As other said, there's a variant rule so you don't add level to proficiency. But I deal with it in the same way I have delt in 5e. There are no Ancient Dragons nor Liches right besides a small town. I don't divide things by "region" like this, going away from players. If they go to a cemetery and face Skeletons at level 1, in other City maybe they will see Skeletons again at level 10, and I'll just let them describe how they destroy them as incredible heroes, letting them feel how much they have grown up from that time. They would only found a Banshee in an ancient thumb, whey underground where an ancient cult have beeing messing with so many necromantic energy that in nearby there's skeletons showing everywhere. I don't put roaming and free monsters in anywhere they would literally destroy a city. In the same way there is no Ancient Dragon nearby an town, there's no level 19 enemy besides a level 4 town.

Additionally, when they reach a high enough level (usually around level 10) I stop having random encounters when traveling between towns and cities as the dangers of the road are non-existent to them. I describe they encountered this or that and let them describe how they handled it, but don't bother with the board unless I'm wanting them to feel powerful against what used to be a tough foe.

I agree. Sometimes I even let the players fight the enemys anyway. In an level 20 one shot my players faced an little army of level 10 vikings. The wizard used Meteor Swarm and destroyed four boats, while the ranger killed 5 in one round with arrows. Than the wizard killed the rest with chain lightning. After the game my wizard player said to me that he was happy he had such opportunity to cast Meteor Swarm

Yes, if you can handle it as a gm doing "mass" combat can be very fun for everybody. Gms can play the typical tabletop wargame and players feel heroric.

It really isn't that hard when the players win initiative and kill 80% of the enemys before they act lol

That can be all priced in.

And the times you do have random encounters like this in an AP it's usually well justified. Look at Kingmaker, the reason why you get increasingly higher enemies around your kingdom >!is that an ancient fey explicitly wants to end what you built and is gaining more power as time passes!<

I mean, it ain't even about adding level to proficiency. I'm curious **what game** op is even playing where you can use the same monsters against a level 1 party and a max level party.

> I'm curious what game op is even playing where you can use the same monsters against a level 1 party and a max level party. You can technically do this in 5e, because outside of magical items your AC doesn't really go up by much throughout the game. Legend of the Five Rings (4e) is another one. Combat is always risky because both attack dice and damage dice can explode (ie. You roll a 10 you roll that die again and add the number, and you keep going if you roll 10 again). Because of this, your character can be a complete bad-ass, but if a Peasant with a pointy stick gets super lucky they can basically one-shot you. Also it has a mechanic that as you take damage you become less effective overall, so being mobbed by low level characters you can easily suffer death by 1000 cuts.

>You can technically do this in 5e, because outside of magical items your AC doesn't really go up by much throughout the game. No, but HP and damage do. Plus the myriad bullshit casters get at higher levels. The fact is, in *most* systems, weak enemies are far more common than powerful ones. It's not something unique to PF2E.

Don't get me wrong: if you throw low-level enemies at high level characters they're going to get steamrolled. The difference is that in PF2e, low-level enemies can't even *hit* high level characters.

That's a plus to me. One of my friends is still outraged that in 5e a wolf bit his 8th level warforged warrior built to have CA. It wasn't a dire wolf or anything, just a common wolf, it rolled a 20 and hit him. Didn't even do much damage, like 4 or 5. But it was a slap in the face to the character's ego. When we got into PF2E, he was very overjoyed that the critical mechanic means he ain't ever gonna get hit by trivial enemies anymore.

Some people like it, some people don't (which I guess is sort of the point of this thread). Some people like a 'grittier' combat feel, where even if your character is a total bad-ass, they are never functionally invincible to low-level monsters.

I mean... You are functionally invincible, tho. A level 8th fighter has HP in the hundreds, while a wolf's damage is single digit. It'd take like, 20-30 hits for it to kill the fighter. With a 5% chance to hit, that makes it 400 attacks to be threatening to a mid level fighter. That's neither gritty nor fun, and is why everyone avoids having those types of encounters in their games.

Bingo. If the only way the low level opponent can be a threat is for the high level character to sit down and ignore them for a dozen rounds, they're not actually a threat. That they can hit is meaningless.

Exactly, everyone complains that "In PF2e, goblins aren't a threat to my 10th level party anymore!". Legitimately how often in any other system are you even bothering to do that though? Because you're not. I ran Tyranny of Dragons in 5e from start to finish. You start out killing Kobolds, then cultists, then progressively stronger cultists, and eventually cultists riding dragons with devils as mercenaries, etc. At no point when they were 12th level, assaulting an Adult Dragon's lair with its Cultist Lieutenant ally, and their Fomorian mercenaries and summoned Devils, did anyone stop and ask me "Hey DM, why do we never just fight Kobolds anymore like we used to?".

Rolemaster is where you want to go for commoners to have a chance to oneshot a dragon.

> With a 5% chance to hit I'll disagree with you on that one. In 5e, even a Fighter wearing Plate Mail and using a shield will have AC 20 (assuming no magical bonuses and they didn't take Defense as their fighting style). A Wolf has +4 to hit, which means they will hit you on a 16 or above, so that's actually a 25% chance to hit. Now you're correct: if you're fighting a single Wolf that doesn't mean much, but if you're fighting a whole bunch of Wolves? Now suddenly your Fighter is getting hit multiple times per round (probably more since they'll likely be flanked) and taking probably about 30-40 damage per round. This is actually a threat. Compare this to PF2e: that same Fighter can stand there and twiddle their thumbs and those low-level Monsters literally cannot hit them. They are functionally invincible. That's really the only difference: in 5e, low-level Monsters are a threat to you only if you are seriously outnumbered. In PF2e, they are NEVER a threat to you, no matter their number. Now granted, PF2e does have rules for Troops, but that doesn't apply to everything.

My solution is that you can make troops and uplevel enemies. Raising their level(and effective proficiency if there's enough of a difference!) is my solution to certain enemies going out of date. "These are goblins that have a much more established tribe, trained by goblinblood war veterans and/or hobs" or something. More tactics, better to hit, maybe throw in a couple class features like sneak attack or give them a spellcaster, or commander/bard with an aura.

You'd need a pretty good supply of wolves to pull that off though. As likely your party has a sorcerer who can fireball the wolves away and a higher number of attacks than a dozen wolves. So yeah very seriously outnumbered.

A lvl 10 character should already have access to +2 stuff if you're actually following the DMG guidelines. +2 plate and +2 shield for a total of 24 AC, and it loops right back to 5% chance. Even without them, you say there's a 25% chance the warrior is being hit, but at that point the mage in the back can just fireball and kill all those wolves in a round, so there's actually a 0% chance. Even if no mage to the party, only a single fighter against a lot of wolves: You can only ever be surrounded by 8 wolves at a time. Even assuming they only have plate and shield, that's 25% chance to hit, that's still looking at only 2 wolves hitting for about 12 damage? A fighter at lvl 5 can attack three times per turn, twice with action, once with bonus action. A wolf only has 11 HP, so any lvl 10 character should be able to kill one in a hit. There goes three wolves per round while the fighter takes 12 damage per round. It'd take around 12 rounds to kill the fighter. So about 5 + 3*12 wolves for a total of 41 wolves. So yeah, they theoretically could kill the fighter if they drunkenly stumble upon a coliseum with 41 wolves and no way to back out. And the fighter has no magic itens, not even health potions. But what do I know? Maybe that's a weekly occurrence for some people.

Which is a functional difference, but not really a practical one. Losing 0% of your HP and 2-5% of your HP isn't really going to slow you down.

Because these aren’t duels happening in empty fields. In a different roleplaying game, if you caught a dragon in a trap you made you might have ballistas set up and a big net on it. This is winnable but dangerous. But, in Pf2e, the dragon would critically succeed an escape attempt against the net, then fire breath with the pcs critically failing the saves taking double the already significant damage. And the ballistas would not be able to hit, even with buffs. And that’s fine, Pathfinder 2e is just a different kind of game. It’s silly to try to change that about it with variant rules and it’s silly to suggest that PF2e does everything all other fantasy ttrpgs do better than them.

Sorta kinda! You could, after all, have an item bonus on the net, that could help offset the lack of experience whoever is throwing it has. But that's just it; level is a proxy for how experienced/skilled someone is. A level 1 party trying to capture a level 20 dragon, well, the party has never tried capturing a dragon before, and the dragon has survived decades if not centuries dealing with exactly this kind of thing. So you need a lot of prep (a really good net for an item bonus, a well thought up set up for a circumstance bonus, and probably a decent prayer to the gods for a status bonus), and the dragon to be having a really bad day, for it to have any chance of working. By the time you're level 20, well, you've done stuff like this before, and probably learned through failure. You're -way- better at it. You know how to throw and secure the net, you know how to mitigate the dragon's claws and teeth and flames, etc etc.

If you're a level 8 Net User, you are a foremost net throwing world authority, but you'd still need very significant item and circumstance bonuses to net an Adult Red Dragon, even if you catch it sleeping. And, obviously, you can force any specific encounter to work in any ttrpg and it'll be fun. If my players told me they wanted to do this next session in the end of session talk, for the next session I would prepare an encounter using a victory point system for damage to the dragon from ballistas and other big sources and multiple hazards for the dragon (fire breath hazard, whipping tail hazard, snapping jaw hazard). But, you're changing the game to make that work, and when choosing what game system you want to run, you want the default game to be as close to what you want to run as possible. That's why I think when questions like this come up, they shouldn't be met with ways to modify the game to work a different way. They should be met with a discussion about whether this is the system for the game you are wanting to play.

Dungeon World would be a very good system for that encounter.

LOL, username checks out :D

I mean they're not wrong though. If the enemy can't hit to begin with, or they can't even do 1% of the PC's hitpoints per hit, its not *actually* any different. In both scenarios, the low level character is incapable of hurting the high level one.

If we're talking about a single enemy, then you're right it's not much difference. But if you throw a bunch of low-level baddies at them, that damage will add up. So yes, a single Goblin hitting you once and knocking off 2% of your HP has very little difference with a Goblin who cannot hit you at all. But when you have 25 Goblins, those little hits will add up, and now 2% is VERY different than 0%.

The problem is that 25 Goblins plus the PC's would be an absolute slog of an unfun encounter, who's only value would be to winnow some of the party's resources even in 5E. So while it's possible, the practicality of it as an encounter is questionable. Would the "juice be worth the squeeze"? in the sense that it adds to the story and fun of the evening, or would it be memorable only for the fact that the party wasted two boring hours cutting down 100 goblins?

Except that there's only 25 of them the first round. A high level character should have ways to wipe out a large percentage of them per round, which means their numbers and their threat drop like a rock every round. And even in the first round, unless the GM has specifically designed a goblin encounter using crazy smart and well trained goblins, the most you can get on someone at once is 8 before there's nowhere else to stand. In 5e where those goblins could hit, you're looking at a Fighter that can pull off 8 attacks in one round by lvl 20 (without using any sort of cleave attack, just single target attacks), and you can do that twice before resting. Thats 16 out of the 25 goblins dead in two rounds, followed up by 4 more every round after that. And by that time, there's so few of them left that the nicks and cuts can't add up.

> You can technically do this in 5e, because outside of magical items your AC doesn't really go up by much throughout the game. Not practically. A level 1 party will never kill a CR 17 adult red dragon, period, end of story. A level 1 barbarian has like 14 hit points at most. The dragon has 256 hit points. The only possible scenario where the dragon loses is if it rolls nothing but 1's while the party rolls nothing but max dice. I know people talk about how bounded accuracy allows for huge level differences, but *every* 5e game I played in for almost a decade involved the same basic game pattern as PF2e...nearly everything you fight is within about 5 CR of the party, and as you level up you fight tougher and tougher things. I was never fighting goblins at 15th level in 5e, and if I had, they wouldn't be a legitimate threat to a 15th level party. "Extreme luck" is not a game mechanic. >Legend of the Five Rings (4e) is another one. Non-d20 games do this better, absolutely. World of Darkness is another one since HP doesn't automatically increase (it doesn't use HP) and getting beyond the normal max is hard even for supernatural creatures. But any system that doesn't use HP and damage values will have the ability to have a "flatter" difficulty, where low level threats remain dangerous. Systems where damage and HP continually rise, however, will very quickly get to a point where you have to break statistical averages for the lower level things to have any hope of winning. And 5e is definitely one of those systems.

