Combat in Pathfinder 2E | How does it work? | Jason Bulmahn

hello everyone and welcome to another exciting Pathfinder 2E lecture hi there I am Jason Bowman I'm the director of game design at paiso and one of the creators of the Pathfinder role-playing game and over the past couple weeks we've been talking about building a character understanding spells even designing an adventure but the one thing we haven't covered is combat and how does combat work in Pathfinder second edition So today we're going to explore that topic and I am joined as always by my good buddy Dan hey there Dan what is happening cool man how are you I am doing well I was just telling the folks that you know we've we've you know we started this whole kind of tutorial series by building uh a goblin character for you a goblin Rogue uh named Silo and uh you know the week after that we we talked about designing encounters last week we looked at spells one of the things that we haven't really covered in depth that is certainly worthy of exploration is combat and how combat works in the game because frankly it's probably the most important rules kind of structure in Pathfinder it's a fantasy role-playing game combat comes up quite a bit it does happen it does happen yeah yeah so when when words and diplomacy no longer suffice when a monster comes sleeking out of the darkness it's time to roll initiative and get yourself into a fight so today what we're gonna do here Dan I'm gonna pop us over to the other screen here and today what we're gonna do is we are gonna talk about combat we're gonna explore how combat works and you know we might even find ourselves in a combat uh before the end of this uh stream is done so the first thing you kind of need to understand Dan and I know you know this this is something you have experienced plenty in our games together is that while you're playing Pathfinder there there tends to be some kind of modes of play we we talk about the modes of play and oftentimes when you're going from place to place we call that just kind of exploration mode you're going around you're talking to people you're doing things you're there's no initiative there's no turn order people just act and describe what their characters are doing and have conversations that's fine the other uh there's another Mode called downtime which is kind of more abstract time flies really fast and folks do training or work odd jobs and stuff and we're we'll talk about that at some point in time and we'll go into more about exploration mode at some time too but today we're going to talk about what's called encounter mode or combat now you always enter combat from exploration mode I suppose you could enter combat from downtime it's like yes I'm working on this piece of leather armor and all of a sudden somebody comes out to stab you you could but it's pretty uncommon uh it what's more likely is that um you're exploring a dungeon you're you're off doing a mission of some sort and uh you run into a monster or some foes and combat gets started so one thing that's important for folks to understand is that what you're doing in Exploration mode can affect how combat starts right and I know that sounds obvious but in Pathfinder that actually may have a mechanical implementation right so normally all things being equal at the start of combat you roll a perception check perception isn't a skill it's just a a statistic that every character has and you know you you will roll perception as your initiative and whoever gets the highest result gets to act first in combat that's kind of the basic initiative but exploration can oftentimes lead to you rolling something else for initiative which Dan I know you like to do quite a bit yeah yeah I I like to do uh like stealth uh if I have that ability that's always a good one to roll from so yeah so that's the thing about Pathfinder 2E is that you can end up rolling various skills for initiative instead of perception based on what you were doing so if you're a rogue and you're sneaking out ahead of the party you might get to roll stealth for initiative and doing so grants you special bonuses in other situations you might find yourself rolling any number of skills in in fact any skill can be rolled for initiative if it makes sense based on you know the GM's call so if you're say tracking a wolf through the woods and you're following its Trail using survival you could find yourself rolling survival for initiative because you suddenly realize that the tracks you're following aren't hours old they're seconds old and you're like wait this still smells of wolf ah it might be right nearby right you can find yourself using survival right oh you're you're trying to climb up a a tower and people up top uh are suddenly deciding to shoot at you with crossbows you might find yourself rolling Athletics for an initiative because you're trying to climb the tower as quickly as possible so there's a bunch of different ways you can roll initiative so let's kind of see this in practice all right so um I do have this PDF here we're going to use this to kind of walk through the chapter nine in the core rule book this is your key chapter for understanding the various modes of play and combat now it starts off here by kind of talking about how checks work and all the different kinds of checks you might make specific sorts of checks like attack rolls and perception uh but eventually we end up getting to talking about initiative and how to start off a fight and that is in here after we kind of get past all of the kind of basic setup stuff we'll come back to some of this stuff for sure um here we are talking about senses okay so in counter mode this is where we need to be this is all about rolling initiatives so damn yes silo is uh living in the town of warm bone and uh is a newfound Adventurer right and doesn't have a party yet doesn't have any allies just looking for odd jobs to get some coin because you're you're poor Dan you're really poor uh and uh you need some coins Jason can we stick to the game please that would be great so you're wandering around town and uh you see a sign post uh that has some notices on it and one of them looks like a job that you might be able to tackle even by your lonesome uh it is it is a kindly old woman named Granny Apple knees uh who would who would who would like someone to venture down into our basement to investigate why her uh uh Larder down there keeps disappearing and the strange scratching noises now this this sounds like just the job for you going down into a basement and solving a problem that how hard could that be I got this i got this so uh you arrive at uh granny Appleby's house and she's a kindly old woman she's like oh oh bless you aren't you just adorable and she like pinches your cheek and pets your frog oh nice yeah now there's some there's some strange noises coming from my basement and I don't go down there anymore because I'm afraid I need you to venture down into my basement and solve whatever vicious nasty thing is happening down there probably a dragon don't worry I got this yeah yeah yeah um so uh you you you gather yourself you ready yourself so you get your weapons out you know uh or you get a weapon out and you venture down the creaky stairs into Granny Apple niece's uh uh seller and so we're gonna go ahead and bring up make this go away and bring up so Dan begin making your way down the creaky stairs and as you look down into the Gloom because you have dark vision you can see we're not going to worry about lighting sources um as a goblin you can you can see and uh looking into the darkened Cellar uh you notice that on the far side the wall has collapsed leading into some dark tunnel and in that dark tunnel you see two beady little red eyes that quickly begin moving towards you and this signals the start of combat oh [ __ ] we're just going right for it yeah no we don't have time to you've got time to think you don't got time it's time to move yeah um however I will let you describe to me how you're going downstairs so that so that we can we can explore how initiative might work okay cool so I'm more than likely Silo is basically as armed exactly as you see in that picture right up there he does have the spear he does have the short sword out um I like to think he sells the pipe and it's in full effect like it's it's fully smoking and stuff um and Lord leggy's worth is definitely