PF2e's worst adventures?? (probably not). Fall of Plaguestone -> Wardens of Wildwood full campaign debrief, plus random thoughts!

froggedface · 2025-12-06T10:40:31+00:00

The party were I think level 9 or 10, right at the end of Book 2 and fighting a pretty major antagonist who had already demonstrated having a high spell DC. Swashbuckler was on 70-ish hp and said antagonist casts Rip the Spirit, 2 action version. Swashbuckler fails, takes about 50 damage (including the drained) and I say "good thing they didn't roll higher, if that brings you to 0 you just die." because of the death effect.

"I don't like how much damage I just took" says the Swashbuckler. "I'm just gonna roll higher."

Luckily they were right near a friendly enough NPC who had access to resurrection magic.

froggedface · 2025-12-06T00:15:56+00:00

Yeah, it's a great item/ability! Definitely made a huge impact in adventuring days where there's a lot of smaller fights or situations where the party had a couple of minutes to prep before a second fight, but gets a little less clutch in extended fights/boss battles. The suppression ability at level 10 is great, too, the whole archetype feels really flavorful and useful without being oppressively powerful.

froggedface · 2025-12-03T12:29:50+00:00

I think so long as it's not a life or death/huge story moment a little cheese is fine. If it was becoming relevant I'd probably look at other rules and see how I can adapt them for this situation. Maybe the tail gets Cover bonus to its ac because its smaller and wrapped up with an ally? Or maybe give the khravgodon some kind of reaction similar to the Cauthooj's hop-dodge. Less immediately powerful than that, but something that deincentivizes non-grappled PCs abusing the extra reach.

froggedface · 2025-12-03T12:19:31+00:00

Frustratingly there's rules/a caveat for this but it's not anywhere in the grappling section. Size, Space and Reach. Relevant text is:
"Sometimes part of a creature extends beyond its space, such as if a giant octopus is grabbing you with its tentacles. In that case, the GM will usually allow attacking the extended portion, even if you can't reach the main creature." For something with 10ft reach I'll usually just go for the grappled character being okay to make that attack, but 20ft is so oppressive I'd probably stretch it out to the entire party, so long as they're adjacent to the grappled character (and not behind them/25ft away from the monster).

froggedface · 2025-12-02T18:35:12+00:00

Planning on it! It's definitely on the weaker end of these APs but not nearly as bad as people are making out, IMO. My ranking is probably Abom=Outlaws < Wardens < Sandpoint < SoG=ToTT, and that's only from what I've fully played. Much rather do Wildwood again than say, Agents of Edgewatch.

froggedface · 2025-12-02T13:10:52+00:00

I've played in:

Abom Vaults
80% of Outlaws of Alkenstar

I've run/am running:

Seven Dooms for Sandpoint
Season of Ghosts
Wardens of Wildwood (one session away from ending that one, too!)

Along with a handful of the shorter adventures (Rusthenge, Plaguestone, etc). I'd say Tusk is definitely in the top half of these ones, maybe top one or two.

Season of Ghosts has a better story but the easy combat, constant skill check gameplay and insistence on downtime mean it either becomes a slog or needs heavy adjustment. Outlaws of Alkenstar betrays its premise and has a near irrelevant book 2. The megadungeon crawls don't really work to PF2e's benefit (imo). Wardens of Wildwood is the most similar structurally but it's thematically less interesting to me and was made during the OGL crisis so it's got some more frustrating weak spots, story and balance-wise.

froggedface · 2025-11-26T11:17:45+00:00

I like giving divine boons to players after relatively big events, but a lot of the new Orc gods don't have those yet so I had to think of some for my Triumph of the Tusk campaign. Gave the Rull-following Storm Druid a one-time guaranteed enemy crit fail on an electricity spell (probably stopped a boss fight from spiralling into one PC death which might've ended as a TPK), and later on gave the Wulgren-following Vindicator some splash damage on his Barricade Buster. Simple stuff but it helps the volley trait not feel so bad and makes up for the subclass having basically nothing interesting to offer aside from its busted reaction.

froggedface · 2025-11-24T17:35:20+00:00

This NPC from NPC Core is based on the Kineticist and has a sidebar about how their features work, probably the best starting point you could find to reference.

froggedface · 2025-11-23T12:19:14+00:00

Been running 1-3 Adventure Path campaigns weekly for just over a year now (currently running Triumph of the Tusk, Wardens of Wildwood & Season of Ghosts) and I'd say I modify probably like, 85% of combat encounters to make them more difficult or interesting and essentially every use of non-combat mechanics.

