Claxon's page

The problem with a lot of AI programs like this is that it will provide an answer rather than no answer, even if its answer is wrong.

A GM I play with tried to feed an AI program the Core rules for 1e Pathfinder to use it to look up rules and rule-clarifications fast, but still it would give incorrect answers. The AI doesn't necessarily understand how things connect together, I think, or understand when one rule overrides another.

Yeah, for very complex topics (especially ones with a lot niche exceptions like PF1) AI just gets things wrong because it doesn't catch the exceptions.

A lot of good suggestion here already and I'm just going to empahsize a few points that I think are important:

When balancing combat for a larger than expected party, it's typically best to keep the number of enemies close to the number of PCs.

If you had a table of 9 player characters, and you wanted a moderate encounter you would normally have an XP budget of 80. With 9 players it increases by 20 per PC, going from 80 to 180 XP.

In a scenario like this, I'd probably do 6 APL-1 enemies.

For a lieutenant boss fight scenario, a severe encounter, (120 XP normally, 270 XP adjusted) I'd probably do 1 APL+2 enemy, 1 APL +1 enemy, and 4 APL enemies (technically the 4 is a little high but eh).

In both scenarios I would probably break them into 2 groups to attack from opposites sides, and I'd probably put in a lot of terrain to break up the battlefield and make it challenging for either side to dogpile onto one enemy.

And beyond simple terrain challenges, for fights you might consider adding traps or hazards that technically should eat up part of the encounter balance budget, but you only activate them if combat seems to too easy. That way you can kind of tune the combat on the fly without the PCs knowing.

Fighting in an area with lava? The party knows to look out for exploding puddles of lava. But you as a GM can roll behind the scenes and only have it go off when the party is having a little to easy of a time. The party can be aware of a threat, and sometimes that awareness is enough of its on to make the party cautious and add the feeling of tension to a combat even if it never inflicts damage.

My impression is that there are four common answers "Can AI do X?"

1) No
2) sort of, but poorly and you have to make sure you get the right answer, thus negating the point of having something else do the work for you
3) yes, but you'll have to do a lot of expensive and focused training to do what you want reliably, so you're better off doing it yourself in any case
4) yes, but for so limited sets of things that you're still most likely better off doing it yourself

Is this a fair assessment?

Yes-ish, but I would argue point 4 is more nuanced. There are a lot of annoying, boring, repetitive tasks that fall into category 4. You ever had a task that was something to the effect of "combine these two data sets into one file and then compare them to identify where they are different"? A lot of moving and copying data and simple formulas?

That's an area where AI can excel. It doesn't get tired or bored of that work.

If you (a theoretical you) could imagine a simple macro or set of commands you want the AI to run, it can probably do that thing very well (although you could also write code to do it). And funnily enough, there are a ton of AI vibe coders out there who have no formal coding experience but use AI to generate software.

Also there's at least 3 races, Barathy, Contemplative, and Dragonkin that have innate fly speeds for characters.

So no reason to restrict it for the afrementioned Sprite, Strix, or Awakened Animal.

The real question would be, what should you adjust in PF1 if you wanted ancestries that should have always available flight to have that from level 1.

I think it's really giving NPCs viable ranged attacks and or giving long lasting flight magic as an item at low levels.

Seems like something a Spellheart could do, just need to let it recreate the fly spell as the 4th level spell. Affix a spellheart, get 5 minutes of flight. Enough for most NPCs and for combat for PCs, without creating the problems of true permanent flight.

Maybe add a restriction that flight with anything more than negligible weight is limited to 5 minutes, and add a higher level feat that removes that restriction. Makes it less narratively jarring for people that expect bird people to be able to fly.

You can see how the "fly speed at level 1" thing is totally about "potentially you can break the game if you're fighting something that doesn't have a ranged attack" in how Starfinder 2e doesn't worry about that, since everything in that game is designed to be able to fight at range.

If you're playing a Sprite, or Strix, or the right kind of Awakened Animal in a SF2 game you should absolutely get full-powered flight right out of the gate.

I agree that because in SF2 everything (or at least almost everything) has meaningful ranged attacks that flight at level 1 should be an option SF2.

Low level flying NPC are mostly designed to not have ranged attack for the same reason.

At first I read this as "for some reason" and I was like, you already established the reason. The devs understand that if (at low levels) they throw a flying enemy with long ranged attacks they can practically invalidate a lot of player builds.

For example, a flying enemy with a longbow could sit like 200ft above the ground and be out of range of melee and many spells.

That’s pretty cool.

So yeah, kingdom building has been called a spreadsheet simulator, so if I have the spreadsheet, could AI come up with random challenges and pop them out in text turn by turn?

