Assurance is REALLY bad

Outside of a couple corner cases, Assurance looks like a REALLY bad feat.

I was thinking about taking it with Craft for my Inventor so that I could more reliably use Overdrive.

Nope. The feat automatically fails the standard level DC at every level. Like, WTF? Barbarians, rogues, and others don't have to deal with this **** for their extra damage.

Why would anyone ever bother taking this feat outside of Medicine/Treat Injury?

Please tell me I'm wrong.

First of all, that's probably to prevent exactly what you're trying to do.

Second, you can take it for any skill that allows recall knowledge and then take Automatic Knowledge, which will let you Recall Knowledge as a free action every round.

Third, use it in rituals (either as primary or secondary, provided you set up some circumstances to make things easier).

Let's put it another way: if Assurance let you succeed on at-level standard DCs, everybody would be taking this feat, because nothing beats guaranteed success. The power of Assurance comes not from being able to auto-succeed on certain at-level challenges, but from being able to auto-succeed on checks where you're likely to succeed anyway, but really don't want to flub, i.e. your Medicine checks to Treat Wounds, but also your Athletics checks to High Jump, Long Jump, Swim, etc. Unfortunately, it does mean your Inventor's stuck having to deal with failures on their Overdrive checks, which to me is all the more reason to give the class a proper rework.

Assurance like everything else has its place. Medicine is one. Maybe Stealth Savant for a rogue would prefer to not even risk the crit fail. Maybe for Athletics for climbing if the DM is a stickler about rolling for each round or action of climbing.

No one ever takes it in my campaigns because I can't be bothered to waste my time with rolls that are easy and don't matter much. It's a waste of the table's time. And for us older, busy folks, we don't want to waste time on rolls that don't advance the game.

I imagine your mileage may vary.

It also has some use with athletics manuevers against weak enemies since it bypasses MAP.

Auto succeeding on an athletics maneuver against a foe is like finding out a cheat code. It's such a rush to be able to bully enemies with impunity.

Also good at protecting a key skill (like Craft for Inventor or a Swashbuckler's go-to Panache skill) from Misfortune effects because it's a Fortune effect & you end up w/ your normal roll.

And another Athletics use is for low-Str PCs or those wearing armor too heavy for themselves. Some token rolls might be unintentionally hard if you don't have Assurance. Ditto for Acrobatics for a 10 Dex warrior trying to navigate an icy slope.

As with most static feats, its benefits help those at the bottom of the curve more than the top, against one's worst rolls or situations rather than for one's best.

Assurance athletics is my favorite use case. By RAW it's the only safe way to scale great heights, and the maneuver thing can sometimes be handy.

Beyond that it can be nice for characters with crappy ability scores who wants to be ok at a skill. Gnolls are supposed to be consumate hunters but they have a wisdom flaw, so when I built a gnoll alchemist I gave him Assurance Survival. Survival usually uses static DCs, too.

First of all, that's probably to prevent exactly what you're trying to do.

Second, you can take it for any skill that allows recall knowledge and then take Automatic Knowledge, which will let you Recall Knowledge as a free action every round.

Third, use it in rituals (either as primary or secondary, provided you set up some circumstances to make things easier).

Assurance on Recall Knowledge freaking sucks, though. You almost never know the DC, but usually the checks you really want to succeed on are against higher level foes. And by RAW you can't retry once you've failed, so Automatic Knowledge is worse than useless most of the time.

The Feat is a offshoot of the Take 10 rule. Unfortunately it is now a Skill Feat that doesn't increase action cost and works in combat. Those buffs cause some issues.

It's biggest strength of that it avoids Critical Failure. That is the one reason you pick it up and use it. If it also guaranteed a success against most challenges, it would just become the automatic best choice, all rolls, full stop. Only reason to not use it, is Critical Success and that would not be worth the chance of Failure and Critical Failure.

It is either like it is now or utterly busted.

Maybe something like the Elves Ageless Patience would be a more generally useful feat?

Being able to auto-crit on aid actions at 9th level has some nice perks.

Assurance is really great for things you're going to do often where a critical success isn't much more valuable than a success, but also failure or especially critical failure effects you definitely want to avoid.

It's not good on everything.

If you wanted a version that was good on everything, it would probably be too good and be a required feat for every skill (which definitely shouldn't become the case).

