Rogue Class Preview

That number includes proficiencies right? So its 5 "slots" from the propably-maybe around 35 to get a legendary proficiency in sth?

Huh? Why would it include Proficiencies? Some Feats might give Proficiencies, I guess, but I got the impression they were mostly a non-Feat Class Feature.

I feel like the new Rogue must be in a decent place if the choice of use of the term "Thievery" is the biggest cause of debate right now on this thread...

:)

The point of the skill is to take something from someone by sleight of hand. There's nothing really honorable or legal about it, even if just because you put a Lawful or Good sticker on your character sheet's alignment. The actions of the character define the alignment of the character, not just because the player wants to.

The Disable Device portion of the skill can be used for totally legal purposes such as disabling traps that others have placed. There are also circumstances where picking locks can be done for reasons other than theft or murder.

Calling it Thievery is a step backwards.

Okay, people want a more appropriate name for the skill (or rather, collection of skills gathered under one skill check) and maybe even one centered in fiction too?
Clearly it should be renamed to "Burglary" then. Just ask Gandalf, he'll set you straight (since "Expert Treasure Hunting" is too long).

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

The point of the skill is to take something from someone by sleight of hand. There's nothing really honorable or legal about it, even if just because you put a Lawful or Good sticker on your character sheet's alignment. The actions of the character define the alignment of the character, not just because the player wants to.

The Disable Device portion of the skill can be used for totally legal purposes such as disabling traps that others have placed. There are also circumstances where picking locks can be done for reasons other than theft or murder.

Calling it Thievery is a step backwards.

I'd say picking a lock and disabling a trap are vastly different, using skill sets and requirements to warrant them being separate from each other. After all, not every trap is disabled by a simple jury-rigging of a miniature mechanical function.

Also, I never included murder as part of my argument, so that's a strawman. (I'd use non-sequitur, but that would imply murder has nothing to do with thievery; some jobs go that way, unfortunately.)

Leedwashere wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

In my opinion, this is just a Shakespeare's Rose situation. A skill by any other name functions just as well if it were named anything else. It doesn't particularly matter if the skill is "Thievery," "Purloining," or even "Dick Move Time," if the situation calls for it. As long as it functions properly and as intended, they could even call it "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," and I wouldn't particularly care.

I have to disagree with your assessment here, because words don't exist in a vacuum where their strict definition is the only thing about them that matters. They have connotations and associations. In this case thievery, and every other synonym you've listed so far, is inextricably associated with unlawful and nefarious pursuits. This can put a cognitive limiter on interpretation. In this case the implication is that the purpose and goal of investing in this skill set is to steal stuff, which means that there will likely be people that ignore the skill entirely because they don't want to be a thief. Even though there are other uses for these fine motor skills besides theft. Calling it something else without that baggage removes the issue in its entirety.

If all you care about is the mechanical function of the skill, then I don't understand your reason for arguing against a change in the name to make it less conceptually limiting.

The point of the skill is to take something from someone by sleight of hand. There's nothing really honorable or legal about it, even if just because you put a Lawful or Good sticker on your character sheet's alignment. The actions of the character define the alignment of the character, not just because the player wants to.

If there were legal and appropriate means, there would be procedures followed, and warrants of authority to confiscate potential contraband or items involved in ongoing investigations, negating the need to make skill checks of this nature for it. The fact that you...

What many of us care is that there is no reason for Disable Device and Sleight of Hands to be a single skill at all. They are entirely different skill sets, and mashing them awkwardly together just to make a "dur hur Thievery" skill is both stupid and a step back. See my post on the previous page for a much better alternate approach.

What many of us care is that there is no reason for Disable Device and Sleight of Hands to be a single skill at all. They are entirely different skill sets, and mashing them awkwardly together just to make a "dur hur Thievery" skill is both stupid and a step back. See my post on the previous page for a much better alternate approach.

I'd quibble with the "many" in that statement.

Stealing, smuggling, picking locks and disabling traps are all skills that require similar perception, analysis, and dexterous abilities. In universe, they are most commonly associated with thieves.

Climbing and Swimming and Jumping are also pretty unrelated, and yet we're getting Athletics.

When creating a game, you've gotta balance the realism aspect with the utility of how many skills you wind up with.

A game with 60+ skills (and more in every sourcebook going well over 100 in total) can have everything from Beautician to Gambling to Play Instrument (Xylophone) to Weightlifting (and that list isn't random, all those are actual skills in Classic Unisystem, a game I love and play regularly).

