Why didn't they use Follow the Expert to have people Expert+ in Athletics "pull up" the stragglers? Unless that was very early levels and nobody was Expert in Athletics yet, that is.
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One of those trials was literally bearing a cross on a mountain hike. Now the way he set that up is we needed to make a standard DC for level 10 athletics check every hour to keep the cross aloft.
That triggers my "Is this even fun?" flag.
Rolling dice after dice just make each roll less and less meaningful and interesting. Very quickly, it becomes a burden to play.I would have considered that keeping the cross aloft doesn't require a roll but that obstacles and hazards along the way ask for their specific checks to see the progression (going over a chasm, crossing a swamp, with Survival, Acrobatics, Athletics checks required to easily go through).
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So I had a pathfinder 2e GM that had us all taking a set of challenges to earn the approval of the local leadership.
One of those trials was literally bearing a cross on a mountain hike. Now the way he set that up is we needed to make a standard DC for level 10 athletics check every hour to keep the cross aloft.
Now we had two non strength focused casters who hadn't focused on athletics in the group who were incapable of lifting the cross and so couldn't join the party on their hike for two weeks.
Now personally I am of the opinion this wasn't the best bit of GM I had ever seen but was wondering what he should have done differently ?
I obviously don't know any more of the context than what you write here. So based on that, several things are possible:
* The GM just made a naive error in judgement. Taking the level appropriate DC for a skill check seems like an obvious thing to do, right? And a test of endurance consisting of multiple checks seems obvious too, right? And if you'd done this at level one and it had been a short hike, the non-trained people might have lucked through as well. But as it turns out, this math doesn't work well at higher level and for longer tests.
* The GM actually had in mind to create a challenge that could really be failed, and failing the challenge isn't the same as failing the story as a whole, it just means that you go into different scenes and follow a different path.
I think in either case it didn't work out very well, but that doesn't mean the GM is objectively a bad GM forever. They made a judgement call that turned out badly; what came after? Did they try to fix the situation? Did they get feedback from the players like "hey this game wasn't much fun, here's why"? Did they analyze what actually went wrong? Learn from it?
When I read the GMG and look at DC-setting hints for minigames I'm quite skeptical about many of them. I think the probability math behind it is not very rigorous and it's not clear to GMs who just do what the book says how it's going to turn out, or how to use the dials to get to the difficulty that is enjoyable.
Some of the worst challenges (combat and skill challenges) revolve around situations where you have to try lots of times to eventually roll high enough. Most of the time you eventually "win", but the victory is 80% failed rolls until the few that do succeed win you the day. It's balanced in that the party is capable of reliably eventually succeeding, but it's not fun.
A better model I've found sets much lower DCs (so players succeed a much higher % of rolls, and critically succeed a lot), but also needs a lot more successes to finish.
Objectively, a party going through challenge A has the same overall chance of beating it as a party going through challenge B. But subjectively, the second party has more mini-victories and feels more like competent heroes.
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In practice it wasn't much fun and I don't roleplay with this Gm anymore. I just wanted to know the best ways to avoid that particular pit trap if I were to GM something similar in the future and to see if other people had similarly awkward experiences in 2e.One of those trials was literally bearing a cross on a mountain hike. Now the way he set that up is we needed to make a standard DC for level 10 athletics check every hour to keep the cross aloft.
That triggers my "Is this even fun?" flag.
Rolling dice after dice just make each roll less and less meaningful and interesting. Very quickly, it becomes a burden to play.I would have considered that keeping the cross aloft doesn't require a roll but that obstacles and hazards along the way ask for their specific checks to see the progression (going over a chasm, crossing a swamp, with Survival, Acrobatics, Athletics checks required to easily go through).
I'd say there are two ways to avoid making the same mistake:
* Be careful with your math. Think things through, maybe even playtest before a session, if you're setting up a challenge you're not experienced with.
* Be prepared to notice mistakes in progress and admit them. It's fine to tell your players "hey I see I balanced that wrong, this doesn't make sense, I'm changing it on the spot" or afterwards "thinking back on last session, that didn't go well. You should have had a better chance. What's happened is happened, but we take the story in a bit different direction now..."
Players tend to have a lot MORE respect for GMs who admit they're not infallible math geniuses.
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Players tend to have a lot MORE respect for GMs who admit they're not infallible math geniuses.
But they have even MORE respect for infallible math geniuses!!!
