Going through some of the older vids. This one gives a chance to discuss some tactics. As character builds are nice and all but much like with CCGs having the best deck doesn't mean much if you don't know how to use it. Same goes with character builds. ;) My analysis of the combat and some mistakes in it. 1) If your out numbered, and in general, don't run into the middle of the room. Let the enemy waste their actions coming to you. 2) Stay mobile. By not moving you allowed them to easily flank you and then the 2 other goblins would get 3 attacks on you though you died to the first ones onslaught so it didn't matter. If you look at the action economy moving away means that instead of each getting 3 potential attacks on you for a total of 9 attack rolls moving away means they have to each spend one action moving thus at most they get 2 attacks each for a total of 6. 3) Attacking is not always your best option. The 2nd attack is risker because of the -5 penalty and you are at a serious action disadvantage fighting 3 foes but it could be worth it. The 3rd attack however is not and there are so often better options to use your 3rd action on. You have other options at your disposal such as shield, the cantrip is a verbal so even with 2H weapon you can use the spell which sadly is only +1 AC so it wouldn't have negated the critical hit you took in that case. 4) Use the terrain to your advantage, taking position in a corner of the room would have prevented them from getting into flanking positions with you. In short after the first attack taking the goblin down I would have recommended either moving away max speed followed by casting shield to boost AC for the incoming attacks. Or just done 2 stride actions towards a corner forcing the goblins to give chase with 2 strides of their own and getting only 1 attack in while being unable to flank. Proper use of tactics make a huge difference in combat it's not all about the numbers. I'll warn spoilers ahead for The Fall of Plague Stone adventure which I hear is a very deadly adventure and I could see it in some of the encounters however through proper use of tactics our party turned around what according to our DM were some of the more deadly fights in the module, and he's run it for lots of groups as he does DMing at conventions. I'll give 2 examples in module. First example is there is an encounter where your party crawls into this tunnel under a tree which turns out to be a wolves den. The area is dark and roots from the tree hang from the ceiling making it all difficult terrain and giving penalties to range weapons. Seeing that it was gonna be tight quarters cluster **** as the entrance was small and had to climb through single filed it was setup to be a tough fight at a major disadvantage. When I saw this I just said the the party, "Why don't we just leave? I mean we can back out of the cave and bottle neck jump them as they give chase." So that's what we did as on each persons turn they simply used stride actions to move back out of the cave with the most really damage getting taken by the fighter since she was in front when init began and got mauled by 2 wolves. Other than that I think the wolves got in like one good hit as they charged out of the hole at the two front line guys. After the fight the DM told us most parties try to rush in through the difficult terrain which slows them down letting the wolves gang up on individual players taking them out. The second example is major spoiler for the final fight of act 2. The baddie has a group of alchemist and they summon this blood monster to attack us. Rather then rush into the room I suggest we let them come to the door like we did with the wolves. The first round the blood monster basically moves up to the door but doesn't do anything. The alchemist in the room spend their turn moving into range and making one attack then striding back out of range. Taking a few hits things seem decent until Round 2 the Blood monster does this AoE attack which followed by a single reach attack which really messed up our front line followed by the alchemists lobbing more stuff at the front line characters which were really low on HP now. Talk of this might be end of the line cropped up as 2 party members were nearly about to cave and our healer could only heal 1 at a time with any reasonable amount given the damage they took in one round. But once again I proposed we changed tactics. I pointed out the first round the blood monster did nothing but move to close the gap which means it's probably really slow speed. And that AoE attack likely hits all creatures because the alchemist are keeping their distance from it. Thus if we fall back down the hallway we can kite it with fighters doing a Stride into range, Attack, and stride back their full movement. Thus making the creature which is likely slower than us spend more of it's actions on giving chase. Also it puts more distance between us and the alchemist in the back room so they can not do ranged attacks on us as easily. So with our turns coming up in the init for round 2 (we all rolled poorly and all the mobs went before us, and yes DM rolled enemy init publicly). But this uniformity in our init order worked to our advantage as everyone of us could move away from the blood monster before it's next turn. That is pretty much how it played out with use falling back giving the healer time to cast heal spells on everyone that needed it without use taking a lot more damage and everyone focusing as much Damage as they could to take down that Blood Monster. After which we ran back towards the door but the alchemist were already coming out to fight us in the hall and did do some damage but overall turned a seemingly hopeless encounter around with the implementation of some tactics. After that fight the DM told us it was another fight that a lot of parties just run into the room on. Being in the confined area the blood monster's AoE tears through the parties as the get pelted by the alchemist and then quickly drop. From running through it though I can see how the Plague Stone adventure could be extremely deadly as sometimes it can come down to luck of the dice. Like the first act boss was just the boss vs party and the guy hit like a ton of bricks. Our fighter was like a whack a mole with the boss hitting him down and then healer bringing him back up, he had like 2 wound conditions after that fight and our champion also went down at one point. We failed a lot of attack rolls and boss got a lucky crit in. It was close and other than flanking there wasn't a lot to be done tactically speaking. But through out our adventure a lot of fights which probably would have resulted in one or more player deaths, if not TPKs, was made fairly manageable through proper use of tactics. Like the party was not using flanking at all when we started but with more experience they started doing it more by the end of the campaign. In fairness though 2 of them were new to PF2E and TTRPG in general.