sitting up on the head um and on the Frog hat the magical piece of equipment that we have yet to describe that definitely exists in the world of Pathfinder you've heard it here first uh that's right um so what I think though is that I honestly think uh I think that I'm a pretty darn scared but not gonna let that show to Granny Apple knees or anything um so I would imagine that he's moving slow he's already kind of crouched down he's taking his time and the second he sees these red eyes looking at him he's he's probably gonna you know a get ready for fight B [ __ ] his pants I don't know which order but it's gonna happen in one of those one of those orders I don't know but yeah so he's he's definitely taking his time I don't know if I would say that he's sneaking but he's probably trying to be quiet just because he's scared truthfully all right so you go down the stairs kind of cautiously kind of carefully the rat's still uh quite possibly senses that you're there but I am going to allow you to roll stealth or initiative so uh you can go ahead and do that I'm going to roll Initiative for uh my little rat friend here I'm gonna go ahead and select him initiative oh that's quite good um it is now Dan you rolled you rolled a 17 what's your bonus to stealth seven so you got a 24 four yes gotta be joking man you beat me by one look roll20 likes me tonight I'll take it all right so the uh the we have just rolled initiatives so um what happens next is we go into the combat round now the combat round is basically a cycle of everybody getting to take their turns uh at once everybody's gotten a chance to take their turn we advance to the next round rounds are really only important when you're tracking durations there are some spells and effects that last from you know one round to a minute or you know four rounds or something like that um so we'll we'll keep track of that but it probably won't be too important in this fight uh but here we are at the start of the first round of combat now uh once we've done that we will go ahead and sort the characters by initiative now as GM if you've got multiple monsters like let's say there was a whole bunch of rats I could decide to have all the rats go on one initiative that is perfectly fine they don't all have to have their own own initiative you can however have them have their own initiative so if I had two rats maybe I would want to give them two different initiatives just to kind of mix things up a bit or if I had a whole bunch of rats and say you know uh one rat swarm I could have the rat swarm go on a different Edition but for right now all I've got is one giant rat one Goblin versus one giant rat surely this is going to be a fight that you are just going to crush now can I can I just say I'm so glad you decided to go with a rat and not a swarm I don't think I've ever had a good encounter with a swarm yeah well you know honestly for your first fight uh with with poor Silo here I wanted to give you something that was a bit more manageable and a swarm is a swarm is quite powerful Jason you are as they say benevolent that is what I hear now all right so we're gonna go into taking turns now um everybody knows you know Pathfinder uh Second Edition as well well known for having the three action uh system so at the start of combat you beat me an initiative by one uh which means the rat doesn't even really know that you're there um now this has an effect because you're a rogue and because you rolled stealth for initiative your stealth score is higher then my perception so it doesn't even really see you so the rat instead of charging at you the rat is kind of Milling around in the tunnel there you can see it you don't think it's seen you yet so there's that now we're going to get to you taking your turn and on your turn you're going to get to do three actions now characters have a lot of actions they can choose from in fact let's go ahead and go back to our PDF here for just a moment and we'll come back here to encounter mode and what I'd like to do is just kind of talk about the various kinds of actions you can take now one thing that's important to note is that actions can take one two or even three actions to perform like each thing that you might want to do has a cost in a number of actions there are even some things that don't cost an action at all like dropping the thing that you're holding doesn't cost you an action you could just let go of things that you're holding on but most things cost one action now it's also important to note that you can repeat actions as much as you want and do them in any order you want so you can move three times you can move twice uh and then make an attack you can stand still and attack three times you could do all of those things because each one of them only costs one action now there are some things that cost more than one action so you probably can't do more than one of those those in a turn but you can combine them with other things in any combination like so let's go uh down here we got a list of all the basic actions and Dan I want to walk through some of these because I think they are important yeah uh before we get too far off in the reads because the very first one is a special one um you get three actions per turn you also get one reaction now the reaction you don't have to spend on your turn as a matter of fact you usually won't a reaction usually happens because something else happened right so um the the classic one that I think a lot of folks are are used to is something called the tack of opportunity which basically says if somebody lets their guard down near you you can spend your reaction to take a free attack at them now not everybody in the game has a tack of opportunity anymore as a matter of fact most characters don't have reactions at all uh but for those who do uh they always come with a trigger that says if this happens then you can spend your reaction and do this thing and if you don't spend your reaction by the start of your next turn that's no big deal and at the start of your next turn you get your reaction back if you've spent it so the very first action in this list is actually called aid aid is basically saying I want to help out my friend and so on your turn you spend an action to set them up and then that allows you to do a reaction to help them when they do the thing so for example if somebody was trying to climb a tree and you wanted to give them a boost right you could make an Athletics check to Aid them uh so on your turn you would be like you you know get there put your hands out so they can step on it and then uh when they do that on their turn you spend your reaction to give them a boot and you make a check and possibly give them a bonus that's what Aid does the next action is one of a bevy of uh move actions so it's best for us to actually jump to the most important move action which is just called stride stride is for an action you move up to your speed that's it now there are other move actions as well one of the most common ones is called step step just says you move five feet but your movement doesn't provoke any reactions so sometimes reactions trigger because people try and move away from you that is the most common form of reaction is someone tries to get away from you and you hook them or make an attack at him or do something step says you can move five feet and not trigger any reaction um let's go back up to the place that we were at crawl crawl says you move five feet wall prone and you still provoke an attack so you don't want to be crawling around on the ground it's not it's not an effective way of getting around in combat but it's being suggested in chat that I just do crawl three times which maybe that would maybe that's a good idea I don't know I you know I I think we'll go through some more of these while you think about it uh delay is a free action you do at the start of your turn that just says take your turn later don't do anything just take your turn later but um no really quick if you were to delay you have to pick a time that you're delaying and tell or do you just jump in and you just do uh excuse me Jason I'd like to go now if you do a delay um no you don't you don't specifically pick a time you just remove yourself from the initiative order and then um uh you can uh decide when you want to go later okay before the end of the round I assume or something like that no it's just