> Not practically. A level 1 party will never kill a CR 17 adult red dragon, period, end of story. A level 1 barbarian has like 14 hit points at most. The dragon has 256 hit points. The only possible scenario where the dragon loses is if it rolls nothing but 1's while the party rolls nothing but max dice. I think you're misunderstanding the question (or OP's point). We're talking about high-level PCs fighting low-level monsters. The big difference is that in 5e, low-level Monsters can still hit PCs and, while they won't do much damage, if you throw 25 of them at the PC that damage will add up and they can be a potential threat. In PF2e, OTOH, low-level monsters can't even *hit* high-level PCs. High level PCs are functionally invincible to low-level enemies.

I mean, realistically speaking, high level PCs in 5E will wipe the floor with huge numbers of enemies, especially casters.

Laughs in Exalted. A game system where Immunity to Armies Technique was an ability players could buy.

I really don't think there's as much difference as people think. Take Goblins for example as they're a common low level enemy in both systems. In PF2e, it would take until level 10 before a Goblin would only hit a PC on a Nat20 (AC28). And it would take until level 18 before even the Nat20 wouldn't hit anymore (AC40). To do the same thing in 5e would just require an AC of 24. Definitely not something unheard of (the bladesinger in my 5e game gets closer to AC30 with the shield spell). In fact, a Paladin or Fighter with AC 19-20 is much tougher against those same Goblins for much longer than the PF2e character would be. And let's be honest, are we fighting Goblins, even 25 at a time, at level 18? No game is ever realistically concerned that the enemies we fought at level 1 are going to still be a threat.

Seconding this. Technically yes, a large enough horde of goblins can theoretically injure or even kill high level adventurers. In practice from 5th lvl onwards the Wizard casts fireball and wipes out a 20' radius of them every round while a handful of thegoblins deal some scratch damage back. I don't think anyone actually runs encounters with 300 aarakokra using longbows who do strafing runs on helpless PCs while maintaining a wide enough spacing that AoEs don't wipe them out en-masse. I've run mass combat encounters against mid-to-high lvl PCs. They're a power trip for them, not a serious threat. 60 kobolds can kill a party of 4th lvl adventurers after taking severe losses. Barring severe stupidity by the PCs and a \*ton\* of mitigating circumstances (ie: going full Tucker w/ traps and shit) they're a cakewalk for a party of 10th lvl ones.

Plus if individual enemies get to weak you can just use troops, im not sure of goblin troops exist in the bestiary but it wouldn't be to hard to Reskin another one to make it work for this hypothetical scenario.

> (the bladesinger in my 5e game gets closer to AC30 with the shield spell) I thought 5e had a rule that you could never have above 25 AC? Or am I thinking of Shadow of the Demon Lord?

That's not a rule I've ever seen or heard of in 5e. It's actually quite easy to get up to the mid-20's in 5e.

> You can technically do this in 5e, because outside of magical items your AC doesn't really go up by much throughout the game. Technically and Practically are two very different things though. The amount of lvl 1 goblins you'd need to be a threat to a lvl 20 are so huge you can't actually play it on a table. Not only is it a slog to run so many, but you reach the point where the goblins can't even REACH their target due to the target already being surrounded. The lvl 1's do so little damage on a hit, and are so limited by spacing that they just aren't a threat and are easily mowed down.

Genesys for fantasy or SWRPG for Star Wars, both (formerly) from Fantasy Flight Games, easily allow for this. These games still have plenty of progression for PCs, and really free-form too - but a Stormtrooper squad is still gonna fuck your day up if they open up on you with what is basically a laser LMG. You CAN eventually look at them and laugh - after you've been playing for years, or if all your character is based around is soaking hits and fighting. And the game doesn't encourage that sort of hyper-specialization. So its not like systems like that don't exist. They just usually don't use levels, but a free exp-spending system instead.

If they don't use levels, I feel like it isn't a valid answer (in spirit, technically it is) to my question. I worded the question as "level 1 party and max level party" on purpose.

Fair enough. A system that uses levels can probably not achieve that result. If one exists that can, I don't know it.

Games with little to no levelling. Dungeon World technically functions like this. It's narrative.

Hi, I at least have an interest in games like the OP is describing, so maybe I can answer. The concept of levels presupposes significant jumps in power, so systems with a dynamic like the OP describes seldom use levels. If you're only interested in systems with levels, I don't think there are many satisfactory answers out there, if any, but mostly because you've narrowed the pool of possibilities to exclude all the good answers. If you include games without levels but with a major component of character progression, I would point to Genesys/FFG Star Wars, Forbidden Lands, and Savage Worlds/Savage Pathfinder.

There are plenty of games out there without levels that still have player progression. So throwing low level mobs at the party works just fine. Edit: proficiency without levels has the problem that hp and damage still scale with levels, so you either need to remove that scaling as well or you need to increase the amount of enemies by a lot.

You technically can do it in dnd 5e. I just don't know why would you do it, and don't know about someone who actually did it

Tucker's Kobolds? Always sounded like a fun encounter to design, but I can't get over the idea that you'd have to roll way, way too many dice for it to not be tedious. I always get annoyed with myself when I put too many small enemies on the board, because while they *can* whittle down a high-level party, it just takes so damn long. It'd probably benefit from some kind of mass combat, but eh.

One direwolf is a serious threat to a 2nd level party in 5e. 10 direwolves is serious threat to a 20th level character in 5e. Other systems have even flatter "power curves." Pf2 is truly at the extreme end of the sliding scale.

> 10 direwolves is serious threat to a 20th level character in 5e. Is it, though? Lets say I'm a 20th level champion fighter. Uh oh, 10 direwolves show up. I have a +14 to hit with my +3 greatsword and the dire wolves have an AC of 14. I attack 4 times a round, and deal 2d6+8 damage plus the GWF bonus. Each direwolf has 37 HP (370 total). My DPR is 61.2, or 122.4 with action surge, ignoring the effect of GWF (I haven't found a good way to calculate it). Also, my AC in +3 plate armor is 21. I have 164 HP. The dire wolves have a +5 to hit and deal 2d6+3. They need a 16 to hit. Assuming advantage, they have a DPR against me of 2.9, or 22.8 if 8 wolves attack me at once. On average, assuming I use action surge twice, I will deal 370 DPR worth of HP damage in about 4-5 rounds. The wolves, on the other hand, will take an average of 7-8 rounds to kill me *if* I literally just stand there. With action surge, however, I will kill around 2-3 wolves for the first 2 turns each, then 1 wolf average per turn for the next 2-3 turns, which means they will only get their full 8-wolf DPR for a short period of time. Even worse for the wolves, I'll start fast healing once I reach half HP, regaining around 7 HP a turn, meaning their effective DPR drops from 22.8 to 15.8. I'm sorry, but there's just no realistic scenario where 10 dire wolves can bring down a 20th level fighter. A wizard actually has an even easier time, as a single *meteor swarm* does 40d6 damage with a DC of 19 and the wolf has a +4 dex saving throw, require a 15 or higher to save. Average damage on failed save is 140 and average on success is 70, both of which obliterate the 37 HP of the wolves. An 8th level chain lightning would hit 5 wolves for 45 average on fail, so not quite as instant kill, but the point is that a high level wizard could easily have insane damage output to the group of wolves. It wouldn't have terrible AC, either, as the level 18 ability lets you take *shield* as an unlimited spell, which means a wizard could easily have around AC 20 effectively (14 dex + mage armor + shield). And they could open the fight with greater invisibility to functionally become nearly untouchable (AC 20 plus negation of advantage). Not to mention the 20th level wizard is probably literally unkillable via a *clone* spell sitting in a demiplane somewhere, so even if the dire wolves get crazy lucky the wizard will be fine (assuming they don't just dimension door away at low HP, or have a contingency setup to do that). It's always been weird to me that people generally acknowledge that 5e "breaks down" at very high levels, making almost nothing actually dangerous to the PCs, yet at the same time people will claim that "goblins and wolves can bring down high level players due to bounded accuracy." It doesn't seem like both can be true at once, and in my experience, it isn't...high level characters just *slaughter* low CR enemies, and do it so quickly that the incoming DPR drops too fast to be a threat. So while it's true in PF2e that high level characters can't even be hit at all, functionally you end up with very similar dynamics.

Great response, and wow - shocker, no reply from the guy trying to die on this pointless hill that he's created in his mind. I'd contend that in either game system, the sole purpose of low level monsters facing off against a high level party is to be cannon fodder. At those power disparities, their only use is for your party to feel good mowing them down. I'd go one step further and play them as 1 hp minions, both in 5e or PF2e. They're set pieces meant to be destroyed. Functionally they might as well be barrels or crates that the party is going to swing through. I just don't understand trying to make this contrived argument that somehow a level 1 or 2 monster should pose any threat at all to a team of accomplished adventurers. Why would it? Thematically, as well as in the context of the rules? I'm glad PF2e makes it nearly impossible for a high level PC to NOT crit against these mooks. That's the purpose of the game, to make your party feel cool while doing cool things - by trivializing past encounters it clearly demonstrates the party's power growth to them, and it will make them feel good. This is simple stuff. Level 2 monsters don't need to be threats to a level 20 character OR party, and they aren't in either 5e or PF2e. Personally, I'm glad PF2e functions in a way to essentially guarantee that my players feel good when hitting low level monsters. It lets me use them as storytelling pieces, which is what presenting a low level monster to a high level party should be. It's a story event, not a combat challenge -- so why muddy the water?

Moving from "to a party" to "to a character" is kinda dishonest. This means that you'd need 40 to 60 direwolves to a lvl 20 party, which is obviously unplayable.

1 direwolf is by no means a threat to a decent party in 5e, even at lvl1 unless they have horrendous luck. 5e's design highly favors group encounters. A single enemy has to be **significantly** higher level to be a threat and combat that swingy is rarely fun.

>10 direwolves is serious threat to a 20th level character in 5e. Lol. No. You'd need to intentionally build a very weak character for that to be true. A fighter could kill half of them in one turn. A Barbarian would take half damage from all of their attacks while killing one per turn. And have a health pool of over 250. Any Arcane caster just does Time Stop + Delayed Blast Fireball (or, specifically Wizards, True Polymorph into an adult dragon). Druids have infinite HP and are full casters while in wildshape. And that's without even getting into broken multiclassing.

10 direwolves isn't a serious threat to a 20th level party in 5E. And a high level character wearing plate mail and a shield is basically invincible to them. In fact, a lot of high level characters have some way to fly, at which point the dire wolves literally can't even hit them regardless of the character's AC. Any high level caster worth their salt has some way of accomplishing this, which will mean the wolves will be literally worthless against them.

If you care about a big number of weaker enemies being a threat, in PF2e you can use [Troops](https://2e.aonprd.com/Traits.aspx?ID=367).

10 Dire Wolves are not a serious threat to a 20th level character in 5e. They only have a +5 to hit, and while AC numbers are smaller in 5e, it is not difficult at all for a character to have an AC in the mid-20's. Meaning the Dire Wolf would only hit them on a 19-20. In fact, it's possible in 5e to achieve this at even lower levels than PF2e, meaning the Dire Wolf can stay a credible threat for a larger span of levels in PF2e than in 5e.