But contrariwise if you're gonna have a shorter skill list, say 20 skills, you start having to combine things that do not necessarily go together in real life simply because you have to do so to get the numbers down. If doing this, the proper strategy is to combine skills that are less useful so that all skills are mechanically on par. This is particularly true in something like PF2 where you have limited ranks of skills to distribute, since the fewer and more powerful skills there are the more those limited ranks matter.

And lets face it, Pathfinder has always been a pretty cinematic game, one where characters tend to have broad competencies rather than narrow ones for the most part, so the short skill list version makes more sense than the long one.

And, in a cinematic story, when's the last time you ran into a character who can pick pockets but not locks or vice versa? Because I don't think that's something I've basically ever run into. The closest I've seen is a book acknowledging that having both skill sets is unusual...but the protagonist still possesses both.

Climbing and Swimming and Jumping are also pretty unrelated, and yet we're getting Athletics.

When creating a game, you've gotta balance the realism aspect with the utility of how many skills you wind up with.

A game with 60+ skills (and more in every sourcebook going well over 100 in total) can have everything from Beautician to Gambling to Play Instrument (Xylophone) to Weightlifting (and that list isn't random, all those are actual skills in Classic Unisystem, a game I love and play regularly).

But contrariwise if you're gonna have a shorter skill list, say 20 skills, you start having to combine things that do not necessarily go together in real life simply because you have to do so to get the numbers down. If doing this, the proper strategy is to combine skills that are less useful so that all skills are mechanically on par. This is particularly true in something like PF2 where you have limited ranks of skills to distribute, since the fewer and more powerful skills there are the more those limited ranks matter.

And lets face it, Pathfinder has always been a pretty cinematic game, one where characters tend to have broad competencies rather than narrow ones for the most part, so the short skill list version makes more sense than the long one.

And, in a cinematic story, when's the last time you ran into a character who can pick pockets but not locks or vice versa? Because I don't think that's something I've basically ever run into. The closest I've seen is a book acknowledging that having both skill sets is unusual...but the protagonist still possesses both.

Triathletes are a thing, so they are probably more related than you think. At least, they are more related than disabling a Fireball Trap and picking a chest are to one another.

As for the character example, this is supported with someone who has Sleight of Hand ranks, but no Disable Device ranks. The amount there is few and far between, but I have seen it in play, usually from an NPC.

Hardly anyone is arguing against abstraction itself, but rather that consolidating the skills further than PF1e did is a step too far.

Triathletes are a thing, so they are probably more related than you think. At least, they are more related than disabling a Fireball Trap and picking a chest are to one another.

Well, yeah, admittedly. I admit we lack a good cross section of skills for me to use as an example here.

As for the character example, this is supported with someone who has Sleight of Hand ranks, but no Disable Device ranks. The amount there is few and far between, but I have seen it in play, usually from an NPC.

Sure, in a game where they're separate skills this will occasionally happen. I was talking in any other form of fiction. Where I've literally never seen it.

Hardly anyone is arguing against abstraction itself, but rather that consolidating the skills further than PF1e did is a step too far.

Sure, but that reduces the aforementioned ability to have a small number of very meaningful skill choices and still be fairly broadly competent. Which is a very good thing for a cinematic game.

What many of us care is that there is no reason for Disable Device and Sleight of Hands to be a single skill at all. They are entirely different skill sets

..

So is listening and spotting things. Or sneak and hide. Or tumbling and balance.

I feel like the new Rogue must be in a decent place if the choice of use of the term "Thievery" is the biggest cause of debate right now on this thread...

:)

The entirety of the presented rogue's usefulness depends on the skill system that we really don't know about yet.

Will having tons of proficiencies and skill feats matter? We don't know.

The rest of the kit presented seems based around damage which isn't all that important for what a rogue needs to do to feel like a rogue.

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

As for the character example, this is supported with someone who has Sleight of Hand ranks, but no Disable Device ranks. The amount there is few and far between, but I have seen it in play, usually from an NPC.

Sure, in a game where they're separate skills this will occasionally happen. I was talking in any other form of fiction. Where I've literally never seen it.

There are several instances in current media (one of the DC television shows actually does this on a semi-regular basis, and actually did it in their latest episode) where people can pick-pocket and plant stuff on people, but don't have the skill or ability to pick locks or other similar objects.

I'm looking forward to saying "Roll for Shenanigans" to a rogue player.

Thanks, now I'll either have to wait for someone to modify the sheets to have that skill, or to modify it myself. XD

Deadmanwalking wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

As for the character example, this is supported with someone who has Sleight of Hand ranks, but no Disable Device ranks. The amount there is few and far between, but I have seen it in play, usually from an NPC.

