BardicWander's page

We tried inoculated and inured and those were universally panned. The editors came to our rescue and came up with fortified, which we tried but sounded too much like fortitude, and then bolstered.

I find this incredibly disheartening. Words have meaning!

Personally, as a writer and journalist, I was taught that using the wrong words just because you like them better is lazy and inaccurate, if not detrimental. Using an empirically incorrect term in the rulebook is a terrible idea, because the rules are not in a fantasy setting, they govern the fantasy setting.

I'm 100% behind fantasy storytelling, but the rule book should not knowingly contain deceptive, distorted elements simply because you felt evasive or indecisive.

"Bolstered" is misrepresentative, inaccurate, and empirically false in the current context.

The fact that the team discarded obvious easy answers in favor of "what sounds better," regardless of the deceptive nature of the decided outcome, does not give me hope for the mountain of larger, more glaring problems present in this Playtest -- and furthermore, the fact that you think the editors "came to your rescue" with a definitively-incorrect statement leads me to assume they're not the kind of people you want making decisions for you.

A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.

Food for thought.

ryric wrote:

This seems like an especially big problem considering one of the arguments I keep hearing for "everyone gets better at all skills" is that higher level PCs should be able to, e.g., sneak even if they've never tried it before.

But it seems like with this math that the "freebie" skill points don't actually let you succeed at things, so now we're sacrificing verisimilitude in order to gain basically nothing.

Well, let's examine that. Assuming, say, level 13, bonuses in Perception range from +19 to +25 (clustering at the +22 or better level). An untrained person with Dex 16 (for medium armor) and a -1 armor check penalty (due to high quality armor) has a total of +15 to sneak. That means they need a 17+ to sneak vs. most foes of their level (and a 14+ even vs. the least perceptive). Ouch.

Raising them to 15th level, and they still need a 15+ to sneak vs. foes two levels lower than them (an 18+ on the toughest such foe).

That's...sort of a chance, I suppose.

A PC Ranger can barely manage to keep up with that range of Perception scores (I think the highest possible is +22 at that level without vastly overleveled gear)...but few other Classes will manage even that particularly well.

I'm just a bit confused by the math on this sneak estimation you made.

Stealth: +3(dex) (13(level)-2 untrained proficiency)(-1 armor check penalty) = so 3 + 11 + (-1) = 13, not 15.

Unless I'm missing something.

This would make the required check to be 19+sneak vs. foes of their level, which feels a lot more like what I've been experiencing in the playtest so far.

TheBlueFairy wrote:

OP has let me play with their professional lockpicks and practice locks, and the fundamental idea of lockpicking as a potentially dangerous but rewarding process has a lot of potential. It succeeded in evoking the feel of the real thing.

While playing around with lockpicks and practice locks, did you ever break the picks while trying to open the locks?

Even when completely new to it? (untrained)

That's a great question!

No.

I haven't ever broken one while practicing. Nor has anyone I've let play with my practice set ever broken or even bent one. Lock picks are typically made from spring steel.

When picking a lock, you need knowledge of the lock mechanics and patience. Applying strong force does not help with picking a lock. It's a calm finesse with a light but purposeful touch.

More difficult locks, such as pick-proof locks, aren't pick-proof -- they're just very, very difficult. What makes many of those types of locks difficult is the pins used to secure the barrel (the turning part) have ridges or odd shapes that fool you with false-positives, making you think you've made progress when you haven't. There are pin shapes of all sorts, some designed to bind very frustratingly in the lock and make progress even more difficult.

Still, those extremely difficult locks don't require force, they require patience, skill, and a little luck.

On the job, I've broken one pick. It was a hotel room door for which there was only one key, and the key had become bent. We (staff) didn't want to break the door just to replace the lock, so I set to picking it. The pick I broke honestly only broke because I had become frustrated after 30 minutes of picking and applied far too much force to it. I eventually got it open with a different shaped pick and more patient effort.

But to summarize an answer to your question, no, neither myself nor the 8 other people who I've let try out my practice lock and picks have ever broken a pick while practicing, or "untrained." It was just me, the trained guy getting frustrated in a professional-use situation that broke one.

Two people in my playtest party have tried the practice set with great success.

So unless the standard Thieves Tools are made of overpriced wooden sticks, they really shouldn't be breaking as often as the mechanics cause them to.

Fun bonus fact: You can get yourself a set of picks and a clear padlock for about $10 on Amazon. My practice set has held up for over three years now.

