Watch a LEVEL 20 BOSS FIGHT in Pathfinder 2e! | Does high-level play WORK?!

hi i am ronald the rules lawyer if you play dungeons and dragons or some other high fantasy tabletop role playing game and are frustrated by high level play and want to tell those high level stories without the system bogging down then you should definitely try pathfinder 2nd edition in today's video we will walk through a combat that is by a level 20 party facing a solo boss creature and in dnd 5th edition the most popular system today it's well known that gameplay breaks down after say level 10 and nearly every published adventure put out by wizards of the coast does not go beyond level 10 or 12. in fact the recent adventure that deals with hell and taking on leaders of hell doesn't go past level 13 which speaks to the designers feeling that level 14 adventurers perhaps are not challenged by hell and also not finding not feeling that gameplay at those levels is fun enough to justify a longer adventure in hell and many pathfinder second edition players talk to people who play other games and say well try the system high level play works and there's a lot of incredulity from people because there hasn't really been a system that i have experienced or heard of that makes high-level play work without it bogging down or having one of several problems there are common complaints about high-level play in fifth edition and other systems one is that it's not easy to balance encounters and so you get a dichotomy of encounters being either too short too easy uh particularly when you build up a big villain boss that the party has been waiting for solo boss creatures in 5e often need to be given ways to cheat the system such as having extra actions such as legendary actions or being able to ignore magic that would shut it down through legendary saves in order to provide a fun and challenging fight and even after that happens a well-prepared party could still shut it down completely and make it kind of anti-climactic it the battle could be determined by a single critical role in the alternative you can have the monsters in 5e often are given many hit points to account for the fact that a boss monster has fewer actions than the party does have it being only a single character and so they're given more hit points and some other advantages that have the function of dragging out combat making and it can be a slog and not be tense or fun and this makes it very difficult for gm's who want to create a tense experience while not killing the party and who often are made to fudge dice hide their dice rolling give hit points secretly to the monsters behind the screens or research videos or the internet to look for homebrew monsters that can solve this problem and even when you do that work you're still improvising so that's one common complaint that gets worse as plague gets into higher levels another common complaint about high level play and other systems is that it becomes too complex that the party members are able to do more things per turn and there are more things to keep track of more persistent effects that are easy to forget more abilities that react off of things that happen that you realize much too late you could have used and that it becomes harder to manage and that the mathematics can get too complex and in additions previous to 5th edition you often had many modifiers to keep track of and many persistent buff spells that the party would cast before a combat and it became way too much for the gm and the players to keep track of another common complaint about high level play is that the math gets out of control so for example uh player characters often have a greater ability to affect the math in the party's favor to give ever greater buffs to give advantage to each other to have magic items so that they only need to roll a five or higher on their d20 roll to hit an enemy and if they had have advantage on that role it's pretty much a done deal the opposite of that is that if someone targets a weak saving throw of another creature then you're pretty much assured that that creature will fail their saving throw and so even before you roll the d20 you kind of know what the results gonna be and there is just less suspense before you roll the die in our example combat today it will be a level 20 party facing an extreme encounter facing a great worm red dragon that is level 24. so if you haven't yet like and subscribe to my channel i am the rules lawyer i am a lawyer who runs and teaches games with kids and teens tabletop role-playing games and this channel is devoted to teaching and popularizing pathfinder second edition and talking about rpgs so we will have a level 20 party facing a extreme encounter and according to the charts in the core rulebook an extreme encounter is approximately equal in power according to the game's math to the party and there's theoretically a 50 50 chance for the party to succeed and we accomplish this simply by having a monster that is four levels higher than the party i absolutely recommend that gm's never do a monster four levels higher than a low level party uh this is going to be a party that is going to be more capable of dealing with higher level threats because it is higher level and has more tools such as powerful magic spells to bend the math in its in its way still besides that caveat the encounter building system generally works and i would say this extreme encounter feels somewhere between severe and extreme because the party is at level 20. i will also warn viewers that if you have not seen pathfinder high level play in action this will seem like there is a lot going on and that's fair first p players who will have reached level 20 and the gm will already be used to their players abilities and running high-level monsters and so this would give a impression that's a uh that actually you wouldn't you wouldn't be quite so overwhelmed let's say if you actually were in a campaign that built up to level 20 naturally the first thing to comment on is that for the game master it was quite easy to make an extreme encounter there is a level 20 party so to have a single boss character that is an extreme encounter it needs to be level 24. there aren't many level 24 monsters admittedly but all i had to do was take a similar monster in this case the ancient red dragon which is level 19 and then refer to the charts in the game masters guide which are also free online to change the numbers i just found the row uh for level 19 for a course a specific statistic and then looked down five rows and saw what level 24 would be if you look closely you'll see that the numbers have been changed to make it a level 24 creature all of the special abilities are exactly the same but the math has changed our story begins with our party who are the heroes of the land and their nation has lived in fear of the next time the great legendary red dragon will come the party in preparation not knowing when this attack will fall has made sure to prepare so when they hear that the the village a village has been attacked they uh they muster themselves and cast teleport which takes 10 minutes before they can get to the vicinity and they see from the distance smoke rising and they see that the village is already burning and that dragon in