PFRPG2 GM Enhancement extension

[MaxAstro]

I think there's a bug with the threat calculation on an encounter due to the difference between xp award and xp used to calcuate difficulty

Situation:

Party of two level 3 characters. Against a single level 3 creature, the XP reward would be 40xp.

A moderate encounter for a party of 2 is 40xp.

Therefor, two level 3 characters fighting a single level 3 creature should be a moderate encounter.

However, they still receive the full XP for the moderate encounter, which is 80xp.

The extension seems to be looking at the 80xp award and saying "this is an extreme encounter", which it should be looking at half that and saying it's a moderate encounter.

Oh no, we just went over this whole mess. XD

Your confusion is understandable, but you are wrong here: "A moderate encounter for a party of 2 is 40xp. "

The budget for a moderate encounter for a party of 2 is 40XP. However, a moderate encounter is always worth 80XP, regardless of party size. If this weren't true, smaller parties would level up very slowly and large parties would level up too quickly.

[ThirdSign]

I understand, but it should still be a "moderate" encounter. It's based on the 40xp, not the 80xp reward. Everything in the screenshot is correct except the "Threat" field. It's based on the award, not the budget

Build the encounter here and compare it to the screenshot:

https://maxiride.github.io/pf2e-encounters/#/

[MaxAstro]

EDIT: I completely misunderstood you, ignore this.

EDIT 2: On closer look I think you are right. The encounter in your screenshot should be "Moderate", not "Extreme". I didn't realize you were saying the description was wrong, not the XP award.

[dsaraujo]

My understanding from previous debate is that for two PCs we need to remove two character adjustments from the budget to get the threat for that encounter. So, the table would be the standard 10-1, adjusted twice by the character adjustment value (subtraction in this case since is is less than 4 PCs:

Trivial: 20 or less
Low: 30
Moderate: 40
Severe: 60
Extreme: 80

One L+0 versus two Level 3 PCs is 80xp award, so an extreme encounter, not moderate. By the way, a single L+0 versus two PCs is **very** deadly imho, and there is no way this is Moderate as a guide. Right? Just wanting to be 100% clear.

[ThirdSign]

My understanding from previous debate is that for two PCs we need to remove two character adjustments from the budget to get the threat for that encounter. So, the table would be the standard 10-1, adjusted twice by the character adjustment value (subtraction in this case since is is less than 4 PCs:

Trivial: 20 or less
Low: 30
Moderate: 40
Severe: 60
Extreme: 80

One L+0 versus two Level 3 PCs is 80xp award, so an extreme encounter, not moderate. By the way, a single L+0 versus two PCs is **very** deadly imho, and there is no way this is Moderate as a guide. Right? Just wanting to be 100% clear.

That's not right. It's an 80xp award, but it's a 40xp encounter.

When scaling a moderate encounter to different party sizes, you adjust the budget by 20xp in either direction, depending on if you're adding or removing characters.
For a 4 player party, you want 80xp of monsters for a moderate difficulty encounter.

For a 2 player party, you want 40xp of monsters for a moderate difficulty encounter.

a single L0 monster is worth 40xp, therefor a a single L0 monster is a moderate encounter to a 2 player party.


After the moderate encounter is completed, you'd award the players with 80xp because you always award the players XP as if it's a 4 player party, but the award has no impact on the threat level. That's always based on the difficulty table for the encounter.

---

Here's a good example:

2 L0 monsters are worth 80 XP. This is a moderate difficult encounter for a party of 4.
If I'm playing the campaign with a party of 2, I need to scale this encounter down.

To do this, I look at the table linked below, and see I need to reduce the budget of this encounter by 20, for each player missing. This leaves me with a budget of 40.

Since I know that a L0 monster is worth 40xp, I know I can remove 1 L0 monster from this encounter, which leaves a 40xp budget, making this a moderate encounter for my party of 2, successfully scaling the encounter.

Likewise, if my encounter was one L+1 and a L-2 that would be an award of 80xp for a party of 4. If I wanted to scale this down, I would need to adjust it down to 40 XP again.
I could do this by removing the L-2 monster, and changing the L+1 monster to a Weak variation, making it a single L0 encounter (or a 40xp encounter)

Reference: https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=497

[Trenloe]

One L+0 versus two Level 3 PCs is 80xp award, so an extreme encounter, not moderate.