it's just you delay until you decide to go again until you decide to go which has to happen after someone's turn um okay uh and if it gets back to your spot on initiative again you just take your turn okay okay I've got it uh there's drop prone this just says stop prone you know in the space you are in drop prone and why would you do that well there there are reasons you might want to avoid uh an attacker give yourself a bonus against Ranch attacks or things like that um Escape is an action that just allows you to try and break free from something grabbing you um that's a pretty common thing to do you can either make an Athletics check an acrobatics check or an unarmed attack to try and Break Free uh interact is really common this is a very generic action but interact says you basically use your hands to manipulate an object or the terrain you open a door you you know open a chest you draw a uh a weapon right all of these are interact actions okay uh leap leap just says you jump five foot uh five foot forward uh or ten foot if your speed is 30 or more okay so you just jump you don't have to make a check you can just jump five feet uh ready um ready is weird ready is two actions that allows you to set up any sort of reaction you can imagine that makes sense that you could do with one action so let's say you uh you you were standing at the edge of a open doorway and you wanted to attack the first person who came through well how would you time out doing that since everybody goes on their own turn well ready says all right I'm gonna prepare to attack anyone that goes through the store the trigger is an enemy walks through the door my action is I take an attack at them so you just basically set up your own custom reaction okay uh release is just a free action you drop something um seek um seek means that seek is one action which means you kind of scan an area for an object or creature this is the action you would do to try and find someone who's hiding um or to locate an object that is somewhere hidden in the room right seek is kind of that action um sense motive uh this is one action as well this kind of is is about sizing up an individual to see whether or not uh their their perhaps mind controlled or lying to you or otherwise not what they see stand up says for one action you stand up from prone uh we already covered step and stride uh we'll cover strike here in a moment strike is by far the most important action in here uh there is take cover we'll explain that a little later with cover but basically you can spend an action to kind of take cover um and that is it for the basic action there's a whole bunch of specialty basic actions that are things like burrow if you have that ability fly if you have that ability grab an edge if you're falling off a cliff right right um some some of these are our uh actions that only really happen in very special circumstance um averting your gaze right oh no there's a monster that if I look at it I'll turn to Stone right there's a Medusa um you can avert your gaze to give yourself a bonus so uh there's that so let's get back and talk about strikes here for a moment because strikes are special strike is just make an attack that's it right um You you make an attack using any one of your weapons um that's the basics of it right you make an attack roll if you if your role is higher than their AC you deal damage you roll damage and apply it as normal we'll kind of get to the nuts and bolts of that here in a minute um but the one thing I do want to note here is that strike is one of the few actions that if you take it more than once in a round something special happened and that special thing is you start taking penalties on the attack rolls so we'll we'll cover that more here in a bit but it's important to note now that just standing still and attacking three times in a row isn't always going to be your best option in pathfind you very likely are going to find yourself in situations where frankly taking two attacks and then doing something else with your third action is a good idea either moving to a more advantageous position or drawing a different weapon or readying a potion or any sort of thing right there's a whole bunch of things that make sense um in those situations so we've covered the kind of basic actions let's get back to your turn let me go ahead and hide there we are so here we are we're back back in the action Silo is in the basement of Granny Apple knees and he sees a fearsome giant rat off off up ahead of you now um there's a few things worth noting here uh in this environment we've got some uh we've got some tables right these are tables and we've got some barrels and stuff floating around here there's some wine rack over here in the corner got a large old dusty cobweb over here in the corner of the room and then there's this hole in the wall and these squares are filled with rubble and count as difficult Terrain now difficult terrain is special because it moved through difficult terrain it basically costs you twice as much movement so if each square is five feet walking into a square of difficult terrain costs you 10 feet of your move so Dan it's your turn you have three actions what would you like to do well um let's see so did I get a sense that this rat really was staring at me or do I get a sense that I saw it and maybe it doesn't know I'm there so at first you thought that rat um definitely sees me but in fact what it might be is that the rat just kind of sensed that something was coming down the stairs maybe it heard the door open up above right light is spilling in from above and the rat is clearly coming to investigate okay okay even if you don't actually think it sees you yeah okay okay um let's see so but you also know that unless you find cover uh the rat will be able to see you you won't even be able to make a stealth check because it can just see you when you're you're not hiding behind it right right okay okay so uh it's probably uh in my best interests to do something like this yeah that would get you into a good place um now one thing of note in in Pathfinder is um you know when you're when you're measuring uh distance here is you know 5 10 15 20 right that's no problem diagonals however count a little differently so the first one's five but the second one is ten then 5 then 10 5 10. so um distance the diagonals um cost you a little more for every other diagonal let's do five more so something to keep in mind we're using a handy measuring tool here so we don't really need to worry about it too much but um all right I'm gonna try to uh stink my way down here okay so you go moving uh and uh getting behind the table now the table isn't going to provide you too much cover because you know it is a table yeah it's nothing yeah I'm hopeful that with the uh the you know somewhat darkened area and just having General stuff there if I can blend in at least a little bit maybe that'll help so sure so that was your first action so you've taken one action and that was to move down and and kind of get behind the table because you're pretty sure the rat didn't see you um so that's your first action what would you like to do with your second action so my second action um boy this is so I was thinking that I would maybe try to drop my implements and get my my bow which would be an action if I drop them not sheath them but if I drop them and grab my bow that's the second action yep I would have to I would have to knock the like Notch the arrow in which would be a third action right no that only would that you only have to spend an action to load crossbows bows uh you can just boom so okay if you wanted to uh draw your bow you could drop your Spear and Dagger just drop them on the floor uh and then you could draw your bow and take one shot this round okay okay um and let me I'm assuming that I do not have a shot where I am though so that gets us into a very interesting part of how combat Works which is determining cover so you're thinking about making a possible range attack now the first thing we need to do is figure out whether or not you can see the rat at all from this position now the way we do that is we just try and determine if any point in your square the square you are occupying could draw a line to any point in the rat Square without going through solid object so in this case if we look from the corner here and we go to this corner and we assume