With training, could it study the spreadsheet and intuit parts about my kingdom? (We have a lot of libraries but no granaries, we only have one army but three cities, etc. )

I don't think you're ever going to get it to actively participate in the spreadsheet, or even have a "turn by turn" thing going. But you can definitely go to it and give it a prompt to provide a challenge.

You would then have to translate what that challenge means in terms of the mechanical kingdom building rules, because the AI isn't really going to understand that. Or if you can get it to provide something, the narrative it provides probably isn't going to match.

Ultimately what this thread really highlight is how AI is being sold to people at large for what it can do versus what AI can actually do. It is actually very good at a very small subset of things people think it is good for. (Personal experience it's good at taking notes in meetings and summarizing long texts and providing lists of action items.)

And what's hilarious (and terrifying) is that no one has actually been able to AI into doing something that's creating a lot of value. Almost all companies that have been attempting to institute and utilize AI in their business have found virtually 0 return on their investment and AI companies are starting to feel the burn.

Very likely in the next 2 years there's going to be a massive bubble that bursts in regards to AI.

It's also worth noting that the AI we have now is not the extent that AI can be, it's just that we have the Large Language Models that everyone is pumping out trying to capitalize on the current stream of events, which really only exists because wall street tech bros have convinced a lot of people to invest on the basis of "trust me bro". There's even a solid argument that the current trend of LLMs is hurting other AI development opportunities due to a lack of funding.

I love the goodest boy Remmert. I will say, though he was undead, as he ascended to true godhood I'm not sure if being undead remains relevant or not, or if he's truly undead at that point. Anyways, slightly important (IMO) is the Undeath domain which I don't really see as appropriate based on the description you provided and to me it feels like a shoehorn in just because Remmert in his non-deific nature happened to be a skeleton. To me it also feels like a "must choose holy" not a may choose holy with his areas of concern being to protect his community and be eternally loyal.

But I absolutely love the backstory.

And would also like to suggest that Remmert's master be his first herald.

exequiel759 wrote:

I said it before and I'll say it again; GMs and AP designers aren't going to change how they design maps for a class that is going to come out 9 years after the release of the system.

I mean, you don't need the daredevil to exist to have an excuse to not design bad maps.

Bad is very dependent on your viewpoint. Different classes/builds benefit very much from different map design ethos.

A melee character might prefer smalls cramped maps with 5 or 10ft wide hallways because it allows them to lockdown the map with their reactive strike and serve as a shield to the rest of the party.

A caster focusing on wall spells might prefer a moderate size map that they can then carve up with their wall spells to separate the enemy into single individuals to fight.

A ranged weapon user might prefer very large maps with as little terrain as possible to make maximum use of their range while the enemy has little recourse or anything to hide behind and take cover.

Can you tell me what would make a universally good map? Let's ignore anything to do with the daredevil specifically.

Yes, sure, but simply removing such players from the table looks like cleaner solution than TPKing the whole party. And less hassle. At least looks like it to me.

And if the other players had spoken up and said "No we don't want to do that" I would have said the munchkin player needed to abide by the others desires or leave the table.

But when no one spoke up, I used the same broken combo (can't even remember what it was) against them.

On the original topic, if the ground can count as a prop then there's no point in requiring a prop at all.

On the other hand, I think the prop requirement is a bad idea as I've already expressed because of how maps often are designed and it leaves the class entirely at the mercy of a GM remembering/deicing to include things.

Claxon wrote:

But if a group pisses me off by abusing grey parts of the rules and I warn them that I don't like it and they continue to ignore it, I have 0 problem killing off all those characters. And doing so repeatedly until they get the message.

That's not a great way to handle it imo. Really, it's 100% a people problem, one of mismatched expectations. It needs people solutions (i.e. conversation followed by agreement/compromise or by parting ways), not gameplay solutions.

I don't disagree exactly.

But if I as a GM politely tell you what is effectively "please don't do that" and you ignore that, then I consider it within my rights to ignore the normal gentleman's agreement that exist until you get the picture. And while the root of the problem was 1 specific player, the other players also didn't commit to saying no we shouldn't do that either.

The TPK taught the lesson, I (as a GM) am not playing around when I ask for something (being polite is often viewed as not being serious). The other players didn't need to be taught the lesson a second time.

It may also be worth mentioning it was the first time I had GM'd for the problem player and he is well known within our group to be a bit of munchkin. To the extent that he actually refuses to play PF2 because in his words "there's nothing for me to break".

I also think that if something is obviously x creature type, the GM should confirm it. Why not? If it's obvious it should be part of the description.

