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I have a very weird relationship with alignments; I always pick one out for my DnD characters but then I forget about it and it never comes up in play lol.

I guess I'm fond of them in the same way you're fond of your stupid idiot cat that keeps getting stuck on top of the fridge, despite knowing he can't get down on his own: "You useless dumb fuck, God I love you."

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug I guess

E: Thinking about it, Legend of the Five Rings had an 'okay' alignment-ish system with the Honor mechanic, but that only one works because the game is (relatively) clear about what is and isn't an honorable action as defined by traditional Rokugani social norms, unlike DnD's very vague approach.
 
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I dunno, I haven't really found alignment to be the source of headaches that other people say it is during actual gameplay. (During debates on the internet, sure. And then usually because of the law vs. chaos axis rather than good vs. evil.) Mechanical things like "Smite Evil and Holy Word work on Evil creatures" have never really been a problem. (Sometimes there can be potential disappointment if too many of the enemies are neutral things like constructs, elementals and animals.) "Detect Evil" can be an issue by giving away plot twists, but that's true of a lot of spells. Obviously you can't fit all of human morality into a nine-square grid, but as a quick and easy way to say "this is how this character does things" it's useful.

That said, I don't think there would be much problem with getting rid of alignment. Most RPGs get by fine without it.
 
To me the worth of alignment begins and ends with a super straight forward shorthand for your character's personality as it applies to the bounds of a good vs evil fantasy universe. If you character a dick they're evil, if they're nice they're good, and if they're in between they're snarky neutral. With Law and Chaos honestly being a bit more important as they determine to what degree your character is a free spirit vs stick up the ass.

If you want to replace alignment you want something that's straightforward enough to be a clear shorthand you don't even need to read any material to understand. If your version of it requires the player to look up what the words you're using mean then it doesn't have the same utility.

Honestly I'd less replace it with something equivalent, but have character personality be determined by selecting moral/personality values like perks.
 
is 1 Weak Green Hag too much for a boss fight for 3 level 1 characters?

EDIT:in pathfinder 2e, sorry
 
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I don't have the books open before me, but one of the repeated strengths of Pathfinder 2e is that you can generally trust the math when you follow their encounter building guidelines.
 
A green hag is a level 4 monster, so I'm pretty sure it would fuck them up pretty hard. The encounter guidelines indicate that a boss should be party level + 2, and this is level + 3 with only three PCs. They might win through sheer number of actions and good tactics, but they're definitely going to bleed and and some PCs will probably end up on the ground. Its primary attack is at a +14 and a 1st level PC's AC maxes out at... what, 18 or 19 for most classes without a shield raised? It's gonna hit almost every time on its first attack woth a high chance to crit, and hit most of the time on its second. And two average hits or one crit will drop a PC. Meanwhile players will probably have about a 1 in 3 chance to hit its 21 AC with their first attack, and need like fifteen or twenty hits on average to deplete its 70 HP. Expect a long fight.

I really like PF2E, but the monsters are seriously overtuned. They're designed with huge bonuses to almost certainly land hits on equal-level PCs once or twice a round, so players are constantly taking damage. I prefer to use lower-level baddies in larger numbers so my players don't feel like they're getting slapped around by everything they meet.
 
The Narrator said:
A green hag is a level 4 monster, so I'm pretty sure it would fuck them up pretty hard. The encounter guidelines indicate that a boss should be party level + 2, and this is level + 3 with only three PCs. They might win through sheer number of actions and good tactics, but they're definitely going to bleed and and some PCs will probably end up on the ground. Its primary attack is at a +14 and a 1st level PC's AC maxes out at... what, 18 or 19 for most classes without a shield raised? It's gonna hit almost every time on its first attack woth a high chance to crit, and hit most of the time on its second. And two average hits or one crit will drop a PC. Meanwhile players will probably have about a 1 in 3 chance to hit its 21 AC with their first attack, and need like fifteen or twenty hits on average to deplete its 70 HP. Expect a long fight.

I really like PF2E, but the monsters are seriously overtuned. They're designed with huge bonuses to almost certainly land hits on equal-level PCs once or twice a round, so players are constantly taking damage. I prefer to use lower-level baddies in larger numbers so my players don't feel like they're getting slapped around by everything they meet.
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The weak template makes it only CR 3 I believe, with a +12 to hit and ac19, so according to the encounter building math it is just a severe encounter, but I also hear that singular boss monsters are tough at low levels even if you follow the math.
 
wrecksalot said:
The weak template makes it only CR 3 I believe, with a +12 to hit and ac19, so according to the encounter building math it is just a severe encounter, but I also hear that singular boss monsters are tough at low levels even if you follow the math.
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Oh, I missed that it had a template. That helps a little bit. It's definitely still going to smack the players more often than they smack it.
 
It will be a rough fight at level 1 but should be doable. I'd be cautious if I only had 3 pcs though - maybe make sure they have a way to trigger the cold iron weakness or something.
 
Oh man, I hadn't even thought of putting a cold iron weapon somewhere, that sounds like a great way to even the odds.
 