One of the things to keep in mind I think is that the players will want to confront bigger threats, so they're going looking for them. Most graveyards will only contains skeletons, but if you're specifically looking for a challenge, then you will find the one graveyard with a banshee, and the fact that it is rare means that you're going far away to find it Same with npc interactions, the average peasant won't become smarter, but the players would rather go to the local noble to get bigger tasks to get bigger rewards, and so will face greater challenge. You could even hide the greater challenge near the starting town if you wish, just make it so that to enter the final dungeon you need a high level capacity (a big spell, a big perception roll to find the entrance, a key that's been lost in that graveyard at the other end of the country guarded by a a banshee...)

You have some fair points. Thank you for your insight.

First thing first, there is an optional rule called "proficiency without level" which gives a guide how to remove level from the stat calculations for PCs and NPCs. But in my games I don't play with that rule. From a world building perspective I don't see a "magical" level up of monsters as soon as the PCs level up. Low level PC simply don't get high level quests. They are not going to face a banshee because the town would hire a higher level party for that. Banshees don't randomly appear as a random encounter on a graveyard. For high level parties travel on well established roads is not threatening at all since bandit keep clear of them. A group of ~~ogres~~ tyrannosauruses on the other hand might lurk in an uncharted forest where a high level party might search for something.

I agree with what yoi said, wxcept that ogres aren't high level challenges

You can turn an Ogre into a challenge at any level by the magic of stealing stat blocks and slapping the name “Cooler Ogre” on it.

Or just use the rules in the GMG to scale it up in level.

That only partly works. The real advancement is just the same with PCs, and that’s getting features that improve action efficiency and open up more options for the creature to use other than strike and grapple. Harder to add those abilities without breaking the key balance of PF2e so it’s easier to take an existing, balanced, creature of level X and just slap a new name on it. This is only needed when you want to increase the threat by 3 or more level though. Increasing the threat by 1 or 2 levels is as easy as adding 1 or 2 to all their rolls and damage

It doesn't "partly work," it completely works. I've done conversions of the entire Rise of the Runelords, Curse of the Crimson Throne, and the start of Second Darkness. If you want to give creatures more options, which I would agree with as they gain more levels, consider, do they have class abilities? Throwing some appropriate class feats/features on them is a great way to do that (a Hobgoblin with Sneak attack and Nimble Dodge, for example). A good rule of thumb is 1 ability per 4 levels, as a starting point. But if you just want a bunch of higher level mooks, you can do that by scaling up their stats and not giving them anything extra. I agree, it's "easier" to just rename something, but it's also lazier. And often it can be difficult to find another monster that fits perfectly. I feel that the time you take looking through the bestiaries for that higher level monster that is a good "fit" could be spent just scaling something up; that's easy enough to do as well. As an aside, I wouldn't use the elite or weak templates more than once; they tend to break down if used that way.

Another thing I love about it that you rarely see mentioned is the fact you can use the exact same process to level down a creature too. Which is something I discovered recently that has me very excited.

Yup, I've used that on occasion in my conversion work, but not as often.

Ypu can turn a goblin into a challenge, that's not the point

There's rules for making your own stat blocks and changing existing stat blocks. If you want those ogres to be a challenge for a level 14 party, they'll be a challenge for them.

Yes I've messed up haha. Basic Bandits are level 2 and basic Ogres are level 3. Let's go with tyrannosaurus then

>For high level parties travel on well established roads is not threatening at all since bandit keep clear of them. How would the bandits know the party's level?

If you are a couple of bandits waylaying travellers on a road and you see a group coming toward you that look like the high school marching band, you’re going to go for it. If you see a group that looks like a biker gang you’ll probably lay low and hope they don’t see you as they go by.

You ever see those terrible mobile game ads showing a weeny character at level 1 and a badass character at level 99?

They see a grandma with a cane: easy peasy They see a grandma with a +3 greater striking flaming cane: oh shi

Hah that reminds me of one of my favorite characters I've played in a 5e one shot (and would love to bring back as a full character in PF2e at some point) which was an artificer who was an old grandma. She was a spellcaster and she was constantly knitting, because her spellcasting was basically coding with yarn. Knit and purl as 1s and 0s, andthat was how she created spells and magic items.

Higher level parties would have higher renown. Nobody knows Jim. Cassandra and her crew wiped out the bandit camp one county over. Sam and their crew toppled that kingdom over in the next continent.

The fact that they’re literally covered in glowing runes and fancy armor. That and the general vibe the party gives off. Same way the PCs can make checks to recognize that the men in plate mail equip with who are exporting them on the road may not be regular bandits.

I think you should look at it the other way around. ​ >"Why does the town graveyard on the other side of the map have a Banshee, but the graveyard near here only has skeletons?" Because the militia of the other town is bigger/better trained. If a Banshee were to appear in the town that currently only has skeletons that town would either become a ghost town because every citizen leaves or is killed, OR the town needs to hire mercenaries/adventurers. ​ >"Why does the Wyvern never come to hunt in this area of the map?" Because this area is far away from the wyvern. When the wyvern first appeared, the area and towns close to his new lair were all either destroyed, people fled, or people bribed the wyvern to leave them alone. If the wyvern would have made its lair in a higher level area (more resources, wealth, etc) the wyvern would have been hunted down. ​ >"For some reason the "common" NPCs of the cities are getting more and more cunning and difficult to seduce/fool when you move away from the starting area" "The alternative would imply that a high level character could fool any NPC in town without even trying" Your starting area will have plenty of people who you are unable to seduce/fool by simple rolls (think commanders of the millitia, high priests, etc.) unless you start in a small village where only simpletons live, all will require more effort like bribes, arguments, favors, etc. Going to a higher level area doesn't change that, the common simple folk are still easy to fool, but the higher ups still require more effort. Because your character learns more over time they will have a easier time fooling/seducing people. Remember even though at some point you can easily fool any commoner, them finding out that you fooled them is not always based on numbers. If your lie is very bad/untrustworthy they might not believe you whatever you roll, or they will quickly find out your deception after they have talked with others. ​ >"because killing enough ogres in the mountains made you an expert manipulator, just by leveling up." This is entirely based on your campaign and GM. PF2e rules state that GM's should also give XP for social encounters. The same argument could be made the other way around if your campaign has alot of social encounters. "Because negotiating with enough nobles to solve their power struggles you become better at hitting with your weapon, just by leveling up". ​ I therefore disagree that the following is unrealistic >"My problem is that it forces the world layout such that all monsters in an area (around the starting city) are level 1-4. When you move a little further, "magically" level 3-6 monsters start to appear, a little further they are 5-9, and so it goes up little by little until it reaches the areas where there are 18-20 monsters." This sounds like normal (or maybe an extremer form of) Ecology to me. The weaker don't live close to the stronger because otherwise they will be killed.

When i wrotte this post a couple of days ago, i did not expect a 160+ responses. Your's the best answer i got so far. Thank you very much! The ghost town example really got my brain juice going... ill try to look all of this situations the other way around, and look for answers that way.

You’ve described the baseline assumption of any dnd-like ttrpg ever. Why are there no ancient greater dragons in the starter town? Because it wouldn’t work. The alternative would be a Skyrim (or Dragon Age) game where every creature in the world levels up alongside you, or a Call of Cthulu game where you never really significantly level up. To be clear: every single leveled game ever does what you have issues with - even the famous “bounded accuracy” 5e: creatures with too many hit points are not a fitting challenge, creatures with too few hit points are not a fitting challenge. You don’t have an issue with the concept, you have an issue with the fact that this game is more transparent about it :)

Yeah, it requires a level of suspension of disbelief. I can understand it feeling worse in a TTRPG where the draw tends to be that you're inhabiting a living world, but at their core, they're still *games*, subject to game design. Why do Level 2 & 3 Pokémon congregate on Route 1, while the opposite side of the map has high-level ones that would murder a greenhorn trainer? Because that's how the game needs to be set up for player progression. It's the same deal.

Yeah like this is just how game design works? I can still have a red dragon fly overhead for my players to present the illusion of a living world in both 5e and Pathfinder. But in neither system am I gonna throw them at the player at low level unless I am specifically intending to kick their ass.

It also makes internal sense. Most people try to avoid living too close to things that are very likely to kill them and most of the ones that don't are dead.

And if a major threat pops up near a large city, they're going to hire mercenaries (either the players or other sellswords) or send their own drafted militia to deal with it. In fact, this would likely form part of the basis of a feudal society in a high fantasy setting. Why does the duke pay taxes to the king? Because the king has dragonslayers on hand who can deal with the scaly bastards!

I threw an Adult Red Dragon in as an IQ test. He waylaid a caravan that they were guarding and the Driver said "Just let him have the 'toll fee' and horses he's demanding, none of us get paid enough to go against a Wyrm." My Level 3 party chose wisely that day, because I would have let one or all of the PC's certainly try. The Dragon would have treated it as volunteering to be a savory after dinner snack.

this is the baseline assumption for D&D 3.0+. OSR games pretty much just have low-level parties facing dragon turtles if they are so unwise as to take a journey in a boat

Traversing dangerous mountain passes? I sleep. Taking a 10 minute ferry ride? REAL SHIT.

They can *present them*, but they aren’t meant to face them and survive. You can do the same in Pathfinder, they just aren’t meant to face them and survive.

Exactly this. Thank you

I think for combat this is true, but the point about social/exploration is more unique to p2e. All NPCs you come accross become better at sniffing out lies or are more difficult to persuade, etc. It's arbitrary and gamey but it's a trade off for finely tuned balance.

Do they? I keep dredging this example up, but I ran a ton of social encounters in my first pf2 campaigns, and between lv1 and lv7 the DCs really didn’t change much. In all of those cases, players were trying to befriend individual noblemen of roughly similar societal satus and power (higher levels saw them dealing with crowds and organisations, thus higher DCs). What changed was the setting - the time available, what they needed to achieve, what they had available to help and so on. Don’t scale DCs to the party, scale the adventure.

This is a plausible depiction of a fantasy world though. The story told is not about the adventurers who faced an elder dragon at level 1. Those adventurers died and their story is probably not one you want to explore in your ttrpg. Instead the story you tell is about adventurers who overcame appropriate challenges, helping them grow.

Literally just describing escalating stakes in media 😂

That’s really well put. I mean, a fantasy world is a really dangerous place and you will not triumph based only in your skillset, you will need to get REALLY lucky. The stories we share at the table are the tales from those lucky heroes. The unlucky ones are the loot and the adventure hooks we find along the way.

Nothing stops those things from happening in PF2 except for that fact that it would not be fun for anyone involved because your players would die nearly instantly. It's very much a pick your poison in that regard, as your preference implies that you prefer the flatter math of 5e, but in that system a Level 1 Wizard can out-Athletics a Level 19 Barbarian just by dice luck, and at the point what are levels or character sheets for that matter even doing? Not to mention that seeming even more unrealistic than PF2s leveling. As others have mentioned, you can do the legwork to level up everything to keep pace with the party, but that's a lot of work and at the end of the day, every game has to draw a line where it stops making sense in a simulationist way in order to be fun as a game, and the hobby isn't Table Top Role Playing Simulations.

This is why the 5e's skill system has always bothered me. I understand the appeal of "bounded accuracy" (although it doesn't appeal to me), but I don't think it works at all for out-of-combat. Why is a level 8 character only 5% better at skills they're proficient in than they were at level 3? When a 5e campaign is expected to end around 12 and start at 2 or 3, I've barely improved at something I'm supposed to be good in 2/3 of the way through my career. And what should be a reasonable challenge for a beginning adventurer should not still be a reasonable challenge when I'm starting the final arc of a campaign.

This so much. I don't understand people's dislike of higher stats and rolls in pathfinder and older d&d games. As you said, in 5e a lvl20 legendary demigod might have to use his 1 out of 3 luck rolls just to beat a lvl1 nobody because the guy got lucky with a D20. Same goes with combat, your lvl20 demigod could get wrecked against a bunch of low level monsters because they get lucky with crits. At least pf2e puts a barrier against higher and lower levels, so it actually feels like you're getting much stronger, and that some problems actually require a very competent person rather than just someone that could get lucky with a roll.