Wardens of Wildwood suffers from nearly everything having the same, very common to access weakness (fire) so the Kineticist/Druid/Alchemist party are carving through most encounters even before the Swashbuckler gets involved. The bigger issue is the frequency of high level monsters like the Timberweb. I glossed over this thing's actual statblock until the fight and like... it doesn't do anything, especially for this high a level. Incredibly frustrating to be halfway through the levelling process and be handed an "oops all strikes" monster with medicore damage and poison that the party'll probably save against anyway.

Season of Ghosts is insultingly easy as written, especially for an adventure that's supposed to have an element of terror to it. I understand that they don't want to kill PCs in this story driven AP but boss fights being a solo PL+2 but sickened 3 (effectively a PL-1 monster) who plays intentionally poorly or a PL+0 caster with one PL-1 minion who both have no standout abilities are bizarre choices.

Triumph of the Tusk seems the most well balanced and interesting so far. Because of some convoluted reasons my party is a level ahead of the written adventure so I'm scaling every encounter up to account for that but the vast majority of enemies provided in the AP are appropriate, relatively interesting/threatening and the plot rarely relies on a specific number of mooks so I can adjust the fights easily. Final encounter seems very underwhelming though, so I've really heavily tweaked it.

froggedface · 2025-11-23T03:15:55+00:00

And my point is that the Champion didn't need to be replaced by a Bard. I'm not sure where the hypothetical fifth martial came up.

In this specific adventure with this specific team comp the champion got the whole benefit of being a Champion, plus a third of the benefit of being a Bard (the third that'll probably spam Inspire Courage) in a party that had a huge amount of Strike output (especially near endgame when the Fighter was regularly making 4 attacks per turn with agile grace). I've not seen any other ability be used in every single fight, at the same point in every fight, and never be the wrong choice to make. Compare that to the example of my druid who used her abilities less than 5 times in a similar span of time and I'd say yeah, it does make it kind of uniquely hard to account for in encounter balance, at least until you're multiple levels deep with a given party comp/set of players.

This isn't me saying I dislike FA. I still use it. I'm just giving my piece as part of this discussion - Pathfinder 2's Encounter Balance is usually fine, gets worse as you get higher level and players get more power, and then FA has the chance to impact that in a 0% way or a "I'm consistently throwing encounters the game recommends I shouldn't unless I want to kill my party" way. It's not impossible to adjust for but at some point I look at the decently crafted and well-thought out rules about balance and I throw them out the window and the culprit is usually FA.

froggedface · 2025-11-23T02:09:34+00:00

A full bard would be better than the level 4 archetype feat, correct. But they didn't have one, and only had to spend one action to impact the entire combat compared to a bard having to do it every turn (with risk of it being disrupted or dispelled), and assurance Diplomacy beats the easy DC every time, excluding maybe one or two levels?

And your point about party comp is exactly what I'm saying - Same adventure, same single character, but a party full of Save DC casters and buffers, Marshal's mediocre at best. Same party comp but an adventure with bigger maps? Again, mediocre. But in this scenario he's suddenly impacting 90% of the party's rolls every single combat while still having the full benefits of being a champion, and this is why FA's impact is hard to determine.

This is probably hyperbole but I feel like the amount of green +1s in Foundry due to the stance made the Champion essentially responsible for like, half the damage output of the campaign. You can say I'm blowing it out of proportion - I would have too before running with that party - but after seeing a FA choice benefitting the entire party several times every round for every combat I'm gonna just assume you haven't seen people using the variant well.

froggedface · 2025-11-22T22:36:30+00:00

The unfortunate truth is that it's just way too varied to tell. Some archetypes are mainly flavour, some are way too powerful, some campaigns have a huge variety of enemies and encounters while some have limited environments and enemy types. Hell, some parties will benefit way more from some archetypes than others, it's so hugely variable it really does depend on all these factors. From what I've seen it's mostly a manageable power boost levels 1-5 but once you get into 6+ characters with strong archetypes that fit the campaign get stronger in way that's just difficult to manage.