Sure, in a game where they're separate skills this will occasionally happen. I was talking in any other form of fiction. Where I've literally never seen it.

There are several instances in current media (one of the DC television shows actually does this on a semi-regular basis, and actually did it in their latest episode) where people can pick-pocket and plant stuff on people, but don't have the skill or ability to pick locks or other similar objects.

Okay. I admittedly haven't been watching those. My point wasn't that this trope was nonexistent, merely rare, especially in fantasy.

Panel from Gary Con with Jason Buhlman and Stephen Radney-Macfarland:
"We've looked at ways to ensure that spellcasters still have cool, fun, useful things to do on their turn, right? I think one of our guiding principles; When it's your turn, the spotlight should be on you and you should do something cool. Right, that's kind of the general guideline. But, once your turn is over, the spotlight should not somehow still be on you. And sometimes with spellcasters that could be the case. Their effects could be hindering and messing with so many parts of the combat that it was like - some of the other characters would be like: "Well, I was there too, I guess. But you blew this spell and ...".
And I'm not saying that that can't still happen, because it certainly can, but I think we've now given every character fun ways that they can interact with ... the combat, the story, with the set-up, that you won't feel like: "Wow, I didn't participate in that at all". And I mean, if you just want to cut it down to brass tacks, we certainly made sure that a lot of the damage, you know, swings and flows between different character types, at different moments of play. Right, so, you now, the Rogue is certainly going to find points in time when their damage bursts are high and they're going to do a lot of damage. The Wizard still, obviously, has spells that are gonna deal a lo ... a fair amout of damage to a lot of targets. Erm, that's kind of one of their schticks, right? Whereas the Fighter is just gonna be like: "That guy! I'm gonna go mess that guy up!" Right? And that's their thing and we want them to be good at 'their thing'".
"Not only mess them up, but lock them down"
"Yeah, and lock 'em down and prevent them going and messing with anybody else. Those sort of things are important to how we want the game experience to work. So, you know, when it comes to the kind of difference between martial characters and spell casting characters, there's still going to be some differences, they're going to play in different ways, but that's expected. What we wanna make sure is that the spell caster isn't also playing in for other people's niche, because his spells let him do everything. I think that's where we ran into some problems. It wasn't because he was winning all the encounters, it's that you didn't need a Rogue, 'cause the Wizard would just cast Knock, right, you know? Or disintegrate a trap or something, right? You could just avoid those problems if you had the right spell selection.
I'm not saying that that's entirely gone, but we've certainly taken a very hard look at making sure that the classes kind of can do the things that they're supposed to do"

http://plotpoints.libsyn.com/99-pathfinder-2nd-edition-seminar-at-gary-con- 2018
The question/answer starts at around 01:19:15

Triathletes are a thing, so they are probably more related than you think. At least, they are more related than disabling a Fireball Trap and picking a chest are to one another.

About as related as using "Disable device" to disarm a fireball trap and to disarm a complicated mechanical trap. Technically these should be two different skills. Maybe moving disarm magical trap to the Use Magical Device skill would make more sense.

Hardly anyone is arguing against abstraction itself, but rather that consolidating the skills further than PF1e did is a step too far.

Personally, I'm of the mindset that PF1 didn't go far enough in consolidating the skills since there were still a great number of skills that simply were not worth investing meaningfully into except in corner cases, particularly given how many classes were short on skill points.

So I would say anytime you can identify a skill as "fairly narrow and short on uses" it's preferable to see if it can be combined with a thematically similar skill. Like there's no reason Knowledges History, Geography, Nobility, and Local need to be four different skills.

Like there's no reason Knowledges History, Geography, Nobility, and Local need to be four different skills.

Call it «Culture». :)

I thought it was "Society" in the playtest recordings.

LuZeke wrote:

Hardly anyone is arguing against abstraction itself, but rather that consolidating the skills further than PF1e did is a step too far.

Personally, I'm of the mindset that PF1 didn't go far enough in consolidating the skills since there were still a great number of skills that simply were not worth investing meaningfully into except in corner cases, particularly given how many classes were short on skill points.

So I would say anytime you can identify a skill as "fairly narrow and short on uses" it's preferable to see if it can be combined with a thematically similar skill. Like there's no reason Knowledges History, Geography, Nobility, and Local need to be four different skills.

IDK, why should you know everything by investing in a single skill? I sort of get what you are saying, but I prefer diverse options to consolidated ones. If you boil skills down to like 10-12 options like 5E did, nobody feels like a specialist or particularly unique.