the distance is about to make another pass so they hurry forward and find some buildings that they can take cover from and cast some preparatory spells to buff themselves in other systems there would be a huge number of buff spells they could they could cast at this time and fifth edition has lessened this problem through the concentration mechanic where each caster can have only one spell that requires concentration at a time what pathfinder 2e does is it makes a lot of such spells only last one minute so you can have multiple spells at once going on but they don't last more than 10 rounds and often you will not know when a battle will start exactly uh within the next minute but there are some spells that have a little longer duration which to cast now pooh garclera casts invisibility which lasts 10 minutes until he does a hostile action so he is focused on supporting and protecting the party and keeping himself not seen while he's doing so they will want to support valoros in being the key damage dealer and he casts a heightened version of heroism so that valoros gets a plus three on all of his attacks and saving throws and skill checks also they have given themselves the ability to fly uh to uh poog that the spellcasters have armor runes that let them do that and esrin has cast fly on mauricio and valaros and will last that will last five minutes for them they also poog has also cast a heightened resist fire that lets him protect five creatures and give them resistance 15 to fire damage there's another ability they know the dragon has which all dragons have which is frightful presence uh it will terrify anyone who first sees it and so valoros has an ability that lets him inspire them through his leadership and gives them a bonus against fear effects as well as a little more a few more temporary hit points so uh they are now taking cover behind this building and they are all trying to not be seen at the moment with the exception of he'll be focusing on defending himself by raising his shield but he wants to be visible to the dragon meanwhile mauricio is doing two things at once during exploration mode she's both trying to not be noticed as well as scouting and that's something she's able to do through a high level feat so the combat begins the dragon's about 200 feet away and it's gonna fly forward this villager wants to be a hero and fi shoots an arrow towards it and rolls a natural 20 and uh he has a bonus of 18. so because the armor class of the creep of the dragons 53 and he rolled a 38 that would be normally a critical failure and his natural 20 raises that to a regular failure so he unfortunately will not hit the dragon it bounces off the dragon's chest and he's not going to be the hero he had hoped to be and he probably should take cover and he should probably should have seen my tactics video we will see his fate soon and it continues to fly forward and uh has a domineering presence everyone must now uh valoros with his leadership ability uh reminds everyone of their responsibility to the people and so everyone in the party because of his feet gets a plus two to their will saves not the stranger though so uh the number they have to beat to beat its draconic frightful presence is 47. beware they all make will saving throws which is the saving throw against mental effects so legendary poog has a 52 he succeeds but as a high level cleric he has the equivalent of evasion for will saves he has a critical success and is unaffected by it even a regular success would have an effect the four degrees of success system works in may with many effects in 2e uh next is ezran who rolls a 45 really a 47 so he also succeeds because of the bonus from valoros and so he also has that ability it's called resolve and so he's unaffected also mauricio rolls a 36 which would critically fail because it's at least 10 lower than the number she needs however that's without the buff from valoros it becomes a 38 and so therefore she gets the regular failure effect of frightened two frightened means that she will have a minus two penalty on all of her attacks and saving throws and defenses and dc's but it fades away round by round valoros rose a 50 given his buff and so he would regularly succeed and be frightened one but because he's a fighter he has the bravery class feature and is unaffected also however our friend or the stranger um rolled a 31 critically failed he is now frightened for so even though he's level seven and a hero among his people um he will not survive this probably uh the dragon gets closer and sees that valeros is wearing a magical very scary blindfold a dread blindfold and so he the dragon needs to make a will save of his own it's not a level 20 item still it's a high level item he needs a 37 and he easily succeeds he has a plus 42 bonus on his will save so the um uh he's not affected by the dread blindfold he flies to where he wants to go and he's now gonna unleash his breath on these buildings that the people are secondary and he will do 25 d6 fire damage to a 60-foot cone area so we'll affect this area and it will do 25 d6 fire damage 86 potential fire damage on them and it cannot use it again for one to four rounds after this and they will have to make reflex saves the those that are taking cover have a greater cover bonus plus four so the we got a cool magical or animation effect uh that you will see and they will now have to make saving throws [Music] now esrim i believe is not in this area of the breath and they here we go so mauricio rolls a 51 the number they have to beat is 49. mauricio succeeds and because she has evasion she gets zero damage valoros rolls 42 which is really 46 and is going to take 86 fire damage uh he has a special ability to use his shield to block it but he doesn't have a reaction yet because the dragon one initiative an initiative by the way like nearly every stat that a creature that the creatures have and the characters have includes their level so a high level monster will probably win initiative so valoros takes 86 fire damage however the resist fire spell that was cast on them earlier means that this is only uh this is reduced by 15 and the temporary hit points that he gave himself and everybody also helps also legendary poog rolled in natural 20. that's what the green means so he'll take zero damage and hunter rolled a natural nine which will be 22 he will critically fail and take 172 damage and he is down he will not uh uh survive the buildings now are on fire and they're starting to produce smoke and the areas above the smoke will be make everything concealed within it next is mauricio who wants to spend an action to try to hide to all enemies which if successful would make her supernaturally invisible to everybody and even common effects like glitter dust would not be able to reveal her so she is a little frightened right now which will make this a little harder she's gonna spend an action role stealth 54 beats the dc of 52 that she needs so she's now invisible and uh she will now try to move forward she's going to sneak forward because she does not she she has the special okay the dragon has sent 60 feet and would still know what square she's in because of that ability but she has an ability that lets her foil senses at all times it's always considered she's