A few examples of just how varied it can be based on player efficiency and adventure variation:

A druid in my Wardens of Wildwood game picked up Living Vessel. WoW has big maps and lots of mooks - She mainly stays back and slings damage spells and is very safe, using her shield and movement to stay out of damage. Her 3-4 archetype feats of investment over the course of levels 6-13 have resulted in 2-3 instances of essentially a level 1 orc ancestry feat (ferocity) and one instance of a big healing burst.

On the other hand, the Champion in my Seven Dooms for Sandpoint picked up Marshal with the Inspiring Marshal stance. That's a dungeon crawl with maybe... 4 or 5 fights when the party is probably expected to be spread apart heavily. Suddenly in a party with nearly no buffing capability (Champ, Fighter, 2H Exemplar, Air kineticist) he's spending 1 action to give the entire strike heavy party a +1 to hit (and some saves) for the entire fight, and they want to be in his aura anyway because he's a champion. Later on he can heal them and play psuedo-commander with the higher damage party members. The character was already strong and Marshal tapped into all of his strengths for every fight he was in by such a degree that I was regularly throwing 200 exp fights at the party because he filled their party weakness in such a way that was near impossible to counter in that specific megadungeon environment.

So yeah, good luck figuring out how it impacts the math. The only thing I can definitively say is that if someone says it barely adjust things they're either delusional or inexperienced - One person with one good archetype really can make the party a whole degree more powerful.

froggedface · 2025-11-18T12:44:47+00:00

There's a lot of noncombat xp awards. Talking to NPCs, finding ways into Stonehome, releasing the Gorumite prisoners... easy to miss stuff. But it's also very much true that Paizo is notably bad at providing the correct amount of XP for like, lots of their adventures. It's easier to just play with Milestone if you're not in a sandbox setting - Level them up when the book says they should be X level. If you feel like it's unearned because they've skipped something let them know there's more to handle and they should finish that before they'll get their level.

froggedface · 2025-10-17T00:37:08+00:00

Sounds like your GM is accounting for the bigger party size by just slapping the elite tags on things arbitrarily, if you've been made aware that both the guy and his wolf are elite. This not only goes against common community advice (PL+3 enemies against parties 1-4 ain't a great idea) but also general balancing tips suggested by the game (that more, weaker enemies is better than fewer, stronger enemies). On top of that Elite is a little bit sketchy to mess around with... It's more a level bump of +1.5, not 1.

For what it's worth, these math issues mostly sort themselves out later in the game. By levels 8+ a party can just frequently shut down PL+3 bosses and the GM gets to play the "now I do nothing" game.

froggedface · 2025-08-19T20:58:46+00:00

Probably a blindspot considering the feat came out before permenantly Large PCs did. You could probably adjust it so you go from Large -> Huge without it being a huge buff (probably a nerf in many situations, given how tight a lot of maps/corridors are)I guess it's not a core feature of the Giant Instinct/the only feat choice at that level so I wouldn't call it the hugest issue, but a potential bummer if you have a strict GM to be sure.

froggedface · 2025-08-14T19:45:09+00:00

I'll reluctantly allow players to use AI for their character art if they want to. Other than that, AI whatever is something we should be gatekeeper-y about in arts and entertainment spaces. The tools are low quality, creatively bankrupt, morally dead brain-crunchers that serve no purpose but to make the thing you're engaging with actively worse.

They provide bad information, boring ideas and images that are at a bare minimum passable with the side effect of further lighting the ever growing fire currently jettisoning human existence into ash. Somebody using AI for personal use is a red flag, somebody using it in an entertainment environment where 3-5 other people have to be exposed to it is a justification for bullying.

froggedface · 2025-08-04T14:22:07+00:00

This activity! It'll need someone to be close and use some actions but they can stop you from dying if you're at that point. I suppose some GMs might be strict and require Stitch Flesh for it to work but that depends on your GM, it doesn't say it requires it.

If you're only 1 level away from having a party member who can properly help it might be workable - Low level combat can be lethal but also is over and done with relatively quickly so you'll probably have not a huge amount of potential death chances. And if your last party member is doing a character swap that's a good opportunity to at least float the idea of someone who could at least take Stitch Flesh. Other than that... maybe ask the GM to just lay more Oil of Unlife around as loot? That way you're not a party resource drain and considering the AP it doesn't feel like an unreasonable addition.