It's almost certainly intended for Inventors to have some chance at failure for Overdrive, but the class needs a rework to be viable anyways.

Being able to auto-crit on aid actions at 9th level has some nice perks.

Assurance (Diplomacy) for a character with the One For All feat.

Assurance to Aid if you want to avoid the risk to roll 1.

But let us be honest. Assurance doesn't pay its cost (a feat slot) and it's something that you only take if you have no idea of what to take instead.

Master Han Del of the Web wrote:

Being able to auto-crit on aid actions at 9th level has some nice perks.

Assurance (Diplomacy) for a character with the One For All feat.

Damn, that is a really good combo.

First of all, that's probably to prevent exactly what you're trying to do.

That's why it's bad! It actively makes your check below average!

Second, you can take it for any skill that allows recall knowledge and then take Automatic Knowledge, which will let you Recall Knowledge as a free action every round.

Well, yeah, but that takes extra resource investment to achieve.

Third, use it in rituals (either as primary or secondary, provided you set up some circumstances to make things easier).

Rituals have some of the hardest DCs in the game, and as we've established, Assurance doesn't even get you the average DCs. This would only work on rituals MUCH lower level than you, and therefore would not be nearly as useful.

The power of Assurance comes not from being able to auto-succeed on certain at-level challenges, but from being able to auto-succeed on checks where you're likely to succeed anyway...

I'm confused. If I'm likely to succeed anyway, why am I wasting a valuable feat slot?

...your Medicine checks to Treat Wounds, but also your Athletics checks to High Jump, Long Jump, Swim, etc.

There are some of those corner cases I mentioned. It can work out well for things with established, static DCs, but most of those auto-succeed without the feat after a while (or get bypassed by other abilities altogether like flying over a wall rather than climbing it).

It also has some use with athletics maneuvers against weak enemies since it bypasses MAP.

If the enemies are weak, why are you extending their time on the board by not just killing them?

Auto succeeding on an athletics maneuver against a foe is like finding out a cheat code. It's such a rush to be able to bully enemies with impunity.

I suppose it would be if said enemy wasn't at least -2 levels below you. It auto-fails on anything else. It's pretty easy to bully -2 enemies without the feat.

Also, seek help. Bullying the weak for that dopamine hit is wrong. XD

Also good at protecting a key skill (like Craft for Inventor or a Swashbuckler's go-to Panache skill) from Misfortune effects because it's a Fortune effect & you end up w/ your normal roll.

Misfortune effects are pretty rare though. It is nice when it comes up, though I wonder how the statistics shake out when compared to rolling with much higher values, but with negative rerolls or numerical penalties. I'm willing to bet it's not as good or as big a gap as people believe.

And another Athletics use is for low-Str PCs or those wearing armor too heavy for themselves. Some token rolls might be unintentionally hard if you don't have Assurance. Ditto for Acrobatics for a 10 Dex warrior trying to navigate an icy slope.

That just sounds like encouraging bad builds.

As with most static feats, its benefits help those at the bottom of the curve more than the top, against one's worst rolls or situations rather than for one's best.

On this I think we can agree.

Assurance athletics is my favorite use case. By RAW it's the only safe way to scale great heights, and the maneuver thing can sometimes be handy.

Beyond that it can be nice for characters with crappy ability scores who wants to be ok at a skill. Gnolls are supposed to be consumate hunters but they have a wisdom flaw, so when I built a gnoll alchemist I gave him Assurance Survival. Survival usually uses static DCs, too.

That seems like a good use case for it, though adventurer's rarely seem to perish from lack of food or shelter.

Assurance on Recall Knowledge freaking sucks, though. You almost never know the DC, but usually the checks you really want to succeed on are against higher level foes. And by RAW you can't retry once you've failed, so Automatic Knowledge is worse than useless most of the time.

I agree.

The Feat is a offshoot of the Take 10 rule. Unfortunately it is now a Skill Feat that doesn't increase action cost and works in combat. Those buffs cause some issues.

If I remember correctly, take 10 didn't take more time (you just needed a calm ennvironment). Take 20 was the one that took more time.

It's biggest strength of that it avoids Critical Failure. That is the one reason you pick it up and use it.