always considered to be foiling scent if she successfully sneaks so she will now do that as well she's going to stealth forward a 50 will not succeed so she's going to be hidden to the dragon she spends two one action to fly forward she has a 40 foot fly speed and the dragon senses her approach but will not attack her because she's invisible and he would have a 50 chance of completely whiffing with her last action well she entered its aura so she's gonna have to do a reflex save against 46 she needs a reflex safe of 46 to try to lessen this damage she fails and the damage is 15 however as a high level rogue she has improved evasion so that's reduced by half to seven and the fire resistance she has from poog negates all of that so because she's invisible to the dragon she it is flat footed to her it has a minus two penalty to ac she needs to hit 51 and yeah it's going to be a tough fight she needs she has a plus 34 bonus so that will miss next oh and her frightened value goes down at the end of her turn goes down by one this dragon by the way has an elevation of 10 feet did it flown down to building level okay valeros is gonna wants to draw its melee attacks to him because it's going to be spending some time to reach before it recharges its breath so he raises his shield which is normally something that a character has to do every turn to get its plus two bonus and potentially shield block which he as a fighter has but he has a special feat that lets him stay in this stance for the for a until the end of the battle and then uh with his shield raised he will now fly forward the dragon has a has a long reach with its jaws it has an attack of opportunity and when valoros leaves the square that his its jaws threaten so this square he will be attacked and the dragon will try to hit valorosa's armor class of 46. here come the jaws all right it rolls at 19 total 64. that's a critical hit so the critical hit damage will be it's doubled everything gets doubled including the flat bonus 142 28 of that is fire the fire also doubled but poog's spell reduces 15 of that so this will be 127 damage valoros does not even consider using his shield to block any of this because it would likely get destroyed in the process so he will take 127 damage now he then continues this flight and it enters the dragon's aura he now has to do a reflex save against it and this will be 44. he fails and 22 would become seven after poog's spell he finally gets to his destination he has he's not as fast as murciel so this is a 30-foot speed that he's flying and he is now flanking the worm uh here comes a strike and hopefully it will hit hopefully it's a okay good he rolled a 55 so he um does his damage it's a plus three major striking shock holy greater frost long sword so it does different energy damage different types of energy damage and most importantly it does cold damage the cold damage in this strike is five even if you had rolled one coal damage it now triggers its weakness to coal damage of 25 which means that 25 coal damage is added to his damage so even though he just got hit hard he now is doing 74 damage to it in addition every minute he can use his dread blindfold to when he hits something uh cause the the creature to have to save against phantasmal killer to get a a nightmarish uh vision so if he will make the dragon needs to get a 37 so we'll probably succeed that's a critical success it's not affected okay also mauricio has a reaction every character gets one reaction per turn in addition to their three actions mauricio is going has opportune backstab whenever an ally of hers does a melee strike that lands an enemy that she can has reach on she can try to attack it also so here we go ah she does so 53 will hit the dragon and she'll get her damage and she is gonna get her sneak attack damage of 4d6 as well [Music] she also has greater debilitating strike so she gets to choose two different debuffs to impose on the dragon one is to make it in feeble one well first let's see the damage it's going to be 47 damage against the dragon first she's going to make an enfeebled one for a round no until the end of her next turn every rogue can debuff an enemy when they hit something that's flat-footed to them and she has some feats that let her do more in this case she will make the dragon enfeebled one until the end of her next turn so it's like a strength penalty for the dragon in addition she chooses to do an extra 2d6 precision precision damage to the dragon and that will be eight more damage so this is the end of valorosa's turn next is pug and the first thing he does is cast sanctuary on himself which lasts a minute which forces any enemy to have to make a will save to try to attack him he wants to not be hurt as a while in his healing supporting role he also makes no effort to sneak forward which would one slow him down but also he wants his allies to know what square he's in he will now be hidden to allies they know what he square what square he's in and that is three actions sanctuary was two actions okay ezran is going to fly here uh he has a 35 foot fly speed from his armor and uh then he he wants to spread out because this dragon has a breath attack oh and also because it just did a critical hit they know that this dragon will immediately get his breath weapon gap back so they're expecting it to use a breath weapon so from here he will well he would like to cast a seventh level haste spell which lets him target six creatures and give them the quickened condition a fourth action that they get at the start of their turn that they can use to either stride or strike and however it only has a range of 30 feet and valoros is quite a ways away he's going to have to use the reach metamagic feat which uh adds 30 feet to the range of his spell that he casts immediately after using it which takes one action however because he is a level 20 wizard he took a level 20 feet that lets him do this as a free action as well as any other meta magic feats he has so as a second action he will cast haste but it's going to have a 60 foot range so uh they now gain the quickened condition and for valoros he was already quickened uh but that action could only be used to strike now he has an extra option to also additionally possibly stride so ezran he's quickened though he doesn't get an immediate fourth action it's uh it affects how many actions he gains at the start of his turn i also forgot that he cannot see his ally so even though his this is an ally he because he's invisible he's hidden to ezra ezra needs to do a flat check to target him so he rolls a d20 and needs to get an 11 or higher he succeeds so he's able to cast it on pug so round two we uh the dragon is uh going to try to uh kill valoros so it will do draconic frenzy uh it's uses it two of its three actions to make three attacks so it's a special dragon ability first he's going to attack with his wing and here we go so a plus 42 this is 54 so the shield that valoros has raised has is preventing this from being a critical hit so um this is a regular hit and it does 40 damage valeros elects to use his shield block reaction so what this does is it subtracts the hardness of the shield 17 from the incoming damage so it becomes 23 damage 23 damage is dealt to valrose and to his shield as