Hey y'all! I just finished reading the core rulebook and loved it, but I am confused about a few things that I hope you can help me understand. There's a lot of questions, feel free to just answer 1 question! I suspect not many people are going to have the energy to answer all of them.
1) What is a disrupt?
There's some actions that clearly can disrupt and there's some actions that can clearly be disrupted, but does disrupt only apply to those things? Like, if you trip a mage, can their "until next turn" concentrate spell be disrupted? What if you trip someone as a reaction? What if you're using a ready action/reaction to be specifically disruptive to a spell caster?
Attack of Opportunity says it disrupts a move action on a critical success, is the same true for a ready-strike action/reaction which triggers on a move action?
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2) Are non-perception initiative rolls just flavor?
The Core book calls stealth initiative rolls a stealth check (which, I assume, the enemy would roll perception against it) and when you hide the same thing kinda happens. The player would roll a stealth check against a perception DC, so that's where this is coming from. It doesn't sound right, but I'm not certain.
In other words, if the sneaker beats the initiative of the enemy is the sneaker then hidden/undetected? If the sneaker rolls below perception would they then be observed?
Or would the rogue's hidden/observed/whatever condition not change before or after initiative, and they'd have to roll another stealth check to hide/sneak at the beginning of their turn?
The reason I'm not certain is because the second one sounds right but, like, what happens when the seeker beats the rogue? Do they waddle about for 6 seconds (in which case why not let the sneaker go first?)
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3) What stops wands from being overpowered?
A spellcaster can only prepare 1 staff a day. The staff is rather limited in use in a way that seems balanced to me, but when I compare it to the wand and how the wand recharges automatically with no limit to how many you can carry, it seems a bit too much (at least, I think that's how it works). What's to stop someone from having a belt of wands and holding one in each hand, only using their spell slots in an emergency?
It might simply be fine in actual play and I'm just not seeing something, like maybe it's too costly or maybe it requires too many actions/feats to easily pull off, or there should be a greater emphasis of utility items.
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4)What should you do when a player tries to do something that's covered by a feat?
This might be more advice-orientated, sorry. If someone tries to distract a crowd or make a big request from a traveling band, can they just not?
So, some feats include more technical benefits and I can see how those might work. Fascinating Performance, for instance, gives the fascinate condition. I can see a bard trying to distract a crowd without the feat leading to the simple ruling that the bard's performance doesn't give the fascinate condition; in turn, more people can leave during the performance willy-nilly especially on a lower roll (which I hope isn't too homebrew-y of a ruling).
But I can't use the same logic for Group Coercion:
Pathfinder wrote:
Group Coercion
When you Coerce, you can compare your Intimidation check
result to the Will DCs of two targets instead of one. It’s possible
to get a different degree of success for each target. The number
of targets you can Coerce in a single action increases to four if
you’re an expert, 10 if you’re a master, and 25 if you’re legendary.
If the player is trying to demand a group of people to do something, do I just say no? Or if they're trying can they not use intimidation and have to use a non-diplomacy/intimidate skill? Do they automatically fail unless it's super reasonable?
I can run into a similar problem with attacks. Bows pin with critical specialization, but what if someone tries pinning another with a knife or what if they're using a bow without critical specialization? Do I use the "other" action and homebrew it? I don't feel like I can do a good enough job homebrewing something like that but at the same time it seems like something that could happen.
5) How strong is a +1 circumstance bonus
Under special circumstances it says to give +1 for a minor but significant thing with +2 being for major things.
I think the book has a lot of +2 circumstances modifiers, though, and I think the player might feel cheated if they do a bunch of work only to receive a modifier which is replaced and ignored by follow the expert. Do you think this is the case, or is a +1 circumstance modifier really something that's worth it?
End
I have a feeling I overlooked some stuff, or maybe the answer is in another book, but hopefully most of the mechanical questions have straight forward answers. I'm super excited to start GMing, but I still feel a little out of my depth and like I don't have a great grasp of the system yet. Hopefully after a few games I'll be better!