Panel from Gary Con with Jason Buhlman and Stephen Radney-Macfarland:

"We've looked at ways to ensure that spellcasters still have cool, fun, useful things to do on their turn, right? I think one of our guiding principles; When it's your turn, the spotlight should be on you and you should do something cool. Right, that's kind of the general guideline. But, once your turn is over, the spotlight should not somehow still be on you. And sometimes with spellcasters that could be the case. Their effects could be hindering and messing with so many parts of the combat that it was like - some of the other characters would be like: "Well, I was there too, I guess. But you blew this spell and ...".
And I'm not saying that that can't still happen, because it certainly can, but I think we've now given every character fun ways that they can interact with ... the combat, the story, with the set-up, that you won't feel like: "Wow, I didn't participate in that at all". And I mean, if you just want to cut it down to brass tacks, we certainly made sure that a lot of the damage, you know, swings and flows between different character types, at different moments of play. Right, so, you now, the Rogue is certainly going to find points in time when their damage bursts are high and they're going to do a lot of damage. The Wizard still, obviously, has spells that are gonna deal a lo ... a fair amout of damage to a lot of targets. Erm, that's kind of one of their schticks, right? Whereas the Fighter is just gonna be like: "That guy! I'm gonna go mess that guy up!" Right? And that's their thing and we want them to be good at 'their thing'".
"Not only mess them up, but lock them down"
"Yeah, and lock 'em down and prevent them going and messing with anybody else. Those sort of things are important to how we want the game experience to work. So, you know, when it comes to the kind of difference between martial characters and spell casting characters, there's still going to be some differences, they're going to play in different ways,...

It's a trivial thing to prevent casters from stomping all over the niches of others, it's an entirely different matter to preserve fun casters and make the noncasters relevant.

I don't like the focus on damage and DPS in their response. That's basic stuff. Damage is boring. Damage is banal. It's what everyone can do. It had nothing to do with C/M. Damage has never been the problem. A wizard doing more melee damage than a fighter is a result of the problem not the problem itself.

IDK, why should you know everything by investing in a single skill? I sort of get what you are saying, but I prefer diverse options to consolidated ones. If you boil skills down to like 10-12 options like 5E did, nobody feels like a specialist or particularly unique.

I think the list is already at least 11 skills long:

Acrobatics
Athletics
Crafts
Deception
Intimidation
Lore (Various)
Nature
Occultism
Society
Stealth
Thievery

And that's counting all the Lores are one skill (while, in reality, they're the Knowledge skill equivalent, I believe, so there are lots). I'd also bet just about anything that there are several more skills. We have no Diplomacy or Sense Motive equivalents and maybe no Profession skills either, just to start with.

And that's counting all the Lores are one skill (while, in reality, they're the Knowledge skill equivalent, I believe, so there are lots). I'd also bet just about anything that there are several more skills. We have no Diplomacy or Sense Motive equivalents and maybe no Profession skills either, just to start with.

You get a free Lore skill with your background. So if you're a former barkeep that goes adventuring you might get Lore: Alcohol (allowing you to identify all kinds of beverage - the example was some sort of fungus drink served in the Darklands and when identifying it the former barkeep adviced his fellow companions not to drink it). Valeros was given the example of having Lore: Warfare.

I'd be fine with something more consolidated than PF1, but not as consolidated as they seem to be going with. Skills with limited narrow applications would be combined more than skills which cover a lot of stuff and/or can be beefed up a lot. Something like Intimidate would be left alone by itself because it can be so powerful, and because it would feel weird for a burly intimidating barbarian to be equally good at diplomacy if the skills were combined. So, something like...

• Acrobatics: Balance, Fly, Tumble
  
• Athletics: Climb, Jump, Swim, "power" combat maneuvers (Shove, Trip, etc)
  
• Culture: Appraise, Knowledge (History, Local, Nobility, Religion), Language
  
• Deception: Bluff, Disguise, feinting, Dirty Trick maneuver
  
• Finesse: Escape Artist, Sleight of Hand, Use Rope, "tricksy" combat maneuvers (Disarm, Steal, etc)
  
• Handling: Handle Animal, Ride, attack rolls and saves for directly controlled pets
  
• Insight: Sense Motive, Use Magic Device (usually flavored as intuiting how an item works), resist vs interaction skills
  
• Intimidation: Coerce, Scare
  
• Mechanical: Craft (Devices, Traps), Disable Device, Knowledge (Engineering), attacks with siege/ship weapons and traps
  
• Medicine: Heal (doesn't fit with Nature to me and should be its own thing with a lot of buffing)
  
• Nature: Knowledge (Dungeoneering, Geography, Nature), Survival
  
• Occult: Knowledge (Arcana, Planes), Spellcraft
  
• Perception: Listen, Search, Spot, basic initiative
  
• Performance: Perform (I could see this combining into Profession)
  
• Persuasion: Diplomacy, Gather Information
  
• Profession: Craft, Knowledge (related topics), Profession
  
• Stealth: Hide, Sneak

So, still a fair number of skills with a lot of granularity, but more consolidated than the way too many skills of PF1.

