Top 5 GM MISTAKES in Pathfinder 2e

howdy my name is nonat and pathfinder second edition is not a simple game especially as a game master there is so much going on under the hood that it's easy to get overwhelmed this can lead to some semi-serious mistakes that can really lower the quality of your game sessions well i'm here today to talk about 5 of the most common mistakes made by game masters and how we can fix them and before we get started you can avoid making a mistake right now by scrolling down and hitting that red subscribe button that way you won't miss any more videos coming out of this channel and how about we make a deal right now if you at any time have committed any of the mistakes on this list you need to leave a like on the video deal deal number one not giving out enough magic items now this sounds like a weird thing to call a mistake but for pathfinder specifically it is and i've felt the repercussions of this one before unlike other systems pathfinder second edition is actually balanced around your characters gaining magic items as they level up to keep up with the creatures they fight this is especially true for martial characters as without runes on their weapons their damage and accuracy is going to fall off hard this is because unbeknownst to a lot of people monsters scale as though they were also getting runes on their weapons take a look at any monster higher than level 5 and you'll see they're dealing multiple damage dice with every attack this is similar to the striking rune characters can get on their weapons monster accuracy also scales way faster than most players as a level 1 kobold scout is already an expert proficiency with their weapon the most important thing you can do to fix this mistake is make sure your characters at least have access to fundamental runes fundamental runes are specifically potency for accuracy with weapons or armor class with armor striking for additional damage and resilience for bonuses to saving throws for martial characters these runes might as well be mandatory to keep up with the massive hit point pools of high level monsters as well as their increasingly higher armor class the easiest way to do this is to have a city that they can easily get to and the blacksmith there is always able to upgrade their weapons and apply runes to their current equipment or you can always do the classic you open the treasure chest and you found an exact copy of the weapon you usually wield but this one's stronger as silly and coincidental as this sounds it's usually the way to go as nobody ever thinks wow that's a coincidence but the person's usually like yes an upgraded elven glaive that we somehow found in this dwarven tomb i'll take it it's always fun and everyone always has a blast if you don't like giving out magic items like this and you want sort of a grittier less resourceful campaign consider using the automatic progression variant rule i'm not going to go into too much detail here but automatic progression basically lets your characters advance even if they never get new equipment it's easily one of my favorite variant rules in the entire system if you haven't seen it i talked about this rule in my variant rule tier list i released a few months back you can actually check it up right there in the corner if you haven't seen it i recommend it number two attacking way too many times this is easily one of the most common mistakes that i've made my friends have made and every gm i've ever talked to has made a monster starts its turn adjacent to a player character so it attacks and then attacks again and then attacks a third time at a -10 multiple attack penalty usually critically missing don't do this most creatures are smart enough to know that flailing wildly attacking three times at once isn't going to hit and if they're smart enough may even recognize that it will usually end in a critical failure letting some classes like swashbucklers actually make attacks back with these obvious openings it may be easy to just keep it simple and attack attack attack with all of your enemies but trust me get creative with it and your combats will become instantly more engaging than they were before first off check if the monster you're using has any interesting abilities or skills that don't have the attack trait spells with a saving throw breath weapons or other monster abilities even if these abilities don't do as much damage as their normal attacks since they're saving throws and not attack roles they're more likely to do something and the creature would usually be smart enough to use those in conjunction with their normal attacks if they don't have any abilities like this remember that all monsters do have skill proficiencies just like players this means they can demoralize with intimidation hide with the stealth action or make a faint with the deception action these are far more interesting and far more effective than just attacking at that huge -10 penalty on top of that it'll also keep your players on their toes if they're suddenly getting inflicted by conditions or enemies are ducking out of sight and vanishing now there are times where flailing makes sense especially if the monster has an incredibly low ability score or just instinctively fights like that sure go for it attacking three times in a row makes sense if a boar or a wolf is just assaulting a player go for it beasts like that are usually going to just attack as often as possible or run away speaking of running away there's a little bonus tip for you speaking of running away monsters want to live too never forget that if a kobold just lost half its health and its two allies were just crushed by barbarians with great hammers chances are he's not gonna keep fighting let the kobold run or surrender or beg for mercy but don't drag on the combat just to have the kobold's turn come up poke someone for four damage and then miss two more times in a row just so we can finally get back to the barbarian so we can squish that kobold too this will wrap your combat up faster and in a more interesting way rather than a normal okay you want to loot the bodies you find four gold now they have a hostage or they can role play about keeping him or letting him go and there's this immersion where just because the combat is over the encounter is not number three making monsters too smart a lot of gm's make dumb monsters way too smart dumb monsters can be anything from stupid thugs to a brainless undead or even the aforementioned wolves and boars and beasties i've seen gm's use these monsters in really cruel ways just to make the encounter more difficult for difficulty's sake they namely do this with flanking the biggest problem with this is just how immersion breaking this can be if you stumble across a graveyard with some mindless undead just wandering around they see you and then they start to attack and then these zombies suddenly start positioning themselves so they're they're perfectly flanking each of your party members and not just going after them like mindless undead would do it takes you out of the scene sure if there was a necromancer or someone behind the scenes puppeteering and commanding these zombies to do it i'll buy it that's a cool twist but if it doesn't lead to that and the zombies just flank because it is the most mechanically optimal thing to do it's not going to be super believable the same thing