Another thing that avoids Critical Failure is rolling with much higher numbers. Unless you're rolling against a static DC that you knew about in advance, Assurance is going to cause you to fail more often than not. But hey, it probably won't be a critical failure, so you've got that going for you, as you said.

Being able to auto-crit on aid actions at 9th level has some nice perks.

So it does. At a certain level though, you're basically crit succeeding Aid all the time without Assurance.

Master Han Del of the Web wrote:

Being able to auto-crit on aid actions at 9th level has some nice perks.

Assurance (Diplomacy) for a character with the One For All feat.

One For All says to ROLL. Since you don't ROLL with Assurance, the two abilities are incompatible. You can't get Y without first meeting X.

Assurance to Aid if you want to avoid the risk to roll 1.

But let us be honest. Assurance doesn't pay its cost (a feat slot) and it's something that you only take if you have no idea of what to take instead.

Exactly right. I've been in that boat. The problem is, if you didn't know what feat to take and settled on Assurance as a result, you probably will have as much or more trouble deciding what skill to apply it to! XD

exequiel759 wrote:

Master Han Del of the Web wrote:

Being able to auto-crit on aid actions at 9th level has some nice perks.

Assurance (Diplomacy) for a character with the One For All feat.

Damn, that is a really good combo.

It really isn't.

Master Han Del of the Web wrote:

exequiel759 wrote:

Master Han Del of the Web wrote:

Being able to auto-crit on aid actions at 9th level has some nice perks.

Assurance (Diplomacy) for a character with the One For All feat.

Damn, that is a really good combo.

It really isn't.

Hey bud, you're right. I missed the more semantic read you pointed out in your previous post. Saying it twice and once with a specifically snarkily named alias sucks.

Blue_Frog shared using assurance for arcana for arcane evolution to learn a spell.
For lower than top rank spells it changed it from a pretty unreliable chance to learn to automatic success. It seems like its actually mandatory if a sorcerer is picking arcane evolution and not just for the extra signature spell.

Nah, the pedantry about assurance not counting as a roll so it just randomly doesn't work with things is dumb. "Roll diplomacy" is just shorthand for "make a diplomacy check". Paizo has page limits and saving space matters.

Even if you're being that pedantic, One For All says you may roll Diplomacy. Assurance says you may take a fixed result instead of rolling diplomacy. I choose to roll diplomacy and then to replace my roll with a fixed result, done.

This is like people arguing that Risky Surgery can't be allowed to work with Assurance because a non-scaling 4.5 extra HP healed is unfair or broken somehow.

Let's be honest, at level 9 a Wit Swashbuckler has, at minimum, a +15 with their master Diplomacy. Add in +4 CHA and they get a critical success 75% of the time already. Assurance is nice, but quickly falls off since in four more levels they have +23 and critically succeed on anything but a natural 1 (and one level later, even a natural 1 is a success)

But let us be honest. Assurance doesn't pay its cost (a feat slot) and it's something that you only take if you have no idea of what to take instead.

Unless you take it in Medicine. Auto-Success on Battle Medicine is huge and can literally save lives. Crit fails there are super risky, and a failure means no healing (and the inability to try again easily).

With Medicine's primary actions having static DCs, you can auto-succeed as early as level 2, auto-succeed on DC 20 at level 6, and DC 30 at level 14.

You probably won't use it when trying to treat a poison, but its useful quite frequently in Medicine.

I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone use it outside Medicine or Athletics (as mentioned above) though.

I think Assurance would work perfectly if the difficulty modifiers for different kinds of activities applied as circumstance penalties to the check instead of automatic adjustments to the DC.

Like if climbing a wall with a rope is typically a DC 15 activity, but becomes a 20 in the rain or a 25 in a huricane, then assurance is useless.

But if it stays a DC15 with a -5/-10 circumstance penalty in those conditions then it works fine.

I try to run my games that way anyway, but especially try to consider it when I know I have a character who chose assurance because they want to be able to represent themselves as a professional in that area that doesn't make mistakes when doing routine tasks, even under difficult circumstances.

Also assurance can also be a good way to check out how difficult something might be if your GM doesn't tell you directly what the DCs for different activities might be and there is a real penalty for critical failure but not for general failure.

...if climbing a wall with a rope is typically a DC 15 activity, but becomes a 20 in the rain or a 25 in a huricane, then assurance is useless.