Perception isn't a skill, but you can still improve it by making some character choices (might have to do with background and selecting certain feats).
Craft is a separate skill, which you have to take certain feats to use for crafting magical items (although you can still craft non-magical items at your skill level, so e.g. Expert weapons).

I'm just going to do a quick cut and paste of a list of skills from Fantasy Craft that I'm largely fond of.

ACROBATICS DEX
ATHLETICS STR
BLEND CHA
BLUFF CHA
CRAFTING * INT
DISGUISE CHA
HAGGLE WIS
IMPRESS CHA
INTIMIDATE WIS
INVESTIGATE WIS
MEDICINE INT
NOTICE WIS
PRESTIDIGITATION DEX
RESOLVE CON
RIDE * DEX
SEARCH INT
SENSE MOTIVE WIS
SNEAK DEX
SURVIVAL WIS
TACTICS INT

Prestidigitation seems to be their thievery.

GentleGiant wrote:

Panel from Gary Con with Jason Buhlman and Stephen Radney-Macfarland:[...]

It's a trivial thing to prevent casters from stomping all over the niches of others, it's an entirely different matter to preserve fun casters and make the noncasters relevant.

I don't like the focus on damage and DPS in their response. That's basic stuff. Damage is boring. Damage is banal. It's what everyone can do. It had nothing to do with C/M. Damage has never been the problem. A wizard doing more melee damage than a fighter is a result of the problem not the problem itself.

"And I mean, if you just want to cut it down to brass tacks, "

I like fuzzypaws's rolling some knowledge into skills like Mechanical (engineering) and Occult (planes, arcana). Though his thought that PF1 list was too long is whack.

I'd be fine with something more consolidated than PF1, but not as consolidated as they seem to be going with. Skills with limited narrow applications would be combined more than skills which cover a lot of stuff and/or can be beefed up a lot. Something like Intimidate would be left alone by itself because it can be so powerful, and because it would feel weird for a burly intimidating barbarian to be equally good at diplomacy if the skills were combined. So, something like...

• Acrobatics: Balance, Fly, Tumble
  
• Athletics: Climb, Jump, Swim, "power" combat maneuvers (Shove, Trip, etc)
  
• Culture: Appraise, Knowledge (History, Local, Nobility, Religion), Language
  
• Deception: Bluff, Disguise, feinting, Dirty Trick maneuver
  
• Finesse: Escape Artist, Sleight of Hand, Use Rope, "tricksy" combat maneuvers (Disarm, Steal, etc)
  
• Handling: Handle Animal, Ride, attack rolls and saves for directly controlled pets
  
• Insight: Sense Motive, Use Magic Device (usually flavored as intuiting how an item works), resist vs interaction skills
  
• Intimidation: Coerce, Scare
  
• Mechanical: Craft (Devices, Traps), Disable Device, Knowledge (Engineering), attacks with siege/ship weapons and traps
  
• Medicine: Heal (doesn't fit with Nature to me and should be its own thing with a lot of buffing)
  
• Nature: Knowledge (Dungeoneering, Geography, Nature), Survival
  
• Occult: Knowledge (Arcana, Planes), Spellcraft
  
• Perception: Listen, Search, Spot, basic initiative
  
• Performance: Perform (I could see this combining into Profession)
  
• Persuasion: Diplomacy, Gather Information
  
• Profession: Craft, Knowledge (related topics), Profession
  
• Stealth: Hide, Sneak

So, still a fair number of skills with a lot of granularity, but more consolidated than the way too many skills of PF1.

Loving this list, almost nothing I'd change! Combining craft (which can be multiple skills) with some standard stuff is weird. Does ANY craft work to lockpick?

I'd be fine with something more consolidated than PF1, but not as consolidated as they seem to be going with. Skills with limited narrow applications would be combined more than skills which cover a lot of stuff and/or can be beefed up a lot. Something like Intimidate would be left alone by itself because it can be so powerful, and because it would feel weird for a burly intimidating barbarian to be equally good at diplomacy if the skills were combined. So, something like...