that the wall this wall right here is where it's at I think we can draw a pretty convincing line from here to here oh because we could use the corner of the square it doesn't need to be from the center of the square so that's just to determine whether or not you can see okay so you can see the rat from where you are currently at that means you can make the attack without it having complete cover um which would be very bad um however now we need to see whether or not it has cover from you and to do that we do a Center Line to Center Line measure so in this case I'm just going to do this and as I can see here the center line to center line goes through this wall right here so because it crosses through a solid barrier that means the creature has cover Now cover comes in three varieties the first variety is uh the most common which is just cover and that means it gets a plus two bonus to its AC there is lesser cover or kind of light cover um this is usually provided by other creatures being in the way so if you had an ally in the way it would get light cover that's just a bonus of one and then there are some circumstances where it's like wow you can almost not see that creature at all it has greater cover now greater cover you can also get by having normal cover and using the take cover action right so that is how that works so in this case Dan I am going to say that this Critter has greater cover because if I draw a line from your Square to it I you can't see more than a sliver of it before it hits the wall right so I will say that the creature has radar cover yeah that is fair that I mean that doesn't mean you can't take the attack it just means that uh you have a a it will be a much harder time to hit okay all right um you know what what the hell Let's uh let's just go ahead and then take a shot with my short bow it's a plus seven to hit um now what I would I still give a full plus seven or do I let the AC do the math that they would have cover so um the way that it's gonna work is that cover is going to give it a bonus to it's AC okay okay right so I don't need to change anything on my side I still make my attack as normal yeah and I'm I'm I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you how much greater cover is so greater cover is going to give it a plus four bonus to its AC okay all right well here we go all right so you just so we've got it totally clear here you spent your first Action Moving you spent your second action drawing your bow after having dropped your other two weapons which are in your square and then uh now that you have your bow drawn you're going to take your third action to take a shot at the rat okay yes I have the rat stat block here I'm looking right at it I know what its AC is with the greater cover so you can go ahead this thing and make your attack roll and add uh your bonus to using your shirt bow okay well so uh Folks at home can't see that could be 13. the turn order is in the way but there it is that he rolled a six damn it so a six plus seven is a 13 you fire the arrow at the rat it goes firing into the tunnel but just clatters off the the walls of the tunnel so you hear it kind of quack quack quack and you hear the rat kind of let off some squeaks but uh you're pretty sure you missed and that is the end of your turn so I am going to go ahead and have the rat movement so the rat has a speed of 30. uh and it also has a climb speed of 10 but I don't think I'm gonna have a climb I think I'm just gonna have it uh Brute Force its way through the rubble just gonna crawl right on through so I'm going to go ahead and have each one of these squares count as 10 feet so 10 20 30. that is its first action now obviously it comes into the room and uh you are not hidden well enough to be uh invisible to it um and you did not take an action to hide which is a thing you could have done using stealth um so uh it does see you right away it doesn't even need to make a check because it too has dark vision So that's its first action for its second action I go ahead and just just measure it out here uh let's see we are gonna go ahead and have it go yeah we'll just do that it comes running straight up to you only 15. so the rat um comes running straight up to you and it is going to go ahead and attempt to bite you um so let's go ahead and roll that and see how it resolves oh I didn't roll so well either the four uh giving me a total of 11 that is not going to I'll run a hit so here we are we have now completed one whole round of combat we've done some movement we've investigated how cover works and we've talked about positioning so one thing that's that's important to know in combat is that generally speaking as long as you're adjacent to a foe you can make an attack with them you may have a reach weapon that allows you to attack foes at reach one thing that we didn't measure actually Dan was the range on your short bow attack but I'm going to wager it was close enough that we don't have to worry about a range penalty um because attacks have attacks have a lot of kind of interesting things associated with them so one of the first things you do is check uh the various traits of the weapons that you use because weapon traits can come in a wide variety and some give you like oh this gives you a bonus if you attack another foe with that weapon after the first Focus you kind of sweep through them and hits um other foes have other weapons like oh this is a backstabbing weapon and if your foe is flat-footed it deals an extra point of damage um so weapon traits can affect your attack rolls and your damage rolls and do all sorts of things so you want to make sure that you're aware of how those work um and because they're so based on weapon I don't think it's worth covering all of them here right now but should you uh you know make a hit with like a Rapier you're definitely going to want to know and get a critical hit you're definitely going to want to know what the uh deadly property does because it's going to come into play so um we'll we'll keep going here and maybe see if we get a critical hit that can explain one then uh you know whoever gets one first we'll see uh but that was the end of one round of combat so let's now go to round two then and it's gonna come back to you you're back in front here uh the rat is right in front of you uh after having crawled out of the tunnel to attack you um your weapons are at your feet what do you do um so uh can I I might have forgotten so the spear cannot be used as a melee weapon right so that's just oh it can be oh okay because all I have in my on my book is that uh the traits is that it's thrown 20 feet and and so I wasn't sure if I could also use that as a melee so melee weapons uh with the throne trait means that you can throw them okay melee weapons without the throne trait you cannot throw okay um well then I'm going to uh can I pick up my uh short sword and my spear so you can pick up the short sword or the spear as an action each one is going to cost you one action because they kind of clattered to the ground and you're gonna have to go grab them um okay and so you can grab one or the other for one interact action okay all right and then can I spend another interact action to pick up the other one and no because then I um okay yeah I'm trying to I'm trying to finesse this a little bit but uh I will pick up the short sword okay and that's that's a that's an interact action right yes I still have two left um okay yeah you know what and then I'm gonna take an attack with my shortsword sure now uh some folks might be like well does the rat get a free attack because he picked up his short Sword and the rat that that interact action would have provoked an attack of opportunity if the rat had attack of opportunity but it doesn't so it does not yeah I mean almost with everything you have to test it once to be like yeah I know you'll find out that they have this you'll find out one way or the other you'll find out um okay so uh go ahead and make your attack against the rat okay and this is um this is a plus seven foreign a six again is not going to do it so um you take another wild swing at the rat but it just does not manage to connect so the rat kind of nimbly dodges out of the way you do still have one action left but remember this is where that multiple attack penalty is going to come in now multiple attack penalties says for your second attack