I don’t think so.
A few observations, then comments:
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“Normal diffculty”, that is, the preset normal, is Enemy Difficulty “normal”, Enemy Stat Adjustments “somewhat easier” and .8 damage. That is not table top Pathfinder under any definition possibly.
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The CR9 Enraged Owlbears encounter in this gives them +18 BAB apparently. That is not CR 9 BAB. It’s CR13, minumum. I have been unable to confirm if this person was playing on normal or some variant thereof, but holy shit.
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The DCs are. . . uneven. Scott’s chest seems to assume you’ve a rogue. At level 6, say, that’s +6 (skill) +3 (class skill bonus) +4 (dex) + 3 (rogue bonus) or +16. And probably either got skill focus or the +5 gloves from the fort first thing.
CR’s in pathfinder are geared towards 4 person parties, as you well know. People who don’t know table top don’t know that CR5 means a party of four 5th level characvters should use roughly 1/4 of their resources to win the encounter. They also don’t know that a 6 person party gains +1 effective party level for this caluclation. Or that there are guidelines to help the DM buff encounters.
I don’t think those guidelines and calculations have been followed by the devs. When I started on hard the spider swarms had 21 touch ac. Your dex based fighter specialized in throwing things (a build used by nobody) is the only person on the planet who has a prayer at reliably hitting these guys and they had so many hp that just relying on the “splash” from missed grenades wasn’t very effective (read: they killed 2/3s of the party before I finished the fight)… I’ve read “hard” means +4 ac/attack and possibly other stats and I haven’t tested this yet (but keep meaning too). It feels like the devs veered from the proscribed table-top methods for changing difficulty and ran with their own numbers.
Now, unlike @tomchick I like choice and things that are good. So I don’t mind multiple difficulty settings with multiple levels each. But isn’t it more than a bit weird that there are two separate settings for monsters when the only possible things we would be doing to change difficult are:
- Adjusting stats, as per the ancient ways.
- Adjusting the makeup of encounters, which there is also advice on doing and which a seasoned GM can do very well. But which a not good GM is likely to fuck up.
Why did we need two separate settings? What’s actually going on with those settings? Like Tom, I do like when games present the right amount of information and they’re not really giving us any here, although we can discern at least some of it from combat logs.
I’m still not 100% certain what “table top difficulty” is right now. Normal/Normal for the twin difficulty settings seems close, but not 100% right to me although I can’t put my finger on it. I expect my level 6 party to struggle with the trolls in this game, for thematic reasons. I often have to fight 2-4, or 1-3 + troll hounds. But these fights have been brutal, and even Ms Tower Shield Specialist only lasts so long in them. I should look more closely at the rolls, but these do not feel like +8 bab trolls. It feels much higher, even on normal/normal.