Honestly I would go with a level 2 creature or level 3 with the weak template + minions with either of those. Player level 1 vs Creature 3 is something I see people having a problem with all the time in published pathfinder 2e adventures unfortunately
 
It kind of depends on the party and the approach. My group (4 level 1s) killed a level 3 rust ooze in a couple of rounds, before it had a chance to do more than maul me a bit. But that was with the benefit of getting the drop on it (i.e. seeing it first) and that we had people that could exploit its lightning vulnerability (thaumaturge and alchemist).
 
Strunkriidiisk said:
It kind of depends on the party and the approach. My group (4 level 1s) killed a level 3 rust ooze in a couple of rounds, before it had a chance to do more than maul me a bit. But that was with the benefit of getting the drop on it (i.e. seeing it first) and that we had people that could exploit its lightning vulnerability (thaumaturge and alchemist).
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Yeah. Being able to get the drop on it and end the fight faster probably saved at least one of you from getting dropped by a crit because after doing some research I found out an average level 3 creatuer is 25% likely to crit with its first attack each round v a level 1 party.
 
Played my first session of Pathfinder 2e as a player. I was playing a Gnome Summoner at first. The first encounter was two giant rats who beat my initiative and crit my eidolon about 3 times in a row, sending me to dying 2 and then dead in a few rounds of terrible recovery checks, before I got to take a single action.

No problem, I roll up a Kobold Bard in no time and we manage to get through the next few fights with inspire courage, telekinetic projectile, and demoralize. Then one kobold I hadn't debuffed yet runs around my party to flank me, downing me with a crit. The Alchemist gives me a healing potion for 1 hp, and I immediately die to another crit before my turn comes up again.

10/10, looking forward to next session, when my Human Fighter plans to spam the hell out of shield block.
 
wrecksalot said:
Played my first session of Pathfinder 2e as a player. I was playing a Gnome Summoner at first. The first encounter was two giant rats who beat my initiative and crit my eidolon about 3 times in a row, sending me to dying 2 and then dead in a few rounds of terrible recovery checks, before I got to take a single action.

No problem, I roll up a Kobold Bard in no time and we manage to get through the next few fights with inspire courage, telekinetic projectile, and demoralize. Then one kobold I hadn't debuffed yet runs around my party to flank me, downing me with a crit. The Alchemist gives me a healing potion for 1 hp, and I immediately die to another crit before my turn comes up again.

10/10, looking forward to next session, when my Human Fighter plans to spam the hell out of shield block.
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On one hand it sounds like you are enjoying yourself. On the other, what you described sounds not-fun to me.
 
Chloe Sullivan said:
On one hand it sounds like you are enjoying yourself. On the other, what you described sounds not-fun to me.
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It's actually really fun trying to spedrun character creation, and I can't really get mad at the GM because this is his first time GMing pathfinder 2e and adjusting the encounters for fewer players is apparently hard.

Kobolds are actually hardcore in pathfinder, I need to learn to hide in a corner or stand back to back so they don't get so much bonus damage.
 
I feel like 1st level is still too lethal in PF2E, even with the extra starting hit points. Especially because the monster's OP attack bonuses mean they're more likely to crit, and even more so against classes that can't max their AC out. Then throw in an under-sized party and you'd got a recipe for a TPK.

I've run a lot of campaigns (in various D20 games) with fewer than the expected four PCs, and I usually compensate by making them a level higher than the module expects. And if I'm running PF2E I usually add an extra level to the PCs to compensate for how unforgiving the math is.

That said, something that I noticed was that you mentioned that the monsters than killed your summoner beat your initiative. You don't mention if that was only a factor because they got the first hit in, or if it caused you to be flatfooted (and therefor more likely to be crit on), but just in case, here's a reminder: in PF2E you're no longer flatfooted before your first action in the initiative. Getting to treat people you beat in initiative as flatfooted is a Rogue class ability now.
 
The Narrator said:
That said, something that I noticed was that you mentioned that the monsters than killed your summoner beat your initiative. You don't mention if that was only a factor because they got the first hit in, or if it caused you to be flatfooted (and therefor more likely to be crit on), but just in case, here's a reminder: in PF2E you're no longer flatfooted before your first action in the initiative. Getting to treat people you beat in initiative as flatfooted is a Rogue class ability now.
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I wasn't flat footed, they just strode up and hit me and didn't roll below a 15 on 4 attacks, with two crits.

First level feels a lot better in Pathfinder 2e than it did in DnD 5e, every character had cool stuff they could do and actually having meaningful choices in charracter creation makes it a lot more fun to make characters.

The dying rules feel extremely punishing though. I get that its to prevent yo-yo healing, but I feel that either the wounded thing or the dropping everything you hold thing would have been enough. Both of them are just brutal and mean that healing a downed person is really risky at best and actively harmful at worst.
 
Our first P2E adventure involved a TPK from a critter rolling a crit on an area attack when we were level 1 or maybe 2. I'm not really sure what the lesson was supposed to be but it definitely felt like a failure of mechanics and encounter design

We waived the encounter away as a hallucination because something clearly hadn't worked correctly
 
You could just... do what D&D players have been saying to do for every edition not 4e for a decade now. Minimum starting level: 3.
 
Chloe Sullivan said:
You could just... do what D&D players have been saying to do for every edition not 4e for a decade now. Minimum starting level: 3.
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I campaign for this in every game I play but I am, somehow, improbably, a minority voice in my own friend group, and am usually overruled.
I console myself by having fully and completely infected my group with Spheres et. all.
 
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