Honestly this. For most creatures it's pretty obvious, and honestly i think it's not a bad house rule to simply say "For most creatures, the family they belong to is obvious". So you know the dragonish looking thing is a dragon. And you might even know that "this animated body looking thing in front of you looks like zombie, but something is different about it" without rolling a check (I can't find the creature name, but I'm pretty sure there is a construct that is made out of dead bodies and not actually animated with Void energy like undead are, but is often confused with Undead). Now, the check would tell you that it's a construct, or heck it might be some unusual type of zombie and that successful check would allow you to tell the difference. But seeing a zombie like thing and thinking "that's a zombie" or "that looks like a zombie but different" are things that I think should basically be free.

That would be kind of a shame, though. I like how the prop system encourages creatively using the environment. I can see how that becomes problematic for a GM or mapmaker who needs to balance having enough props for a daredevil with having an open enough environment for large PCs or mounts and large or bigger creatures.

Or even just a GM who doesn't generally think about adding prop level items because it hasn't been important on a map before.

I think this issue is going to be the downfall of this class.

Looking at the token on the battlemap and guessing that it’s probably a construct is not bad faith, what the hell are you talking about.

Yeah, agree. If you're looking at a big scaly creature with wings and 4 legs it's not a leap to think it might be a dragon. Now, you don't know for sure that it is, but it's not unreasonable to believe so. You also don't know which kind of dragon exactly, which is going to be very important.

I honestly think it reasonable for most creatures to be able to identify their family without any kind of check at all (most, but not all).

It's equivalent to the bonus damage sneak attack does, but you're missing the weapon damage with all the runes that increase that damage.

Witch of Miracles wrote:

At every table I've run or played at, it's been:

Player: "Hey, I want to ID this thing. What's the relevant skill?"
GM: "Arcana or Crafting."

The trouble is, by saying "Arcana or Crafting" you have pretty-much confirmed it is a Construct, and the player has not even committed to the action yet, let alone rolled the check. Not all combinations of Skills will be quite such a giveaway, but others will be worse ("Yes, you can use Vampire Lore").

But I think most GMs realistically trust players not to abuse knowing "hey this is a construct". Especially because for most monsters it's pretty obvious.

Even when it's not, the family of creatures doesn't give away too much (IMO) about the creature. And sometimes creatures go against the generic bits of their family.

If you don't trust your players to not metagame, then I can understand why you might want to be vague. But I think for 90% of GMs, it's probably not a problem.

It usually works, but it can spiral when the player just cycles through different BS ideas and you have to keep doing a game of oneupmanship and the whole world starts feeling ridiculous.

Oh, I don't play that game. If players start going down that path of ridiculous power gaming maneuvers and don't heed my warning to knock it off I usually make it clear that they're heading down the road to a TPK, though I won't say that directly.

But if a group pisses me off by abusing grey parts of the rules and I warn them that I don't like it and they continue to ignore it, I have 0 problem killing off all those characters. And doing so repeatedly until they get the message.

I've only had to actually do that once, because one particular player was insistent in doing abusive things with the rules (this was also in PF1, much more open to abuse than PF2). I created a situation that TPK'd all the characters and new characters were brought it to pick up where the old left off. And when the same player started to try BS again the other players straight up told them no, we're not doing that.

But if part of the design is to create something that engages more with the environment, making it work better without scenery would be kind of antithetical to the function.

Maybe it's okay to start saying that empty squares with a bunch of enemies on one side are not good map design.

Maybe, but it also puts a lot more burden on a GM, especially for GMs writing their own campaign and not using pre-made maps.

I understand your argument, and I don't disagree in theory.

But I think the reality is going to be that it doesn't work out well.

This.

But to clarify, it restricts what level of runes you can apply to the weapon.

The short answer impact-wise is special materials are so expensive and so inhibitive to improving your weapon that you generically don't want to use special material.

You use special materials when you're repeatedly encountering something that warrants its use.

And, there are consumables that can apply some kinds of special materials on a limited basis.

It could probably use some wording to clarify that the damage is only once per target per Caroming Charge.

And while this theoretically can deal a lot of damage, in much the same way a fireball could if every square was filled with an enemy, it doesn't scare me or mean much to me as a GM.

Especially in an extreme boss battle. Good luck using this as your main tactic against the party level +3 boss and his party level lieutenant. The two enemies present will enjoy all the tickling you're doing.

That said, it does probably need to have either an attack roll or save included with like almost everything else in the game.

Yeah, I tell my players that even when they're not attempting to power game.

"Remember team, anything clever you think you can do, the enemy can do as well. Especially once they've seen you do it once. Do you want to open Pandora's box?"

Generally agree Witch of Miracles, but the rules bother to mention it (I think) so that it's clear that it's a negotiation with the GM and more importantly so the player establishes which skill the GM intends to use and that they want to commit to the action.