• Acrobatics: Balance, Fly, Tumble
  
• Athletics: Climb, Jump, Swim, "power" combat maneuvers (Shove, Trip, etc)
  
• Culture: Appraise, Knowledge (History, Local, Nobility, Religion), Language
  
• Deception: Bluff, Disguise, feinting, Dirty Trick maneuver
  
• Finesse: Escape Artist, Sleight of Hand, Use Rope, "tricksy" combat maneuvers (Disarm, Steal, etc)
  
• Handling: Handle Animal, Ride, attack rolls and saves for directly controlled pets
  
• Insight: Sense Motive, Use Magic Device (usually flavored as intuiting how an item works), resist vs interaction skills
  
• Intimidation: Coerce, Scare
  
• Mechanical: Craft (Devices, Traps), Disable Device, Knowledge (Engineering), attacks with siege/ship weapons and traps
  
• Medicine: Heal (doesn't fit with Nature to me and should be its own thing with a lot of buffing)
  
• Nature: Knowledge (Dungeoneering, Geography, Nature), Survival
  
• Occult: Knowledge (Arcana, Planes), Spellcraft
  
• Perception: Listen, Search, Spot, basic initiative
  
• Performance: Perform (I could see this combining into Profession)
  
• Persuasion: Diplomacy, Gather Information
  
• Profession: Craft, Knowledge (related topics), Profession
  
• Stealth: Hide, Sneak

So, still a fair number of skills with a lot of granularity, but more consolidated than the way too many skills of PF1.

Not to pick on you, but...picking locks and picking pockets don't belong together because they're completely unrelated skills, but picking locks and firing siege weapons are a good fit?

LuZeke wrote:

Hardly anyone is arguing against abstraction itself, but rather that consolidating the skills further than PF1e did is a step too far.

Personally, I'm of the mindset that PF1 didn't go far enough in consolidating the skills since there were still a great number of skills that simply were not worth investing meaningfully into except in corner cases, particularly given how many classes were short on skill points.

So I would say anytime you can identify a skill as "fairly narrow and short on uses" it's preferable to see if it can be combined with a thematically similar skill. Like there's no reason Knowledges History, Geography, Nobility, and Local need to be four different skills.

I'll say it plainly: We're never going to agree on this.

What exactly would you say these "corner case" skills are?

As for knowledge skills, clumping those together into one is even worse of an idea than smushing DD and SoH together. Yeah, sure, being "knowledgeable" in one thing is "thematically" similar to being knowledgable in another, but in practice it's absurd. If I walk up to a historian and ask him about geology he's gonna look at me like I'm dumb, because I would be.

I still argue that overly consolidated skills will lead to more confusion about situational penalties, as well as character homogeneity. I have yet to have seen or heard a good counterargument to either.

Not to pick on you, but...picking locks and picking pockets don't belong together because they're completely unrelated skills, but picking locks and firing siege weapons are a good fit?

At least they're both "skill with machines and devices." As opposed to the current Thievery, where half of it is "skill with machines and devices" and the other half is "intense applied physical and manual dexterity."

As for knowledge skills, clumping those together into one is even worse of an idea than smushing DD and SoH together. Yeah, sure, being "knowledgeable" in one thing is "thematically" similar to being knowledgable in another, but in practice it's absurd. If I walk up to a historian and ask him about fauna he's gonna look at me like i'm dumb, because I would be.

Nobody is suggesting this. Indeed, there's definitive evidence that Knowledge is spread among a minimum of three skills (Nature, Occultism, and Society) plus all the Lore skills (which are at least somewhat freeform).

I still argue that overly consolidated skills will lead to more confusion about situational penalties, as well as character homogeneity. I have yet to have seen or heard a good counterargument to either.

Depends on how they're handled and how many skills individual characters have, doesn't it?

I mean, situational penalties for a knowledge-type skill are gonna be pretty consistent even if it used to be 3 Knowledge skills, y'know? The same is true for many other skills that can be combined (climbing, swimming, and jumping should all suffer encumbrance penalties, for example).

And as for character homogenization, the way skills are being handled seems designed to discourage that to some degree. The number of skills you get as you level is small enough that which ones you get at Master or Legendary is pretty limited. I think people other than Rogues max out at maybe 4 of those (and more likely 3 of them) at even the highest levels without serious investment.

Even with only 20 skills, that's few enough that an entire PC group can have 0 overlap in what skills they're actually maxed out in.

Disable Device belongs with Lore (Engineering). Letting you use DEX but otherwise same skill ranks.
Instead of generic use of skill, it's more like special "unlock" of it applying it to that narrow use case (Disable Device).
Although Lore (Engineering) would still tell you things you KNOW about locks, because that's what it does anyways (P1E).
(and why it makes sense to merge them, because a good lockpicker should... know about locks, even if their DEX vs INT has some differential)
Basicallly, something Rogues might get for free by default, but others potentially can get via Feat to "unlock" Disable Device usage.