This is a REALLY important point that I feel gets completely overlooked at many tables, to the loss of those who should have been assured.

Individual responses to everyone

To be honest man, if you can argue against everyone in the entire thread at once like this, I don't really know what anyone is supposed to do to change your mind. Do you, like, WANT to argue about it? Or do you think someone has an answer that will satisfy you, and it just hasn't been said yet?

Climbing a rope in a hurricane sounds like a very stressful, difficult, and for most impossible task. In fact probably just holding on to the rope and not flying off may be difficult. Maybe its ok that it still takes a roll for the best of the best at climbing in that condition.

I guess that in a campaign with a ton of downtine you could use Assurance to earn income. If you roll against CL-1 DC I think you can pretty much succed everytime. If you really want to build your character around it you could ask your GM if you can take I've Had Many Jobs to against a CL+0 DC instead.

It can also work for a thaumaturge or commander if they take Assurance on Esoteric Lore or Warfare Lore respectively and then take Automatic Knowledge later. Since both of these skills would arguably roll against the specific DC to RK a creature, you are pretty much getting an automatic free RK check every turn.

But anyways. I feel Assurance is in the perfect spot for a skill feat. Not mandatory but also not terrible useless, which is IMO the case for most skill feats. You likely aren't going to take it as a first option because its not that good, but since skill feats in general leave a lot to be desired and the list of general feats is laughably small, I feel Assurance is always there as an option to take if you really don't have anything better to take.

Yeah DC reductions are definitely underutilized. I also think they are intended to be utilized for rituals because there's no other way to make them worth the risk and costs. I always read rituals as "a thing the GM wants to let us do but make us meaningfully work for it in the story."

Climbing a rope in a hurricane sounds like a very stressful, difficult, and for most impossible task. In fact probably just holding on to the rope and not flying off may be difficult. Maybe its ok that it still takes a roll for the best of the best at climbing in that condition.

If the point of the challenge is to make the climb be a cinematic moment and even challenging encounter from an adventure design perspective…how did the rope get there? Can you just make the actual challenge more appropriate, and then if the party can get a rope there, the investment into assurance can be worth easing one simple part of the over all challenge?

Also, if it is a full skill challenge, throw in some lightning strikes, wind gusts, splitting ropes, etc. that call for saving throws or other skills. Any skill challenge gets boring when the most exciting window dressing becomes: roll the same skill check over and over.

Nope. The feat automatically fails the standard level DC at every level. Like, WTF? Barbarians, rogues, and others don't have to deal with this **** for their extra damage.

Is this not just a failure of overdrive as a mechanic instead of assurance?

Assurance is useful for skills and situations where you are making a lot of below-level checks. Like, medicine, athletics against weaker enemies, and so on. Push it higher, and it moves out of the space normally occupied by skill feats (Nice to have, not vital) and into centralising terrotory where you essentially have to have it. It's contextual but so are most skill feats.

Squark wrote:

It also has some use with athletics maneuvers against weak enemies since it bypasses MAP.

If the enemies are weak, why are you extending their time on the board by not just killing them?

I should have elaborated instead of just mentioning ignoring MAP. I was specifically referring to using assurance on an atheltics action when you have maximum MAP. A 7th level Monk with maxed athletics could have a +18 bonus and get a 21 when they use assurance. That 21 will succeed against the expected Terrible save for a 7th level enemy, against a low save for a level 5 enemy (still high enough level to be a nuisance) and a moderate save for a level 3 (might show up as a summon or a support piece).

Does that make assurance (athletics) one of the best skill feats? No, of course not. But it's not uselss either.

Assurance is really great for things you're going to do often where a critical success isn't much more valuable than a success, but also failure or especially critical failure effects you definitely want to avoid.

It's not good on everything.

If you wanted a version that was good on everything, it would probably be too good and be a required feat for every skill (which definitely shouldn't become the case)

Yep. One of the fundamental PF2 design principles (and biggest stumbling blocks for people from other systems) is that if something is supposed to be meaningful challenge (as defined by the DC by level chart) you can't optimize yourself out of rolling for it. PF1 would sometimes create incredibly high DCs that you could only succeed at if you built for it, but then might be auto succeeding at it. In PF2, pretty much anything outside of a hazard can be attemped successfully by someone trained or failed at by someone who is a master. You're just shifting the odds around the edges.