In practice you could tell them GM, "If I can use any of my trained knowledge skills or trained lore skills that are relevant, I'll attempt the check." And the GM can tell you what you know.

Zoken44 wrote:

Perpdepog: when you reference damage steroid, are you talking about stunt damage? the very conditional and harder to pull of thing where you actually have to move an enemy into a solid surface to get it?

That is so situational, I would not count it. don't get me wrong, I love it as a bread-and-butter ability, and in most cases you can pull it off, but in the most necessary cases (boss fights against big monsters) it will be the hardest to get.

I am, yeah. I'm not imagining it being super hard to pull off, though I'm also looking at it through the lens of a GM who both largely runs theater of the mind, and who likes to be generous with players who ask if their class can do the conditional thing because that's why they picked that class. I wouldn't be at all upset if they explicitly made stunt damage easier to achieve, though, for those who are more grid-minded than I am.

As someone who is very grind minded, but wouldn't consider myself as purposefully stingy, when I started reading the description of the Stunt damage thing I read it and went...huh that's a very situational and unreliable source of bonus damage. So y'all are on to something there.

It's not intentional, but I start looking at the map and the grid and baring things actually shown on the official map, you're not going to have me describing a bunch of large items to launch yourself off of.

On that merit alone, I think that class feature needs a rework. And again it's not like an intentional thing, but I'm not going to think about. And I don't really want to decide when there is or isn't something there. If they want the class to have access to this most of the time, they need to write it differently so there are ways to use it without it depending completely on scenery or a larger character. I don't know what that looks like, but as it is I would avoid the class just because of this.

Ah, yes, I forgot about crits reducing stages by 2 instead of 1. I was purely thinking of it as needing a crit to succeed at all.

Also initially I was a just think there were 5 position (stage 0 through stage 5) that you had to get through, which is true, but it's only 4 "intervals" so I was creating an off by 1 error, lol.

2 crit successes is incredibly likely to happen with enough time. That is a 1 in 400 chance. So after 400 rolls your chance to have it happen is very close to 100%. And 400 rolls is only 40 minutes.

My guess, or expectation is that you don't build a strength focused daredevil. Or rather than you're going build like a strength/dex equal-ish build. So at level 1 you might wear like chain shirt, needing only +3 dex which is achievable, and also have like +4 strength.

The real drawback is having only like +1 to con and having 8 hp from class.

The class to me does read like it might be a skirmisher, but I don't think the abilities/feats it has actually supports that very well compared to a monk. Move, flurry (two attacks), move away works okay. But the daredevils abilities are harder to use.

Well Mathmuse helped me out with a scenario prompt of needing 5 nat 20s in a row and the odds that it happens like 4800 rolls (8 hours), and the odds were actually still really bad.

Decreasing the need from a nat 20 to a 17 though should increase the probability.

Edit: I also just realized I was mistakenly thinking it was 5 rolls when it is actually only 4.

Claxon wrote:

Absolutely not! That's not how rules (typically) work, and it's certainly not how Pathfinder's rules work. Rules are not typically set up as a permissive ruleset ('everything is legal unless said otherwise), they're set up as a restrictive ruleset (nothing is legal unless explicitly said).

I'd say it's more nuanced. Even for highly codified game like pf2 there are rulings in the moment, homerules, rules judgement, some degree of players' improvisation and non-standard solutions and sometimes just things which are like GM've said they are. More so in more narrative-focused games.

But yes, players demanding things to be how they like it because it's not forbidden and they think it's very 'logical' is not encouraged.

I agree there is nuance in the sense that the rules, because they're written by humans can't be written to cover everything a player might decide to do. And that is where a GM steps in to cover thing.

But more generally, the default rules are "if it doesn't say you can, then you can't". Sometimes that is narratively unsatisfying, and you choose to make adjustments to the rules. For instance, the rules don't really cover directly damaging weapons or armor.

In this case though, it's pretty straight forward for a GM to say, if you want to do this you need to take the spirit familiar feat option because that's pretty clearly the intention.

Needing to clear four stages takes, at worst, two nat 20s in a row. At one roll per round, the expected length of time is 400 rounds, or 40 minutes.

How do you suppose it only takes 2 nat 20s at worst?

I suppose the "bounded accuracy" of the system is the answer. You shouldn't end up with a situation where the difference between the players fort save and the DC is 20.

To an above poster's point (and I didn't verify before writing this):
Trained equal 2 + level proficiency - The characters are level 3 so +5.

Drained 4 with a -1 con would be a -4 penalty applied to the roll with a -1 con modifier (net -5) for a total net of 0.