It's 40xp budget, but an 80xp reward.

I'll refer back to the post I made earlier in this thread:

Table 10-1 Encounter Budget on page 489 gives the threat level, budget and character adjustment. If you have more than 4 PCs you need to essentially create a new table - adding the character adjustment to the XP budget to know the various threat level thresholds.

The character adjustment XP per PC different than 4 are based off the base threat level: Trivial = 10, Low = 15, Moderate = 20, Severe = 30, Extreme = 40.

For example:

• 2 PCs have the threat levels as Trivial, Low, Moderate, Severe, Extreme = 20, 30, 40, 60, 80.
• 3 PCs have the threat levels as Trivial, Low, Moderate, Severe, Extreme = 30, 45, 60, 90, 120.
• 4 PCs have the threat levels as Trivial, Low, Moderate, Severe, Extreme = 40, 60, 80, 120, 160.
• 5 PCs have the threat levels as Trivial, Low, Moderate, Severe, Extreme = 50, 75, 100, 150, 200.
• 6 PCs have the threat levels as Trivial, Low, Moderate, Severe, Extreme = 60, 90, 120, 180, 240.

But, even though the encounter budget is different for a party size of other than 4 PCs, the base XP awarded is still based off the 4 PC levels: Trivial, Low, Moderate, Severe, Extreme = 40, 60, 80, 120, 160.

A single Party level creature has an XP "budget" of 40 XP, it doesn't matter how many PCs are in the party, the XP budget is always 40xp. So, if the level 3 party in our example encounters one party level creature, the XP budget value is always 40xp - and we need to look at the list above to see what threat level this equates to:

Taking 2 PCs, the threat level budget is: Trivial, Low, Moderate, Severe, Extreme = 20, 30, 40, 60, 80.

40xp budget is a Moderate threat level encounter for 2 PCs and a moderate threat encounter gives 80xp - it would be a low threat encounter for 3 PCs (60xp) and Trivial threat for 4+ PCs (40xp or less).

As mentioned by @ThirdSign in post #188 - the values in their screenshot are correct (40xp budget, 80xp award) it is just the threat level that is incorrect.

[MaxAstro]

One L+0 versus two Level 3 PCs is 80xp award, so an extreme encounter, not moderate. By the way, a single L+0 versus two PCs is **very** deadly imho, and there is no way this is Moderate as a guide. Right? Just wanting to be 100% clear.

It is quite deadly, but by the rules it's moderate. Honestly, two L+0 versus four PCs has also always felt more than just "moderate" to me, difficulty wise, but that's what the rules say.

As ThirdSign and Trenloe have said, the threat of an encounter is based on the budget, not the final XP award. It's easy to see why it needs to be this way if you go extremely in the other direction:

Say for example you have an (ill-advised) 8 player party. For such a party, the budgets would be:

Trivial: 80XP
Low: 120XP
Moderate: 160XP
Severe: 240XP
Extreme: 320XP

As previously discussed, the awards don't change, and stay at the usual 40/60/80/120/160.

Let's then say you build an (also ill-advised) 8 L+0 encounter. Such an encounter would have a 160XP award... but it's hardly a "moderate" encounter, is it? No, it's clearly an extreme encounter. So the threat is determined by the budget (320XP in this case), not the final XP award of 160XP.

[dsaraujo]

Thanks again for the explanation. My challenge here is that the whole XP calculation was based on the Random Encounter tool, which has a different perspective: instead of looking at monsters and calculating XP, I was looking at an initial threat and trying to fit appropriate monsters there, so that cause me a lot of confusion as they share most of the code. Here how it should look like after the fix, let me know if I'm still missing something:

Screenshot 2023-03-13 091921.png

Edit: since I've got no negative feedback. I'm pushing this to live as 1.9.2

[MaxAstro]

Rune Force does not seem to recognize the Impactful rune from Secrets of Magic.

[dsaraujo]

This is due to the rune not having anything filled in the Subcategory Field. Change it to Weapon Property (to be similar to the CRB) or Rune (to be similar to APG) and it should work. I wish the modules had some consistency to them for those fields...