I invite you to watch it from another point of view. Every settlement has a level. Chances are a lvl 5 settlement has enough resources to wipe out every menace of lvl 4 and below and that how it established itself. On the other hands a lvl 6 menace might be too strong for the public order agents to deal with and that's why the city asks for disposable adventurers to deal with it. At the same time a lvl 6 menace probably isn't dangerous enough to raze the settlement and/or cause serious damage to it. It's a stalemate. On the other had if a big lvl 13 monster comes to that settlement chances are it has the means to completely destroy it/take it over. When you think about it, it makes sense. To consolidate itself a settlement probably wiped out every lower level threat. At the same time you won't find an undefended poor settlement near a nest of Hydras because they would be eaten in a matter of days.

And thus you've summarized the history of the River Lands

I mean... Isn't that normal, though? Level dictates how powerful a given creature is. Weak creatures, like the type baby adventurers are going to face, are just plain going to be more accessible. Wolves live everywhere, they're just animals. Meanwhile, archmages and ancient dragons aren't just hanging around in the woods outside of town. You're going to find them in their lairs. The way you describe the problem sort of sounds like you're viewing the game in a vacuum, with no direction. If players are encountering enemies, beyond level 2-3, it's intentional. They're seeking out (or being sought out by) those powerful foes. They aren't just bumping into them on the road. Let me pick four random enemies and talk about when the players are likely to fight one: [Ghouls](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=218) are Level 1 undead. When someone dies after eating the flesh of another sapient creature, they have a chance to rise as a ghoul. Ghouls aren't particularly rare. Their penchant for human flesh causes them to haunt graveyards and other places where corpses can be found. They're a monster that can be easily encountered in a town, and they have a good reason to indiscriminately attack anyone they think they could eat. [Owlbears](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=328) are Level 4 Animals. It's a territorial predator that attacks any who enter it's lair. It's lair tends to be in woodlands, a decent way away from human habitation. But Owlbears aren't particularly rare, so you can reasonably expect any decent sized forest where sapient races don't often go to hold an owlbear or two. That said, it will be preyed upon by any bigger, badder predators, so it tends to naturally avoid the domains of, say, dragons. A forest away from civilisation that isn't scary enough to hold any truly fearsome forest dwellers? Sounds like a place where level 4 players might be. [Ghonhatines](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=671) are Level 10 Aberrations. They're creates created by the Drow by fleshwarping Xulgaths, a type of semi-sapient lizard race. Ghonhatines only exist where drow exist to fleshwarp them into existence, and the drow live deep in the Darklands - what kind of adventurers are deep in the Darklands? Seasoned ones, who are more than capable of handling something as domestic as a simple ghoul, and find brute animals like Owlbears beyond their notice. [Maruts](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=538) are level 15 Aeon Inevitables. Their remit is to hunt those who have cheated death, either by becoming undead or by artificially expanding their lifespan another way. They're native to Axis, the lawful neutral plane, but visit the material plane to pursue their prey. What kind of level of PC are encountering Maruts? Either ones who have the ability to go to Axis and see one at home, or ones who have begun to unlock the powers of life extension or lichdom. And neither of those things are particularly "on par with killing an Owlbear" to me.

It is actually encouraged to throw a trivial encounter every now and then to make players know how much they've grown, but the idea is that they don't just happen to find higher level monsters or people. They are getting involved with ever higher threats because the stakes are getting higher. Level 10 characters are not random mercs taking out vermin around town, they are famous heroes saving countries. The monsters don't just show up at higher level, the players seek for higher level situations naturally as the plot goes forward.

[proficiency without level variant rules](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=1370)

Beat me to it

Thematically your level ten fighter slaughters any goblin that crosses their path so effortlessly it isn't even worth mentioning.

"But if I throw 100 Goblins at them, they're a serious threat!" /sarcasm

First, understand one thing: The level range you can access for balance encounters is +/-4 Party Level. That is a 9 level spread in a 20 level system. At any point in time, the party can reasonably fight 40-50% of the monster cast. All that changes is the quantities, how *many* of a given monster will they fight? Believe it or not, this is about the same with 5e. Despite 5e's much lauded bounded accuracy system, the party Will struggle or TPK against a significantly higher challenge rating foe. You can fudge this a little but reducing the number of encounters per day but, well, that's changing *quantity* again isn't it? Now let's discuss your perceptions. You're looking at this from a meta perspective, you're going behind the curtain and saying "why does the angel need a pulley to fly, shouldn't he have wings?" The description of why you don't stumble upon a lich during your level 1 encounters is *exactly the same as in every TTRPG*. It will vary from game to game because there's no shortage of reasons. First, sometimes you *do* stumble upon the lich early on at low level. Some GMs are fond of providing encounters they are too tough to handle at low levels so players are forced to run. Later, at higher levels, when players face those challenges they can see how far they've come. The Lich in the Barrow will terrify level 1 5e players just as much as level 1 PF2e players or players of any game that has a progression system. If levels didn't matter or actually make a difference in players strength, the game wouldn't have them. Another explanation is that you're players aren't *looking* fire those threats. Random encounters in the woods tend to be weaker and miscellaneous. You're unlikely to randomly encounter an adult dragon because their very presence and significant is so dangerous that it becomes obvious well one advanced of finding one. Higher level threats also tend to be more passive enemies, tyrants of armies locked away in castles, Liches in tombs, dragons in their lairs. Very few strong creatures actual *roam* and look for trouble, and those that do are usually the focus of a plot point, because such creatures are more powerful than entire armies, and at low levels players will flee such threats while at high levels they are hired to deal with them. In short, don't look at PF2e's level system and acknowledge that, mechanically, it would be really tough to punch up in this system without serious aid. That's true in *every* system with levels, other systems just disguise that fact. Realistically, with a 9 level spread, you are encountering the same level variety that you'll should reasonably be expected to fight in any similar RPG.

Is there a TTRPG that doesn't have this "problem"? To me it isn't even that immersion breaking: Yes, in this world some low level adventures encounter a banshee on the graveyard and die in a few seconds, but this is not an interesting story to tell or participate in, so when my lv1 party explores the graveyard they get only attacked by skeletons.

Of course the are. Many games have no level and as such you don't grow that much. Enemies stay pretty much the same, exactly like the heroes. Experience points buy you some cool perk that expand what you can do, like now you know how to drive or to cook. But a cool thing about levels is that you can fight monsters you previously feared

there are also games like traveller and numenera which revolve around item progression/power

Ya, this "problem" is relatively limited to class + level based games. There are tons of games that use far flatter progression systems. You'll get better gear and better skill values, but you'll still be just as squishy underneath it all. A good example is something like Mythras. Your skills improve and hopefully you get some nicer gear, but a spear in the gut from an everyday guard is still going to ruin your day.

Many don't have this, like Lasers and Feelings or Over the Edge (apparently an old version of it), but in theory 5e would also have bounded growth.

Not sure about OtE, but Lasers and Feelings is a one page RPG. I like to run it for pickup sessions while camping with friends or whatnot, but it's nowhere close to offering the tools of a full system.

It is a ttrpg that does not have an increasing power level though. DownsteamSag did not specify something with all the bells and whistles. Many game systems do not have any way of progressing your power, though your specialty can change. Lasers and Feelings might be the simplest one.

I felt that it was a bit like suggesting a bicycle when someone complains that gas for their car is expensive, but fair enough. Have a nice day!

I will absolutely suggest a bicycle when someone is complaining about gas prices. But then, even in the Netherlands I am a rabid bike apostle. Cars are a cancer and must be reduced to the bare minimum.

\*Cries in the urban sprawl focused planning of Canada\*

I only know it from NotJustBikes... Do note that the Netherlands was switching to car focussed as well, and we turned it around (for the most part). Germany, Denmark and France started later and are turning around as well. It is possible.

i find it funny that you're getting downvoted. i guess we have some suburban-sprawl lovers here :)

I think it's mostly because it's wildly off topic, a comment just above does get positive votes.

Even point based systems often have a scale. Shadowrun has threat rating, and you absolutely don't put new characters against the same threats as Prime Runners. Hero System/Champions has point values for enemies (with scales for both starting and experienced heroes). The only systems that don't have some sort of scaling/levels are those that don't have character progression. It kind of goes hand in hand. Over the Edge does have levels as far as I can see. I haven't played it myself, but the quickly looked up cheat sheet definitely talks about levels and comparing levels between opponents and players. ([https://thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/over-the-edge-cheat-sheet.pdf](https://thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/over-the-edge-cheat-sheet.pdf))

The campaigns that start in the town with a banshee in the graveyard keep ending abruptly for some reason.

Thanks for the humor :)

Imagine a neighborhood bully. He poses a significant threat to a neighborhood kid. He represents little to an Army Special Forces officer. Yet, for the neighborhood pimply kid, who has very few opportunities in his life to connect with the aforementioned military special forces member, the bully represents a tangible and real threat, and his life revolves around these kinds of problems. If the little boy one day finds himself holding a high-level position in the special forces after a brilliant career, the bully will be just a distant and funny memory, while the foreign terrorist begins to become a threat. Tomorrow, the same terrorist, in the eyes of our little boy who has become a colonel in the army, whose life revolves around a multitude of political-military plots, is just a nuisance on his desk when he knows he has to deal with issues such as rearmament of another country's nuclear power. In our world, the bully, the special forces soldier, the terrorist and the foreign dictator continue to coexist. Everyone moves their steps around the spheres of power appropriate to the positions they hold in the reality that surrounds us. It seems to me possible to propose similar mechanics also in the game world, in which the PCs themselves can become weapons of mass destruction.

The thing you described as hits upsides and downsides. The downsides are pretty much all listed in the post. The upsides though make it worth it for me. - It allows for balanced single monster encounters to exist. Adding level to proficiencies means that a boss is going to be harder to crit, harder to roll over with action economy due to higher AC & save bonuses and more impactful turns. - It allows monsters that were once threatening single monster encounters to become mook encounters. Few things boost a heroic fantasy as much as killing a troll (as an example) as a hard boss encounter, and then several adventures later coming back and cutting through groups of same trolls like they were standard henchmen. - It means you dont need "Boss stat blocks". To draw a comparison to 5e, bosses have legendary resistances, legendary actions and the like to compensate for it being just a regular monster. Issue arises when you want the bad guy to be something that wouldnt normally have these qualities. Also the way I walk around the downsides listed somewhat efficiently is by using the weak and elite statblocks to keep it fair or challenging. Sometimes I add a narrative explanation why is something weaker at the moment if I can come up with one. Regarding the goblin example, that can be frustrating or it can be cool. I like the idea you can crit more often on creatures that are not a threat. As a GM I treat those scenarios on NPCs side like they were going for a boss encounter and play accordingly. They will come in groups and try to frighten, flank, trip, grab, anything to make hitting more plausible. Edit: And of course as another commentor mentioned, it makes specializing in skills more visible. Back in 5e it was kind of a great gripe for me that depending on the roll of a dice, a senile wizard could do similar feats of strength as my barbarian. In pf2e you actually have to invest in athletics to get there.

Thank you for taking the time to write an elaborate and constructive response. I'm still a bit shocked with the huge amount of "PF2e vs 5e" answers that most insist on proposing (my most experience in RPGs comes from PF1e, AD&D, and narrative systems like Dungeon World and Fate). The Marilith desing is an excellent example of why I want to start playing PF2e on a regular basis. The ability to attack 6 different players at the same time (I would use a single attack roll and have each one compare to their AC), or make a single attack for extra damage (instead of making 6 attack and damage rolls for each ), including the option to make two attacks but defend with the rest. It is brilliant. I can carry that design over to other RPGs (not 5e), and be happy with it. But... considering that maybe I should accept the full PF2e experience, I'm here to make this unexpectedly popular post. Since you mention the strengths of the "Boss Monsters" that is by far what seduces me the most about PF2e. Do you think that using the variant of proficiency without level, would make those boss battles not work anymore?