Meaning a roll of 17 or better is what is required as a worst case. And if you have a better con (and as drained condition reduces) your odds increase.

Again I don't have the right knowledge of probability and statistics to do the math, but it does seem more reasonable with that to just say after a night of rest the curse is gone.

Yep, the secret here as others are mentioning is that with this curse, since it has stages and the stages are every round, you get to roll every round to decrease the stage.

You could simply say "Hey, Steve (player character) has this nasty condition. We're going to set up camp and let him rest overnight here." And in the morning, the character has managed a string of saves that would reduce the condition to 0. Is that realistic? Maybe. If the character were at stage 4, they may need up to 5 nat 20s to succeed, which is incredibly unlikely, but since your making a roll every 6 seconds, or 10 rolls a minute. Over an 8 hour time period, a character would make 4,800 rolls (8 hours * 60 minutes/hr * 60 second per minute / 6 seconds per round).

Honestly I forget how to do the probability calculation for such a scenario. Maybe mathmuse will see this thread and answer.

I guess in my experience I rarely see people with a free hand unless they're a caster or monk. And in a party of only 4, it's not a guarantee to have 2 of those.

Although I guess the argument would be you don't need 2. You only need one person with battle medicine. But arguably you don't want it to be a cleric, who can likely do better with their magic.

Anyways, I appreciate the perspective I've been given on acrobatics for strength based martial characters but I don't think it will change how I build my characters.

Claxon wrote:

I suppose you could roll multiple skills, but why? Unless you're using a macro it's a waste of time.

I don't use macros (or VTTs at all). It takes a second or two longer for the player to say for example "any Skill I am at least Trained in" orather than "Arcana", and it takes maybe a fraction of a second longer to look across the PC's list of RK/IM skills and apply whichever yields the best combination of bonus and DC, rather than just rolling a single skill.

Which is still much quicker (and less spoiler-ish) of negotiating over a skill.

Claxon wrote:

And the rules literally say:

Quote:

You attempt a skill check to try to remember a bit of knowledge regarding a topic related to that skill. Suggest which skill you'd like to use and ask the GM one question. The GM determines the DC. You might need to collaborate with the GM to narrow down the question or skills, and you can decide not to Recall Knowledge before committing to the action if you don't like your options.

Okay, maybe my procedure is slighly more in the realm of house rules than I realised (I have not gone through the Remastered version of RK in detail, because I was happy with the procedure established beforehand). Nonetheless, whether or not what I do is strictly RAW, I promise you that it is possible. Because I do it, and it works.

Claxon wrote:

You don't necessarily have to narrow it down to a single applicable skill, but essentially you do narrow it down to which 1 skill you're going to roll.

I, as GM, narrow it down to one skill from those the player has nominated. The player doesn't have to - they can choose "any skill I am at least Trained in" or "any Int-based skill" or "Arcana or Occult" or even "just Religion" if they like.

Claxon wrote:

And there's just no logical way to resolve multiple rolls for the same single roll knowledge action.

I mean, there would be. But that's kinda irrelevant, as I never said "multiple rolls" I said multiple skills (on the...

I agree the player can nominate multiple skills, no problem there. And if the player is vague (as in they say any skill I'm trained in) and are cool with the GM rolling whatever their best trained applicable skill is, then great. But as a GM, you still have to choose 1 skill for that 1 roll that you're looking at. Because a failure means they learn nothing and can't try more.

If what you're saying/doing is:
"I have a macro that makes a single dice roll and the report that the VTT gives me is a list of all the players skills with that dice roll applied to each skill and a I choose the best result from the applicable skills" then I absolutely see no problem with that, assuming the player told you which skills they were okay with as being options.

Claxon wrote:

Hard no.

The apparition is mostly a trapping, an in game explanation for how the animist has its power.

There's no mechanics that allow you to send your apparition out of you and do things with it (that I am seeing).

I also dont see nothing about but my friend its using has his logic to ask for it, as in "its not forbid so i could do it" type of mentality.

Absolutely not! That's not how rules (typically) work, and it's certainly not how Pathfinder's rules work. Rules are not typically set up as a permissive ruleset ('everything is legal unless said otherwise), they're set up as a restrictive ruleset (nothing is legal unless explicitly said).

I would advise your friend to drop that mentality, because otherwise they're going to cause problems for you as a GM and you're likely to want to drop such a friend from the game.

Otherwise, as Pauljathome mentions, the game quickly devolves into an unplayable mess.

Hard no.

The apparition is mostly a trapping, an in game explanation for how the animist has its power.

There's no mechanics that allow you to send your apparition out of you and do things with it (that I am seeing).