And as always... There is always the Barbarian's Sunder approach to lockpicking... :-)

Benchak the Nightstalker wrote:

Not to pick on you, but...picking locks and picking pockets don't belong together because they're completely unrelated skills, but picking locks and firing siege weapons are a good fit?

At least they're both "skill with machines and devices." As opposed to the current Thievery, where half of it is "skill with machines and devices" and the other half is "intense applied physical and manual dexterity."

Yet they're all also commonly associated with activities that could all fall under the Thievery umbrella. Thus they're gathered under the skill Thievery. And you're the one who arbitrarily separate the skills according to those distinctions, while other skills clearly cover abilities that contain both (and more) distinctions.

Disable Device belongs with Lore (Engineering). Letting you use DEX but otherwise same skill ranks.

Instead of generic use of skill, it's more like special "unlock" of it applying it to that narrow use case (Disable Device).
Although Lore (Engineering) would still tell you things you KNOW about locks, because that's what it does anyways (P1E).
(and why it makes sense to merge them, because a good lockpicker should... know about locks, even if their DEX vs INT has some differential)
Basicallly, something Rogues might get for free by default, but others potentially can get via Feat to "unlock" Disable Device usage.

And as always... There is always the Barbarian's Sunder approach to lockpicking... :-)

Disable Device could also involve lifting or shifting something very heavy. Then you have to use STR. Now what?

What many of us care is that there is no reason for Disable Device and Sleight of Hands to be a single skill at all. They are entirely different skill sets, and mashing them awkwardly together just to make a "dur hur Thievery" skill is both stupid and a step back.

I disagree. I've never seen anyone but the rogue take sleight of hand and rogues almost always take disable device. Having them be the same skill. In such cases I'm all for combining skills, much like spot and listen were combined. You could always argue "but my character has keen eyes! I don't want him to have keen ears as well!" but honestly they were almost always taken in combination.

That said, the anti-4th ed crowd might be really against it (I feel I can argue for this point so I'm less worried). So you and them might finally have some common ground.

Only time I ever took Sleight of Hand on a non-rogue in PF1 was as a telekineticist in PF1 whose day job was as a juggler.

Nobody is suggesting this. Indeed, there's definitive evidence that Knowledge is spread among a minimum of three skills (Nature, Occultism, and Society) plus all the Lore skills (which are at least somewhat freeform).

That part of my post was literally a response to someone doing exactly that.

I mean, situational penalties for a knowledge-type skill are gonna be pretty consistent even if it used to be 3 Knowledge skills, y'know? The same is true for many other skills that can be combined (climbing, swimming, and jumping should all suffer encumbrance penalties, for example).

I don't think you understand what the argument is here. If every skill in the game is now a mish-mash of 2 or more skills, then every single skill in the game is going to be subject to situational penalties and bonuses. The switch from Spot/Listen/Search to the consolidated Perception carried with it confusion when it came to visual or auditory based perception skills. And by confusion I don't mean confusion about of how the rules function, but confusion in practice (keeping track of what penalty/bonus applies when).

Now apply that to all skills.

And as for character homogenization, the way skills are being handled seems designed to discourage that to some degree. The number of skills you get as you level is small enough that which ones you get at Master or Legendary is pretty limited. I think people other than Rogues max out at maybe 4 of those (and more likely 3 of them) at even the highest levels without serious investment.

Even with only 20 skills, that's few enough that an entire PC group can have 0 overlap in what skills they're actually maxed out in.

There are two aspects to this. First, skill overlap between party members. With less skills there's going to be more overlap. Whether the new method of skill allotment ameliorates this has yet to be seen.

Second, skill homogeneity between characters in general. Namely a character with Occultism (assuming it's smushing Kn. Arcana and Kn. Planes together) is going to be just like any other character with Occultism. Whereas before a character could have no ranks at all in one and several in the other (or further, not even have one as a class skill). If that's going to be remedied by skill feats and proficiencies, then what was the point of rolling them together in the first place? Not to cause less confusion, because I'm fairly certain there will be at best no difference there.

I took Sleight of Hand on a Sorcerer once, because I wanted a raccoon familiar and wanted to make use of the familiar bonus.

I've played a lot of thiefy-type non-rogue-classed characters that would have taken Sleight of Hand, had I not already burned their traits and skill ranks picking up Disable Device.

Yeah consolidation sucked in PF1 when it came to perception. I really hope that can be avoided this time around. Such a small list means people will duke it out over proficiency. lovely...