a high level fighter he has a feat where he has an extra reaction per round that can only be used for shield block so he actually could theoretically shield block twice because he still retains his generic reaction here comes the next attack it is going to be a claw okay this will also hit this will do 48 damage he is in trouble valoros will shield block this also because he has a third reaction which is dedicated to attack of opportunity he likes to attack of opportunity and doing a second shield block does not threaten that dedicated reaction so it doesn't use it up so shield block 31 damage to himself and 31 to his shield oh as i've applied it okay then uh now he actually has feet to actually shove an enemy or make them flat-footed while he blocks their blow but that only works against huge creatures and this is a gargantuan creature the dragon then tries to attack with its with a claw 42 will miss the last thing we'll do is fly away it's gonna fly way high and way away and uh valoros will get an attack of opportunity as it leaves and it is flanked to him because of the flanking yeah flat-footed to him and oh very good that is a 60. but this is a regular hit and he will now do more damage and we add 25 to that that is 64 damage very good uh and the dragon will fly away so uh maybe a height of 140. mauricio uh is quickened she has four actions so she uses one to move so she's gonna fly to valoros uh and she has the battle medicine feet lets her use one action to use healing tools she has one free hand so she's gonna uh there are different uh dc's she can do for more effective ones are harder to do but they heal more hit points she's going to do the hardest one which requires a 40 on her roll so uh she has a bonus of 32 i believe here we go and uh very good she uh rolls a 45 so she gets to heal 2d8 plus 50 health to valaros and she can do this on valeros once a day the next thing she does is she's going to sneak here and then try to take cover with your fourth action so that will give her a plus four bonus if this dragon does a breath attack so mauricio's frightened value goes away and now it is val rose's turn well he is quickened so he can fly twice up here and he wants to bait the dragon he wants it to get close to him because he wants to scare it to death he's going to use his last two actions to ready an action you can use two actions to ready a single action which scare to death is and we will see how that works uh but it has a 30 foot range so he wants to go up and uh in the air and once to include himself in its breath weapon so poo knows that this breath weapon's coming so he's going to fly right here a little higher so that he can reach everybody he can be within 30 feet of everybody and with his last three actions remember he's hasted he gets to cast a three-action version of blessing of defiance a very strong uh protective spell that will give all willing creatures within 30 feet a plus four status bonus to one saving throw for a round and this will be a reflex saving throw naturally next is ezran who will fly here and then use three actions to cast time stop and it his it's his one tenth level spell and it gives him nine actions in three sets of three to do whatever you want so long as it is not target an enemy so the first thing is he'll cast one of his focus spells he has three focus points and this is protective ward it gives a plus one to armor class and a five foot radius but he gets to spend additional actions to sustain it and increase the radius so he has enough actions to increase it to a 25 foot radius and uh here we go and in addition to that cast a mirror image on himself mirror image and he's also going to cast mantle of the frozen heart which is a spell that protects him if the dragon ever tries to do an unarmed strike against him the dragon will take cold damage and we've seen the power of that okay next is the dragon's turn and the dragon flies towards the party to breathe fire but when it gets within 30 feet of valoros valaros tries to scare it to death and scared to death can kill a creature however he would have to critically succeed um but that's not the only problem it's actually not possible to kill the dragon because it's higher level than he is because it has the incapacitation trait this is one way in which high level play stays manageable and balanced because it's incapacitation when he uses it against a higher level creature the higher level is treated as having one degree of success better against it this also can help the party in turn because let's say level 15 mage wants to polymorph valeros uh polymorph has the incapacitation trait so it would be impossible to for valoros to critically fail on his saving throw because of that so val rose tries to scare it to death here we go intimidation 55 so the number he needed to beat was 52 so this would be a regular success but because of incapacitation it becomes a regular failure the target becomes frightened one so frightened one okay so that's going to be a debuff on the breath weapon and now it flies here to let's say 55 feet above the um party and it's gonna breathe fire down on all of them so uh here we go again with the cool effects uh and um they all are now subjected to fire but he's breathing it downward uh so uh they now have to beat a dc of 48 instead of 49 because of the frightened condition so i'm gonna move the dragon to the side here y'all they're all going to make their reflex saves all right so um poog uh gave everyone a plus four status bonus to their saves so mauricio uh actually has a 49 plus she has cover so uh 53 a circumstance bonus from cover 53 succeeds and because she has evasion she takes zero damage uh legendary pug rules a 39 um he gives himself plus four to his due to his spell he fails so he will take full damage the full that damage is going to be 85 um 85 damage which is going to be reduced to 70 because of fire resistance so with valoros this is actually a 44. so that is a regular failure he would take 85 damage now uh but poog is going to use his one of his focus spells called flame barrier he has three focus points also and flame barrier gives an ally within 30 feet resistance 30 to fire so this will be reduced to 55 damage for valoros and lastly ezran because he's taking cover and benefiting from the spell this is a 53 he is going to take half damage uh and his resist so 85 becomes 42 becomes 27 because of his fire resistance okay breath weapon took two actions so that we're done with the dragon's turn okay next is mauricio but mauricio will delay um she's got a plan uh valoros will go first and valaros is going to fly up towards the dragon uh this is gonna take um one fly action no two fly action since he's flying vertically up but in the meantime he uh will enter the dragons well the dragon will make an attack of opportunity against him first uh and hit and do ooh 61 actually 46 damage to him because some of that was fire actually 47 damage and uh he's then going to enter the fire aura of the dragon and fail and it will uh expose them to three fire damage and he go flies up right underneath it um and uh he's gonna use felling strike now and uh first of all i'll i'll say he's now right above that burning building so it's concealed to him or part of it is um actually yeah let's