Claxon wrote:

But from a game mechanics point of view, we have to choose 1 skill to roll.

Why do we?

In cases like this where the relevant skills are unknown and unknowable until after the check is passed, why can't we pick any or all skills? That's what we do at my table, and it works fine. It may not be spelled out in RAW, but it doesn't contradict it either (unlike your "free-action size up" narrowing down creature keywords AFAIK).

I suppose you could roll multiple skills, but why? Unless you're using a macro it's a waste of time.

And the rules literally say:

You attempt a skill check to try to remember a bit of knowledge regarding a topic related to that skill. Suggest which skill you'd like to use and ask the GM one question. The GM determines the DC. You might need to collaborate with the GM to narrow down the question or skills, and you can decide not to Recall Knowledge before committing to the action if you don't like your options.

You don't necessarily have to narrow it down to a single applicable skill, but essentially you do narrow it down to which 1 skill you're going to roll. You have a question. You ask the GM, "hey is this knowledge or lore appropriate" and the GM tells you "No, but I would accept any of the following for that piece of information". Likely you have one applicable skill, or you have one skill that is applicable with the highest bonus.

And there's just no logical way to resolve multiple rolls for the same single roll knowledge action.

I don't have advice for you, but this is hilarious.

Ughh... My goal is not to bamboozle players but to help them, if they have nothing relevant ofc I'll warn them before they waste their actions.

Edit: although my own personal style is if someone rolls good, even with a different skill than required, to give something based on the character's skills.

I think it's fine to give some sort of information based on applicable skills.

Heck, you could even make a case for Craft(Cooking) or Lore(Cooking) to give you something like "You know that creature is poisonous if consumed" or "People have tried cooking that creature before, but the taste is considered to be bad because it is carnivore and likely to cause parasites". Something like that might be useful, or even just engaging in the world.

But also that is only appropriate outside of combat. Remember, players get to ask a question, what they want to learn about. And in combat, I think that is important to stick to when they're spending an action on it. If they don't have a skill that would provide them with the info they want to know, tell them.

Outside of combat, you can give them interesting tid-bits like the above (although you probably have to make it up).

Sure wisdom isn't my primary stat, but because Will saves, I pumping it at every level up and it's third only to Strength and Con (and generally tied with Dex).

I guess I just like having that group utility. If I only had Athletics and Acrobatics, that's pretty focused on just "my character". Yes athletics can help the whole party, but honestly that's not why I'm doing it. And acrobatics is very much just about yourself.

Intimidation is more group oriented because of out of combat uses, while still having good value in combat. On a fighter or barbarian specifically Intimidation maybe has less value because of Intimidating Strike, but you eventually get things like Scare to Death which is worth the investment.

I guess when I'm looking at Acrobatics vs Medicine (unless there's someone else already planning for medicine) I just think that I'd prefer to generally make my character more useful to the group, at least in the way I'm evaluating it.

It's an easy problem to avoid unless someone is being deliberately antagonistic.

Unfortunately it seems like a lot of people have antagonistic GMs.

Combing back to this, if my character had 5 skills that I could advance to Legendary proficiency for a generic strength based martial character they would likely be (in no particular order):

1) Athletics
2) Medicine
3) Intimidation
4) Acrobatics
5) Knowledge skill (if taking caster dedication) or other skill for character background development

Agreed, it's really as simple as a GM saying, "Hey, all relevant skills you have are untrained, do you want to proceed?" Or even, "Hey, you are trained in a relevant skill, but only trained (level 15characters), do you want to proceed?"

Like there are very easy ways to avoid creating a problem.

But the scenario being described/imagined here seems like it's trying to shortcut the conversation between the GM and player and forcing the player to commit to RK without knowing which skill is being used (which is pretty explicitly against the rules).

To me, it makes no sense to narrow down what skill you are using.

When you are using Recall Knowledge, you are trying to remember what you know about a subject.

So going "I try to see if I remember anything about this thing I'm looking, but only using what I learned in my Arcana class and not in my Religion class" makes absolutely no sense.

What makes sense is simply "I try to remember what I know about this thing I'm looking at".

Yes, but also no.

Yes, from the characters in world perspective absolutely.

But from a game mechanics point of view, we have to choose 1 skill to roll. And from a player point of view, you'd like to know which skill is being rolled, because the rules directly tell us you don't have to commit to the action. Essentially if you as a player realize you don't have a skill with a good bonus relevant to the thing in front of you, you don't have to commit your action (which is nice considering the crit failure potential and wasted action). It's almost like your character can (as a free action) size up the enemy and realize they don't know even the slightest thing about it and choose not to think harder about it.

Plus, even if you pick Medicine as your secondary skill, you still have a tertiary skill which could be Acrobatics still.