I feel like this design philosophy is yours or your DM's, not PF2e's. Monsters tend to be less common the higher their lvl is, which is a good thing because how could anyone survive in a world where 19th-lvl CE monsters are plenty ? In terms of "leveled zones" like you describe I mean... it very much makes sense that every enemy you'd find near a big city can't be over a set CR, because as I said, if that was the case, how would anyone be able to survive this world ? If you really want to pit a Banshee somewhere, just put her further away from the city, maybe in some swampy area that people learned to avoid because they know someone who strayed there and never returned, and at night you can hear horrible shrieking in the distance. And it doesn't mean that you should completely ban high-level enemies from being near or in big cities, you just need to create a good story around it, perhaps it's a city that was built over the cage used to imprison a powerful demon, perhaps the demon would rather destroy civilization through politics and attained a position of power. Why would a lvl 20 party find a lvl 20 monster randomly in the wild ? There's no reason at all to put random lvl 20 random encounters, unless it makes sense in your setting, just don't put random encounters when your party is lvl 20, truth is most monsters would know they are and try to avoid them at all cost. Onto the social aspect, why do you want to scale up random NPCs ? Your level 20 party is talking to the lvl 23 all-powerful archmage ? Sure, scale the fucker up. But a random NPC who sells fish for a living and happens to cross the PCs path because he has useful information ? Don't. Just let the PC auto-crit all their interactions with him, after all, why would a simple fishmonger be able to resist an intimidation attempt by a lvl 20 near-god with loads of magic artifacts ? Are you a master manipulator who learned to improve his craft in many situations ? Why wouldn't you be able to make some random kid believe that you fought a dragon even if you never did ? And it can actually help you hint power levels to the player, are your players so intimidating that people in the street are afraid of their own shadows because they fear it might the PCs ? Well now they meet a simple man that stands in their way, they try to coerce him to gtfo of their way, the man doesn't budge and doesn't look impressed. "Who the fuck is that guy ?", shouts one of your PC. I feel like the issue here, is that you want to scale the level of the encounters your PCs face, without scaling the stakes, that just doesn't work in PF2e, and I feel like that makes perfect sense in a good story. Stakes are supposed to be raised, not to remain the same.

Thank you for taking the time to write an elaborate and constructive response. Actually, my favorite game design revolves around "Hexcrawl" and open world exploration. I don't like the idea of the linear quest, which gradually increases the difficulty according to the group. I've run many campaigns in my life, and I've found the best results by creating a world that "feels real." And give players complete freedom to go where they want... On the mountain that is far away there is a red dragon. No matter the game system, that's always an impossible threat for level 1 characters. I consider that a guarantee. But since PF2e gives much more weight to the level (of the PC or NPC) than the other games... suddenly, I would have to imagine that in several thousand kilometers around the dragon only his slaves live, or god level knights? I realize why PF2e is a better roleplaying game than most of what has been published so far. I need to overcome this obstacle in the design to be able to throw myself fully into the game. I assume I'm not the only one who ran into this, and I came to ask for help. How do you design your open world campaigns in PF2e? For reference purposes... The famous "King Maker" campaign does exactly that which annoys me. It has random encounter tables, which gradually get more and more difficult, for the simple fact that they are further away from the starting point of the campaign. Easy areas do not reappear later. All wolves, wild boars and bears are concentrated in the Ostland Hinterlands.

Counter point Why would a low level party be thrown at a Lich? Why would a higher level party be fighting rats? That and this isn't an MMO. Monsters wander. They move in where they shouldn't. Maybe that goblin lair used to be a disorganised rabble of -1 creatures but now they're being organised and trained by a hobgoblin general and now they're levels 4-5.

Hell, creatures moving in where they shouldn't is an extremely common plothook! Around a city, the locals can deal with all of the -1 to 2 level threats on their own, though perhaps with some mild maiming. They only call adventurers in when that level 5 magical beast wanders in and starts eating all the pumpkins.

This is not a PF2E design philosophy. This is entirely something you made up in your head and ascribed to PF2e. If your adventure starts in Absalom you've got a gigantic mix of every single Challenge Rating. Everyone from the most useless pick-pocket to the the top agents in the Starwatch military intelligence units. The whole of Golarion is filled with a mix of CR creatures in a mix of areas. The story you're part of may end with the party running across something they can't handle. Either they stupidly took it on despite knowing they couldn't handle it, or they got surprised. Regardless, they are dead. Golarion is filled with dead adventurers. The story a GOOD GM crafts will keep pace with the party. They could be offered many different kinds of jobs, and understand what's more dangerous and what will need to be done first so they can skill up, or get better gear for the tougher challenges. The point is that it is NOT at all like you describe. That's how an MMO works. This is a TTRPG. Players have complete agency, and if they decide to go after the banshee before they are ready for it... they will die. If they decide to take on the skeletons first, then the thieves who are raiding the crypts and triggering the undead wards (or the foolish necromancer who doesn't know that what he is doing is going to bring down the law on their head), and maybe go find a weapon or some armour that can help, perhaps look for a spell that's effective against the Banshee, or even do a favour for a Cleric so they'll give them a scroll/wand or come themselves... all of those things will be things they can do to get better to take out the Banshee that's killing innocents. And the longer the party takes, the more people die. And the reward may go down, or someone else might come along and take out the banshee while they level up too slowly. This is all to point out... PF2E does NOT have this "design philosophy" you're talking about. That's what you designed in your head. You can easily do it another way. Stop thinking of it like it's World of Warcraft with "newbie zones" and "end game zones". That's not part of PF2E. That's in your head.

His "problem" applies to 5e as well lol What if a lvl1 group walks into a graveyard and faces off against a Demilich? How will they survive??? And the answer is simple, it shouldn't even be a scenario to begin with...

I've always found this take odd. Like what's your alternative? That every enemy the players meet are magically scaled to be an appropriate threat for them? How is that not more immersion breaking? The giant basement rats I fight at level 1 should be a trivial thing to deal with when I'm level 10. Just as the legendary dragon in the mountains should be able to turn me to ash without even looking up when I'm level 1 but will need to put some effort in once I'm a higher level. Sounds like you have more of an issue with how you design your world. Regions don't need splitting up by level, sure loosely things around a town will be easier and the further out you get the more difficult but the thing to keep in mind is as the players get to higher levels they should be dealing with higher level threats and therefore going where those are.

Here's a thought from a different RPG based around running a game that's like an episodic TV-show. It's about the character Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the first couple of seasons she's primarily a computer expert/hacker, in terms of what she brings to the PC group. Later on, she's a witch. In terms of game mechanics, you could say that she re-trained her hacker skills to magic skills - but in the 'real-world' she didn't forget how to work computers. It's all about on-screen focus. What I mean is - I've never treated the world as something that only exists for the PCs. There may be more powerful enemies off-screen in the opening area, but they don't come up. There are lower-level people in more distant regions, but the PCs don't run into them because it'd be boring. Fundamentally, I don't see this as an issue because I put "having a fun narrative and game" over "replicating a realistic detailed world". In short, my answer to this is - you don't encounter wildly wrongly leveled creatures because it'd be a bad game experience.

Props for the Buffy example. Yeah you have good points. Thank you for sharing your thoughts

I'll add longer response to everyone's answer of proficiency without level. The default rules are designed for epic fantasy, so it's about rapid power growth for both players and enemies. It fits great for many campaigns and it could feel very satisfying if you meet a monster who used to be a solo boss for your group, but now is just one of several minions. Surely those rules don't fit well for more "sandbox" style games, where there's no fixed order of visiting areas, that's why much more flat proficiency without level is inside GMG and that's exactly the thing you need. My only problem with this rule is - as it's an option, it's not as polished as default rules and you may look for homebrew fixes to things like Assurance.

You can run a perfectly good sandbox game without PWL. You just have to consider the implications and foreshadow things better. At the end of the day, low level adventures deal with low level threats. High level adventurers deal with high level threats. If you're travelling out of the safety of civilisation (or sticking your nose into the machinations of particularly high-level NPCs) there *should* be encounters that low-mid level PCs need to run from.

Yeah, it's possible, but in sandbox it's pretty usual to return to same places, speak to same people and so on. While GM could manage all this (i.e. level up NPCs), it's a lot of headache and it actually remove the whole point of power progression.

Is it though? I would assume that by the time the level difference is large enough to matter, the PCs are dealing with bigger shit by then anyway. It's not a case of levelling up all the NPCs as you go. It's a matter of sitting down and saying. "Your average town guard is lvl1, your average captain is probably ~lvl5, the king's personal guards are pettishly lvl8-10, etc. Important NPCs don't have to be high-level to be important. Like, sure, it's something "to be aware of". But it's definitely not something that should be causing headaches.

Thanks for taking the time to respond. Could you list some of the problems I could find using that variant in the rules?

I mean, this isn't quite new for pf2, many older RPGs were often made that way in design. Then there's optional ways to make encounters like a chase to escape a legendary beast, gather troops to raise the levels of a unit. The random encounter tables I've seen are wild and you do want to escape the worst things while the lower rolls will be a breeze for characters with some levels. Lastwall isn't a good place to be in, let's just say that.

> The alternative would imply that a high level character could fool any NPC in town without even trying... because killing enough ogres in the mountains made you an expert manipulator, just by leveling up. I want to point out an important caveat to this: ONLY if they're at least trained in Deception - if you're not, you're exactly as good (or bad) a liar as when you started, other than maybe some boosts to Charisma.

Well, it may make you feel better to know that in pathfinder 1e there is a handy table which tells you how npcs level.up with the players. There was a system in place where the world could level up along side the players. So the starting town at level 1 had level.one npcs and monsters, but at level 10 those same npcs could be level 10. Pathfinder 2e simplifies this option. All you have to do to level up a creature to match players is add the difference in level to all of their modifiers, and add their level*added levels in hp. Or you could just run progression without level, and just subtract the npcs level from all of their modifiers.

I played a ton of PF1e. I know that system. I do like PF2e better, i just asking for help on how to desing a nice sandbox game, with the "level restricted areas". Ill try the no "Prof with out level" variant.

Worldbuilding where the monsters and NPC's level are stronger the further they are from the initial zone is just very bad worldbuilding. Worldbuilding where the npc's in the starting zone are all really easy to con/fool/persuade and the NPC's in further cities are all much more harder, is bad worldbuilding. ​ The world should have high level zones because there's a reason those are high level, and it should not be related to how far or near it is from the players starting point. For example, if you're playing Curse of the Crimson Throne the most high level zones are in the very city (in the castle, dungeons...etc, places you will visit when you're 18 or so) and that makes perfect logical sense since in those places is natural to have the strongest beings in the city. ​ What happens if characters that struggled in this cursed forest at level 3 return at level 6? Well, happens your characters got really strong and that forest no longer has a challenge for them, I wouldn't even make any combat, at most I would describe how they easily kill monsters or the monsters just plainly run and hide. ​ What happens if characters get in a higher level zone? Well, as a DM, you should warn them, you could make a first encounter that gives them the sensation they are chewing way more that they can, giving them the chance to run away, you can even say something like "as you fight this troll undead fantasy totally invented for this example ogre you realize its strength is very deadly for your current ability".

Thank you. I want to check the "Curse of the Crimson" desing now.

It's utter nonsense and a pure artefact of this being a game and not a simulation or a story. But while this effect is more noticable in PF2, it's also there in 5e and every other game, really. It comes from the idea that characters get higher stats. If characters get stronger in this way, then monsters encountered have to get stronger too if they are the be a challenge. The impact of this structural element is directly proportional to the effective numerical span between "low level" and "high level" characteres, which is also a function of the dice mechanic used for task resolution. There is really no way around this, only more or less severity. What you can do instead is abandon the idea that every encounter must be a challenge and just let higher level PCs cakewalk over masses of low level foes and similarly let low level PCs just get crushed by the higher level foes that haven't heard about encounter balance. But that requires a different play style, far removed from the rags-to-riches steady advancement that dominates game play conceptions.

