worried about high level play seeming too complicated so erred toward a more basic monster. Also, I thought it would be fun to raise the question "Who does dragon fights better" given that D&D has dragon in its title (this was an original title idea). I don't think this will be the last high level combat however.
I GMed PF1 for nine years, and yes I agree the disparity within the party can be an issue. I ran Rappan Athuk to about Level 21, and some party members had attack bonuses about 12 to 15 higher than others. I had to make a spreadsheet calculating each character's DPR to come up with my own homebrew versions of monsters, and regularly had to increase the CR of monsters by 5 or 6 levels. And still sometimes the players would come up with something, or a single die roll or two would decide the fight. So it ended up being a lot of work for an okay amount of reward, while I found the ratio to be much better in 2e.
I think choosing the dragon is a good option to show the difference between say PF2E and DnD 5e. In DnD 5e dragons are a complete joke and super lame. I have had 2 5E campaigns where I ran an ancient dragon RAW and a level 10 party basically killed the dragon. It took a while but the party never was in proper danger. A third time I mildly homebrewed an ancient blue dragon and the fight got more intense, but the fight also lasted an ungodly amount of time. By the end when the final blow on the dragon came, my players were not cheering but rather relieved that the encounter was finally over.
So I think this definitely showed that a dragon is actually a viable option and a terrifying monster to throw at even a higher level party and I really liked how it showcased the fact that you can easily adjust the monsters and there are good and clear rules on how to do it, making the GM's life way easier.
Round 3 the dragon flies away and comes back when their buff spells have worn off in 10 minutes. Players recast defensive spells. Dragon flies away again and comes back 10 minutes later. Rinse and repeat until spell slots all used up or players stop casting buff spells.
You want high level play, try the playets guide to immortality from 1986. It doesn't get much higher than godlike. Too high? Try the master set it covers levels 26-36.
"But my system only goes to level 20", you say. The companion rules cover 15-25 and you can stop when you get too powerful.
1st and second edition had no upper limit and even has a module for level 100 characters.
Stop launching forward with newer editions when its been done better decades ago.
i mean, this fight worked just fine. but what was the cost of it working - what had to give way in order for it to be functional?
the dragon had such high checks against the heroes' layered defenses that those defenses basically didn't exist. i don't think the dragon failed a single check? they may as well not be in the game
and that's certainly better than 5E's shrugging at the matter and just letting layered defenses invalidate encounters, but it isn't exactly wonderful to get into high level play and see that the only way the game can work is to completely turn-off certain choices you made that the game told you would mean something
You should not still be a "Murder-Hobo" by lvl.20.
You should have a domain; a keep with some vassals, or some other responsibility within the realm. This is not the same as "retiring" a character, you have merely moved into the Domain/Patron level of gameplay. You have small issues in your lands taken care of by other adventurers (parties of low-level PCs), you marshal your armies to deal with larger threats. Half of the reason "high level play falls apart" is because we have forgotten the foundation of the game is that of the WARGAME.
Love your videos and your excellent explanations of pf2e’s balanced, challenging and exciting games play at all levels. Been playing for 2 years now and it is so much better than d&d5e.
@TheRulesLawyerRPG THanks for the vid! At 22:52 Merisiel is at 5ft, the dragon is at 10ft and Valeros is at 0ft - does pf2e flanking not care about the elevation?
Dnd5e high level play is difficult with a single Boss because of action economy ... offset by Legendary and Lair actions - I don't see how this is balanced in PF2e except by the Boss monster doing a lot of AOE or single damage since it has no more attacks, or by being difficult to hit and so mostly avoiding crits ... ?
So, it seems you allowed the PCs to to use their Hasted actions to Fly. The text says only Stride or Strike, not Fly. RAW this fight would have been tougher, as the dragon would have a significant action economy boost.
What an astonishingly tense fight with such minimal setup.
24:17 Each character has one reaction per TURN?
I am sure he meant per combat round. I didn't know the rules, but one reaction on each individual turn sounds too busted.
I guess in a not staged fight, the dragon would flee at some point, and plan his revenge on these adventurers. On the other hand, the adventurers plan a raid on the dragon's hoard to vanquish this thread forever.
Loved the Overlord reference.
My only problem with P2 combat is that it goes by far too quickly. I find most combats last three rounds or less.
"it's going to be spending some time before it charges its breath"
:laughs in draconic momentum:
"At all times there are three possibilities from your D20 roll."
Tell that to the poor villager who nat 20'd the dragon and had him no sell the attack.
I was a DM for over 20yrs, I ran a campaign that ran for 5yrs that ended when my players were about lvl 34, and only because I didn't know what else to do, they were demigods by then and I really didn't want to deal with any more god related quests to be honest lol, most of the time they won the fights, but some of them they had to escape to survive, 4e and 5e mess up the game so much.
😂
I'm assuming the math is designed for a four person party. What about different numbers of players? Three player parties, six player parties, all different numbers?
In my experience it generally works out - there isn't any having to account for greater action economy of more creatures like in 5E. For a six person party, you just have +50% worth of monsters compared to what you'd put up against a four person party.
55:00 bruh go back to your lair and plot your revenge! silly wyrm, the dude litarelly threw you to the ground, nearly cut off your left ankle and summoned an army of dragons