D'uh Moments in GMing

 D'uh or D'oh? Depends on how much you like Homer Simpson, I guess....anyway I had one of these when, while researching forums and re-reading manuals in depth on Pathfinder 2E to try and settle my questions on "why does this feel like I am not doing it right?" at times, I suddenly stumbled across the little section of the Bestiary that talks about elite and weakened monsters.

Sometimes the hang-up I have is with situations like Saturday, where the group stumbled into a den of nosferatu, but the group is only level 7. That is not an ideal situation, as the nosferatu thralls are level 8 and the weakest nosferatu stat out at level 10. One nosferatu could tank the group with a few good rolls, easily.

But: while my story/game setting call for Nosferatu there, I could have (had I remembered it) applied the weakened template to that particular nosferatu which would have made a nontrivial difference in the combat experience. Reducing the AC by 2 and hP by 20 for example would have meant a larger number of actual hits on the target with damage toward 0 HP happening faster, given the actual fight was already tough due to vampiric fast healing. The group's archer was the only guy with a useful wooden weapon since they did not at all come prepared for a vampire!

An entire reddit forum I ran in to basically boiled down to two camps: people who (like me) tend to think of the stat blocks on monsters as the "defining stats" and tend not to change them, and people who were, like, "just scale them up or down as needed." And all I could think was, "huh, yeah, why wasn't I thinking like this." I suspect its because in the process of simplifying the stat blocks it moved PF2E design further from the old 3rd edition approach which provided copious mechanical approaches to scaling (all of which were tedious). Also, because I am getting old.....yeesh.....

Anyway, just wanted to share that thought! Now to work out some good rule of thumb on judiciously applying the weakened template to desired high CL encounters, and also using the elite upscaling template on lower level foes I'd like to give more life to.