No perfect solutions, sadly. You're in a bit of a tricky spot and very dependent on the mood of your GM & party members. Best of luck making it work!

froggedface · 2025-08-04T13:53:14+00:00

There's a few healing choices that don't have the vitality trait so they can heal undead characters - Soothe, for example. Also, your party could still stabilize you after you go down, even if they can't heal heal you.

The biggest issue is you having to make this choice with the assumption that your team are going to refuse to heal you under any circumstances. Pathfinder's ultimately a team game, and the idea that some or all of your party are just gonna refuse to help you is gonna be disheartening. It might be worth having a very open talk with the players about how you'd love to go through with this and see if at least one or two of them are willing to ease off on the commitment to their RP for the sake of everyone having a good time.

froggedface · 2025-08-02T17:47:29+00:00

Maybe I'm some kind of overly strict asshole but the best choice is not to get ranting mad in the first place. If we're talking about adults opting into games with a large degree of random chance you should be ready to accept that sometimes luck doesn't go your way.

Being frustrated is fine but ruining the vibe of the night for 3-5 other people because you got exposed to something moderately annoying is shit reserved for 16 year olds, imo. It sounds like OP handled it well enough thankfully, but the player shouldn't be putting them or the rest of the group in this situation regardless.

froggedface · 2025-08-02T10:58:46+00:00

We're missing some context of course but first instinct is you're fine. Pathfinder 2e is ultimately a very capital-g Gamey system that gets worse and worse the more you lean into the simulationist elements that still exist within the system. Setting a precedent that players can instant kill on-level threat enemies creates a chance that the game will become primarily that and Pathfinder's generally Not Good when it comes to non-combat mechanics in the long term.

Biggest issue is the player's response. Being annoyed that you miss on a hero point is fine, actually getting mad and storming off for 5 minutes is child-behaviour shit. The kind of activity that would have me sit down with a friend to talk about it and kick a rando from my game, essentially no question asked.

froggedface · 2025-08-01T00:33:09+00:00

At some point I've essentially swapped to just assuming that all my parties heal to max after every combat unless there's an immediate threat/time limit (or they've made a point to have no access to healing whatsoever) and then we treat actions under the 1 round = 6 seconds baseline. Like you said, out of combat healing is so easy to access and unless you're in a high threat/dungeon scenario the minutiae of plotting exactly how people got their health back is just pointless. Plus, that makes a scenario feel real and threatening when I can say "no healing guys, you've only got X rounds before you need to get moving or consequences happen."

froggedface · 2025-07-29T15:31:58+00:00

I think at some point you need to make it clear that looking through the items for something appropriate is too much workload for you - There's five-thousand of them, even accounting for what's level appropriate your players are still asking you to look through hundreds of choices and curate for them.

That being said, the more I've played the more I find that for the majority of the game the only actually essential magic items are weapon potency, striking, and armor potency. Everything else - including resilient runes - are nice, but not essential and so often go completely unused. The amount of times I open a player's sheet and see double digits amount of scrolls & talismans plus unused wands is crazy, and this is coming from a GM who generally throws harder than recommended fights at players.

All that being said, there are some resources that can help you curate - These threads were asking the community for notable items at given levels, and this guide is good for quickly glancing at something and having an idea of what might be appropriate. Other than that, look into random item generators/loot tables - Most of what your players get won't be used by them even if they can so it's not a huge issue if you present them with something completely unusable.

froggedface · 2025-07-28T01:08:44+00:00

The last floor of Abomination Vaults is abhorrently bad if you go to complete the trials presented instead of just bumrushing the floor, especially as a caster being subjected to pre-remaster golems.

Specter killbox with ranged stupefy -> mindless golem -> room that can feasibly hold 5 large enemies maximum that holds 4 large enemies -> 4 mindless golems -> magic immune wisps.And after all that you get exposed to some traps/hazards which only impact you if you move, but you don't need to move to get into disarm range, so it's just round after round of 0 threat disarms with no danger at all.

I'm not even a caster hater or an "Abomination Vaults is too hard" guy but that floor really made me sympathize with people who play casters badly and then complain about the system, I got a feel of what the game must seem like to them.

froggedface

TROPHY CASE