you take a minus five and for your third attack you take a minus ten unless the weapon is agile uh my weapon is agile oh well uh look at that illustrative um so uh agile weapons the penalty is minus four minus eight so it's it's okay it's one less on each each extra attack okay so I can take another attack and it'll be a plus three instead of a plus seven because I have an agile weapon correct if it wasn't aware weapon it would be down to a plus two okay let's do this let's uh um boy um what the hell let's do this I'm gonna I'm gonna take my other attack at a plus three all right oh 19. a 19 so the rat nimbly Dodges to one side but uh you quickly reverse your uh attack and stab forward and manage to stab the rat you have hit Dan so go ahead and roll me some damage here so here's what happens um now that you've managed to score a hit the next thing you will do is roll damage damage is then applied to the creature uh and if it has any resistances or immunities we would reduce the damage or mark it as immune so this is a rat however it doesn't really have any immunities but let's say you had a flaming uh sword that dealt fire damage and you were attacking a creature that was resistant to fire it might say something like resist fire five in which case if you don't do at least six points of damage your attack would do no damage um but in this case it's a rat it's not really resistant to damage uh it it's there to take damage so um we're gonna go ahead and roll that damage and uh and see how that plays out so go ahead and bounce me a D6 yes what's your bonus plus four um because I use decks for my bonus all right okay that's a five all right so uh you did Five Points of damage to the rat I'm gonna go ahead and deal five to it so it is now down to just three hit points however it is now the rats turn because that was all three of your actions so let's go ahead and have the rat attack back the rat doesn't have much in the way of special tactics it mostly just runs up to you in bites it's a very simple creature other creatures might have special actions that they could do things like breathe fire or uh you know do burrowing attacks or all sorts of things cast spells creatures come in a million different varieties and can have a lot of different special abilities in one of these future streams we're going to talk about building a creature and I'm gonna have Dan build his first ever Monster for Pathfinder it's gonna be a blast uh so that sounds fun that'll come soon uh but for today let's just have the rat try and take a bite out of you so here it comes here's its jaw attack 14 I don't think that's gonna do it um that is gonna come up short so let's go ahead and have it attack again it really really only has the one trick so fortunately its jaw attack is agile as well how about a 16 Dan not gonna happen Jason just going to happen just short last attack the the dice rolls are getting better but the the penalty is killing me here so um it attempts to bite you all three times and it is going to miss all three times got real close what's your armor class 17. 18. 18 ah okay I gotta roll pretty high uh but uh that first attack getting only a uh seven didn't help oh they got lucky on that one like that was you did that was it that's the big one yeah my AC should be 17 but the Frog adds another one so yeah you got A plus one frog bonus that's he's that's that's something my ears like he's uh you know like he's a Mech controller he's like it's dodging me out of the way this is some Ratatouille nonsense uh look we're gonna make some Ratatouille later when I'm done with this bite thank you you put it on the board you probably can make dumb jokes too Jason come on [Laughter] anyway tutorial over no all right uh coming on um let's do this so there's something that uh I really want to try with Silo but to do that I need to have another weapon in my hand so I am going to use the interact and I'm gonna pick up my spear all right so now you have your Spear and Dagger um now this is uh yeah sorry Spear and uh and short sword um so you have both your weapons in hand now what uh what special action you're thinking about doing I would like to try twin faint all right can you read twin faint off to us do you have that I can't because uh I don't have access on that uh if it were in roll 20 I could do it but I don't have that in front of me I just have the uh action or the uh ability well that's okay Dan because I have a pocket edition Google book right here so I'm just gonna go select the Pocket Edition pocketed it is not paying me enough for this for me to advertise the specific Pocket Edition they are dope though I'm just gonna say I really should set up affiliate links for this Channel and be like yes buy it through Amazon through my affiliate link um all right one of these days I'll become better at this whole like you know streamer thing anyway yeah we'll see twin fate requirements you are wielding two melee weapons each in a different hand which you are you make a dazzling series of attacks with both weapons using the first attack to throw your foe off guard against the second attack at a different angle make one strike with each one of your two melee weapons both against the same Target the Target is flat footed against the second attack apply your multiple attack penalty to the strikes normally so basically you get to make two attacks and the second one it will be flat footed to so which one once it's flat footed then we can get into that well I need to hit first so let's not do it so let's see let's actually talk about flat footage over here for just half a second because this is one way that you can make a creature fly-footed but it's by no means the only way you can make so I'm gonna just pasted another rat here for just half a second damn and we're gonna we're gonna move around here so when when you're being attacked by two foes that's trouble right you know if there were two rats there they both attack you that you're just getting hit a whole bunch of times however there's a special thing uh that can happen in Pathfinder called flanking flanking occurs when you're being attacked from opposite sides so if you weren't backed up against the wall here or let's say the rat was over here um now the rats are flanking you and the way you determine flanking is you draw a line from Center to Center to the creatures that are attacking you and if that line goes through opposite sides or corners of you then you are being flanked uh now when you are flanked you are flat footed to those attacks flat-footed means that you take a penalty of two to your AC so that is how that would normally work I'm going to go ahead and get rid of that extra rat there don't need to tag team you not yet okay I I was I was actually expecting you to delete the damaged rat and leave the healthy one and be like oh that's weird it's so unusual he's a healing rat he's got oh [ __ ] okay he's got he's got wrinkle he's got battle medicine he heals himself with a tiny little rat healing kit I like it it's like a little thing with like a little red cross on it yeah he's got he's got he's got little Band-Aids with like a cheese on them [Laughter] I like it I like it no it's nice it's really nice all right um okay here we go Jason uh first attack is with the spear all right this is a plus four to hit okay and Bam [Applause] 19. so you swing with the spear and that is going to hit so uh you easily catch the rat uh off guard and uh are going to deal with damage um go ahead and deal with damage Dan I have a sneaky suspicion you're probably just going to kill it at this point although this video doesn't get a bonus does it no it's just plus one for damage two that is two damage who that is not enough to kill the rat okay well all right Brad has a fighting chance yet um now Jason uh let's see so he is now flat-footed to me correct correct against this second attack so you did a special Rogue ability right remember I said oh you get all these basic actions right we kind of went through those things like you know Aid and crawl and move stand in stride but as a rogue you have special actions that you can take and this one allows you to make two attacks uh it costs two actions so you don't really save any actions but it does say that your second attack they're treated as flat-footed so that means my AC is going to be lower but it's your second attack so you will still take