say it's concealed to him however um knowing that they were facing this dragon um high level fighters can re um get a bonus feat and at this level two bonus feats in the morning that they can change every morning and he chose to take blind fight so he gets to ignore the concealed condition okay so he is now gonna use his other feet felling strike now if he connects with this it takes two actions it will force the dragon to fall to the ground and if he critically succeeds the dragon will not be able to fly until the end of valorosa's next turn so uh it'll be great that valorous can get this so that's a hit great and he does 65 damage because of his frost weapon so it falls to the ground uh and on top of that building and uh he's going to use his last action to fly here downward towards the dragon and he flies double speed when going down okay that was a great turn next is mauricio who is going to now use this opportunity to flank she's going to fly up right here and uh it's going to try oh she's going to actually s sneak here no no she's just gonna fly there and she's gonna try to um hit now first with her rapier that's a hit so she's gonna do um an extra 2d6 precision damage by choice because of her debilitating strike ability so that's going to be 43 and she's going to make it in feeble to 1 until the end of her next turn then um with her third action she's going to make one more attempt to hit it with her dagger and that does not hit next she's going to try to aid valoros on his next strike which they're all expecting because another reason why he's there is to do an attack of opportunity so preparing to aid takes one action and it gives her the chance to use her reaction to help someone else on their check in this case his attack role and aid is very powerful at high levels as we'll see she's going to prepare to do an attack role uh to aid uh we'll see how that works out okay next pook sees that valoros is desperately in need of healing so what poog will do is fly towards valaros can actually yeah we'll have to fly around that's uh two actions and uh he's gonna cast a two action heel and he has the echoing channel feet at tenth level it's going to have um 10 d8 well actually he has a feat that makes it 10 d10 [Applause] plus 80 hit points are restored to him 133 hit points so as we can see pathfinder 2e there's uh big ups and big downs and hit points at high levels they scale up to along with the hit point totals of higher level and also it doesn't use a bonus action it's still there's attacks on it it's preventing him from doing other things also so there are crucial choices involved with healing okay so the reason why he took two actions to be next to him is because the echoing channel feat lets some of it reflect back to him uh he gets healed um 10 v10 as well without the plus 80 bonus so he's going to be healed 57 and that heals both of them i forgot one thing poog and murasil when their turn started they should have or when they entered the aura they needed to save against the heat aura okay so poog um takes three damage and mauricio will succeed evasion makes that zero next is ezran who's now going to fly around to valoros he's going to fly here and he's gonna use his staff his staff has a lot of spells on it and he it has 10 charges and he's going to spend eight of those charges to cast an eighth level spell off of it punishing wins and punishing winds creates a cylinder a hundred feet high that is 30 feet in radius that is going to cause all flying creatures to be throttled down to the ground and makes it hard for them to escape it as well so um we have a cool special effect here and uh this will help hopefully they can keep the dragon trapped in here with the spell so that took two actions oh when his turn started he would have for free sustained his protective ward because he has the effortless concentration feat that lets him sustain as a free action at the tart start of his turn so the radius becomes 30. this spell actually uh the punishing wins was three actions and haste gave him the opportunity to move before doing this oh and he also subjected to the heat aura and succeeds so he likely will not be damaged at all okay all right next is the worm the great worm the dragon is no dummy and it smells somebody who has powerful healing because the dragon did not take damage when it fell it was not prone when it fell so it uses its first two actions to do draconic frenzy the dragon will now try to hit pug who will remember has the sanctuary spell cast on him so the dragon needs to make a saving throw against the spell and it gets plus one because it is a dragon um 60 will critically succeed so that's the last time it has to save against the spell but hopefully the invisibility will save poog um every time the dragon tries to target poog it needs to make a flat check of 11 or higher so roles of d20 succeeds i'm going to roll them all in advance uh oh they might all hit so it's going to do uh it's draconic frenzy now so tail is a hit um that's gonna do 43 damage the claw will hit into oh okay and the last one's a critical hit let me get the damage applied first then uh the uh first claw did 38 damage and the last claw was a critical hit and is going to do 88 damage that's brutal rolled a 15 and critically hit on its last attack so that's 88 damage against poo poog is gonna uh need to find safety so the next thing the dragon does is try to fly out and the in valoros has an attack of opportunity so it'll be flat-footed and um mauricio will use her reaction to aid valoros to aid it is the number that you need is a 20 a total of 20 and if you critically succeed then the bonus you give is increased so normally it's just a plus one circumstance bonus so she will do an attack a 46 critically succeeds and because she's master with her weapon it gives a plus three bonus to this attack roll by valoros and the dragon's flat-footed he needs to hit a 51. oh 58 becomes a 61. so this is a critical hit ding ding ding that um aids turn this into a critical hit and uh there we go this will be um 84 damage which becomes 109 damage against the dragon he has a he has a critical specialization effect of a sword which is to make it flat-footed until the start of his next turn including flat-footed to his allies all his allies uh next it's a shock weapon when it critically succeeds damage arcs to two creatures of his choice nearby but not doesn't help here next it's a holy weapon uh he gets to once a day as a reaction gain heal hit points equal to double the level of the an evil creature that he hits so he is going to now gain 48 hit points back from from this critical hit and lastly it is a what is left oh a greater frost weapon so it makes us a fortitude save to not be slowed one it needs a 34. well 62 critical on a natural 20. it is definitely not going to be slowed okay it continues with its flight and this is now treated as difficult to rain because of the punishing wind spell so 15 feet for every 5 feet and then to escape out of it to get through that last square here it needs to do a maneuver in flight action acrobatics or athletics to against the spell so it will do athletics it succeeds and it busts out and it has 90 more feet of flying it's going to fly here so it's going to get out next would be valoros