True, but I have Athletics, and Intimidation, Medicine, and Acrobatics to consider. And possibly a knowledge skill if I'm going into a caster dedication.

I guess I just don't value Kip Up enough to bother investing my limited skill increases into Acrobatics. Like I'd never use it for anything other than Kip Up and Catfall. And the need for catfall can be pretty easily eliminated with items. And don't misunderstand me, I see the use case for Kip Up. I just...guess I don't value it that highly.

You don't need dex to invest in Acrobatics, Kip Up and Cat Fall are incredibly valuable feats, and the Acrobat dedication lets you get auto-scaling Acrobatics proficiency at very little cost.

But you do. Kip Up requires Master proficiency, which means either investing your skills or spending a class feat on the Acrobat dedication, which is definitely an opportunity cost.

I will grant you, one class feat (if you're not planning on taking another dedication) isn't a huge deal, but it's also not nothing. And there are plenty of characters I would take a dedication on.

I simply don't think access to Kip Up is so valuable to be worth that cost.

I do think it's also worth noting that skill feat quality heavily influences skill selection, and Kip Up almost makes it worth investing in acrobatics by itself. A lot of other skill choices just have extremely weak feat options.

I do generally strongly agree with this.

In general a lot skill feats aren't amazing. And a lot of skills are of low or dubious inherent value.

Like all the knowledge skills have questionable value in the sense of it will depend a lot on how your GM runs the skill.

Athletics has high inherent value to the skill. I feel Acrobatics has low inherent value, but Kip Up and Catfall are good. Crafting is generally not great, except for Shield users (for repair) and Alchemists. Deception is good, as is Diplomacy but I rarely take these unless I'm playing a Charisma based character. Special shoutout to Bon Mot though as an amazing skill feat. Intimidation is great. Medicine is required for someone on the team. Performance is a pass unless you're a bard. Stealth is great (if you're a dex based character). Survival sucks unless you're GM is dead set on making it matter and then everyone needs it. And thievery is pretty meh.

altough i really want a bump to the summoners and magus. would love more slots for both, more free evo feats for the summoner, better scaling of dcs and prof for the eidolon and less action tax for the summoning

Have you tried wizard dedication on a Magus? Like, not that taking a casting class dedication SHOULD be the answer to making the class work like we (as players) expect, but it does work pretty darn well.

Honestly, the class should have just had more spell slots for feats as an option.

If you're just trying to stabilize or patch up the main Medicine person after battle, being Trained in Medicine is plenty.

I disagree. You need at least expert you so you can actually take Continual Recovery and Ward Medic. My characters have usually been the main source of non-emergency healing. And being able to do that in an hour or less (without limited resources) has usually been useful.

But I suppose you mean, if your character is just that extra person to get the main healer up and working again then you're not wrong.

I guess I've always just volunteered because "grizzled veteran who knows how to sew himself back together" is a trope I like.

Claxon wrote:

ScooterScoots wrote:

Claxon wrote:

But if the strength based full-plate wearing NPC has it, I'm going to call shenanigans.

Considering how many heavy armored Kip up users I’ve made I might not have grounds for complaint on that one…

I'm not going to say I doubt that you've made a character that does this, I'm just curious why?

Like the main advantages of heavy armor is that your AC can be 1 point higher than using another armor (assuming you hit max dex in either case) and that you can avoid the dex investment. So the whole point of bothering to get/use heavy armor is to avoid the dex cost to maintain maximum AC (and being slightly harder to hit is really just a small bonus).

So you could absolutely choose to invest in dex, but it doesn't make a lot of sense. Heavy armor because of the speed penalty just generally isn't worth it if you're also investing in dex.

And if you're not investing in dex, why are you investing in acrobatics? I mean you can, but why? And especially getting all the way to master acrobatics. I could see getting trained, so you can overcome "trivial" dex acrobatics challenges. But not spending a significant portion of your proficiency upgrades on something your attributes don't support. I mean you can, I just don't see anyone do it.

There's not even that many acrobatics feat that I would say are "must haves" or even nice to haves. Like it's nice to have kip up and cat fall, but everything else...I wouldn't really bother to take. And cat fall can be negated by getting access to flight. I think there are boots that basically give you catfall or featherfall.

Let’s say I’m a two handed weapon build in heavy armor. Athletics is obvious, maneuvers and grapple defense and I have the STR for it. That’s one.

I don’t have the free hand for battle medicine, so that’s out unless the party has no one willing to do treat wounds, and they probably do just from other battle medicine users. So mostly out.

RK skills are mostly...