They just needed a fail forward option. Binary stuff like this might sound good on paper until half the party fails
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I must admit that I personally don't like skill challenges that are designed like skill challenges. Where you feel the math behind it and such.
I find skills to be a mean of expression. The Barbarian climbing the wall and the Bard bluffing the guard are not succeeding at skill challenges, they are expressing themselves, telling who they are through their acts.
In general, I'm extremely nice with skill challenges. The result of the die doesn't speak about the success of the action but on how the characters succeeded (well or not). What is important is the solution the party chose to overcome the challenge.
So when I have a skill challenge, I don't design anything. I just state the situation and let the players play with it, like kids with Legos.
"You have to walk for days with a heavy cross.
- Sounds awful. Can we try to make the trip easier?
- What are you thinking about?
- I don't know, maybe by ...
- Ok, roll me a ... check."
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When making skill challenges, there are a few things that need answers:
What is the actual problem? Why is this challenge actually challenging in the first place?
What are the success methods? Yes, plural.
How does each character contribute?
What happens if they still fail?
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In the given example, there are not good answers to any of these questions.
Lifting something heavy isn't all that much of a challenge. Not for active adventurers. It doesn't become believable.
There is only one success method - Athletics checks.
Only players trained in Athletics and at reasonably high strength could participate.
No information was given in-thread about the results of failure, so I can't really analyze that one.
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I don't know if we honestly know enough information to truly judge the contest. It seems we were only given an initial, explanation of what the GM requested from the players upfront for the contest. We don't know what value the strength checks conclusions brought about.
If each day was an 8 hour hike and to make progress required everyone making a successful strength check to make an hour's progress and thus requiring 56 successful strength checks to achieve the 1 weeks hike. (missed checks requiring additional checks at penalty potentially from fatigue or having them fall behind) Yes that seems really harsh if success it based on all or at least one of them making it all the way.
HOWEVER.... if they are required to make the athletics check, and if they fail it, they drop, or repeatedly drop the cross, but move along with them.
Perhaps, the mage who critical failed 2 check, failed 50 of them and got 4 successes might actually 'IMPRESS' the elders because they simply continued to do it without complaint. Where the hulking fighter carrying the large load got 50 consecutives successes, including 5 critical successes, but basically drops the cross and then stops as if he has failed and then criticizes the challenge as being unreasonable might give the elders a bad impression. Maybe the elders are looking at the interaction of the folks, and looking to see if the stronger members subject themselves to penalties to make the checks for the weaker players easier.
We don't know what the victory conditions of the challenge were necessarily.
The checks the GM asks you make for a challenge are that. The things you are prompted to do. What you do in response to them... is what you do. If you only take the initiative to do only what is asked, you may miss the 'right' answers. GMs, should however keep their ears open for those players reaching out to see what their available responses are, and if there are ones that might not be 'visible' on the table yet.
Like:
Ok, I'm probably going to fail my STR check, but can I minimize how bad it looks that I'm failing.
GM says: Absolutely, as a reaction give me a Deception check, on a success you cause them to not notice your failure.
Can two of us stand close together so we can occasionally lean upon a stronger character.
GM says: Absolutely, this will allow when you fail a check, the other individual may as a reaction attempt a Aid other to provide you a bonus to your roll.
Ideally, unless a campaign was crafted to specifically cater to the abilities of the players given, challenges should generally have multiple ways to resolve them, and have ways to fail forward through them as a viable course as well. While the task given, as presented doesn't appear to have that, we don't really know if that was completely true or not.
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I'd say there are two ways to avoid making the same mistake:
* Be careful with your math. Think things through, maybe even playtest before a session, if you're setting up a challenge you're not experienced with.
* Be prepared to notice mistakes in progress and admit them. It's fine to tell your players "hey I see I balanced that wrong, this doesn't make sense, I'm changing it on the spot" or afterwards "thinking back on last session, that didn't go well. You should have had a better chance. What's happened is happened, but we take the story in a bit different direction now..."
Players tend to have a lot MORE respect for GMs who admit they're not infallible math geniuses.
But they have even MORE respect for infallible math geniuses!!!
I am neither infallible nor a genius, but I used to be a professional designer of mathematical algorithms.
Making multiple skill checks is almost always the wrong algorithm. Skill checks are designed to work linearly, but requiring two skill checks makes it quadratic and three skill checks makes it cubic. Even if the only penalty for failure is a time delay, it can lead to story-breaking awkwardness for any character whose skill is below average.