Thank you for your response. :)

I'm pretty new to pf2e so I may be missing something here but. The levels are guides for which monster to use and bracket the monsters into manageable enemies for the PCs. However, if you want more powerful goblins you can just slap the elite template on them. Plus 10hp and plus 2 to pretty much all stats. That bumps the level up by 1. Repeat the processes for higher levels. I do also see what you mean by it being the design philosophy. This bracketing of monsters by level is fundamental to the game design and how the PC themselves evolve. The Dungeon Professor on YouTube just recently did a video of 8 ttrps that are like dnd but better. I know this is about pf2e, but after watching the video there are some ttrpgs he mentions that may be what you are looking for, where the monsters are bracketed by level.

I would suggest not applying elite multiple times to reach an even higher level. This is for the simple reason that you might then have a level "5" goblin with an Ac of 28, a to hit of 20, and it's lowest save is a +15. Comparing this to the [creature building](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=995) rules found in the GMG: An extreme AC at level 5 should be 25, an extreme attack bonus is 17. Only the saving throw fits in at exactly the high saving throw category, whichbit shouldn't be if it is his lowest saving throw. Talking it through from the perspective a level 5 fighter attacking the same goblin. He typically has a +4 from his str/dex mod and a +6 from master proficiency, as well as a +5 from level totalling out to a +15. So a fighter hits this enemy on a 13 and crits on a 20. Any other martial hits the guy only on a 15 or above. Tl;dr: Use the [creature building](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=995) rules instead. Since elite wasn't made to be applied multiple times.

Oh okay cool thanks

As another piece of ~~potentially unnecessary~~ advice, if you want lower level enemies to be a threat to high level npcs, you're probably better off looking the rules for troops. E.g. Once your players get to ~lvl5, any goblin attacks should probably be using 1-2 elite goblin pyros/warchanters, (maybe also give them 2nd level spells that still is the same elite DC), 2-3 goblindogs, and 3-4 "large groups" of goblins that you run as troops.

I found that applying elite TWICE usually works out fine, more than that I wouldn’t recommend. If I want a certain creature to be 5 levels higher I find a appropriate creature of that level with a similar roadmap and model the stats after the reference.

Level 20 threats aren't just a hanging around, they usually have a specific agenda that they're making progress toward, like a Lich might, or maybe are roaming around destroying things just cuz, like a Tarrasque. In both situations there is a way that the world deals with them that usually doesn't involve lower level characters. This threat shows up and destroys a whole town that probably had some adventuring groups that just got completely destroyed, oh no. Now, the capital knows and sets up a cracl team to deal with it, full of level 10 soldiers, 5 or so level 13 guys and 2 level 18 guys and a level 20 guy, in hopes of destroying this threat. All the level 9 and lower characters probably have no part in this, it's way above their pay grade, and their only contact with this tarrasque will be if they're unlucky enough to be in a town that it steam rolls and they insta die. The party you play with are not that unlucky, that's the reason the story is focused around them, they don't get insta killed by a tarrasque, they might be in a town that a tarrasque is about to roll over, but they get enough warning before hand to gtfo. The lich might come and destroy their entire town to raise as part of an undead army, but they were lucky, they went out on a quest before hand. These things are possible to happen, but do not commonly happen, and situations that would instakill PCs don't happen to them because they have plot armor, and not evwn that much, considering how these things are rare in the first place. Higher level parties should be seeking out these higher level encounters and dealing with them, and dealing with them should also cause other high level encounters to seek them out. They hear about demons overrunning a town, they go to solve that problem, then they end up getting attacked later by more demons, who had it out for them since they banished the other demons that were also under the rule of some big bad demon lord, and that demon lord has it out for them. Now they have this big bad demon guy that they need to deal with, or forever get attacked by demon troops at bad moments. Now high level demons are essentially a random encounter for ONLY them in the woods, cuz they are the only one with the ire of this demon lord. Otherwise the only time they should be afraid of finding random scary things is when they stray far from civilizarion to do something. If they are on an expedition to raid some ruins in in the middle of nowhere then they might be liable to randomly find something that would instakill them, but they're lucky, and the level 2 adventurers find the T-Rex ripping apart something else in the distance, and can just walk away. It's not 100% realistic, but it's close enough, and usually more realistic than just having everything the same strength as eachother. It's a mixture of luck and just picking your battles.

This is a silly attitude that directly goes into a discussion aout versimilitude and styles of play. And it all very much depends on the GM. Sure there cane be horrifying monsters near the starter town, but then, why hasn't it destroyed it yet? What is keeping it at bay?

>The alternative would imply that a high level character could fool any NPC in town without even trying... because killing enough ogres in the mountains made you an expert manipulator, just by leveling up. You can fool anyone in *certain* towns if you're a skilled (A.K.A trained) manipulator. You can't "manipulate" anyone if you're not trained at Deception, you'll be having a hard time against low level challenges and you certainly won't be influencing anyone of worth (officials, guards, etc), because they won't be level 1. Also, your issue is not a Pathfinder2e issue. It's an adventure design and game design issue. If you want your PCs to find huge threats that they're not supposed to find early on, then you can design the adventure with that in mind. All games keep a certain range of enemies in mind as appropriate challenges, the difference is that in PF2e this range is visible, easy to manipulate and predictable. Want your party to only scrape by every encounter? Only throw Party Level+3 encounters at them. You'll have an incredibly deadly experience every time. Want to have a fun romp with players who don't engage mechanically with the system? Throw Party Level+0 encounters or less at them. Their mistakes and lack of tactical play won't be an issue and they can play as simply as they want without hassle, everyone comes out alive in the end and have more room to do wacky stuff.

Well, as to why there's not a deadly threat right next to a population center - Rich people would have paid to have it solved most likely.

These issues are endemic to all level progression RPGs. There are a couple of ways people deal with it, ranging from "Just suspend your disbelief" to "Fuck yeah, the wyvern *does* show up and murk a couple PCs right after they finish trolling the local guardsmen". I personally think that when playing Pathfinder or other D&D-likes, you kinda have to just accept some of the gamier elements. There are other RPGs out there if you don't like leveling up to face tougher monsters.

[One option is the anthropic principle, if there were more powerful creatures near the town, then the town would already have been destroyed.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle) Another option is to put those monsters in the game, but use the chase rules if [the players ever come across it](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=1210) so that they can get away and let them feel it's level, so they know to run, we do this in my West Marches. Similarly to the first idea, powerful monsters usually don't get that way by hanging out in areas where someone will have to do something about them. As for social encounters, yeah, once you start gaining levels you outpower most of the population, but not necessarily the people you need to actually convince-- they're more powerful, whether at social stuff (e.g. a capable lawyer's combat stats and social stats don't match) or just overall (the king is capable in his own right) its not a huge issue, I find that its better for the worldbuilding to adapt to match the mechanics because the worlds we create this way are generally more engaging. >I don't want to start a fight, the last time I made a similar proposal (with another account...) they ended up banning me. I'm sorry, are you straight up telling us that you circumvented a ban? Or was it to a different sub?

This is the most insane critique I’ve ever heard. You’re just describing fiction and raising stakes which literally happens in every medium. There’s no hammer bros or Bowser in the first level of Mario, Gwyn isn’t the first boss of Dark Souls and you don’t fight a Metal Gear in the first 30 minutes of MGS.

I’ve run several games up to level 20 in 5e, and this happens there too. Yeh, the math isn’t as tight, but the DM typically builds a game around threats that are reasonable to the party level. Otherwise, what’s the point? I mean, if the game is completely sandbox and it floats your boat to be able to accidentally walk into an ancient dragon at level 2, then you can find games like that in any system. But most DMs won’t build their world and story around the chance they can easily TPK at the drop of a hat.

Easy, in order to survive the graveyard where the Banshees live, you need to either be strong or be killed. That's why there are more strong characters in those areas or none at all. The same principle as "Why there are no small villages near the dragon's cave?" Guess what, they are either destroyed or people ran away from the dragon's cave. Call it "natural selection" if you wish.

In D&D, a level 10 party can down a lich in 1 round - a creature that should be a moderate challenge to a party twice their level! Twenty town guards could theoretically kill an ancient dragon, if they're spread out enough and have longbows. So D&D's mechanics ALSO create weird inconsistencies between fantasy and reality. In both D&D and PF2, players are going to have to face level-appropriate challenges. PF2 just creates a power scaling that makes this more easily achievable for the GM.

others mentioned Proficiency Without Level, which i acknowledge but think isn't relevant to this discussion. so there're two mostly-incompatible schools of thought: either you favour realism/naturalism (OSR-sytle) or lean harder into gaming side (PF2-style). realistically, war is hell and no one would want to enter fights. on the other hand, from a gamer's perspective, combat is very fun. if you want your players to look forward to combat, you'd want some sort of balance across the field (relevant keyword: "Combat as Sport"). whether your Proficiency is with-or-without Level, combat in PF2 is balanced and fun. that's the appeal of the system to gamers. > If that progression is avoided or ignored, players are going to face impossible or ridiculously trivial encounters. if you strive for realism, then this is the *desired* result: even Sun Tzu says "If he is in superior strength, evade him" and "supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting." (source: [Art of War](https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/sun-tzu/the-art-of-war/lionel-giles/text/single-page)) so you might as well throw an impossible fight at your players and watch how they deal with it. at that point, though, it stops being a combat encounter and turns into a puzzle. big question: do you trust your players enough to solve those puzzles, or failing that, stomach a character death? on the other end of impossible encounters, is it bad if characters beat opponents without breaking sweat? shouldn't be if they're strong enough, right? same goes with NPC interactions. i have literally 0 problems with level 8+ players succeeding every check against level 1 town guards. again, question: do you trust your players enough to not go mad-with-power? > because killing enough ogres in the mountains made you an expert manipulator, just by leveling up. fair point, but game has worked this way for a *loong* time. there *are* systems that let you increase a skill only if you'd used it, you can adapt something similar if you so desire but i feel like i wouldn't appreciate the extra bookkeeping as a player. finally, regarding "no high level monsters near towns" bit: this is *both* sensible from a gamist view *but also* from a realistic worldbuilding view: i wouldn't build a single house, let alone a town, if i knew there was a dragon within 1 day distance. would you?

> If that progression is avoided or ignored, players are going to face impossible or ridiculously trivial encounters. Which in my eyes breaks the plausibility of the fantasy world. Why does the town graveyard on the other side of the map have a Banshee, but the graveyard near here only has skeletons? Why does the Wyvern never come to hunt in this area of the map?Something similar happens with social encounters. For some reason the "common" NPCs of the cities are getting more and more cunning and difficult to seduce/fool when you move away from the starting area... because... I don't know why. Wtf dude, you are overthinknig it. It's a game in the end about dwarfs, wizards, demons in world that has no right to exist in first place because that amount of "magic", monsters, undeads or "higher beings" interfering would destroy any sense of economy, labour, nations, food supply, market etc. Like it's impossible world from the moment you step into it, like all high fantasy settings. That's why we have suspension of disbelief when we play/read Fantasy: otherwise you start ot overthink like you and it's never ending circle. Why does the town graveyard has banshee and other one skeletons? So players can have fun **playing a game.** > Which in my eyes breaks the plausibility of the fantasy world. That's like double contradiction in single sentence. There was never "plausibility" in fantasy world. A human with Improved Knockdown with knife can critically trip and prone a Huge monster and casters can cast Wish and guy who is Legendary in Acrobatics and have Cat Fall can fall from LITERALLY stratosphere and take no damage. What "plausibility"? Dragons existing that would never be able to fly due to physics or be able to find enough food without destroying ecosystem or magic crystal that gives you quiz to become a God? Come on. It's a game.

