Thread by @DanTalksGames

I want to highlight this particular tweet, because I think explaining what #pathfinder2e does in terms of good encounter design will help extrapolate on the points I made in my Aesthetic of Numbers thread yesterday. #ttrpg #dnd

https://twitter.com/DjangoWexler/status/1549139952054611968

The first thing to make clear is, when it comes to encounter design in TTRPGs, I'm not suggesting what is desired is some sterile idea of encounter progression. I'm not trying to railroad encounters, or remove any semblance of unpredictability.

What I would posit, however, is that there are 'good' kinds of unpredictability, and 'bad' kinds of unpredictability. Good design enables 'good' unpredictability, while minimising unpredictability that is frustrating and causes problems rather than is something to be leaned into.

Good unpredictability is when the the natural flow of combat leads to certain outcomes through dice rolls, legitimately intuitive roleplay improv and player decisions out of band of their usual abilities, etc.

'Bad' unpredictability is essentially when the tonal expectations of a particular fight are scuppered by bad design. This can be a monster not being as threatening as the game's encounter building advice suggests, blatantly OP abilities completely trivialising a threat, etc.

Essentially, when you have to regularly start adjusting monster stats on the fly and rebalancing encounters in real time because the suggested guidelines didn't work, that's when the design becomes burdonsome for GMs and you have to work around bad unpredictability.

What PF2e does to make this work well is manifold, and really it's a delicate balance that most players on the front end won't realise or appreciate. It's a combination of factors from good class balance, consistent maths, and utilising the core design of it's action economy.

Basically, monsters in 2e scale much closer to characters than they do in a system like 5e, using overt Creature Levels (CL). What this does is it creates an interesting horizontal scaling effect across the whole levelling band that makes them potentially remain a challenge.

Ironically, this also means power disparity between individual levels is greater, but that works in the system's favour. It means you know the relative strength of any given creature just by comparing it's level to yours (assuming the maths on their stats is done correctly).

If a creature is two CL below the party, they're considered a mook level threat. If a creature is two CL above, then they're considered a boss-level threat. And thanks to the scaling success system, you will feel the difference between those lower and higher level creatures.

As I said, the goal here is not to create a sterile, predictable encounter system. The goal here is to create accuracy in the intended threat of each monster. If I throw that CL+2 monster at a party, I have a fairly good indication that it will be a serious threat.

There's potential for things to go unexpectedly, sure. That's the 'good' unpredictability; taking chances on a risky dice roll, the general flow of combat going in interesting ways when combined with it's outcomes and how the creatures react to that in-character, etc.

But the point is I find myself fudging numbers and values less because in my experience, the intended design actually works, and I'm not having to work extra behind the scenes to compensate for inaccurate numerical scales.

I get all the benefits I want from that crunchy combat, with none of the on-the-fly maintenance to create the narrative tone, because the mechanics help set that tone without any intervention on my part.

This is also the part where I point out that one of the lead designs of PF2e is a *literal MIT masters graduate*. The game was absolutely SPOILED in terms of the mathematical quality injected into it.

That same designer said one of his goals was to avoid the issue PF1e had of the game just being so unpredictable and out of band, that GMs had to spend time overcompensating with pre-prep and in-game adjustments. So this is exactly in band with my own complaints.

One last thing I'll quickly touch on is character balance. The other thing that ultimately makes PF2e work is good character balance. Simply put, the band between characters is much tighter, so you have much less power level disparity to compensate for.

This is achieved in manifold ways, but the core element is minimising randomness. Stat allocations are the base expectation over rolling, HP increases are set to max, etc. Optimisation is basically baked into character progression; there's no power level disparity.

Obviously good class balance helps, but the big thing this enables is it prevents that power disparity in any given group so you're not overcompensating for one person who's powergamed themselves way out of band, or one person who lacks system mastery and made a subpar build.

This does step on the toes of people who's preferred playstyle is powergaming to purposely break out of band but....well, I've already documented my thoughts on that.

https://twitter.com/DanTalksGames/status/1526541125426638851

Now I want to make one thing clear: this isn't a 'Pf2e Is GrEaT aNd YoU ShOuLd pLaY iT' thread. The thing is, I wish I had more examples to point to of the kind of design that I want when it comes to this sort of thing. There SHOULD be more examples

My point is, it's doable. You can have rich, dynamic, unpredictable encounters, without needing the GM to overcompensate for the desire to maintain that illusion of gamey-ness. This is what that kind of system should be aiming for when it comes to that sort of encounter design.