Well considering that encounter was beyond extreme you'd need some major skills to pull it off. Encounter budget for Moderate is 20 per player character. The Budget for an Extreme encounter is 40 per player. The goblins are a level lower than the player which means they worth 30 XP each. Thus 4 of them would be 120 XP encounter or 3 times higher than Extreme encounter given a single player character. So short of some really good tactics, or super lucky dice rolls, most players are NOT coming out of that fight. The cleric I think is best suited for it as my other LONG post on tactics covers I do think he stood a chance since he could heal himself if need be. I kinda cover what he should have done for round 2 but an over view on how I would have approached the fight given the character. First round magic weapon is solid but instead of moving into the middle of the room move to the left side near one of the points that stick out. This increases the distance from the goblin on the right while keeping enough range that the other goblins will likely have to spend 2-3 strides to reach you. Round 2 is one attack regardless of results 2nd and 3rd action are either double move or move and shield whichever I think does better. Moving most likely in the left direction to continue to try and kite the right most goblin for longer if possible. 3rd round really comes down to how things are looking at that point if you've taken a lot of damage, if you killed one during that 2nd round attack. Overall though a lot of it comes down to basic battlefield control and risk management. Like if you move away 2 strides with 3 surviving goblins they give chase with 1 action left for a total of 3 attacks. Or do you risk a 2nd attack to try and kill another goblin. If you are successful and use your third action to move away the goblins only need 1 action to give chase and the two remaining goblins each get 2 attacks for a total of 4 attack on you, if you fail that second attack the result is 3 goblins now getting a total of 6 attacks on you though they might sacrifice one of those attacks for an extra stride to get in flanking. So yeah thinking it over even more regardless of if your second attack is successful your in a better position to double move away after the first attack. Because even though the enemy gets -4 on half their extra attacks that is still a 14+ to hit or 35% chance to hit, plus might roll NAT 20, and it assumes one of them doesn't just run behind you for flanking and sacrifice that 2nd hit to get better odds on it's primary hit which would then be 8+ or 65% chance to hit. If they don't flank you right at the start then moving away from them 2 full strides means they can't flank without one of them spending their full 3 actions to get into flanking. While those tactics can help turn a pretty much one sided impossible fight into a nail biting razor thin victory fight there is still a huge amount of luck. Like not taking down a goblin in 2nd and 3rd rounds means odds are your not gonna survive. If you manage to take down a 2nd goblin in round 3 I think a stronger case could be made for risking the 2nd attack at -5 because if you succeed there is only 1 goblin left. But it is risker and depends on your health as you gotta consider to cast heal uses 1-2 actions so you likely won't be attacking that round and thus give the goblins another swing at you which could negate the healing you just did. Also if your forced to use 2 action heal means you only can move 1 stride away so be in pinch. Basically the fight is a TPK unless you got some mad skills and some good luck with the rolls because you can only negate the risk so far.
I really like seeing these builds in a practice live example. Would love to see the war caster with a bow as their primary weapon. Keep up the good work
Not that it would have made a difference as to the outcome of the fight, but the character lends itself more towards demoralizing or stepping out of flank instead of that hail mary 3rd strike. Cool build though.
you prolly dont give a shit but does anybody know a method to get back into an instagram account..? I was stupid forgot the login password. I would love any assistance you can offer me.
@Abraham Mitchell thanks so much for your reply. I got to the site through google and im waiting for the hacking stuff atm. Takes quite some time so I will reply here later when my account password hopefully is recovered.