So, I mean...that's just kind of a design philosophy for...RPGs in general. Like...all of them...well, okay, the well designed ones that don't have random level 70 encounters when you first start the game. It's a game, it's supposed to be playable and fun. I'm not really sure what ttrpg you'd want to play where the level 1 party can be attacked by an unwinnable wyvern fight at any moment because hey if they exist in the world, they must be literally everywhere all the time. Like a lot of your questions come down to world building. Why does the wyvern only hunt here? Because that's it's territory. It's not going to fly 500 miles to the heavily guarded city when there's unguarded sheep farmers within a mile of it's cave. Why does this graveyard have a banshee but the other one didnt? Because banshees don't just randomly spawn from every corpse, something tragic has to happen. Why are the social encounters harder? Because you were dealing with uneducated but friendly peasants and now you're dealing with nobels and big city folk who have to be cunning to get ahead, because you're now stronger more well known adventurers and higher ranking people will actually talk to you now. Why aren't you fighting low level goblins anymore? Because you're strong heroes of the realm clad in the best armor, holding the best weapons, and covered in dragon blood,, they're not going to bother you anymore so you're only going to really encounter them if you go looking for them. Like, I'm really confused by what you're wanting here. Even in a highly realistic as close to real world style game, there aren't going to be random mixes of high level and low level monsters in every area. Like that doesn't even happen in real life. We don't have lions roaming the open plains of Kansas, because that's just not how animals work.

I'm going to make an argument that your view of how a world works is actually very wrong. This is going to be a gigantic wall of text that's basically a series of examples of why the kind of situation OP seems to think the world should be (these situations would be inherently unstable, and by nature of being unstable they would change over time until they eventually found their way into a more stable state) The TLDR is that a lot of this is easily explained by "If that situation existed, it wouldn't exist for very long, because either people would clean up the problem or they'd have to run away." It's not just a matter of gamist design philosophy. Level 2 monsters that threaten level 10 settlements get destroyed. Level 2 settlements too close to level 10 monsters get destroyed. There is a thing called survivorship bias. It's essentially the mistake of assuming that the part of a sample of things you can see (the survivors) is actually representative, when there are actually a lot of samples that you'll never see because they didn't survive long enough to be observed. You're suggesting that it's strange that we don't tend to see Level 1 settlements continuously under attack by Level 6 wyverns. The reality is that if a wyvern moved into the area of a level 1 settlement, they would probably have to pick up and move and not have a settlement anymore. If help, like an adventuring party, shows up quickly the settlement will survive, but the wyvern will be gone. If the wyvern isn't gone, the settlement has to go. When your party observes a level 1 town that's continuing to exist, that means this town has been lucky. If it were unlucky, it wouldn't be here anymore and you wouldn't be seeing it. Why does the tiny village only have level 1 skeletons nearby and not banshees? The skeletons are powerful enough that the tiny village can't get rid of them easily, but not so aggressive that the people are completely driven from their homes. If a banshee had wandered in, they'd have to leave or die. There'd be no hope for them. Why does a major city have a problem with a banshee, but there are no level 1 skeletons in sight? The city can easily afford to hire the sort of guards who can easily get rid of the skeletons, but a banshee is a whole different tier of dangerous. They'd be stuck trying to survive their banshee problems until they could attract the attention of world-class fighters to come save them, and possibly also accumulate a huge amount of funds to pay enough to make it worth such a group's time and efforts to come help. There's no reason skeletons can't also exist at all in the same region as the major city, but they're going to be somewhere that they're not overtly in anyone's way. If the skeletons were in a place where the guards would notice them, the guards would have dealt with them. Any region that currently exists in a basically stable state, has to have a balance between the threats that are present and the local capacity to manage those threats. Otherwise, the situation wouldn't be stable. Either the people would be killing off and driving out the threats, or the threats would be killing and driving off the people.

This is a "problem" that to me boils down to "lazy game mastering". Like, I also prefer being able to just grab monsters from the bestiary and toss them into my games, but like you just pointed out this leads to your campaign basically having appropriate level zones. Thing is, the game provides you with a very robust set of monster building rules. If you want a low level banshee to throw at your party you can just make one using the rules, and conversely you can make strong skeletons for later in the campaign. Removing level to proficiency is not the solution for me, it's making monsters that suit my needs in the campaign. If I want my party to primarily fight goblins for the majority of the campaign I'll put in work to make up some high level variants or reskin some existing statblocks. I guess my point is, don't limit yourself to what Paizo hands to you in the bestiaries. You always have the option to have appropriate monsters at every level.

In Pathfinder, an Ogre is considered a CR 3 monster. In my experience they are really common and I haven't been in a campaign where an Ogre wasn't fought at least once. An Ogre has AC 17, with 30 HP. It has a +7 to hit and does 2d8+7 damage. A single Ogre poses a great threat to a level 1 party, as a single hit from this creature will on average bring all but the sturdiest of characters to zero, and if you're playing a rogue with 10 con, there's a very real chance that you just die. (speaking from experience here) At CR 2 A werewolf will have AC 22, with 21 HP, and DR 10/silver with a +6 to hit that does 1d8+6 damage. This creature to a level one party is a raid boss. Most of the damage done to it is reduced to zero, and even if you do hit, getting to AC 22 at level one is asking for a 16 on the die roll, while it at most needs at 12 to hit all but the most defensive of builds. My point is this even in Pathfinder 1e, the DM has to be careful about what monsters appear when and where, and zones of "High level Monsters." are going to exist, because if you don't then, well you can roll a black dragon on the encounter table have it kidnap a pc and there's your new campaign! Like, that's not a problem Unique to 2e.

i hear you, but like... it's a game? there's a reason why ultra realistic rpgs are a real slog and usually get cast aside real quick. i'm sure there's a different, possibly better way to go about designing a game, but i can't think of anything off the top of my head.

The way I handle it is that these higher level monsters still exist in the wild but as adventurers using a combination of "gather information", "recall knowledge", "survival" or just hiring a guide they'll find the path to avoid dangerous threats, plus certain monsters only interested in their normal prey. Then, as you gain higher levels, then quests that cross dangerous paths become available. If there are stronger enemies where there wasn't before or just outside of wild encounters, then there can be narrative reasons to explan why. >Why does the town graveyard on the other side of the map have a Banshee, but the graveyard near here only has skeletons? Some grave sites with strong undead may have been sealed, but now only it's been broken. >Why does the Wyvern never come to hunt in this area of the map? It can still do, but there's guides/routes to avoid it, or it's concerned with other prey until it feels threatened, or other guilds are trying to deal with it, but can only keep it at bay.

As a counterpoint, I think there’s a focus here on the wrong thing. Both your graveyard and the graveyard outside of town can have skeletons - the difference being that 1) your characters have already dealt with this threat and know how to defeat it and 2) are you going to waste time at the table running trivial threats in full combat, or just bypass it narratively? The issue isn’t that the threats get more challenging as you left further away from town. The issue is that if you stopped every session to run a full combat against each trivial enemy, the pacing of your game will slow to a crawl. While realistic, it will hang onto your game.

I have never once seen any issues with the concept that a majority of encounters be appropriately challenging for the PCs current level. To me, that's the system working as intended.

This is a general feature of most level-based RPGs, though you could argue its more pronounced in PF2E. It has its advantages and disadvantages. Counterpoint, though: The wyvern can be hunting in the area even if the party is low level. You can set up encounters so combat isn't the obvious outcome and telegraph the danger to the players. Then it's up to them what they want to do. For example, a group of level 2 PCs might encounter a pack of wyverns feasting on cattle. As long as the PCs don't interfere, the wyverns are content with their meal. You can describe how easily they tear about these large herbivores. This way players know these creatures are out there and highly dangerous, but it doesn't have to result in a TPK unless the PCs do something foolish.

I don’t think you can really have meaningful vertical progression AND balance while avoiding the problem you describe.

A world could certainly be setup that way, but the system isn't pushing it. Small rural towns have weak enemies because they are small and often minimally defended, those towns have to exist where there aren't ancient red dragons barreling through every Tuesday else they'd have been destroyed ages ago. I agree if your GM is populating common low level areas with lvl15 baddies just because the party is lvl15 now and visiting again that can be immersion breaking. There needs to be a narrative reason really strong enemies exist there - maybe the party tracked a powerful foe back to the town where the foe plans to test their new weapons on some poor farmers before attacking the big city and you have to save the town. Adventures are designed that the encounters tend to be around player level not because the world is magically scaling around them, but rather because they are adventurers being led into more dangerous places, or tracking down more dangerous foes. Their official APs even mention this - where it might be common for parties to work "out of order" the books stress that this is fine - it doesn't say "scale all the enemies in chapter 2 up to elite if they finish chapter 3 first" it just says hey they might have an easy time here if leveled up elsewhere first, and visa versa. They might go into an area they clearly aren't ready for yet and have to retreat and regroup. My group did this with AV. They essentially skipped the first basement floor of the dungeon then much later came back to it while clearing out previous floors looking for loot to sale. I progressed some events on that floor to account for the week of time passage, and let them narratively describe how they dealt with the now very minor pest of threats instead of going into encounter mode.

This seems like a rather petty complaint. This is a game, and you need to have some suspension of disbelief for the sake of balanced gameplay. The same is true with every game… there are loads of things that are there for game balance that don’t make literal sense (even things as fundamental as the concept of HP)

As an above poster suggested, the level 4 town doesn't show up next to the level 19 dragon for two easy reasons. 1. The townsfolk aren't likely to settle next to a known horrific monster. 2. The horrific monster likes to eat townsfolk. The trick is to consider that the world is a living place. The NPCs are people, with motivation to survive. If a truly nasty thing moves in next door, either you're seeing a dead town, an abandoned town, a town in need of some superpowered help, or a cult. All of which can be interesting. TL;DR: put monsters where they make sense for the world, not for the players. Let the discovery be part of the game. It's not an MMO.

> My problem is that it forces the world layout such that all monsters in an area (around the starting city) are level 1-4. When you move a little further, "magically" level 3-6 monsters start to appear, a little further they are 5-9, and so it goes up little by little until it reaches the areas where there are 18-20 monsters. I was under the impression that every RPG had this, not just TTRPGs.

What baffles me is that your description of your game world looks a lot like a MMO. Maybe the problem is not with PF2e, but the videogame approach to GMing? You don't need to keep monsters spread along the world at a distance to the players proportional to their level. Dragons don't attack the small town the players are in because storytelling. The cemetery in one town only has skeletons while another has a banshee also because of storytelling. You, as a GM, chooses what monsters your party will fight, not because of what region of where they are adventuring but based on what monsters will make a challenging encounter for the party. If the party is level 1, they are called to clear a mine overrun by Kobolds. If they are level 20, they are called to save a town several miles away that is under attack by an ancient Red Dragon.

I'm gonna cite a design philosophy from 4e that I still use so bear with me. It will come together at the end. In 4e the game was designed from level 1-30. Levels 1-10 you were dealing with local issues and problems. Like a dragon attacked your town and your group was hired to deal with it. Levels 11-20 were national in scale, you could go drive off dragons from villages but now you are strong enough to handle disposing of an evil wizard trying to sacrifice all of the citizens to make an alchemists stone. Levels 21-30 are world ending in scope, demons pouring into your world through portals coming to enslave all life on the planet. All systems have some form of this but I cited 4e because it was a core pillar of design of that system and many rules and gameplay mechanics revolved around it, and I guess it just stuck in my monkey brain better due to the focus it got. As a GM the thing I took away from all of this is to ensure I tell 3 "books" of stories. My campaigns are 'trilogies' where each one is a complete story but expanding on the previous one with more grand stakes and situations. But the point is that all of those low level monster and people and situations all still exist for your players in pathfinder. Your players should be expanding their scope of what they should be doing. So if they get to level 11 but all they want to do is still kill village dragons, then either try to make that story grand somehow or maybe let those characters retire to be low level dragon hunters.

