Mathematicallly and mechanically, I mean.
I'm still in the phase of trying to understand the rules enough to be able to GM the playtest on Friday and my math skill has way too few ranks in it (that's right, I haven't converted myself to PF2 yet) to answer that question myself.
But how much would it break the game if we got rid of that mechanic or substitue it with another?
Just the skills, or everything?
Just the skills could cause issues with things like Athletics Vs Saving Throws, and would require you to flatten the difficulty table of things in the world. It could also cause weird situations where buff spells become highly optimal compared to all other options.
To everything looks like it would throw off encounter balance, with the difficulty of adding additional combatants off from what is expected -a room of weak combatants could become a murderbox, and a big tanky boss suddenly becomes lame. Your ability to crit hordes of weaklings would also be altered, so control tactics might prove less effective.
However, the main issue is that it has been explicitly noted that any feedback given for the playtest modified in such a way is basically worthless to them, and if not noted highly misleading.
It sounds like it would shake out to be similar to 5e's bounded accuracy with 1 (very big) exception. Feats and abilities that give +1 or +2 or whatever would become very, very strong. The bonus they give would be a much larger proportion of your total result as you level.
It would similarly increase the importance of proficiency and magic items for the same reasons.
This is in addition to the effects of bounded accuracy, which would reduce the threat of stronger enemies but increase the threat of weaker enemies.
Substituting it would probably have less drastic of an impact, unless the new thing interacted with the games other systems in a strange way.
EDIT: I misread and didn't see that you said skills, not everything. One thing that would break is cases wherea skill check gets compared to a non-skill check. (e.g. Athletics vs reflex to disarm)
Substituting it would probably have less drastic of an impact, unless the new thing interacted with the games other systems in a strange way.
that's basically the reason I asked. If I theoretically substitute the current system with old system of ranks, it probably wouldn't change anythinig for a char with ranks in Athletics for the aforementioned Athletics vs. Reflex check and a Char without ranks in Athletics would be considerably worth, as it should be.
But outside of skill checks what would be affected? Is the +1/lvl for skills too integral to the system to take it out without starting from scratch or is it something that might potentially be dropped between today and the finished product?| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Substituting it would probably have less drastic of an impact, unless the new thing interacted with the games other systems in a strange way.
that's basically the reason I asked. If I theoretically substitute the current system with old system of ranks, it probably wouldn't change anythinig for a char with ranks in Athletics for the aforementioned Athletics vs. Reflex check and a Char without ranks in Athletics would be considerably worth, as it should be.
But outside of skill checks what would be affected? Is the ALP for skills too integral to the system to take it out without starting from scratch or is it something that might potentially be dropped between today and the finished product?
Hmmm. One effect that I would really like about doing that is preventing automatic increases to skills that one does not want the character to be good in. For example one of my favorite characters was a total high level boss, but had 1 rank in perform(comedy) to show that they actively spent some time trying to be funny. They had a high charisma, but were still able to tell awful jokes on a bad roll, something very endearing to me.
Mechanically, it is an exception to the +level to everything rule, and add one more system to the game. That means I dont think Paizo probably will, but I do think(or at least hope) that skills will become more granular. Perhaps a change to how proficency bonuses work?