Requiring three checks before completion really changes the probability of success and critical failure.

The DC for the door in question is 15. So a character optimized for lock picking (trained and with 18 (+4) in DEX) would have a +5 modifier (assuming my math is correct).

So critical failure shouldn't happen. Even rolling a 1 is a success by the numbers, so would be a regular failure overall.

Success on any single check would need a roll of 10. So 0.55 percent chance of success (again I think my math is right, but feel free to correct).

But requiring three successes would mean only a 0.166 probability of success without any failures. But since there is no possibility of critical failure, the character should eventually be able to get through. Taking 20 manually.

Now, if the player did not optimize completely for lock picking, then things go downhill quite a bit.

According to the PF2eplaytest rule book there are no DC 15 locks, they start at DC20 for "Standard" locks. We were picking a DC20 lock.

Anything 10 or less is a critical failure.

Even rolling with an optimized stat (a +4 with +1 guidance that was accidentally cast perpetually because no one knew that "bolstered" meant something special) I had to roll at least a 5 to not critically fail. There were several fours in my rolls early on. Many more rolls were between 5 and 15, making no progress. There were just enough high rolls in a row to finally succeed the lock.

You are correct in that I did not optimize for thievery. I had a +3 to DEX, giving me a trained +4 to thievery. The +1 guidance that made the success possible shouldn't have actually even happened, hence my addition frustration.

Can't edit, but for clarification, any mention of PF2e in my post should actually read as PF2ePlayTest

My first impression, considering that the Halfling Sling Staff is both a sling and a staff is that you should be able to whack people with it. I mean, it's a stick -- shouldn't we be able to whack people with sticks?

There's rules for improvised weapons, but they are specifically of poor quality and the GM determines how much damage they do -- I'm pretty sure a Halfling Sling Staff would be better quality than "poor."

So... on that note, I agree that the staff should have a melee component and deal staff-esque damage.

Picking a lock in PF1 allowed retries and you could Take 20. That was why the lowest lock DC was 20 and the really good ones could be as high as 40: because if all else failed you could spend two minutes working at it until you got through.

My sentiment exactly.

In PF1e, you could take a 10 or 20 on any lock, providing you were trained in Disable Device. As long as you didn't have any negatives, you would 100% be able to open any Simple lock (DC20).

PF1e lock qualities: Simple (DC20), Average (DC25), Good (DC30), Amazing/Superior (DC40).

PF2e lock qualities: Standard (3x DC20), Expert (4x DC25), Master (5x DC30).

Furthermore, pg 336 of PF2e describes Pick a Lock as a proficiency gated task.

PG 336, Proficiency-Gated Tasks: Locks and traps often require a certain proficiency rank to successfully use the Pick a Lock or Disable a Device tasks of Thievery; a character whose proficiency rank is lower than what’s listed can attempt the check, but can’t succeed.

As there are locks with Proficiency words listed in the Adventuring Gear table (pg 185, PF2e), my interpretation is that someone without the associated proficiency can never succeed at a lock pick attempt if they don't meet the proficiency, regardless of what roll they might make.

The table on pg 185 lists: Lock, Expert Lock (level 2) and Master lock (level 7).

So, in my opinion, none of this adds up. At level one, you can't take a 20 to open a standard lock. You roll, but run a very high risk of breaking tools in the process, which are expensive. If for whatever reason you ever encounter a lock of proficiency higher than your skill proficiency, you can't succeed the lock pick attempt even if you succeed the DC check.

As written, even if a deity bad-touched you and gave you a +100 circumstance bonus to a lock pick attempt, but you didn't meet the proficiency rank requirement, you're still not getting through that lock. And you'll probably just break that pick, too, because reasons.

The base ancestries should include the basics. Your feats should draw on unique and interesting aspects of racial/ancestral identity. Not just get you to the starting gate.

Agreed.

As is stands, if you burn your ancestry feat at level 1 to be a Half-something, you have to burn your 5th level ancestry feat just to get the rest of those Half- traits. In total, you only get 4 additional ancestry feats past level 1.

For example, you decide to play a Half-Elf. You take Half-Elf as your ancestry trait. You get to pick two of the following four: elven speed (+5 move), elven tongue (speak Elven), gifted speaker (trained Diplomacy), low-light vision. At 5th level you can forego picking from the Elf, Half-Elf, or Human ancestry feats to get the other two half-elf traits you're missing. AT FIFTH LEVEL.