I would haven taken versatile font if i was going alone, not as much healing as healing hands but give you area damage which is good when you're up against multiple foes and the can still heal yourself for a good bit for level one.
Definitely, i enjoy talking about that stuff. Not sure what you mean CD models though. Old, out of touch person here. I'm pretty sure this was back in the roll20 days. I moved up to tabletop simulator at some point for a more 3d look, and lately I'm experimenting with Unity.
@@LegendaryCMD Ah I gotcha. I meant 3D models sorry lol. Yea i've been trying to make my foundry experience better with mods to create a better experience for my players with weather and sounds
@@alienjimmy101 ah.. auto corrected. I darn nearly sprained my brain trying to figure that one out. This sounds awesome. Weather effects and what not. I add effects in after, with DaVinci Resolve, which works great and is easy. Adding effects during game play might be trickier but probably doable somehow.
Hmm maybe a llittle to eager to get into combat... It's certainly one way things could have gone, but getting out of flank and using shield on the last action a turn probably would have been the way. It's a bit strange to look at it being a hp and damage advantage to the player but a to hit bonus and numbers advantage to the monsters. THanks for the animation and sample build
Not a bad build but you played him wrong… First of all nobody nobody takes that third attack… You use the third action to move away from the enemy… Then you are no longer flanked and they have to give up actions coming towards you so they can attack you again and when it’s your turn you have once again all three of your actions… Nobody absolutely nobody does that last attack unless you’re specifically set up to take it vantage of it such as a flurry ranger but otherwise nobody does that last attack
I really like the way pathfinder built its rules for 2e, but the monster bonuses are, imho, extremely off. Even a fucking lowly goblin has better modifiers than a lot of 1st lvl characters, and that's infuriating. Why does every goddamn monster needs such high numbers?
Going through some of the older vids. This one gives a chance to discuss some tactics. As character builds are nice and all but much like with CCGs having the best deck doesn't mean much if you don't know how to use it. Same goes with character builds. ;)
My analysis of the combat and some mistakes in it.
1) If your out numbered, and in general, don't run into the middle of the room. Let the enemy waste their actions coming to you.
2) Stay mobile. By not moving you allowed them to easily flank you and then the 2 other goblins would get 3 attacks on you though you died to the first ones onslaught so it didn't matter. If you look at the action economy moving away means that instead of each getting 3 potential attacks on you for a total of 9 attack rolls moving away means they have to each spend one action moving thus at most they get 2 attacks each for a total of 6.
3) Attacking is not always your best option. The 2nd attack is risker because of the -5 penalty and you are at a serious action disadvantage fighting 3 foes but it could be worth it. The 3rd attack however is not and there are so often better options to use your 3rd action on. You have other options at your disposal such as shield, the cantrip is a verbal so even with 2H weapon you can use the spell which sadly is only +1 AC so it wouldn't have negated the critical hit you took in that case.
4) Use the terrain to your advantage, taking position in a corner of the room would have prevented them from getting into flanking positions with you.
In short after the first attack taking the goblin down I would have recommended either moving away max speed followed by casting shield to boost AC for the incoming attacks. Or just done 2 stride actions towards a corner forcing the goblins to give chase with 2 strides of their own and getting only 1 attack in while being unable to flank.
Proper use of tactics make a huge difference in combat it's not all about the numbers. I'll warn spoilers ahead for The Fall of Plague Stone adventure which I hear is a very deadly adventure and I could see it in some of the encounters however through proper use of tactics our party turned around what according to our DM were some of the more deadly fights in the module, and he's run it for lots of groups as he does DMing at conventions. I'll give 2 examples in module.
First example is there is an encounter where your party crawls into this tunnel under a tree which turns out to be a wolves den. The area is dark and roots from the tree hang from the ceiling making it all difficult terrain and giving penalties to range weapons. Seeing that it was gonna be tight quarters cluster **** as the entrance was small and had to climb through single filed it was setup to be a tough fight at a major disadvantage. When I saw this I just said the the party, "Why don't we just leave? I mean we can back out of the cave and bottle neck jump them as they give chase." So that's what we did as on each persons turn they simply used stride actions to move back out of the cave with the most really damage getting taken by the fighter since she was in front when init began and got mauled by 2 wolves. Other than that I think the wolves got in like one good hit as they charged out of the hole at the two front line guys. After the fight the DM told us most parties try to rush in through the difficult terrain which slows them down letting the wolves gang up on individual players taking them out.