the multiple attack belt right right and for me it was minus four or minus four because minus it's minus four because it's an agile weapon okay so then this is a plus three to hit is what I get here twenty twenty will hit so okay that is that is definitely going to kill the rat but you know what here we're gonna say just so that we can explore it here for a second we're gonna say that that was just a few higher right so instead of 20 if it were a 23 23 uh yeah it's uh it would have been a critical hit so critical hits are a really important thing in Pathfinder they you can get a critical uh success on almost anything on a skill check on a saving throw on an attack roll um you can also get critical failures on skill checks and saving throws and attack rolls now for the purposes of this the thing that we really want to focus on here is what would happen on a critical hit uh your your dagger or sorry your short sword strike is going to kill the rat you you're going to do a D6 plus four it has one hit point so it's gonna die um wait Jason really quick what determines that it's a critical hit so that's because if I wouldn't have rolled a 20 I still could have made it a critical hit corrosively now the wave Critical Hits work in Pathfinder critical successes is you roll a 20 on the die that's almost always going to be a critical hit and I'll explain why I have to say almost always here in a second but almost always it's a critical um or you beat the target number by 10. so in this case the rat was flat-footed which took its armor class down to 13 which means if you get a 23 or higher it is also a critical hit even if the die isn't a 20. now before when I said when a die is a 20 it's a critical almost always what actually happens is when you roll a 20 you still determine whether or not it was a hit or a miss or whatever as normal and then you treat the success or the result as one category better so okay let's say you were attacking something with an AC of 50. um nah 50's too high let's say 30. okay and and I'll tell you what happens if you attack an ac50 creature in a sec but let's say you were attacking a creature with an AC of 30 and you only have a bonus of seven so if you roll a natural 20 that would be a 27 well 27 is still a miss but because you rolled a 20 it would be treated as a hit instead but it would not be treated as a critical hit okay okay and it would be Miss hit critical hit like those are the those are the steps and critical failure is below that right so Pathfinder has four different talk about that Jason come on yeah no so so if you were attacking uh let's say there's a rampaging super ancient powerful Dragon that has like an AC of 45. you can't just line up a bunch of peasant archers they're not even going to be able to not critically fail against it right it has an AC of 40 something and and their bonus is five so even if they roll a 20 they get a 25 which is still 20 short from 21 short from what they need which is a critical failure so even getting a natural 20 only takes it from a critical failure to a failure so they still don't hit right all right right okay so that's a dope way of doing it I like the way that that's laid out that's that's pretty cool and it should be noted that a rolling a one works in the opposite right so it it causes you to treat the the the result as one category worse so let's say you're a super skilled fighter and you're attacking you know a a farmer right and you've got a Bonus of 20 to hit well if you roll a one that only gives you a 21 and if that would normally only be a hit because let's say the farmer has an AC of 16 and you get a 21 well that would be a hit but because you roll the one it would turn into a miss okay um so that's really you know that's how the system plays out in that ones and twenties aren't automatic but they mean that you step it in one one degree uh in in that direction so that's it so so it does play with the idea to say look this is this is a pretty badass thing but you rolled a 20. so you'll at least get a hit possibly like you might still get a hit it just won't be a crit yeah you don't get to like that you don't get to just you know it's one of the things that that kind of bugged us with Pathfinder first edition is that it did live in kind of a thing where it was like well one through 19 is a miss and then 20 as a critical hit and that that was it and it was it's kind of weird uh you know uh things being equal this works a lot better and it has a lot better uh kind of feel at the table where it's like yeah your skilled Archer might get lucky and land an arrow hit on the dragon that is super powerful but that's not going to be a strategy for Success you're gonna need to figure out a better way to deal with the thing then than Brute Force because you you can't just I like it I like that so let's get back to this rat situation I'm sorry I didn't mean to go off on a table no don't worry about that no no no no no need to apologize at all I wanted to explain how Critical Hits and failures work so um when we're dealing with a critical hit it the base effect of it is just roll your damage as normal and double the result now there are some things that don't double like there's some some specific types of damage that don't double like if you get some bonus damage that only shows up on a critical hit that doesn't automatically double um so for example there are some uh you know weapons that are like oh on a critical hit this does a d10 fire damage um that doesn't automatically double but most other damage just doubles so if you were to roll a critical hit here it would be a D6 plus four and then you would just take whatever that total is and double it okay um so the damn the the bonus the the damage bonus also doubles yep everything about it just you just deal double damage um so yeah and we don't roll twice we we just roll once and and double the result so that it can be kind of swinging you can roll really high and be like okay well I deal 30. um or you can roll really low and like be like well I did six nothing is worse than making an attack roll and being like well I rolled a one on the damage so uh like if this rat critically hit you and I rolled the one it'd be like take four I wouldn't really play out too well um right so so uh there are you always want to be aware of what critical uh effects you have floating around some weapons when you become more skilled at them have critical specialization effects based on the type of weapon it is all that sort of stuff so in this case um you know you would roll a D6 plus four you can go ahead and roll the damage um it doesn't doesn't matter the rat's about to die um nine points of damage and if that was a critical hit that would have been 18 it would have one shot at the rat in one hand no that would have been awesome the rat is a pretty Minor Threat so you don't have to worry about it too much this is also a good time though for us to talk about add-on effects that happen based on conditions in fact you get one that we overlooked because it was flat-footed against this attack which means you get to apply your sneak attack damage because Rogues have a special ability that says deal a D6 damage whenever you're attacking a flat-footed foe um so you can go ahead and bounce me another D6 and that would get added on and If This Were a critical hit that would get doubled as well so now we're up to 11 turning into 22 you stab the rat so hard it's children die like it's not so that rat's super dead so um but this this is the thing that the rat has as well like have the rat managed to bite you it could have affected you infected you with filth fever a disease right and Phil fever uh it being an Affliction is something that it's not going to hurt you right away but over the coming days you would start to get sick and start taking damage and it could eventually kill you um it is a deadly disease so you would have to try and make fortitude saves to kind of get over the disease and has a rogue uh that's not good that's gonna be tricky um so yeah so that's how that works now in our in in our last session Dan one of the things that we talked about was spells and how spells function they function in combat just kind of like any other action most of them take two action to cast they have a range sometimes they'll ask for an attack roll or they'll require the opponent to make a saving throw um these things