ZeroPathos's page

This kind of scale would allow characters to "pick up skills" from just general experience, while reflecting that casual experience alone will only get you so far. The amateur and the professional might carry out the same task (and therefore have the same experience) but while the experience becomes an "ah hah" moment for the professional it just comes across to the amateur as being harder for some reason that they can't understand.

I could get on board with something like this. Life experience counts for something, but not as important as specific training in a skill.

The undergrad could craft a batch of Rum, and if it later it was damaged he could repair it (“we need to add more molasses”).

The stock broker can only repair it (we could add more molasses, we could add more sugar, we could add more sugarcane juice...)

This misses the key issue; Which is that the 50 year old stock broker can "repair" the rum better than the undergrad can despite having no idea how to "craft" rum in the first place and the undergrad having training in that specific skill.

And hell, let's kick it up a notch. The Undergrad graduates and becomes a Grad student (Expert). The Stock broker takes a a learning annex course in chemistry (Trained) The Stockbroker can now craft better chemicals than the than the Grad student simply by virtue of his "levels" in Stockbroker.

And if one can "repair" an alchemical item why the hell shouldn't one be able to attempt to craft it? They clearly know what the end result should be, and what each of the ingredients are otherwise they wouldn't be able to "repair" it. The gating there is arbitrary, and limits what one should reasonably be able to attempt, just at a higher level of difficulty than one who has actually studied the skill.

I went for reduced bonuses later as it describes that more you invest in one field, more work you need to put in to have and increase of performance.

I like (and more importantly, agree) with you on where you're coming from on that, the issue I see with it though is that there isn't a lot of incentive to take that last skill level since all it gets you is a measly +1. You also want the people who have risen to the top of their field be more consistently able to do things that even folks one tier below struggle with, which +1 doesn't really reflect.

Not sure how I'd fix it though. You could have that last level gain you more, but cost 2 skill slots to buy. That's a solution I'd be happy with, but it would add an extra layer of book-keeping to the skill system, which I suspect is what the developers were trying to avoid with the existing system.

So, if you want to eliminate the level bonus for skills, you should also eliminate it from everything else and have all relevant rolls scale only from resources deliberately chosen to boost them.

I'd prefer that to having to live with the current skill system as is.

I would remove +1/lvl treadmill.

Then:

Skills at: +0,+4,+7,+9 and +10 proficiency bonus.

Attack/AC/spell DC bonus at: +0,+2,+4,+6,+7 and +8,

I'd do something similar, although for skills I'd go with something like:

I am curious as to the reasoning behind why you chose the progression you did though. Maybe you've thought of something I haven't.

So "skill uses gated by proficiency" is not new, since PF1 had several things you could not roll on without ranks in the appropriate skill (e.g. knowledge checks above DC 10.) We've simply expanded on that system for PF2, so it should be familiar.

There's a big difference between "You've never studied that at all so there's zero chance you'd know" and "doing a back flip is hard so you can't even attempt it."

Skill feats, I feel, exist to allow someone to differentiate between different aspects of a given skill, in terms of what a character is good at. So if you wanted a deceptive character to be a great liar but only average at disguise, you could take lying feats instead of disguise feats. If you want to be excellent at picking locks and disabling traps, but don't want to also be a pickpocket simply eschew the pickpocketing feats. I figure this will be clearer as time goes on and we have more skill feats representing more things one can do with their skills.

But what if I want to play a great liar who was absolute crap at disguise? What if I want to play a pickpocket who couldn't disarm a trap to save his life? Not that these are great examples because of the skill merges (that's a whole separate issue for another thread that someone else can start. I really don't care as much about that).

A better example of what's affected here is what if I want to play someone started out as a pickpocket, but gave it up, never got any better at it because they focused on other things, why should I get better at picking pockets because I got better at swinging an axe, or studying a religion?

The level 1 Barbarian is the equivalent of a highschool (American) football player while the 8th level Wizard is the equivalent of his or her highschool science teacher.

Both can open a stuck door but the teachers experience usually lets them get the stuck door open easier.

If there was any experience needed in body checking open a door, the footballer would still have the edge 99 times out of 100. There really isn't though. If this is actually the case where you grew up I feel really bad for your highschool's football team.

But let's reverse things there. Let's say we have a 20 year old undergrad student in chemistry and say a 50 year old successful stock broker with no formal training in chemistry. Are you honestly trying to tell me that simply by virtue of their "experience" the stock broker should be better at chemistry than the undergrad?

Furthermore would that same grad student be a better at athletics than the highschool footballer simply by virtue of her experience?

And many of those very same stories are considered the stupidest things that GMs have let happen due to 5% or 10% chances of super success/failure.

In my experience when that happens it's the fault of the GM letting something that should actually be impossible still have a 5% chance of success. Regardless of your acrobatics skill "I flap my arms really fast and try to fly" should still fail.

I'm of the mind that the standard success results for most skill checks should be the something like following:

Critical Success- You succeed getting a result for the proficiency tier 1 higher than your own proficiency level
Success- You succeed getting a result for your proficiency tier
Failure- You succeed getting a result for one tier lower than your proficiency tier
Critical Failure-You succeed getting a result...

I've seen in real life people with no experience pull off (once) things that experts struggle to achieve, and I've seen experts screw up things that they should be able to do with ease. Both these extremes should be rare, but not impossible. The tiers you suggest don't allow for an expert to fail at something that is one tier below their proficiency without it being a critical fail, and a novice can only get one tier above. It's better than not being able to attempt one tier above at all, but still doesn't go far enough.

I think your problems are completely born from a misunderstanding of what the proficiency system is intended to do. The system doesn't seem to be set up correctly to there are still problems with it.

No, I understand what it's meant to do, I just don't think A) that it's achieving that and, B) that what it's meant to do is particularly desirable.

A level 8 untrained Wizard might have a +6 bonus to Athletics checks compared to a level 1 trained Barbarian's +5 bonus to Athletics checks, but that dooesn't mean that the Wizard should be attempting to make every check that the Barbarian can attempt. The Wizard might have a better chance to succeed when making a check both can perform due to experience but the Wizard can not attempt any check that requires training, expertise, mastery or being legendary.

There's a couple of problems with this. The first, is that said Level 8 untrained wizard is still better at all of the things one can do untrained than the Barbarian who HAS trained in it. That, to me, is a huge hit to verisimilitude.

The second is that even if, as Githzilla called out, they are clear with what is gated and what isn't, and don't move the goal posts later on (which is a big ask of a company that makes it's money selling rule books) there is still the question of "why the hell can't I even attempt it?" Some of the very best gaming stories have been borne out of trying to do the thing that was nigh unto impossible and either pulling it off, or failing spectacularly. Gated skills means that doesn't happen with skills anymore. Frankly, this too, is a knock on verisimilitude. If something is hard it should be more difficult to achieve for an untrained person, not be impossible for them to attempt.

I was going to post something to this effect myself, but you've covered it so well and so eloquently, that there's no need.

You even mention the similarity to 4e's skill system to which I had the same distaste for.

Like you I've only had a chance to read the playtest rules, but so far the skill system is the last major barrier to me adopting the game. (Well... Resonance still needs tweaking but they're working on that.)

In my estimation it's not too difficult of a fix either. Just remove (or greatly diminish) level as a factor, and add a greater bonus per proficiency rank. This might mean increasing the amount of skill training you receive per level as well, but I'd be a lot happier with that system than the current one.