The second example is major spoiler for the final fight of act 2. The baddie has a group of alchemist and they summon this blood monster to attack us. Rather then rush into the room I suggest we let them come to the door like we did with the wolves. The first round the blood monster basically moves up to the door but doesn't do anything. The alchemist in the room spend their turn moving into range and making one attack then striding back out of range. Taking a few hits things seem decent until Round 2 the Blood monster does this AoE attack which followed by a single reach attack which really messed up our front line followed by the alchemists lobbing more stuff at the front line characters which were really low on HP now. Talk of this might be end of the line cropped up as 2 party members were nearly about to cave and our healer could only heal 1 at a time with any reasonable amount given the damage they took in one round.
But once again I proposed we changed tactics. I pointed out the first round the blood monster did nothing but move to close the gap which means it's probably really slow speed. And that AoE attack likely hits all creatures because the alchemist are keeping their distance from it. Thus if we fall back down the hallway we can kite it with fighters doing a Stride into range, Attack, and stride back their full movement. Thus making the creature which is likely slower than us spend more of it's actions on giving chase. Also it puts more distance between us and the alchemist in the back room so they can not do ranged attacks on us as easily. So with our turns coming up in the init for round 2 (we all rolled poorly and all the mobs went before us, and yes DM rolled enemy init publicly). But this uniformity in our init order worked to our advantage as everyone of us could move away from the blood monster before it's next turn.
That is pretty much how it played out with use falling back giving the healer time to cast heal spells on everyone that needed it without use taking a lot more damage and everyone focusing as much Damage as they could to take down that Blood Monster. After which we ran back towards the door but the alchemist were already coming out to fight us in the hall and did do some damage but overall turned a seemingly hopeless encounter around with the implementation of some tactics. After that fight the DM told us it was another fight that a lot of parties just run into the room on. Being in the confined area the blood monster's AoE tears through the parties as the get pelted by the alchemist and then quickly drop.
From running through it though I can see how the Plague Stone adventure could be extremely deadly as sometimes it can come down to luck of the dice. Like the first act boss was just the boss vs party and the guy hit like a ton of bricks. Our fighter was like a whack a mole with the boss hitting him down and then healer bringing him back up, he had like 2 wound conditions after that fight and our champion also went down at one point. We failed a lot of attack rolls and boss got a lucky crit in. It was close and other than flanking there wasn't a lot to be done tactically speaking.
But through out our adventure a lot of fights which probably would have resulted in one or more player deaths, if not TPKs, was made fairly manageable through proper use of tactics. Like the party was not using flanking at all when we started but with more experience they started doing it more by the end of the campaign. In fairness though 2 of them were new to PF2E and TTRPG in general.
As a person used to Hollywood movies, always having a good ending, I've burst with laughter and satisfaction due to outcome of this :D
This cleric died to arrogance not to goblins
Your understanding of action economy is astounding. Not many PCs will survive being surrounded by 4 goblins at first level.
+100 XP No they won't, not with all those attacks.
Well considering that encounter was beyond extreme you'd need some major skills to pull it off. Encounter budget for Moderate is 20 per player character. The Budget for an Extreme encounter is 40 per player. The goblins are a level lower than the player which means they worth 30 XP each. Thus 4 of them would be 120 XP encounter or 3 times higher than Extreme encounter given a single player character.
So short of some really good tactics, or super lucky dice rolls, most players are NOT coming out of that fight. The cleric I think is best suited for it as my other LONG post on tactics covers I do think he stood a chance since he could heal himself if need be. I kinda cover what he should have done for round 2 but an over view on how I would have approached the fight given the character.
First round magic weapon is solid but instead of moving into the middle of the room move to the left side near one of the points that stick out. This increases the distance from the goblin on the right while keeping enough range that the other goblins will likely have to spend 2-3 strides to reach you. Round 2 is one attack regardless of results 2nd and 3rd action are either double move or move and shield whichever I think does better. Moving most likely in the left direction to continue to try and kite the right most goblin for longer if possible. 3rd round really comes down to how things are looking at that point if you've taken a lot of damage, if you killed one during that 2nd round attack.