but with this punishing wind spell not being useful anymore they're all going to wait for ezran ezran's next and he will spend an action to dismiss the spell so the spell is gone so it won't impede their movement anymore with his next actions he will summon a draconic legion um draconic legions are incarnate spells they summon uh something so huge and powerful that it's only around for two rounds and in this case it's a horde of dragons and it has a range of 100 feet three foot casting time and so uh here comes our draconic legion and it's farther down here but the first thing it does when he spends these three actions to cast the spell is it's going to use a breath weapon and let's say a 120 foot line that will be cold damage and we know why cold's damage so it will then have to make a a reflex saving throw against a 45 against the spell it rolls 46 that's a regular success so that means it will take half the damage and this is 10 d8 cold damage so 45 coal damage is halved to 22 but because it is weak to coal damage it will take 47 damage and in the next turn uh at the end of his next turn it's going to do something else valoros will do similar to what he did last time he is going to fly up try to bait it he's going to spend two actions to fly up here and he's gonna ready a demoralized action uh to try to frighten it next mauricio will also fly upward and try to aid valoros in scaring the dragon and she's gonna prepare to aid with an intimidation check next is pooh who's gonna fly up to valaros and uh do the echoing channel again uh he has eight no no he has six heal spells tenth level heal spells every day as a cleric so uh he's gonna heal actually himself um the larger amounts 146 to himself and then the smaller amount to valoros 68 to valaros okay uh the dragon is now going to come forward and and it will not it will try to go right here and let's say 40 foot elevation to try to breathe on valoros and esrin and that is going to be within range of the valoros of valoros's demoralized check which is 30 going to be 30 feet so uh the valoros will try to intimidate this is not scared to death and uh mauricio's going to prepare is going to try to aid this this is another critical success and because on intimidation she is trained this is actually just a plus two bonus but that's still good and this will be a 49 which does not succeed so it will now breathe fire on them and they have to make reflex saves all of them so uh valaros is uh ray has his shield raised okay let's see okay ezran succeeds so he is only going to take oh let's see what the damage is 25 d6 fire 98 fire damage so ezran uh uh reduces it by half and that will make it 20 uh after resistance uh from the spell that'll be 24 damage this fight would be much harder if they didn't have this resistance actually 34 damage and also uh legendary poo critically fails so he wants to roll a useless hero point on that and he's going to succeed well actually he's going to regularly fail and so that will reduce the make the damage 98 against him so fire resistance makes up 84. valoros meanwhile did succeed on his safe and so it is and he has evasion so he takes zero damage but he can use his shield block reaction uh right now because he has a feat that lets him protect allies using shield block against damaging reflex save effects so uh he will do that and uh he's going to reduce the damage against pooh by the hardness of his shield by 17. then uh mauricio uh rolled a 42 which fails and her improved evasion means that she still even though she fails takes half damage from that and she takes 34 damage so their uh defenses are really helping them here what ezran will do now is cast a spell that takes can can take two action or three actions or two rounds to casts a total of six actions called horizon thundersphere the new secrets of magic book include some spells that can be uh cast using two rounds of actions so uh this is a horizon thundersphere is a first level spell normally but it is heightened here at the sixth level so making it do more damage so he uh crackles with energy he gathers into his palm forming a concentrated ball of electricity and he's going to start to spark so he spends three rounds doing that and he still has another action because he's hasted the next thing ezran does is fly up towards his buddies so that they can continue to benefit from his protective ward so it's gonna fly down here uh valaros is going to go fly up to it and uh he's going to enter it's uh it's going to do an attack of opportunity against him first of all and try to hit that's a crit and it will do after fire resistance 87 damage to valoros and now that he's okay and he flies into its aura it's heat aura and succeeds against it and it will do no damage against him okay so uh that's his first action so what he's going to do is use his feet um double slice uh where he attacks with uh uh both weapons in his hands his other being his shield and his second attack is much is going to have a much less of a penalty than it normally does so here we go here's the the long sword that's a hit it's gonna do 67 damage and uh the shield is going to possibly hit oh that's a miss and with his last action he's going to prepare to aid mauricio in her attack that's about to come up so mauricio will fly up uh also and she's going to try to sneak up no no she's just going to fly up and this is also just a single action and she yells out to valaros to help her out valeros is going to help with a legendary weapon strike critically succeed of course against the dc of 20. she's kind of a plus four on this attack and is flat-footed her because she remains invisible here we go 55 and that will hit and do 32 damage plus another 2d6 uh 36 damage it is at 21 hit points and it is enfeebled because of her debilitating strike well she has two more actions she is going to hmm this uh she's going to try to use her offhand weapon a 46 misses and then try to prepare to aid valoros this haste is doing really um it's working out really well for them giving them that extra action okay and then pug pooh wants to um cast his level 10 spell he is uh a little uh reckless now and he's not concerned about future encounters he is going to turn into a embodiment of he's going to turn into an avatar of his goddess sarin ray and uh become huge and give him a battle form uh in which he can uh fire to fire rays and also uh um attack with a big weapon um that has reach and uh the next thing he does is gonna cast that only takes one action this spell the next thing he does is he's gonna cast spiritual weapon which is heightened and takes two actions and it immediately well first of all this is an attack so he's gonna lose his invisibility he's going to make himself visible to the enemy and no longer okay and he's going to make an attack so when he casts the spells a weapon appears next to the foe a scimitar and he gets to make an attack at uh plus 35 so that misses and poog in order not to fall needs to fly on his turn so he's gonna fly right here just a little beyond the dragon's claw reach and now we go back to the dragon so the dragon would love to attack that now large healer and but flying around would provoke from valoros so he's going to just try to kill valrose right now okay so here comes a draconic