That's also why you see designers talk about fail forward. If a challenge is supposed to be meaningful but overcoming it is necessary for the story to proceed, then let the roll determine additional consequences beyond halting progress.

Assurances can sometimes create interesting choices, in trying to determine if your check is likely to succeed or whether you're better off rolling the dice and hoping to critically succeed. Out of combat, I'll take Assurance to safely scale down the 100 foot cliff with my ally tied to my back. But in combat maybe I really need to get up that cliff as quickly as possible. Maybe Assurance and automatic knowledge are worth it when you can use a highly specific Lore skill.

For something like the Inventor's Overdrive, the only way to make it work for Assurance is if Failure can sometimes be an acceptable or even desirable condition. I think maybe they pulled it off in the G&G remaster? On a success, you deal more damage of the type you already deal. On a failure, you deal less damage, but it is fire damage. Hello, second most common weakness in the game.

Granted, the Inventor has several ways to build into constant fire damage, but if you didn't spend your more valuable class resources to get it, then on-demand fire on every strike for the price of a skill feat? That's a cheap price.

Yeah DC reductions are definitely underutilized. I also think they are intended to be utilized for rituals because there's no other way to make them worth the risk and costs. I always read rituals as "a thing the GM wants to let us do but make us meaningfully work for it in the story."

Playing with a VTT with a moon calendar mod, I try to let the PCs flavor some of their rituals and definitely have NPCs flavor theirs to tie to certain moons and certain months for reduced DCs.

Even in the worst circumstances, you can perform basic tasks.

Keyword is "basic". Things a couple level lower than you, things your level with an easy or very easy modifier, trained and after not particularly long expert level flat DCs. All easily covered by Assurance no matter the situation.

It's not supposed to let you just do on level tasks always and forever.

Bluemagetim wrote:

Climbing a rope in a hurricane sounds like a very stressful, difficult, and for most impossible task. In fact probably just holding on to the rope and not flying off may be difficult. Maybe its ok that it still takes a roll for the best of the best at climbing in that condition.

If the point of the challenge is to make the climb be a cinematic moment and even challenging encounter from an adventure design perspective…how did the rope get there? Can you just make the actual challenge more appropriate, and then if the party can get a rope there, the investment into assurance can be worth easing one simple part of the over all challenge?

Also, if it is a full skill challenge, throw in some lightning strikes, wind gusts, splitting ropes, etc. that call for saving throws or other skills. Any skill challenge gets boring when the most exciting window dressing becomes: roll the same skill check over and over.

Lol thats true if your throwing a hurricane at the party its probably not the kind of thing that they should resolve in a one and done check.

Ravingdork wrote:

Individual responses to everyone

To be honest man, if you can argue against everyone in the entire thread at once like this, I don't really know what anyone is supposed to do to change your mind. Do you, like, WANT to argue about it? Or do you think someone has an answer that will satisfy you, and it just hasn't been said yet?

Making controversial topics and then argueing them to death seems to be one of RD's favorite pasttimes.

Aid sufferrs from still having a fixed DC. I like Ronalds rules for Aiding, but did not get around to try them myself.

As for DC reductions: They are somewhat necessary. Circumstance bonuses are Common, possibly too common.
IIRC, the "+/-2 Circumtance bonus" used to be called "The GM's best friend". But not in pathfinder, that bonus type has too many sources (I once had three +2 Circumstance bonuses on one initiative roll).
I would highly encourage reducing the DC instead just for that. But it also helps Assuance to shine more.

I think most of what I would say has already been said. To summarize:

* Assurance somewhat looks like take-10, but in practice it is more like take-8 or even take-6 because you don't get to add in your Attribute modifier or other bonuses. That makes it not auto-succeed for checks for on-level challenges or higher.

* To an extent, Assurance's worth is dependent on the skill. Some skills are more valuable to have Assurance in than others.

* To a larger extent, Assurance's worth is GM dependent. If the GM is only giving challenges (enemies or hazards or skill challenges) that are on-level or higher (no lower level challenges), then Assurance has less value. If the GM only uses the base DC as the final DC instead of creating a composite DC from a lower base DC and Circumstance penalties, then the value of Assurance is lower.

This, however, I think I do want to address more fully.

