Wandering Adventure Party

I like that Pathfinder 2e hard blocks winning in character generation, and heavily (and mechanically) promotes cooperative and smartly selfless play. I dislike how much of how the core books are written, and a pedantically RAW-focused wing of the online community that has risen up around the game. The books read in many parts like they wrote computer programming documentation for lawyers in a past life, and it can make the game seem way more daunting than it really is. It's helpful to read the rules with the knowledge that they're actually pretty simple, and that most of them sre describing how people generally play d20 fantasy games. They've just been very thorough with trying to shut down the kind of bullshit munchkins and the like try to pull. The more hardcore tactical part of the fanbase seems to go to great lengths to convince new players and GMs that it's a rigid and unforgiving tactical combat game, and that it's not suitable for fiction-first or beer-and-pretzel games, which I've found to be blatantly untrue. From a fiction-first PoV, the game tells you how to do a thing. But most people seem to read the books and see it telling them what they can and cannot do.

Hmm. Something seems a little out of wack, as XP doubles every 2 levels, but you're scaling things linearly here. One Level 1 creature is worth 40 XP to a combat vs a group of 4 Level 1 PCs, so things work out here. But a Level 2 creature is worth 60 XP, not 80, and 60 * 4 = 240, not 320. If you're indexing the creature XP to Level 1, the XP curve looks like this (where Approx XP uses a 240 baseline for Level 2 as they do in the books, and XP is using exact scaling): Level XP Approx XP Linear Scaling 1 160.0 160 160 2 226.3 240 320 3 320.0 320 480 4 452.5 480 640 5 640.0 640 800 6 905.1 960 960 7 1280.0 1280 1120 8 1810.2 1920 1280 9 2560.0 2560 1440 10 3620.4 3840 1600 11 5120.0 5120 1760 12 7240.8 7680 1920 13 10240.0 10240 2080 14 14481.5 15360 2240 15 20480.0 20480 2400 16 28963.1 30720 2560 17 40960.0 40960 2720 18 57926.2 61440 2880 19 81920.0 81920 3040 20 115852.4 122880 3200 21 163840.0 163840 3360 22 231704.8 245760 3520 23 327680.0 327680 3680 24 463409.5 491520 3840 25 655360.0 655360 4000 26 926819.0 983040 4160 27 1310720.0 1310720 4320 28 1853638.0 1966080 4480 29 2621440.0 2621440 4640 30 3707276.0 3932160 4800 Using Level 1 indexed XP (let's call it XP_1, for the sake of brevity), your example above becomes 560 XP shared between either 4 equally levelled characters (140 XP) or 3 unequally levelled ones, with it being unclear how exactly to divvy up the reward. I'm not convinced your use of level as weight works, due to the fact that level power does not scale linearly. Instead, I would look to the players' contribution to the party's XP pool. PCs have an encounter XP budget that's the same as monsters', by level, which means the mixed party has 160+240+240 = 640 XP between them. The Level 1 character contributes 160/640 = 0.25, or 1/4 of the party's XP, so they should probably receive 1/4 of the XP reward. 560 * 0.25 = 140 XP, which is what they would get if it was a party of 4 Level 1 PCs. The other two characters each contribute 37.5% of the party's XP, so they would each receive 560 * 0.375 = 210 XP, which would scale to 150 XP in the standard rolling XP window. I've been kicking this math around for a while now on scrap paper. There's been a small spike in questions around XP and balance over on r/Pathfinder2e, though, so maybe I'll work through his a little and make it a little more accessible/searchable.

I created this regional #map for @cawoodpublishing ‘s latest #TTRPG module Ghosts of Wrath!It’s a system agnostic adventure perfect for any edition of #DnD, #Pathfinder, #OSR or even my favourite, #Dragonbane ! Be sure to check it out and share it with your friends: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/cawood-publishing/the-ghosts-of-wrath-adventure-for-5e-and-other-ttrpgs

@kichae@tenforward.social Two-way with masto! Nice! And the topic's been moved into the right forum! Amazing!

The Eclectics (Narrative Declaration) has to be my favourite actual play going right now https://youtube.com/shorts/CzlMyI7Yfy4?si=3Cv-WOIpwFgUm2pl Original Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgPnNx5lTys