frenzy uh claw that is a critical hit even with the bonuses yes so here's a critical hit 90 damage to valoros and this oh and this will recharge the dragon's dragon breath the next attack will be a a wing this will hit also and do 42 damage this may knock him out he valo's is down to 66 so actually valor's probably stays up okay claw at plus 37 okay that's a miss so the the dragon will then fly it can fly about 250 feet away and it will and this provokes an attack of opportunity from valoros mauricio will help this attack of opportunity she prepared to aid and she's going to distract it with deception so she rolls that's a critical success and she gives a plus four bonus since she is legendary in deception no she's a master in deception so this is a plus three bonus for valorosa's attack and this may be it oh he rolls a one so the dragon lives on and flies 200 feet away well beyond the range unfortunately for ezran's super spell his horizon thunder sphere which he's been building up can only reach 60 feet and even with reach it would only be 90 feet so that is a cool spell that he unfortunately does not get off so uh he uh is going to then use his hmm he's going to try to he does have a spell that reaches it has a 500 foot range it is hand of the apprentice it's hit one of his focus spells he has two focus points left and it propels his weapon in this case his magical staff up to 500 feet and it gets to use his magical attack bonus for spells and it's one action and before doing it he's going to cast true and not true true strike which is a level 1 spell it is also one action and it gives him what 5e players will recognize as advantage on his attack role as long as it's during his turn so he's going to attack with uh he's gonna be able to roll the attack twice and this will be plus 35 oh he um he will hit his attack roll of 54 hits the dragon and he gets to do his weapon damage to it and 12 damage well it is not enough to knock down the dragon but that was cool what he'll do now is fly forward uh he wants to get as close as possible to the dragon so that it will focus on him since he can possibly do damage with his mantle of the frozen heart ability it does cold damage to anything that touches him so he will fly there valoros and mauricio both delay they are just the dragons is too far away for them to do anything impactful right now so they're just going to be later in the initiative and use all of their actions then poog meanwhile he could delay but then he would lose his spiritual weapon ability or spell which he has to sustain every turn if he delays then that spell ends immediately so he will take his turn now and fly f uh fly a little here he he liked being behind someone else last time he's gonna be below them let's say and then he's gonna sustain his spiritual weapons spell and what he's gonna do is with his two actions is ready his goblin song this is something he took at level one he gets to sing annoying repetitive lyrics and possibly with his performance check annoy the dragon so much and lower its mental defenses so he will do that okay so the dragon goes forward and it has recharged its breath weapon and once it gets within 60 feet uh pooh does that annoying goblin song and it's gonna do a performance check 42 does not beat the 52 that he needed so no effect and it's gonna once again breathe hell fire on them okay so uh this they all need to make another set of reflex safes okay so uh the number they need to beat is 49 and it looks like mauricio succeeds and has evasion valoros is going to fail and therefore take this damage he takes 90 and his resistance lowers it to 75 but that is enough for him to fall to the ground and he becomes dying one from the fire then his damage from landing on the ground makes him dying too so he is in trouble and ezran critically fails with a 33 he now regrets spending that hero point earlier possibly and he will take 180 damage double the number however his resistance reduces that to 165 which brings him down to 14 hit points so that resistance just saved his bacon then legendary puke with a 47 also critically fails so i believe he wants to spend a hero point right now because he will be knocked out and i actually don't recall if he still has a hero point but he deserves one at this point so he is going to reroll that and hopefully he'll be better okay if 46 is a regular failure and so he will take full damage which is 90. okay so that was pretty devastating on the party and valoros his initiative moves to right before the effect that knocked him out mauricio is next and uh ezran has a spell of magic missile which he thinks will finish off the dragon however ezran's within the reach of its attack of opportunity and they don't want any any risk so they're going to delay until pug is ready to act uh pooga's gonna go forward however he has a feat that lets him do a fast channel and that lets him do the area version of heel as only two actions instead of three actions so he's going to do that and he'll 54 to himself and his allies and he will not include the dragon that's another thing a feat allows him to do he can exclude a number of creatures and then with his next action he will fly forward with and uh get towards that dragon the dragon's gonna bite that cleric fight that cleric and uh does a critical hit and hopefully the healing that it he did prepared him for this okay 92 damage and some of that is fire so that's going to be 77 damage to the cleric okay he still has some health left and as the avatar of sarin ray he has a huge scimitar that he has 15 foot reach with gives him an attack bonus of plus 33 for which is not great at this level it's decent and against a boss it will need to be very lucky to hit okay that does not hit so that's his four actions now next is ezran ezran is now the dragon has already used its reaction so he's now gonna cast magic missile which the base version is for first level spell and the number of actions that a caster spends on magic missile determines the number of magic missiles that are shot and one per action but because he has it heightened prepared at third level he gets to cast shoot two muscles with every action so he's gonna shoot off and because he's hasted he gets to spend a full three actions and still move somewhere else or maintain its flight so he's gonna shoot six arrows at the dragon and this should be it 23 damage that is enough to bring down the great dragon and it falls to the ground with a mighty crash and the village cheers and after they uh heal themselves they're gonna help the village put out the fires so that is our level 20 combat we say goodbye to our dragon and i'm now going to give a summary of what we've learned so i hope that shows that high level play even level 20 play can uh still be tense and exciting and relatively easy for the gm to balance and you so you can still tell high-level epic stories that involves baylor demons great dragons going to other planes of existence and it will still work it won't break down and uh some of common complaints about high level play let's go over some of them first the difficulty of creating balanced encounters here the game master just uh decided they wanted to have an epic fight decided to have an extreme encounter which requires having a encounter budget