Overall though a lot of it comes down to basic battlefield control and risk management. Like if you move away 2 strides with 3 surviving goblins they give chase with 1 action left for a total of 3 attacks. Or do you risk a 2nd attack to try and kill another goblin. If you are successful and use your third action to move away the goblins only need 1 action to give chase and the two remaining goblins each get 2 attacks for a total of 4 attack on you, if you fail that second attack the result is 3 goblins now getting a total of 6 attacks on you though they might sacrifice one of those attacks for an extra stride to get in flanking.
So yeah thinking it over even more regardless of if your second attack is successful your in a better position to double move away after the first attack. Because even though the enemy gets -4 on half their extra attacks that is still a 14+ to hit or 35% chance to hit, plus might roll NAT 20, and it assumes one of them doesn't just run behind you for flanking and sacrifice that 2nd hit to get better odds on it's primary hit which would then be 8+ or 65% chance to hit. If they don't flank you right at the start then moving away from them 2 full strides means they can't flank without one of them spending their full 3 actions to get into flanking.
While those tactics can help turn a pretty much one sided impossible fight into a nail biting razor thin victory fight there is still a huge amount of luck. Like not taking down a goblin in 2nd and 3rd rounds means odds are your not gonna survive. If you manage to take down a 2nd goblin in round 3 I think a stronger case could be made for risking the 2nd attack at -5 because if you succeed there is only 1 goblin left. But it is risker and depends on your health as you gotta consider to cast heal uses 1-2 actions so you likely won't be attacking that round and thus give the goblins another swing at you which could negate the healing you just did. Also if your forced to use 2 action heal means you only can move 1 stride away so be in pinch.
Basically the fight is a TPK unless you got some mad skills and some good luck with the rolls because you can only negate the risk so far.
I really like seeing these builds in a practice live example. Would love to see the war caster with a bow as their primary weapon. Keep up the good work
Not that it would have made a difference as to the outcome of the fight, but the character lends itself more towards demoralizing or stepping out of flank instead of that hail mary 3rd strike. Cool build though.
Very good build
7:32 although I played a warpriest from level 7 to 9 only now I realised how much they're multiple attribute dependent :v
you prolly dont give a shit but does anybody know a method to get back into an instagram account..?
I was stupid forgot the login password. I would love any assistance you can offer me.
@Mayson Nehemiah Instablaster :)
@Abraham Mitchell thanks so much for your reply. I got to the site through google and im waiting for the hacking stuff atm.
Takes quite some time so I will reply here later when my account password hopefully is recovered.
@Abraham Mitchell It did the trick and I now got access to my account again. I am so happy:D
Thanks so much you really help me out !
@Mayson Nehemiah You are welcome :)
I would haven taken versatile font if i was going alone, not as much healing as healing hands but give you area damage which is good when you're up against multiple foes and the can still heal yourself for a good bit for level one.
Also had moved instead of taking that third attack It would have reduced the incoming damage by a bit.
Love the videos! May I ask, what program you are using for the CD models?
Definitely, i enjoy talking about that stuff. Not sure what you mean CD models though. Old, out of touch person here. I'm pretty sure this was back in the roll20 days. I moved up to tabletop simulator at some point for a more 3d look, and lately I'm experimenting with Unity.
@@LegendaryCMD Ah I gotcha. I meant 3D models sorry lol. Yea i've been trying to make my foundry experience better with mods to create a better experience for my players with weather and sounds
@@alienjimmy101 ah.. auto corrected. I darn nearly sprained my brain trying to figure that one out. This sounds awesome. Weather effects and what not. I add effects in after, with DaVinci Resolve, which works great and is easy. Adding effects during game play might be trickier but probably doable somehow.
Hmm maybe a llittle to eager to get into combat...
It's certainly one way things could have gone, but getting out of flank and using shield on the last action a turn probably would have been the way.
It's a bit strange to look at it being a hp and damage advantage to the player but a to hit bonus and numbers advantage to the monsters.
THanks for the animation and sample build
Not a bad build but you played him wrong… First of all nobody nobody takes that third attack… You use the third action to move away from the enemy… Then you are no longer flanked and they have to give up actions coming towards you so they can attack you again and when it’s your turn you have once again all three of your actions… Nobody absolutely nobody does that last attack unless you’re specifically set up to take it vantage of it such as a flurry ranger but otherwise nobody does that last attack
I really like the way pathfinder built its rules for 2e, but the monster bonuses are, imho, extremely off. Even a fucking lowly goblin has better modifiers than a lot of 1st lvl characters, and that's infuriating. Why does every goddamn monster needs such high numbers?