I had this hit me in the face in my current campaign at 3rd level. The PCs were climbing down a handhold ladder carved on a cavern wall, a DC 15 Athletics check. All five were trained in Athletics, so a critical failure leading to a fall was unlikely. However, a regular failure leading to no movement was fairly common. And the ladder was single file, so when one character barely moved due to two failed check, everyone above them on the ladder was equally stuck. And a critical success for extra movement just lead to the character moving down to the next character on the ladder and not gaining any more progress.
Not only were the multiple rolls boring, but the climb did not resemble reality. The athletic characters should have been able to maintain a steady pace with an occasional risky missed handhold rather than the perpetual stop and go.
Thus, for the climb back up, I instituted a houserule: if the PC rolled a skill check on a Climb action, then they could repeat the save value without rerolling on the following Climb checks during that turn. Climbing up was much smoother. If the skill check on the first Climb was a failure with no movement, then the player rolled the second Climb. But once the player rolled a success on a Climb, the character could move steadily for the rest of the turn.
It was one of the best houserules I ever invented and I extended it to other checks, such as Stealth checks for Sneak. The key to the houserule was asking whether anything changed? If not, then keep the previous roll.
The carrying-a-cross cross-country hike in siegfriedliner's example would follow the same houserule, which means that for my game, multiple Athletics checks would be pointless. Instead, I would follow Superbidi's advice and change the details of the challenge as the hike progressed:
I would have considered that keeping the cross aloft doesn't require a roll but that obstacles and hazards along the way ask for their specific checks to see the progression (going over a chasm, crossing a swamp, with Survival, Acrobatics, Athletics checks required to easily go through).
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The two non-strength-focused casters untrained in athletics make a separate problem. Assuming that the challenge cannot be changed because the leader to impress cares only about athletics, they will need a separate quest when the rest of the party is off on the two-week hike.This had happened during my Jade Regent campaign. I had added The Ruby Phoenix Tournament module to Forest of Spirits. That is the original one-shot module, not the newer Fists of the Ruby Phoenix adventure path that takes place at the following tournament ten years later. As I said in my chronicle, not every character wanted to participate in an athletic tournament.
Arc, Jao, and Lu wanted to compete, and [NPC] Amaya made the fourth for their team. Nathan, Ebony Blossom, and Miyaro preferred to work from the shadows, Yuki was not as proficient, and Ameiko wanted to play the crowd as a bard, so the party had intertwined separate adventures: four on the team, three against the skullduggery behind the scenes, and two running the fan club for their team from a saki-serving noodle shop.
I used another method in my Ironfang Invasion campaign. The PCs had to persuade the mayor of Longshadow and his advisors that the approaching Ironfang Legion was a threat. I could have treated it as a Diplomacy check, but that would mean that only the two high-Diplomacy characters out of seven party members would have been active. Instead, I told the players that each of their characters could recount a story about their character personally facing trouble from the Ironfang Legion and could roll on the skill that they used to face that problem. For example, the druid talked about a burnt-out region in the forest from a fire that the Ironfangs had set and how she had helped a wood giant replant that area. She rolled a Nature check for persuasion, her best skill. Every player participated and they even made a challenge for themselves to use a different skill for each story. Of course, the characters chose their best skills, so the results were usually high.
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It was one of the best houserules I ever invented and I extended it to other checks, such as Stealth checks for Sneak. The key to the houserule was asking whether anything changed? If not, then keep the previous roll.
I hadn't seen this variant before, but now that I've seen it, it makes a lot of sense.
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Yes. It sounds like standard adaptation for exploration activities.
We already have Avoid Notice that does this for stealth checks. You make one stealth check and can move along at half your speed - and you probably only actually roll the stealth check when (or if) the party happens to come across something that could detect them.
And Track. You make one skill check and can use the same result for the next hour of tracking.
And Cover Tracks. You don't make a skill check. Anyone trying to track you does the rolling against your Survival DC.
So yeah - choosing an option like that for Athletics check to run a climbing or carrying thing task seems rather reasonable. Make it a one time roll when something important happens or at longer time intervals, or use the player's skill DC and have the interrupting event do the roll.
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I don't think those cases are exactly the same. With Avoid Notice and also Searching, you're basically skipping all the checks where, unknown to you but known to the GM, there was no opposition.