work just like all the other checks we've been talking about you can get critical hits you can get critical failures on saving throws a lot of spell effects have a have a listing in them that says this is a basic save you most often see this with like spells that deal damage so like burning hands says you know deal uh you know a couple D of fire damage couple dice of fire damage but a basic reflex save can reduce the damage and what that means is when they say basic what they mean is on a critical success you take no damage on a success you take half damage on a failure you take full damage and on a critical failure you take double damage that's what a basic save me so those sorts of things will pop up in combat now you've managed to defeat this this rat here Dan so I'm going to go ahead and take it off the board but let's say the rat had a friend oh wait what is that that is a cinder rat Dan oh no granny appleneese had a far more powerful creature lurking in her basement and really briefly here we're just going to we're just going to have the cinder rat play with you for for a moment and this is it we're not going to count this this is Jason this is this is an example you will notice the cinder rat has 45 hit points it's a level three creature uh so uh uh-oh is uh is what you should be thinking about now the rats uh this rat uh comes crawling up out of the tunnel uh and and sneaks up on you uh really quickly we're not going to bother uh we're gonna go ahead and roll its initiative here so let me go ahead and add its turn select it and roll initiative and it gets at 28. and uh first action I'm gonna have it move up to that spot so that'll be one of its actions because it was in the tunnel uh you didn't see it sneaking up and the moment it gets next to you you can notice that this Burning rat is emitting terrible fumes fetid fumes in fact uh everyone in the area is concealed by the smoke however the rat can see through the smoke um and you need to make a fortitude save oh cool yeah as you start inhaling the deadly smoke from the evil rat that is a critical failure Jason I'd like to use my hero point please very well I will let you use your hero Point hero points are a thing in Pathfinder second edition you start each session with one hero point and you can spend your hero point at any point in time to re-roll a roll you can also use a hero point when you're unconscious uh to stop yourself from dying but uh you know what uh we won't worry about whether or not you're dying right now you're just gonna make this saving throw against the cinder Rat Smoke so go ahead and re-roll your fortitude safe I'm not even gonna look it's gonna be so good it's gonna be amazing well it's it's plus five so so the upside is Dan it's no longer a critical failure it's just a failure God damn it yay look who's not a critical failure anymore [ __ ] that Mom whatever the second condition uh basically just gives you a penalty on all your D20 rules okay so there's that that it was its first action for its second action it is going to attempt to bite you with its flaming rat Jaws here they come it sounds like you're just making that up on this okay come on I am not uh bites you uh armor class 21 is going to hit and as yeah and you are going to take 11 points of damage now this dealt uh let's see here it dealt uh uh let's see 1d8 plus four fire damage I rolled a seven so you took 11 damage and you are now on fire well thank you Jason it's just good to hear we today we just say you're fire like that's usually how you say it that's what the kids like to say so I yeah I'm sure I'm sure you do so you are now on fire and uh you are sickened by the smoke that was its second action it's gonna go ahead and take its third action to attempt to bite you again oh good for you good for you [Applause] is yep that misses all right so uh that was the the the the Flaming rats turn come to avenge it's Fallen brethren you now get to go Dan uh all right I'm gonna twin faint with my Spear and my short sword awesome I mean this is a total Rocky moment right now yeah the orchestra is swelling up behind me I've got Burgess Meredith over in the corner being like you got this Silo don't give up it's your thing you're too time to shine and I'm just I'm just doing it yeah that's this is Granny Apple needs looks down from up above is everything okay down there shut up granny I'm busy right now uh all right that is what's my bonus that's uh 16 16. hey 16 is going to miss your your spear does not manage to connect with the rat it is too it is too tricky for you it's also hard to see so that even if you do score a hit we're gonna have to do a flat check to see if it actually if it actually does make it because it's concealed in the Smoke ah cramp okay so now that does not uh because I missed the first one twin faint is off the table now because he's not flat-footed to me I have to hit with both of them to make sure no the second one still counts as flat-footed even though yeah I didn't no I didn't know that okay so this is going to be a plus three to hit yes and this is with my short sword this is the second attack with my short sword plus three yep uh 15. 15 is going to miss and you're sickened so technically it's one less uh so uh you you uh stab out at the rat twice but do not manage to hit either time uh you have one action remaining Dan okay probably forever um you can run under that table you're short enough can I yeah okay uh wait I assume I can't get through this way because of the barrels right no let's say no okay that's fair uh all right I'm gonna do this this and then uh this I'm gonna try to get up to there okay around basically just going around okay all right you make it to there the rat goes it's going to follow you up to the stairs right there it has to move to do so and then it's going to attempt to bite you the whole time I'm screaming granny grinning up police please come save me God save me from this [ __ ] thing so I did also forget Dan that you're on fire and took fire damage at the end of your turn but it oh that's true it's not going to matter because the rat comes up and bites you again and reduces you to below zero Jason wait let's let's look at the numbers let's do the math you never know don't just assume so my my AC is 18 um let me look at what you did yeah I'm flocked that actually I know all right so you're gonna go ahead and take another 12 points of damage uh that's going to take you to negative three but we don't go to negatives in path right you just drop to zero so this gives us a chance to talk about how death and dying works so the way death and dying works is that when you're reduced to zero hit point your initiative moves to right before the creature that knocked you down um in this way if there were multiple participants in the combat everybody else would get to take a turn before you it got back to your turn and you might die um so what happens is if you get knocked to zero you go to dying one if you get knocked to Zero by a critical hit you instead go to dying too when it comes back to your turn if no one has helped you you make what's called a flat check a flat check is just rolling a D20 and you're trying to get above a certain number now in this case that number is uh I believe it's 10 plus your dying condition if I recall correctly let me double check 10 or 11. so what ends up happening is you end up having to make uh the flat check uh it's dc10 plus your current dime value uh that I was right uh so in this case you make the flat check if you succeed on the flat check your dying value is reduced by one if it goes to zero you're just unconscious and stable um if you get a critical success it decreases by two if you get a failure it increases by one and if you get a critical failure it increases by two and if your dying value ever gets to four you die okay so that is how that works now you have fallen unconscious and the door upstairs opens and Granny aplinis throws a bucket of water down the stairs scaring off the Cinderella the cinder rat flees back into the sewer it doesn't like water it's terrified of water so it flees back under the into the sewers and isn't is is is is a threat we will deal with on another day you will have to hunt down and avenge yourself against that rat uh but it does get back to your turn so let's go ahead and do a recovery check so go ahead and just bounce me a D20 Dan and the target number