Also there is the option to not roll, if you don't think your character would have the knowledge of the planes, or the knowledge of history. I mean knowledge history isn't broken down between Knowledge (history (Varisian))) vs knowledge (history( the shackles))) when it stands to reason in setting their are people who are aspects in the shackles but not anything about varisia, or cheliax, or elven lore.

So I would say anytime you can identify a skill as "fairly narrow and short on uses" it's preferable to see if it can be combined with a thematically similar skill. Like there's no reason Knowledges History, Geography, Nobility, and Local need to be four different skills.

As for knowledge skills, clumping those together into one is even worse of an idea than smushing DD and SoH together. Yeah, sure, being "knowledgeable" in one thing is "thematically" similar to being knowledgable in another, but in practice it's absurd. If I walk up to a historian and ask him about geology he's gonna look at me like I'm dumb, because I would be.

Deadmanwalking wrote:

Nobody is suggesting this. Indeed, there's definitive evidence that Knowledge is spread among a minimum of three skills (Nature, Occultism, and Society) plus all the Lore skills (which are at least somewhat freeform).

That part of my post was literally a response to someone doing exactly that.

Except PossibleCabbage said Geography, not Geology...and I think you would find the vast majority of historians have a pretty decent grasp of Geography, because History doesn't make much sense if you don't. I could see an argument against Local, but honestly, Local is a very vague knowledge to begin with, so it's a bit hard to quantify that in real world terms. Nobility depends on the setting, but considering most fantasy settings feature nobles as the primary movers and shakers, yeah, he would probably know a lot about the nobility, because he would be a terrible historian if he had somehow managed to avoid all knowledge of the primary group of influential people in his world.

A more appropriate term to use would've been geographer, true.

Considering Pathfinder assumes a world where kings and lords are a current part of the world, not something of the past, I've always viewed Kn. Nobility as keeping up with the political environment. The suggested tasks reflect this: "Know current rulers and their symbols", "Know proper etiquette", and "Know line of succession". Yeah, you can argue a degree of overlap, but the key distinction is that Nobility focuses on the "current" state of affairs.

The same kind of distinction can be made between Kn. History and Kn. Geography. A historian may have some knowledge of old maps and whathaveyou, but plop him down in a spot of land and ask him to determine which hemisphere he's in based purely on the environment and suddenly Kn. History isn't so useful.

It is true that a skilled geographer would know more about geography than a historian, but there is some degree of overlap there.

That being said, even if traithletes are a thing that exists, they're not a common thing. Climbing, Swimming, and Jumping probably have less skillset overlap than Geography, History, and Nobility do. Also triathlons are typically Swimming, Bicycling, and Running.

Honestly I'm not bothered either way, as long as I'm not constantly getting stuck playing characters that can't do something that my concept of them says they should be able to, just because I couldn't eke out that last skill point to put ranks in it. I'd rather Paizo err on the side of letting me do things, than err on the side of restricting me from doing things. If that winds up meaning my historian-bard is also good with geography and heraldry, and my Mountain-climber Ranger is also good at Jumping and Swimming, I think I can live with that. At the very least I'd prefer it to the frequent situation in 3.x where the Rogue doesn't know Sleight of Hand, because it's not a commonly enough needed skill to make it worth giving up on something else to take it, even though thematically it makes sense for the majority of Rogues to have it; or the Cleric not having Knowledge (Religion) because he only gets 2 skill points, has an 8 Int, and needs to be able to notice incoming danger far more than he apparently needs to know what his deity's teachings are.

I want to point out that I didn't say geography, history, local,and nobility should be one skill...just that it shouldn't be 4.

My preference would be to divide the functions of those four skills into two: one about knowing the current state of affairs, and one about having some insight on how we got there.

It is true that a skilled geographer would know more about geography than a historian, but there is some degree of overlap there.

That was just a repeat of what has already been said. The ", but" implies that there's a counterpoint being made, except there isn't.

I'd prefer it to the frequent situation in 3.x where the Rogue doesn't know Sleight of Hand, because it's not a commonly enough needed skill to make it worth giving up on something else to take it, even though thematically it makes sense for the majority of Rogues to have it;

Maybe the rogue in question is a cutthroat vagabond that doesn't care for subtleties?

Now we're veering into the territory of complaining about people allotting their skill ranks "wrong", thus by extension pigeonholing the classes.

@PossibleCabbage
Fair enough, I drew a conclusion from your post that wasn't entirely accurate to what you were implying (although it did read like it). But even so, it served to highlight the issue I see with overly consolidated skills.