Climbing with athletics, presumably, is more like "opposed by this rock, opposed by that rock, opposed by another rock...". Although that might be a glitch caused by taking the 1-action encounter check and stretching that mechanic beyond the breaking point for overland traffic.
I think for something like climbing it might make more sense to say, if you could climb this surface at all, then given enough time, you're going to make some progress. You don't have to roll checks for each bit of progress; rather, the check says how fast you progress.
So it might be something like, roll a check at the start of each day.
Critical Success: as success, and you help struggling teammates. One other PC can upgrade a failure to a success or a critical failure to a failure.
Success: move normally.
Failure: move at half speed.
Critical failure: you have accidents and minor falls. You move at half speed and are fatigued.
I think for something like climbing it might make more sense to say, if you could climb this surface at all, then given enough time, you're going to make some progress. You don't have to roll checks for each bit of progress; rather, the check says how fast you progress.
So it might be something like, roll a check at the start of each day.
Or run it like with Tracking - make one skill check and use that result for up to an hour for climbing the same object.
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Why on earth would you call for Athletics checks when there is a ladder in the first place?
Wouldn't it have been infinitely easier to just say "everyone climbs down the ladder" or something similar? Checks really should only come into play when the outcome is in doubt.
Climbing a ladder is absolutely mundane. At the very least it should not have been DC 15. Maybe 5 or 0. DC 15 is the Trained Simple DC. Who the heck needs training before they can climb a ladder?
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I can see it if there was something making it more difficult.Why on earth would you call for Athletics checks when there is a ladder in the first place?
Wouldn't it have been infinitely easier to just say "everyone climbs down the ladder" or something similar? Checks really should only come into play when the outcome is in doubt.
Climbing a ladder is absolutely mundane. At the very least it should not have been DC 15. Maybe 5 or 0. DC 15 is the Trained Simple DC. Who the heck needs training before they can climb a ladder?
Yeah, a rusty, crumbling, mangled, slippery, and/or unstable ladder would certainly warrant a higher DC.
There actually was a similar obstacle in Extinction Curse that I felt was badly written. Ultimately, it took my players 50+ skill checks and half the session just to scale a ramp.
Oddly enough, similar obstacles later on didn't call for similar checks.
I'd say there are two ways to avoid making the same mistake:
* Be careful with your math. Think things through, maybe even playtest before a session, if you're setting up a challenge you're not experienced with.
* Be prepared to notice mistakes in progress and admit them. It's fine to tell your players "hey I see I balanced that wrong, this doesn't make sense, I'm changing it on the spot" or afterwards "thinking back on last session, that didn't go well. You should have had a better chance. What's happened is happened, but we take the story in a bit different direction now..."
Players tend to have a lot MORE respect for GMs who admit they're not infallible math geniuses.
But they have even MORE respect for infallible math geniuses!!!I am neither infallible nor a genius, but I used to be a professional designer of mathematical algorithms.
Making multiple skill checks is almost always the wrong algorithm. Skill checks are designed to work linearly, but requiring two skill checks makes it quadratic and three skill checks makes it cubic. Even if the only penalty for failure is a time delay, it can lead to story-breaking awkwardness for any character whose skill is below average.
I had this hit me in the face in my current campaign at 3rd level. The PCs were climbing down a handhold ladder carved on a cavern wall, a DC 15 Athletics check. All five were trained in Athletics, so a critical failure leading to a fall was unlikely. However, a regular failure leading to no movement was fairly common. And the ladder was single file, so when one character barely moved due to two failed check, everyone above them on the ladder was equally stuck. And a critical success for extra movement just lead to the character moving down to the next character on the ladder and not gaining any more progress.
Not only were the multiple rolls boring, but the climb did not resemble reality. The athletic characters should have been able to maintain a steady...
I don't even consider this a house rule. I do this because as you stated: mathematically the chance of failure is extremely high given the usual DC for climb and other checks is around 40 to 60% depending on variable factors like skill investment and statistics. So making a person make multiple checks is mathematically boosting the chance of failure given most checks are done in finite numbers with 3 or 4 checks a climb or exploration type of activity. So given a 40 to 60 percent chance of success, they will have 2 successes and 2 failures per person which can be a bunch of useless rolling that makes some of them seem incompetent for getting unlucky and others just have a low chance of success. It's not fun. It often frustrates players.
I try to get rid of as many rolls as possible that lead to frustration and annoyance. I even allow the resolution of roleplay activities if the person roleplays well enough that I feel whoever they interacting with would believe them, do as they ask, or the like.