you're trying to get here is 11. you just need 11 or higher easy I got this yeah it oh it was almost a 20. it was so close now an eight means that your dying value would increase by one so you would go from dying one to dying two now other folks can come in and try and help you they can try and heal you if anyone gives you any healing you're no longer dying you don't have to worry about it you regain Consciousness um if you were to stabilize then you'd just be unconscious for a little while and could possibly wake up later on your own so that even if you were in a dungeon and you you know you kill the monster but because you're on fire you fall unconscious um you know you could still find yourself in a situation where you're unconscious in a dungeon by yourself but may wake up a few hours later but it's not a good situation to be in uh because if anything finds you while you're laying there like that you make for an easy snack now there's another thing that's important to note let's say Granny Apple needs comes downstairs and feeds you a healing potion because she can certainly do that but in this case in her case she's feeding you a healing cookie they just came out of the oven they're they're delicious they're uh cinnamon raisin cookies and uh she feeds oatmeal cinnamon raisin cookies and she feeds you one of those and it heals you for some some some some damage uh so let's say it just heals you for a D4 you would roll that and that's how many hit points you would be but when you come back from being unconscious like that you gain the wounded condition and the wounded condition doesn't really do much to you unless you fall unconscious again so the wounded condition just sits there saying that you have taken some Grievous harm and if you fall unconscious again you're gonna die easy so the wounded condition adds to your dying the next time you fall unconscious so you would get wounded one if you fall unconscious again you would immediately go to wounded two or wounded three on a critical hit if you then came back to Consciousness again your wounded condition would go up by one to two which means on a critical hit if you got knocked out to zero with the wounded two condition you would go straight to dying for and die okay okay so that's it's cumulative it it and and to reset that it'd be like a long rest or something so the way to reset that is to use the medicine skill uh the medicine skill can remove your wounded condition and that's covered in the in the in the medicine skill under treat deadly wounds you can go in there and Patch someone up but that takes a minimum of like 10 minutes to do so it's not something you can do in a fight so generally speaking in Pathfinder second edition once you get knocked unconscious you have to start playing carefully because now you're in serious you're in serious danger of dying it is very easy for characters to slip away uh because no one was able to get to them and they just kept failing that Flack check there are very few ways to be better at that flat check one of them is you can you can take a feat that changes it so that you don't die on dying for you die on dying five like that's it there's no good way to monkey with that flat check this is another place though that you can spend your hero points if you're unconscious and have any hero points left you don't right now but if you had any hero points left you can spend all of them to automatically stabilize and not be dying um uh okay all right so it's that's kind of why it's a good just in case have a hero point because correct you only have one left and it's going to be one hero point to stabilize and you'll be okay correct okay now in this in this combat we had a lot of bad things going for you technically you were still on fire and whatnot but we'll we'll assume that granny granny Apple needs when she threw the bucket of water down the stairs also put up your fire uh the rat uh so uh you regain Consciousness on granny Applebee's doil lead couch with a plate of delicious oatmeal raisin cookies at your side and a warm glass of milk granny is super happy that you managed to get rid of the Rat down there and she's already called some Foreman to come by and seal the hole so that this deadly problem never happens again and that is the end of little Adventure yay so there we go Dan that's how combat works empathy that makes sense that makes sense um is the uh so now really really quick uh what sort of uh so so we're done I almost died I'm recuperating what sort of things would I get from a long rest what sort of things would I get from a short rest things like that first so what like my HP the way that that works and and we don't really frame them as long or short rests you can rest overnight and heal hit points right um You Know You by resting overnight you do heal naturally some hit points and you can even heal more if you've got folks helping you um one of the things that you can do one of the most common things that folks do after a fight um is they use the medicine skill to patch up wounds so the medicine skill has a a feature in it that takes 10 minutes that is just treat deadly wounds and if you succeed you can heal a whole bunch of hit points and it's not magical healing and you can get that right after the fight um but once you've gotten it you're immune to it for an hour so that you cannot do more of it right away the the wounds need time to kind of sit and Stitch and and you know the bruises need time to to to pan out before you can do more of it so there is like when you're adventuring in a dungeon you have to kind of decide do we need to go fast do we need to get to the end of this quickly or should we take it slow and deliberately and make sure folks have as many hit points as we can give them between fights it's a it's a balancing act you you have to kind of weigh how much time you have how much time there is in the day between what kind of risk you're willing to take and sometimes the adventure isn't going to like them right oh you're in a dungeon where you're being chased by a uh tribe of kobolds that are intent upon hunting you down and you're running from room to room to room and you can't stop and take a breather you have to just keep pushing on so um you know there are times where those sorts of tactical considerations and of give way in this case Granny Apple niece was more than happy to bandage up your wounds and send you on your way with your tidy pouch filled with silver for a job well done um even though she had to save me she still paid me which I respect that that's that's cool Granny Apple needs is is nothing if not true to her word so we're definitely putting her on the NPC list there yeah there we go we're coming back to Granny Apple niece that's right all right folks uh that is about all we have here today I want to thank everybody for stopping by and uh watching all these videos uh here and on YouTube uh we have seen a phenomenal outpouring of of comments and sharing and likes and I really do appreciate it I do hope that while you're here you subscribe to the channel uh that does help me out quite a bit and you know throw some likes around on these videos anything uh helps uh more folks see this come so that's all I have for today folks Dan I want to thank you for uh being my guinea pig as always absolutely thank you both man yeah thank you folks uh hope you've enjoyed these we'll be back next week with more thanks for watching we will see you next time [Music] [Music]

Channel: Jason Bulmahn

Views: 11,788

Keywords: Pathfinder 2E Adventure, pathfinder 2e combat example, pathfinder 2e combat tutorial, Pathfinder 2E Combat, Pathfinder Second Edition, Pathfinder 2E, Pathfinder Game Master Tips, Pathfinder Gameplay, Pathfinder vs dnd, dnd5e, D&D5e, Pathfinder dnd difference, dnd, d&D, Pathfinder New GM, Pathfinder New Player, RPG Combat, Pathfinder Rogue, Understanding Combat Pathfinder, Critical Hit, is parthfinder different, PF2E Combat, Pathfinder Combat, Combat in Pathfinder 2E

Id: s-uavqtnk4o

Length: 74min 37sec (4477 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 07 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/JasonBulmahn]

Just realized I did not pun up the title at all this week. I have critically failed you...

[u/Top_Appointment_5965]

How does PF2 combat work? Simple answer - really well! My work here is done ;-)

[u/Yuven1]

Looking forward to this!