of a certain amount and having and populating the fight with monsters that add up to that xp budget in this case one level 24 monster it could have also been two level 22 monsters or any other combination and it was plug and play well the monster had to be home brewed but this was a relatively easy home brew just had to take a similar monster from the target and then adjust the numbers in accord with the charts given by the game but once that was made it was plug and play there wasn't any having to stress out over is this too hard is this too easy uh will there be a crucial saving throw mist that will completely bend the fight to something much uh longer or and more of a slog or something much shorter and anticlimactic no needing to hide your dice rolls or fudge dice rolls no needing having to have secret hit points added to the monsters and no need to improvise you just run the monster as it was in the bestiary also i'll just add that this was a relatively simple monster actually there are many some many monsters that are more have much more memorable abilities and are more interesting that were probably going to be too would have made this demonstration more involved but they are out there and those are plug and play as well okay so now why is it balanced the a big factor one of the big factors is that the math is controlled the a creature's level is added to all of their statistics and this means that level means level it's not simply an approximation of their power and what's often said among pathfinder players is that the math is tight so there's this predictable upward moving band as you go from level 1 to 20 of the numbers and it helps that everything is based on the same mathematical formula armor class is based on the same formula as the how attacks are calculated and so are all of the saving throws so it's easy easy to uh for them all to be in the same band of numbers so as a result the d20 rule stays relevant at all times there are three possible results uh of the four degrees of success that are likely that are going to take up 95 of the possibilities that that d20 will produce and so you're always on the brink of a critical failure or a critical success and a failure and success is a coin toss of some relative amount now the fact that a level uh a creature has a level does not tell you everything you know about its numbers there are those that have very high acs but low hit points or low hit points but have resistances uh the monster building guide gives you guidelines so that everything is unique and and feels like a unique encounter another benefit of this predictable math and the fact that level means level is that you can have a boss creature that doesn't have to cheat the system to get extra actions or ignore uh failed saving throws you we just put a level 24 dragon and the damage it did was scary appropriately scary and it felt dangerous the dragon was often getting critical hits because of the way the math worked and uh nearly knocking out down some characters uh also its defenses were really high all they could do was plink it they would not were not able to get critical hits themselves except from valoros near the end also there it was not possible to use save or suck effects on the dragon such as scare to death uh one because its saves were so high but also because of the incapacitation trait it made it impossible to scare the dragon to death because you're not going to critically succeed against the dragon this tipping of the scales in favor of the boss by the math forces the players to have to work as a team to think about each other to protect each other with magical spells or to buff each other to use actions to aid each other to debuff the dragon to help their allies against it and so instead of a aaron's die role deciding the outcome what results is the team effort won the fight and i think that's what how a boss battle should be one it is quite complicated i think to someone who hasn't played high level pathfinder before at first glance to people who come from the third edition dnd or first edition pathfinder this was a revelation those systems can get quite complex and get really bogged down as you deal with floating modifiers and lots of pre-buffs here there were maybe four pre-buffs cast by the party and maybe two or three more cast during the fight which um i find manageable but also remember that this is uh because the rules are explicit and defined in pathfinder uh not all in the gm's set of house rules in their head everyone can share the responsibility of dealing with the rules load so oh i um that guy was frightened i had frightened him last round for example or i actually have resistance to fire because of the buff that we cast so the uh the other thing obviously too is that we're gonna assume that the players built their characters and that they played with them a substantial amount of time before reaching level 20 and so they are gradually learning their character over a period of maybe a year or two and all of this is natural to them okay so as for running the monsters yes pathfinder 2e monsters are their stat blocks are more complicated than those for 5e and many other systems but as i say in one of my other videos they each have their own signature abilities and an experienced gm can look at a stat block for a monster and know within five to fifteen minutes uh how to run it and that's been my experience so and also the fact that the monsters are memorable makes it more rewarding i think for the gm uh for the amount of work you put in another thing that's important for gm's is the fact that this party after fighting a extreme encounter probably could take on another one soon after definitely a severe encounter they've only used a small fraction of the spell casters have only used a small fraction of their daily resources and the rogue and the fighter don't haven't used any abilities hardly that have a limited number of daily uses pug and ezran also cast focus spells and can each spend 10 minutes to get that focus spell back and they have many many more eighth and ninth level spells and also many of the lower level spells are quite impactful also so what this means is that the game master can focus on balancing individual encounters and less about having to create a succession of encounters that drain the party's resources in order to make the party start to feel challenged and it frees up the gm to be able to say oh this is a severe fight it's going to feel severe regardless of what time of day it is now if the party is very low on resources then you have the tools you need to eyeball what an encounter actually will feel like because the measurements are there so yeah that's my uh explanation and demonstration of how high level play and level 20 can work in pathfinder 2e i hope you found it informative and enjoyable you don't have to stop your campaigns at level 10. so if you haven't yet like and subscribe ring the bell so that you get a notification about my next video i have a lot of more videos planned

Channel: The Rules Lawyer

Views: 66,860

Keywords: pathfinder 2e, pf2e, pathfinder 2nd, high level, dragon, pf2, combat, demonstration, D&D, dnd

Id: EmitEnoyAlQ

Length: 83min 52sec (5032 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 08 2021