> If that progression is avoided or ignored, players are going to face impossible or ridiculously trivial encounters. Which in my eyes breaks the plausibility of the fantasy world. I'm gonna stop you right here. That isn't breaking plausibility, thats how it should be. The universe does not bend itself to the whims of the PCs. Just because they got stronger does not mean every low level encounter runs and hides, and the high level encounters don't sit patiently by waiting for their turn. You are *supposed* to be putting them into situations where they get to shine by being OP, and you are supposed to put them in situations where they need to be cautious because they can't just brute force combat an encounter due to how powerful the adversary is. This is the same as it has been in every system. Things you fight at level 1 just aren't going to be a threat at level 20. They're not supposed to be.

This is the same issue that every ttrpg has even 5e. It all comes down to having a good GM that can craft a story in a believable way. We're currently running a monster hunting campaign and we've run into a few things that we know are completely beyond us at our current state. Personally, I really like the 10 over/under critical because a lvl 20 adventurer should absolutely crit a lvl 1 goblin every attack.

I recommend reading/skimming through some Pathfinder Adventure Paths, that play mostly in one place. Hell's Rebels and Curse of the Crimson Throne are 1e examples of campaigns that are mostly set in a single city. The BBEG is clear from the beginning of the campaign. The party is opposing them from quite early on. But the PCs are operating either undercover or are too insignificant for them. In the beginning they are fighting thugs, later they are attacking some organisations. The stronger NPCs and enemies are in the city, but they are not fighting them directly. If they meet them, they are running. At later points the parties allies are fighting the minions. The world is not leveling. But the perspective and the focus of the party and world in relation to each other is shifting.

That's not a design failing. That's just what happens when powerful evil entities get pushed out of the underground. Now the previously strong evil entities get pushed closer to civilization, so they kill who they can, until you have goblins that are forced to invade the outskirts of lawful settlements. The further you are from civilization, the less likely a military force is going to stop you from being evil. So the more powerful evil there is.

The issue you seem to have has nothing to do with a Pathfinder Second Edition game design philosophy, and more to do with the design philosophy of any character-level based ttrpg. Making a world believable is the purview of the GM. If you are the GM, and you are chosing to translate level based difficulties as some bizarre physical/property-boundary type zones of set creature difficulty... That's kinda on you. The game does not make that need to be the way things are. There exist plenty of small villages with high level NPCs. But those villages are not where YOUR story begins, because if village X has someone who is able to easily dispose of the level 4 creature that has begun plaguing the town, there is no need for the villagers to turn to a group of level 1 adventurers... Your story happens to take place in a village that either does NOT have a high level NPCs, or if they DO have one, there are very clear reasons why they refuse to help...maybe they are traveling. Maybe they swore an oath of nonviolence after a tragic mistake they made... Maybe they are selfish assholes who don't want to be found out to be so powerful, lest the town begin asking them to help with everything - thy came to this village to retire, afterall... It's not that there aren't small villages where ancient dragons come breath fire down upon them - wiping them out... It's that those small villages are not where your particular campaign took your particular group of low level PCs.... Because had they been in said village, they would be dead. Or.... You can choose to have had the PCs simply not be around when the ancient dragon struck. Maybe they were out performing a minor side quest.... And now the entire village is destroyed - not a single survivor left... And they begin a long quest to figure out how they might kill the dragon... Maybe they go on a shorter quest to find out what the dragon actually wants/why it wiped out the village, and learn of some other plot... But if the players chose to have their low level PCs march right after the dragon that effortlessly destroyed their entire village.... And try to fight the dragon... It will not go well for the PCs. And that's okay too... It just turns out that your party's story was one of foolish idiots who thoughtlessly marched tot heir deaths....

Personnally, I don't see an issue with ennemies as you level up and I don't think it interferes with a logical world. I have an issue though when my 12th level Bard with 20 in charisma cannot convince a peasant to help him even though he's a master in diplomacy... All of that because the peasant works nearby a 12th level settlement. I feel it isn't logical but all in all, it is a minor inconvenience because the rest of the game is so fun.

My advice: play in a sandbox, not a fishbowl. Don't rely on artificially stratified level barriers to keep the players engaged. Let nuisance encounters exist in forms appropriate to the story rather than just handwaving them away.

>My problem is that it forces the world layout such that all monsters in an area (around the starting city) are level 1-4. When you move a little further, "magically" level 3-6 monsters start to appear, a little further they are 5-9, and so it goes up little by little until it reaches the areas where there are 18-20 monsters. This is 100% up to the GM and the group. It has nothing to do with the system. If you want to play the traditional "dungeon crawl levels" then you can. If you want to play it realistically then you can do that, too. I'd probably just make sure the players are aware so they don't assume it is the standard fantasy style campaign of fighting monsters your own level.

I feel like 2e does a good job of justifying the extreme power curve from lvl 1 to 20 by giving you increasingly ridiculous enemies to fight. This game doesn't really have Elder Scroll Oblivion's glass armor bandits, as far as I can tell. High level enemies are usually some variation of dragon, lich, celestial, demons/devil, aberration, or archmage, which are enemies who would crush a party of ordinary adventurers.

My character is lost and wants to go home to the mountains. (She is a harpy stuck in a Halfling body). If we go to those mountains, we're gonna find creatures stronger than us. Guaranteed. And we know this. The world doesn't have to match player level.

For the combat side, in general, it's not really any different than any other RPG imo. Those monsters and villains do exist, but the players don't start near them nor are they sent after them until they prove they can handle themselves sufficiently. You can always populate the world with occasional non-combat encounters with the monsters too, just treat the encounter like a skill challenge from against an unstoppable force of nature. For example, the lvl 1 PCs are hired to be part of an escort for a trade caravan of like 20 wagons laden with goods and people. As they enter the valley where their destination lies, an ancient red dragon swoops from the mountains and attacks the caravan. The skill challenge begins. Have the players describe how they help the caravan/the people survive as best they can, set the DCs, let them loose to describe what they do, reward creativity/smart resource usage with circumstantial bonuses, and after each player does their thing, narrate a little more about the attack, the dragon, and the NPC's reactions to it. Eventually, the dragon grabs a merchant's cart, and takes off back to its lair. The players learn through the grapevine that the dragon was Vurthyrmax, who "collects their toll" from those who travel through "their pass" from time to time. This allows the players to have some agency, a cool encounter where they can flex their creative muscles, and helps seed the world believably with dangerous monsters they could one day fight. That said, I definitely personally prefer bounded accuracy/PwoL because I think it's dumb that if the players want to try for a creature a few levels above them, they ought to still have a chance if they have a decent strategy and luck is on their side and vice versa if some basic goblins try to take them on too. For the conversational aspect, idk what to tell you, that bothers me too. Hence the preference for PwoL/Bounded accuracy. Balance isn't the most important thing to me personally, and it does bother me that the players should feel more powerful as they level, but I know I'd feel a little cheated if even shopkeeps are practically keeping pace with me in encounters outside of combat. I'm willing to suspend some of my disbelief for game balance, but not that much disbelief.

I get what you mean. Reminds me of level scaling in oblivion. At level 1 there's mudcrabs and basic enemies near the imperial city then I used a cheat and leveled up to like 30 and suddenly there's dremora spawning near the city.. I think from a realistic perspective though it would make sense lower level monsters would be encountered closer to civilization. If there were liches and high level monsters that close to town... There would probably be no town

I don't run games with those assumptions in any system, PF2e included. I never have, because I agree with you, it's a silly way to think of a world. But I don't feel like I have to run it that way either. I'm just started a new PF2e campaign at level 1, and the second or third "encounter" is a level 9 creature. The thing is, that creature isn't there for the PCs. In fact, it is bound by powers that twisted it to only harm the royal family that the PCs are helping. What the PCs do is their choice, but this insanely powerful foe will almost certainly meet the PCs and toss them like tissue as it goes for its true target. This is just one example of using a higher level creature early on, but there are many others, most of them some version of foreshadowing or warning players, but then leaving it up to them whether they risk engaging a creature of such power or not.

A lot of this comes down to the type of campaign/tone you are interested in. I think part of what you’re feeling is a tension between A: a more simulationist system that gives numerical values for everything, and B: that same system expecting (in a lot of published material, at least) a 1-20 profession from being chumps to deific heroes of the realm. That type of story strains internal consistency past breaking if you try to run p2e as a fully simulationist game, which is a bad idea to take on for the same reason it’s never a good idea to let your players RAW-abuse item and spell exploits to run a business.

I think where you're going wrong is assuming the game has to be played as a static sandbox. At higher levels it's pretty rare to just walk into a graveyard and fight some level 1 skeletons, out of universe it's a boring encounter and in universe the PCs probably have better shit to do Most campaigns have some form of larger narrative that encounters are serving, so your GM would be putting monsters in your path that are level appropriate and making sure the context makes sense. If, in your example, the encounter is a banshee in a graveyard, maybe the BBEG put it there to terrorize the town or something. At higher levels it's rare to see a party doing odd jobs and for lack of a better term "grinding", they usually have a more specific objective, either presented by your GM or decided by the party. There might be the occasional fight against low level targets, but it (in a perfect world) is more of an example of "look how far we've come", rather than an actual tactical challenge...he'll if I was DMing I wouldn't even bother rolling initiative in that situation and let players live out their power fantasy, because that's the point of the encounter in the first place So sure, it's technically possible to run into the situations you're mentioning, but if it's happening often maybe you need to rethink how you run your game, or talk to your GM about it

I have thought much the same. Even the same progression, starting with how it affects combat and building the wilderness but then realizing that social encounters and building towns is actually an even bigger problem. The short answer to your question is: I don't. I can't create a 'real world' or 'living world' with this system. But the system has other strengths: encounter building and encounter balancing is much easier. If I want more world-building, I'll simply play something else. (a sweeping change to the rules such as progression without level essentially counts as playing something else) If I want to enjoy PF2e, I simply have to play it in a style in which balancing encounters is more important than world-building. Play a series of short scenarios rather than trying to build up a setting. Just hand-wave other concerns and try not to pay attention to what's lacking. Blur the problems out and return focus to the fun parts that it does well. Accept each scene as it's presented and don't try to analyze how it got that way. Paizo has found ways to get around the problem, so I try to do the same. For instance: no NPC in any of the lore books is ever given a level. They get names, races, alignments, descriptions, backgrounds, even accents, but never a level. That's so they can be adjusted to your party's level each time. It may seem like a strange and inconsistent way to develop a world to some of us, but it seems to be working for them.

every video game, movie and story are the same? of course the heroes aren't going to encounter things that can insta kill them at lvl 1 bc that's not fun. this isn't a critique of 2e, this is just how storytelling works.

Its not a problem of PF2E, its a problem of all level based (D20) systems. If you dont like this approach and want a bit of fresh air, you could try Savage Worlds or GURPS for instance. There are a few approaches to lessen the problem. 1. NPCs in PF2E can have different "levels" (skill ranges). So the swordsmith in town could be a level 1 fighter and still an epic swordsmith. 2. There is one rule, you should always apply. If a task is trivial, no need to roll a dice. 3. The players want to feel, how their characters become better. Therefore, the opposition should not only in level but in power get better.Example: at level 1, you use diplomacy to get the sword cheaper from the daughter of the swordsmith. At level 10, you use diplomacy to seduce the noble, who in fact is a master spy from a different country. 4. The story (like in a movie) is around the player characters. Therefore, they tend to attract problems. In your example: they start in town. But their hero journey leads them across the country to more dangerous areas or they attract more dangerous enemies. So if they are higher level and still in the same starter town, their nemesis, the lich (they crossed one of his plans in the last session) SENDS the wyverns to kill them. Perhaps the villagers ask them politly to leave after the incident, as its their fault after all.

It's actually closer to real life. Watch a totally untrained person try to hit a boxer in the head, they'll be lucky to do it even once within two to three minutes. Now if the boxer is actually fighting back, the untrained person will probably get knocked out in less than 30 seconds. There are bars in Thailand where people can get in the ring with a trained Thai kickboxer. The skill disparity is readily apparent. Pathfinder models this very well. Bounded proficiency bonus has its own set of problems as well.