Why on earth would you call for Athletics checks when there is a ladder in the first place?
Wouldn't it have been infinitely easier to just say "everyone climbs down the ladder" or something similar? Checks really should only come into play when the outcome is in doubt.
Climbing a ladder is absolutely mundane. At the very least it should not have been DC 15. Maybe 5 or 0. DC 15 is the Trained Simple DC. Who the heck needs training before they can climb a ladder?
True, the module did not mention the DC for the handholds.
This winding tunnel leads down until it abruptly ends in a wide pit descending 40 feet to the lower dungeon. Rungs have been carved into the side of the pit, allowing creatures to climb up and down as easily as they might a ladder.
The CR 3 is from the two darkmantles that I removed because those creatures had yet not been ported to Pathfinder 2nd Edition and their presence there did not make sense anyways. Instead, I switched to a climbing challenge.
A character does not Stride down a ladder (I do let them Stride down stairways). Instead, it is a Climb action.
Climb [One Action] Athletics Untrained Action
Move
Source Core Rulebook pg. 241 3.0
Requirements You have both hands free.
You move up, down, or across an incline. Unless it’s particularly easy, you must attempt an Athletics check. The GM determines the DC based on the nature of the incline and environmental circumstances. You’re flat-footed unless you have a climb Speed.
Critical Success You move up, across, or safely down the incline for 5 feet plus 5 feet per 20 feet of your land Speed (a total of 10 feet for most PCs).
Success You move up, across, or safely down the incline for 5 feet per 20 feet of your land Speed (a total of 5 feet for most PCs, minimum 5 feet if your Speed is below 20 feet).
Critical Failure You fall. If you began the climb on stable ground, you fall and land prone.
Sample Climb Tasks
Untrained ladder, steep slope, low-branched tree
Trained rigging, rope, typical tree
Expert wall with small handholds and footholds
Master ceiling with handholds and footholds, rock wall
Legendary smooth surface
Climbing a ladder was in the examples of a DC 10 Athletics Check, so it did not count as a particularly easy Athletics task that required no skill check. I judged that handholds carved in the wall of a cavern were even more difficult to climb (stone does not easily carve into "rungs" despite the description in the module), so I set the DC to 15. I did not anticipate how badly the three-action system in PF2 amplified a moderate skill challenge.
The PCs were 3rd-level low-Strength characters trained in Athletics, so they had a +5 to +7 bonus in Athletics. Nevertheless, the dice were against them and they rolled low on the d20 unusually often. And a single person stuck unmoving held up everyone above them. The elf ranger decided to lower a rope instead of waiting on the handhold ladder. He twice rolled a critical failure (Climbing a rope also has DC 15) but succeeded at Grab an Edge to grab the rope each time.
Gah. I looked just about everywhere for the Sample Climb Tasks earlier, but never found them. :|
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I've had someone untrained in Athletics repeatedly fail to climb a ladder in a fight.
It was incredibly funny.
This is why I get Athletics even on my casters. Your character looking like a Keystone cop all the time is not fun.
To OP's thing; as it's been suggested other times here; I would have made it a victory point game; and had multiple angles of approach to helping; sure, you COULD use Athletics to carry the cross, but you could also use stealth to avoid the attention of roaming beasts, survival to find/clear a safe path to walk, or hell deception to cover up mistakes, or a sneaky wizard using a silent spell to telekintically hoists it to ease the burden.
Either way, I probably would make the trek only take one VP from each party, and using the guidelines in the book, failure is set to about twice that. Carrying a heavy burden up a trecherous path is a common storytelling trope; so it makes sense as a trial, but it's not very exciting to play out. This is why in movies, they tend to be montaged or the like; because it's important for us to see the struggle, but we don't need like 20-30 minutes of it.
The ttrpg version of this is a simple skill challenge type deal and the DM takes what the players did and narrates the scene; you should probably only be investing maybe 5-10 minutes tops. This way, there's still a feel of accomplishment and the trial isn't just handwaived, plus it showcases the players abilities to the people they are trying to impress; who might compliment the strength and fortitude of the carriers, as well as the creativity, wisdom, and knowledge of the supporters.
Mind you, I probably would have eyerolled the heavyhanded christian overtones, but this type of thing does exist in other forms in media, and real like; like the carrying buckets of water up the temple, hoisting a heavy shrine through the lands in a festival ritual, etc