Castilliano wrote:

And another Athletics use is for low-Str PCs or those wearing armor too heavy for themselves. Some token rolls might be unintentionally hard if you don't have Assurance. Ditto for Acrobatics for a 10 Dex warrior trying to navigate an icy slope.

That just sounds like encouraging bad builds.

That isn't a 'bad build' unless you think that a bad build is any character that has more to bring to the story than killing enemies.

This is a campaign that is being played differently than you are used to. This is a campaign that features skill challenges like terrain traversal or social encounters.

So don't be disparaging to people who play campaigns that are different than yours.

Ravingdork wrote:

Individual responses to everyone

To be honest man, if you can argue against everyone in the entire thread at once like this, I don't really know what anyone is supposed to do to change your mind. Do you, like, WANT to argue about it? Or do you think someone has an answer that will satisfy you, and it just hasn't been said yet?

It is rules lawyering. There is nothing wrong with that.

This is a type of question/concern that a lot of people have for the game. People who are not confident enough to come here and post a question. I have had several people question or complain about Assurance and Skill feats in general. Among other things. None of whom even have accounts on these forums.

So it makes sense for someone like Ravingdork to come here and represent those people - to ask the questions and give the reasoning that they have heard from the people they play with.

The value is that we can then discuss it out and give the counter arguments in one place. A place that has a permanent URL that can be shared with those players even if they have no account on the forums.

I never take Assurance for something where I am good at. Unless I really really want to avoid the Critfail.

Assurance as a skill feat is niche. It's not going to be much of a benefit for a character's primary focus (barring a rare corner case).

Adjacent feats from a class or an archetype (bard or loremaster for Assured Knowledge and Enigma's Knowledge) with a wider application than a single skill, although it's limited to Recall Knowledge, may also be somewhat useful for some characters.

I'm confused. If I'm likely to succeed anyway, why am I wasting a valuable feat slot?

Let's take a simple example: you're a level 10 Fighter running down a mountain away from an avalanche, and you spot a 20-foot gap in your path ahead. With an Athletics modifier of +23, clearing this gap with a Long Jump is a piece of cake... except you roll a 1, and make a horizontal Leap instead. You now find yourself plummeting down and looking for an edge to grab, all while the avalanche is still threatening to crash down upon you. With Assurance, that chance of failure would have been 0.

Seems simple to me. If you find a combo where Assurance works well, use it. If not, don't waste the feat on it.

I honestly do kinda think that when we look at Assurance in context of the game it kinda, uh, reveals a rather sad state of affairs.

If Assurance was replaced by a feat that simply nullified the possibility of a nat 1 and did nothing else, this would be a massive improvement in most use cases.

That really, really, is not a point of praise for Assurance. Right now, there is such a huge desire / demand for a way to avoid the dreaded nat 1 causing things like literally falling to your death, that players will be grateful for the moldy crumb that is Assurance.

.

I'd say a large amount of this "grateful for scraps" status is because of just how badly the in-story chances of your PCs getting nat 1s really does not match the mechanical danger of these 5% "your f*ed" chances.

Seriously, I've been at tables where we try to avoid out of combat rolls as much as possible, because the game is just stupid and unfun when everything, even introducing yourselves (Make an Impression) has a 5% chance to backfire disastrously.

Seriously, non-combat skill checks are horrendously dangerous in pf2, to the game's detriment.
In a fight and nat 1 on a Trip, oh no, you are Prone. A "serious" penalty, that is solved by 1A. Not a big deal in context, where

getting a nat 1 on a Climb can just kill you. Yeah, imagine loosing a PC to a god damn Climb check. (We *almost* did in Amb Vlts, and we *did* loose a PC to a nat 1 jump check)
Even Nat 1 on social stuff is a huge PitA for everyone, GM included. Especially when that can directly trigger a fight. Way more of a problem than combat nat 1s skill rolls. Doing a little damage w/ Battle Medicine's bleed has nothing on out-of-combat BS that happens from nat 1s.

.

In other words, the fact that Assurance has very real use-cases in pf2, despite being so mechanically terrible in its function, is a point of consternation.

The ever-present 5% chance of nat 1 is such a problem / pressure upon the players, they will take just about anything to avoid it.