Interesting thought process. I usually go with Athletics, Medicine, and Intimidation (or possibly a knowledge skill if I'm doing a caster dedication). I guess if more than one other person in the group was already taking medicine I might skip it, but it's nice to have at least two people in the group with medicine, just in case one of you is knocked out. You can also can substitute a class with healing spells that regularly prepares/knows them to get the medicine user back up to heal everyone else.

But funnily, basically every martial character I make (even if they can't use battle medicine in combat) still takes medicine unless there are already two other sources of healing.

gesalt wrote:

Much like NPCs with counterspell or subtle spell vs parties that love silence, GMs will add kip up the more often you frustrate them with trip spam.

I feel like this is saying the equivalent of GMs will avoid sending groups of weaker enemies against the party the more the wizard uses Fireball.

It is, and it's adversarial GMing which is bad.

Remember GMs, your goal isn't to TPK or otherwise defeat the party. It's to challenge them so they feel like they've earned victory (because an unearned victory doesn't feel very rewarding).

Well, let's talk about why it would matter for just a second too.

So whether something is additional damage or extra damage would only matter if the enemy has a weakness or resistance that would apply.

If the enemy has neither, then it works out the same.

As for the difference between them, well extra damage is a new instance of damage (possibly being reduced by resistance or triggering weakness).

Whereas additional damage just increases an existing damage source.

Errenor wrote:

pauljathome wrote:

See Easl’s post above for proof that at least some GMs basically make sure you crit fail A LOT with most characters

Have you actually read the posts? It was more or less clear from the start that the procedure is used to choose THE BEST skill, not the worst as you imply. But above Easl has explicitly described it now, it's clear that's not what you say it is.

Yes I have read his posts. All of them. Maybe I am misinterpreting him but I think that he is saying that if my character is expert in Religion and expert in Nature but untrained in Arcana and untrained in Crafting and untrained in any relevant Lore skill that when I try and identify a construct (I'm deliberately choosing this example as it is NOT particularly hypothetical. Some constructs look like other things so it is a mistake a player can make. And lots of my wisdom or charisma based casters have an Int of 0 or even -1. This example has occurred in practice) he'll

1) Assume that I HAVE spent an action
2) Look at my untrained Lore - Golem, Crafting and Arcana skills, use my Untrained Lore Golem because the DC is a bit lower, look at my result, see that it is a critical failure, and lie to me (even at quite low levels one is often more likely to crit fail than succeed on an untrained skill, by level 5 or so one only succeeds on a 20 and crit fails half the time assuming the stat is 0).

Note - the above is EXACTLY what some GMs I've played with who use this macro do. Maybe that makes them poor GMs. maybe it just means they haven't thought things through, maybe I've just been very unlucky, maybe they think lying on crit fails is absolutely hilarious. But it HAS happened.

If that is NOT what he is saying then
1) I apologize
2) I think he should clarify himself.

I'll quote Easl to show why his posts make me think he would act exactly as I describe above

Easl wrote:

We roll, he says Bob learns x. If one person succeeds and the other crit fails, Bob learns x but Alice learns

...

Yeah, if that's what's happening that's 100% being a bad GM and I would probably quit.

That said, when I build fighters I often focus on strength, but also boost dex, con, and wis. And on such a character, taking the Acrobat dedication isn't crazy, as Dodge Away is a nice reaction to pick up. And Tumbling Strike isn't bad either. And if you've already done that, Kip Up isn't unreasonable. But that character isn't wearing full plate either.

Claxon wrote:

But if the strength based full-plate wearing NPC has it, I'm going to call shenanigans.

Considering how many heavy armored Kip up users I’ve made I might not have grounds for complaint on that one…

I'm not going to say I doubt that you've made a character that does this, I'm just curious why?

Like the main advantages of heavy armor is that your AC can be 1 point higher than using another armor (assuming you hit max dex in either case) and that you can avoid the dex investment. So the whole point of bothering to get/use heavy armor is to avoid the dex cost to maintain maximum AC (and being slightly harder to hit is really just a small bonus).

So you could absolutely choose to invest in dex, but it doesn't make a lot of sense. Heavy armor because of the speed penalty just generally isn't worth it if you're also investing in dex.

And if you're not investing in dex, why are you investing in acrobatics? I mean you can, but why? And especially getting all the way to master acrobatics. I could see getting trained, so you can overcome "trivial" dex acrobatics challenges. But not spending a significant portion of your proficiency upgrades on something your attributes don't support. I mean you can, I just don't see anyone do it.

There's not even that many acrobatics feat that I would say are "must haves" or even nice to haves. Like it's nice to have kip up and cat fall, but everything else...I wouldn't really bother to take. And cat fall can be negated by getting access to flight. I think there are boots that basically give you catfall or featherfall.