PFRPG2 RNG issues?

[The Wayward Wizard]

Thanks for your help, the case is closed.

[bmos]

I've been seeing a TON of nat 1s myself lately in PF1 also.

[lostsanityreturned]

Foreword: the diceroller is FG based rather than ruleset based. So if there is any issue it is FG wide.

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Are your players crit failing with natural 1s or are they getting rolls 10 under the target number? Because crit fails and crit successes scale with the strength of enemies.

As for distribution of odds, some of that can be bad luck. It is possible for a person to roll badly every session for months on end, and given that we remember bad rolls more than good ones a whole party with bad luck can quickly look like a party with dire luck.

The reality is, to get a good feel of odds distribution you really need to record tens of thousands of results minimum to start to get a feeling, hundreds of thousands ideally. And even then deviation is to be expected.

On the anecdotal side of things, my session last night was punctuated with consistently decent rolls of 12-14, my session on saturday had a good spread of player rolls with two players rolling exceptionally well. The previous saturday session had one combat of horrible rolls and one combat of exceptionally good rolls including a player who rolled 20, 17, 17, 17 before their luck failed and they rolled a 2.

[ShadeRaven]

lost is definitely right that it would be a Fantasy Grounds issue not PF2, so it's probably just a strange anomaly.

Also, I would look closely at what kind of combat scenarios you are giving them. What are the creatures like? Do they have special defenses, resistances or immunities, high AC, and so forth.... one thing that's absolutely true about PF2 vs 5E, there is many more special features at play and the difficulty is a bit higher. I have a level 20 5E campaign that is coming to its climatic conclusion and it's hard to find creatures that the group has any real fear of missing much versus, so comparing that to a low level PF2 campaign would be unfair.

Which brings me to one other aspect about rolls: perspective. I am not saying this is the case, Wayward Wizard, for your group but there's always an aspect of dice rolls that is very player centric. When a player rolls bad, it always feels like "more bad luck" beyond what the good rolls make up for. Conversely, when the GM rolls poorly, no one remembers but when you land that devastating critical, they'll proclaim that the "GM's Dice are Loaded". It makes sense because the players have pseudo-permanent characters that matter whereas the GM has fire-and-forget foes.

All that said, there *is* a chatlog that builds within the campaign folder for each campaign you run and if you have real concern, I'd consider looking at that closely, seeing if there's some obvious pattern, and if you can literally see an unacceptable abundance of RNG results over a good sample size, contact [email protected] with your concerns and data to back it up. I would never say it's impossible that something wonky is up - but it would not be a PF2 problem, it would be something deeper within FG itself.

[The Wayward Wizard]

Thank you all for your input. I just noticed an abundance of critical failures (rolls of natural 1) and got concerned. I'll keep an eye on things, but the enemies thus far have been primarily goblins with the odd goblin dog, and a bugbear. I'll give it a few levels of game play and if the natural 1s are persistent I'll find and comb through the chatlog.

[Weissrolf]

FGU's 3D dice follow questionable physics on top of a weak pseudo-random number generator. You can forgo the physics part and thus get better results distribution by using the following extension:

https://www.dmsguild.com/product/347009/Fantasy-Grounds-Instant-Dice

It says "5E" because of DMG's new policy, you can edit the extension to work in PF2, too.

[Trenloe]

@Weissrolf - Please don't start this theoretical discussion yet again.

@The Wayward Wizard - if you're interested, or concerned, please follow the link provided by Weissrolf and make up your own mind as to whether it makes a difference or not. Otherwise, please follow ShadeRaven's advice. Thanks.

[hawkwind]

you could always use real dice or discord dice bot :)

[The Wayward Wizard]

you could always use real dice or discord dice bot :)

Thank you for your insight. (:

[The Wayward Wizard]

Update: I paid closer attention to the roll results tonight and noticed that the critical misses were more frequent on secondary and third strike actions during a turn. And the dice roll wasn't a natural 1. in many cases it seemed any roll that resulted in a sum less than 10 was considered a critical miss. Is there some portion of text in the rules I am missing? I can't find anything that describes this particular situation in the rules for the Strike action or attack rolls.

From the chatlog:
[ATTACK #3 (M)] Fist [MOD: DEX] [Agile] [d20-5 = 2]
[ATTACK #3 (M)] Fist [MOD: DEX] [Agile] [2] -> [at Goblin Pyro 1] [CRITICAL MISS]
This means the dice rolled a 7 and somehow it's still a critical miss.

[AlaskanFalcon]

That behavior is fundamental to the ruleset for PF2e.

You achieve a degree of success one step higher if you meet or exceed the DC by 10 or more OR if you roll a natural 20. You achieve a critical failure of you fail the DC of a check by 10 or more OR you roll a natural 1.

Here's the rules reference on the official SRD:
https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=319


This is the case for all rolls against a DC and applies to players and enemies.

[lostsanityreturned]

Update: I paid closer attention to the roll results tonight and noticed that the critical misses were more frequent on secondary and third strike actions during a turn. And the dice roll wasn't a natural 1. in many cases it seemed any roll that resulted in a sum less than 10 was considered a critical miss. Is there some portion of text in the rules I am missing?

Yup, pretty much every D20 roll has four degrees of success, the one exception to this rule that I can think of is a flat check. Although that is less that it doesn't happen and more that it doesn't matter. This is a design feature of PF2e, it lets players who debuff the enemy or buff an ally adjust the crit range of a check. Whether that check is a save, attack or even skill roll.

Keep in mind that unless something is specifically stated to happen on a critical hit nothing special will happen on it. e.g. a critical miss on a strike is no worse than a standard miss in most cases.

Link: Determine the Degree of Success and Effect (https://pf2.easytool.es/index.php?id=5753&name=Step_4:_Determine_the_Degree_of_Success_and_E ffect)
Link: Checks (for context) (https://pf2.easytool.es/index.php?id=5748&name=Checks&optional=optundefined)

[The Wayward Wizard]

Ah, I see what FG is doing now. Because the AC of the creature is 17, sums of 7 and lower are considered a critical miss because there are triggers that happen in that circumstance. Nifty! Thanks for helping clear this up!

[hawkwind]

In Pathfinder 2 any roll that misses by more than ten is a critical miss, just as any that exceeds by ten or more is a critical hit

[Weissrolf]

Indeed, you are missing one of the the main changes in Pathfinder 2 compared to PF1!

Rolls 10 higher than the DC are critical successes, rolls 10 lower are critical misses. 20 is *not* an automatical crit, but only pushes the result one step higher (miss -> hit or hit -> critical hit). 1 is *not* an automatic failure, but only pushes the result one step lower (hit -> fail or fail -> critical fail).

[MaxAstro]

This is working as intended. In 2e, any roll that fails by 10 or more is a critical failure/miss. Since the goblin pyro has an AC of 17, a result of 2 is a critical miss by a wide margin.

EDIT: Oh gosh drat it I didn't see the second page. ^^;;