applies to animals wolves would not inherently flank they're actually balanced around this with their pack attack feature pack attack allows wolves to deal 1d4 bonus damage on all of their attacks as long as there are two more wolves adjacent to the target they don't need to be flanking for this but if you have four wolves suddenly all flank perfectly around the same character well those wolves are now critically hitting fairly often if they're equal or higher level and those crits are doing an average of 14 points of damage per hit not to mention their subsequent attacks also being more accurate if your level 1 characters are fighting these wolves that will almost kill an average level 1 character maybe drop them to 3 or 4 hit points so be careful when making unintelligent creatures use combat strategy because they're often designed to hit hard enough that they don't need it like i said it could be a cool twist to find someone behind the scenes puppeteering it but if there's no reason and they're just flanking for flanking's sake it's a little annoying hey so did you know that these videos are made possible thanks to the over 80 patrons over on the known at one's patreon yeah these awesome guys scrolling by my head and a bunch more it's thanks to these incredibly generous folks that i'm able to do this for a living and bring you all that pathfinder content you clearly so crave and hey if you want to help me keep doing this upgrade the channel improve the quality of everything i do consider clicking the link in the pinned comment below to get taken to the no not one's patreon not only does your pledge benefit the channel but it also nets you some really cool benefits depending on the tier you pledge to the most popular of which is definitely my custom pathfinder 2nd edition homebrew i've already released a bunch of unique subclasses and there's even more to come if you pledge high enough you'll also get your name in the credits of videos just like the folks who are scrolled by so if any of that sounds interesting to you or you just want to support the channel click the link in the pinned comment below you won't be disappointed number four not using hazards use hazards there are so many cool hazards pre-written for you in the pathfinder 2 e-books poisoned locks electric runes hidden pits evil mirrors toxic molds and way more and they're so easy to come up with on your own too a magical rune can literally contain any spell that can have whatever trigger you want or you can tie up any weapon to release when a pressure plate is hit and just deal that weapon's damage to whoever triggers the trap on top of hazards just being fun to use they also make exploration more exciting and tense if the party is just meandering from room to room to room fighting monster and monster and monster the entire dungeon diving experience just gets incredibly stale hazards add that extra layer of fear that makes the dungeon itself feel like an enemy of the party plus nothing feels better than a player being able to roll perception high enough to spot the trap and save the lives of their allies by pointing it out sometimes you can even create an entire non-combat encounter simply based around a single hazard whether they trigger it or not a 100 foot hallway filled with spear launchers is going to take some thinking to get around and lets your players think outside the box from a non-combat perspective it also makes getting to the next room way more interesting so use hazards folks they're seriously fun for everyone involved just don't put a hazard around every corner once the party starts expecting the traps that's when you pull back just long enough for them to get comfortable again and then you spring another one so they never feel safe number five relying too much on the rules this one is easily the most controversial on the list and i know people in the comments are gonna get at me for it but it's what i believe if you focus on making sure every action taken by every character follows the exactly correct rule to a t your game is going to grind to a standstill i am speaking from experience because that is how many of my sessions went when i was learning the system trying to remember the climb dc of a slightly rocky wall or exactly which skill has to be used to identify specific monsters doesn't matter just pick something and keep going sure maybe trolls are technically supposed to be identified with the nature skill but the wizard wants to roll arcana let them just let them roll and see what happens maybe the fighter wants to jump kick off the wall and make a cool jumping attack onto an enemy but they don't have the sudden leap feet well let them have them roll athletics and even if you don't even remember how jumping works in pathfinder just let them roll you determined they're on the spot did they roll high enough cool make the attack roll did they roll it too cool you jump and kick the wall and stub your toe that's it you lose the actions you just make decisions on the fly it keeps the action going and it makes everything so much more fun fluid and memorable there are tons of people out there who are going to be concerned of players abusing this to do things that are usually locked behind feats by abusing the rule of cool well i have something to say if you're abusing the rule of cool to win at a tabletop rpg you got a few more problems to worry about i've been guilty multiple times of saying oh no you can't do that there's a feat for that so i i can't let you do that and i felt awful every single time i've had to say that telling my players no is the last thing i like to do even if it's against the rules even if it's something they don't technically have let them try let them roll for a chance to make this cool one-of-a-kind action happen at the end of the day it's a game of make-believe if the gnome rogue wants to run up the troll's leg bounce off and throw dirt in the troll's eyes i'm letting him do it roll me athletics climb up that make me a ranged attack roll let's see how this goes and those are the top five most common mistakes i see gm's making in pathfinder second edition now if you make these mistakes does it mean you're a bad game master no not at all it means you're human these mistakes are incredibly easy to make but the important thing is that you learn how to fix them if you can do that your games will be smoother more fun and way more memorable but please be honest down in the comments have you made these mistakes have you been on the receiving end of a gm making those mistakes i want to hear your stories because those stories are always the best part of releasing these videos so thank you all so very much for watching i hope you all have a wonderful rest of your day and until next time no now

Channel: Nonat1s

Views: 61,143

Keywords: Pathfinder, Pathfinder 2e, Pathfinder Second Edition, Advanced Player's Guide, Pathfinder 2e APG, Nonat1s, Pathfinder 2e Nonat1s, Pathfinder 2e Level 1, Pathfinder 2e new features, Pathfinder 2e New Ancestries, Pathfinder 2e Gamemastery Guide, Pathfinder 2e Beginner's Guide, Pathfinder 2e GM tips, Pathfinder 2e game master, Pathfinder 2e gm guide, pathfinder gm mistakes, pathfinder 2e mistakes, pathfinder 2e top 5, top 5 gm mistakes, pathfinder second edition top 5 mistakes

Id: 24n3zsCnyi8

Length: 14min 44sec (884 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 07 2021