The "will avoid making skill checks whenever possible" phenomenon is *not* a sign of a healthy system.
Even when the skill *is* a PC's specific hyperfixation, they often will flip from enthusiastic into becoming veeeery shy about asking the GM to make such rolls if they have 0 hero points, which are the main band-aid that's masking the problem.

I'm confused. If I'm likely to succeed anyway, why am I wasting a valuable feat slot?

Well, I'll push back on "valuable feat slot". For quite a few skills, there is a dearth of skill feats for some levels or even interesting/useful ones in total. So how valuable that slot is can be questionable and vary depending on the skills picked. I often find myself picking the least awful skill feat for some levels and picking between niche feats which could include assurance.

Apologies if it was stated above, but the marshal archetype stance feats are easy dcs now in remaster. So as long as you bump diplomay or intimidation at L7 and L15 you can auto succeed entering your stance regardless of your CHA.

Justnobodyfqwl wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

Individual responses to everyone

To be honest man, if you can argue against everyone in the entire thread at once like this, I don't really know what anyone is supposed to do to change your mind. Do you, like, WANT to argue about it? Or do you think someone has an answer that will satisfy you, and it just hasn't been said yet?

Making controversial topics and then argueing them to death seems to be one of RD's favorite pasttimes.

To be fair, sometimes it feels like Ravingdork is carrying forum engagement on his back.

I know I was disappointed when I saw that one of the envoy subclasses in Starfinder gave Assurance (stealth) as it's associated benefit because of how useless I find Assurance outside of Athletics.

One of the fundamental PF2 design principles (and biggest stumbling blocks for people from other systems) is that if something is supposed to be meaningful challenge (as defined by the DC by level chart) you can't optimize yourself out of rolling for it.

Well Paizo have failed more than a few times then. Example the Subtle trait just works. There is no roll. Prior to this trait it always failed though the GM might allow you to improvise a roll at some sort of DC.

Dubious Knowledge is pretty reliable.

For something like the Inventor's Overdrive

That is a poor example. Other classes don't have a fail chance at all for getting off their focus powers. Why is the Inventor being penalised? It is not as if its a non core feature, nor is it especially powerful. In fact it falls below some other classes.

Some of Paizo's decisions are quite arbitrary.

Assurance has some value with Medicine, and some with Athletics. But in general it is a very marginal feat and from level 10 very little value at all.

That is the real problem. Assurance is somewhat useful early on, it become useless. It needs to scale better.

Captain Morgan wrote:

For something like the Inventor's Overdrive

That is a poor example. Other classes don't have a fail chance at all for getting off their focus powers. Why is the Inventor being penalised? It is not as if its a non core feature, nor is it especially powerful. In fact it falls below some other classes.

Some of Paizo's decisions are quite arbitrary.

Assurance has some value with Medicine, and some with Athletics. But in general it is a very marginal feat and from level 10 very little value at all.

That is the real problem. Assurance is somewhat useful early on, it become useless. It needs to scale better.

Psychic and its Unleash Psyche's stupefying condition acknowledges your pain... while hoping Remastering fixes our issue.

Also, what if Assurance also applied half the skill's attribute modifier to the total? (rounded down)

getting a nat 1 on a Climb can just kill you. Yeah, imagine loosing a PC to a g!@ d~&n Climb check.

I've experienced this as GM. Had the player characters attempt to scale a steep slope. Enemies ahead of them had nailed boards into the slope to make something of a rather steep angled ladder.

Then there were the gargoyles at the top. Only the champion had Athletics. Only the champion made it to the top. Only the champion died making a stand alone as his companions repeatedly fell from high heights.

Two others were lost to gravity.

It was absolutely humiliating for all involved.

To be fair, sometimes it feels like Ravingdork is carrying forum engagement on his back.

*sniff* That's the kindest thing anyone has said about me on these forums all year.

I think the problem with Assurance is that it works fine for some really specific things, but that's not how the feat "sells" itself; it sells itself as being far more generally applicable.

There are backgrounds that give you assurance in skills that don't really work with it (Student of the Canon, Religion). There are skill feats that let you use assurance with Recall Knowledge, which would fail to identify any monster of high enough level compared to you that knowledge is really important.

Abilities that can't do what they promise are not fun design. The ability might be okay for other things, but then the promise should be more tailored to not give you the wrong expectations.