Leaving you then 3 total ancestry feats to choose from by level 18.

Adopted Ancestry Feat... Additionally, this means you are forced to take at least one feat from your biological ancestry even if that doesn't make any sense for your "adopted" character.

Not only is the cost incredibly high (burning 2/5 feats merely to even play a half-race), but I agree with previous comments that gating it all behind leveling is immersion-breaking.

In the Wizard class section, page 137, General Feats is listed as a 2nd Level advancement, while the text and associated tables still list it as a 3rd level advancement. This seems to be a typo, as my understanding is that no classes are allowed a General Feat until 3rd level.

I wanted to share the experience of lock picking from Lost Star.

I built the goblin alchemist with the suggested background. For ability scores, I only invested enough in DEX to gain a +3 ability modifier, as I wasn't sure what to expect and really wanted more Resonance for bomb-making (INT). Trained in thievery gave my goblin a total of +4 to thievery checks. I had purchased a set of thieves tools during character creation merely for thematic purposes, to match the background, but hadn't really anticipated being "the party rogue."

The first locked item we encountered was a door, just after the fountain encounter (Quasits).

Pros:

- In an RP sense, I enjoyed lock picking. Our GM added flavor to the situation. When I made a successful check against the lock, the GM said, "You feel a tumbler move within the lock."
Backstory, I have done some apprentice locksmithing in real life, and can actually use real lock picks. This flavor was an excellent bonus to the game, but that was only added by our awesome GM in her interpretation of the mechanics.

- Lock picking was hard, but when I finally got the lock opened, it felt VERY rewarding. I even got a hero point for my diligence.

Cons:

- I broke all of my lockpicks, but our GM allowed a retcon that I had purchased more (paying out of some loot, as I was already poor) in our last visit to town -- so we continued trying. I broke 3/5 of that second set before getting the lock open. With only a +4 to thievery rolls, this was extremely difficult.

- In addition to my +4, our Bard was giving Assistance, and our Druid was casting Guidance. I got Guidance on every roll, because the "bolstered" condition is not at all clear in the book and no one realized it until a week later (hi) that it could only be used once per character per day. I got assistance on about 3/4 of the rolls, as our bard at least made most of the assistance checks with their +1 to thievery.

- So, for that particular lock, a DC 20 "Standard Lock" I had to still personally roll at least a 16, unaided, to pass a single phase of the lock. With perpetual (oops) Guidance that roll had to be at least a 15. With Assistance, a 13.

This doesn't *seem* so bad mathematically, until you factor in roll failures.

- As stated previously, I broke 8 picks (which cost 60 silver to a PC that had already spent his 150s on starting gear). After 15 rolls I stopped counting the attempts. That's very expensive for your tools to break on critical failures.

- With the DC at 20 that means anything rolled less than a 10 was a Critical Failure. With only a +4(+5/w Guidance, +7 when Assist worked and also didn't critically fail), Critical Failures were extremely common. As I had to roll (with bonuses) at least a 15, +/-2, most of the time I failed the check, and a string of low rolls meant I critically failed and broke several lockpicks.

Thoughts:

This was a "Standard" lock, encountered by 1st level PCs. It seems like only Thieves Tools will break on a critfail, which seems unfair when compared when other 'crafting' tools don't break. Alchemist tools, crafting tools, etc don't seem to have a breakable/replaceable element.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the flavor added by our GM ("you feel a tumbler move within the lock") and the euphoria of finally getting through the thing, the sheer difficulty of a Standard Lock at level 1 was enormously frustrating and excessively expensive.

When we found the locked chest later, I failed the check for traps, got poisoned, tried a couple of times to pick it (and failed miserably, as that one had a higher DC) and our barbarian smashed the trunk open while I writhed in pain.

Overall, I like the idea behind lock picking, but I feel like either low-level locks should have a lower DC, or lockpicks shouldn't break quite so easily (AND... perhaps not be so astronomically expensive to replace).

Yaknow, mirrors have traditionally been made of or with silver. The oldest mirrors were polished silver plates, and modern-era mirrors are a layer of silver on glass.

So, a character arrogant with lots of vanity -- and a mirror -- might really enjoy a religion that worships silver. I picture an elf holding a silver-backed looking glass, explaining to their party, "Yeah, no, I'm totally praying to Omrataji right now in this beautiful silver. Omrataji, you beautiful thing."