RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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I've seen a few different people bring up the idea that there are too many traits in Pathfinder 2nd Edition. I think that's true, to a point, but the real problem is a little bit subtler than that.
The problem is not that there are too many traits per se, it's that some of the traits carry additional rules baggage with them. It's very difficult at the table to know which traits require additional rules and which don't.
For example, my Fighter player was completely unaware that his Furious Focus feat couldn't be used on the first attack of a turn, because it has the Press trait. (And that's with a sidebar right next to the feat description explaining that trait!) Because this important rule was "hidden" inside the traits list, he just glossed over it without looking up what all of the traits were and what else he needed to know about each of them.
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that there are a *lot* of traits that don't have any "rules baggage" associated with them. For example, the traits list for the Fighter's Intimidating Strike feat is:
Attack
Fear
Fighter
Emotion
Mental
Let's examine each of these:
Attack - This indicates that the action is offensive, and that it will cause the multiple attack penalty to increase. This comes up often enough that it's probably safe to assume players will understand it after the first game.
Fear - No rules effect by itself
Fighter - Not listed in the Traits glossary. Presumably this just indicates that it's a fighter feat, but no rules by itself
Emotion - No rules effect by itself
Mental - No rules effect by itself
Many of these traits will be used by other abilities, such as a monster's stat block saying that it's immune to fear. I think those kind of traits are okay. They help streamline the game and make it easy to tell whether a certain rule will affect a given situation.
But sometimes, there will be a trait buried in the list that requires you to go apply a new rule that isn't obvious just from reading the description of the ability, like with Furious Focus. In those cases, I think it's very likely that players will just plain miss that there is additional stuff they are supposed to be doing! And with most of the traits not having any rules impact by themselves, it becomes very hard to tell when you need to go look up what the trait does in order to know what the feat does.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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So, what can we do about it? Here are a couple of suggestions:
a) Eliminate traits that have additional rules associated with them. Require the rules text to be printed in the ability it modifies. This is the simplest solution, but it would involve a lot of reprinting text, and use up room that could be used to put more content in the game. So not ideal.
b) Call out the feats that have special baggage attached to them. Maybe with bold or an icon of some kind? It might also be useful to provide a page number reference for where the player needs to go to look up what that trait does.
Do any of you have other ideas that would help with this situation?
Basically anything that has a fear effect will always have the traits Emotion, Fear, and Mental, because Emotion effects are a subset of Mental effects, and Fear effects are a subset of Emotion effects.
On last Friday's Twitch stream, Stephen Radney-MacFarland suggested that they might roll together traits like this. I think this is a good solution.
Instead of Emotion, Fear, Mental, you could just list the Fear trait, which is the most specific. Then, in the bestiary, the Mindless trait, for example, would list that the creature is immune to Mental, Emotion, Fear, etc. effects instead of just Mental.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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Basically anything that has a fear effect will always have the traits Emotion, Fear, and Mental, because Emotion effects are a subset of Mental effects, and Fear effects are a subset of Emotion effects.
On last Friday's Twitch stream, Stephen Radney-MacFarland suggested that they might roll together traits like this. I think this is a good solution.
Instead of Emotion, Fear, Mental, you could just list the Fear trait, which is the most specific. Then, in the bestiary, the Mindless trait, for example, would list that the creature is immune to Mental, Emotion, Fear, etc. effects instead of just Mental.
I think that would help, but it doesn't address my primary concern that some traits mean "you need to look up a bunch of extra rules" and some are just keywords that are hooked into by other things (e.g. a monster's immunities).
One other option I thought of would be to split out the rules-bearing traits from the ones that are just identifiers. So you could have, say, a Traits list and a Tags list. Then you would at least know which ones you need to look up before you even try to use a given feat/spell/whatever, and which ones the GM just needs to know about to adjudicate interactions between things.
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So one thing I'm genuinely not sure of is how many things are "confusing" just because we're unfamiliar with them. After all, the playtest is a month old and we've all gotten used to weirder things in other games just out of familiarity with them.
It's certainly worth considering "how to lay out the book for maximum clarity" but I'm not sure anything more is needed to define Open and Press in context than a sidebar.
One of the traits that came up as having rules baggage associated with it that no one realized: Summoned. Mainly because the Summon Monster spell includes about 80% of the baggage text that the 'Summoned' trait has, but lacks the other 20% (namely, that summoned creatures get to act the moment they are summoned).
Summoned trait:
Summoned
A creature called by way of a conjuration spell or effect
gains the summoned trait. A summoned creature can’t
summon other creatures, create things of value, or cast
spells that require an expensive material component
or special focus. It can take only 2 actions on its turn,
and can’t take reactions. Otherwise, it uses the standard
abilities for a creature of its kind.
When you finish casting the spell and when you spend
an action to Concentrate on the Spell, the summoned
creature then takes its 2 actions. After its actions, you
continue with the rest of your turn. You can direct a given
summoned creature only once per turn; Concentrating on
a Spell for a summoned monster more than once on the
same turn doesn’t give that monster any more actions. If
you don’t Concentrate on the Spell during your turn, the
creature takes no actions, assuming it isn’t dismissed due
to the spell having a duration of concentration.
Summoned creatures can be banished by various spells
and effects and are automatically banished if reduced to
0 Hit Points, or if the spell that calls them is dismissed.
Bolded portions are duplicated in either the spell description or another trait ('Concentrate').
The spell description notes that the creature summoned "gains the summoned trait" but does not include a page reference to the aforementioned rather large block of text.
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I think that would help, but it doesn't address my primary concern that some traits mean "you need to look up a bunch of extra rules" and some are just keywords that are hooked into by other things (e.g. a monster's immunities).
Both of those things mean that the trait interacts with other rules. There's not really a way to differentiate what requires looking up a bunch of extra rules, because all traits have mechanical effects. The importance of the mechanical effect can vary a lot depending on context.
You probably won't care about the Light trait most of the time, but there are also more complicated situational rules that hook into it for dispelling Darkness effects or when fighting a Shadow.
Or, going back to Fear effects, it's not immediately apparent what the "Fear" trait means. You'd have to know that some creatures may have a bonus against Fear effects from class features or feats, or that monsters with the Mindless trait are immune to it, and so on.
All of the traits have rules implications that aren't explained in the feat, spell, etc.
Basically anything that has a fear effect will always have the traits Emotion, Fear, and Mental, because Emotion effects are a subset of Mental effects, and Fear effects are a subset of Emotion effects.
On last Friday's Twitch stream, Stephen Radney-MacFarland suggested that they might roll together traits like this. I think this is a good solution.
Instead of Emotion, Fear, Mental, you could just list the Fear trait, which is the most specific. Then, in the bestiary, the Mindless trait, for example, would list that the creature is immune to Mental, Emotion, Fear, etc. effects instead of just Mental.
They've sort of already done this in some limited cases - a Verbal component has the Concentrate trait, but things requiring Verbal components don't mention that (presumably because of abilities like Quicken Spell or Unusual Composition that can remove such a component or substitute it for something else without modifying the base spell traits).
I'm especially confused by the Barbarian 'Concentrate' traits. Since Rage says
You can’t use actions that have the concentrate trait unless they also have the rage trait. The Seek basic action gains the rage trait while you’re raging.However, a large number of the Barbarian feats have both the 'Concentrate' and 'Rage' trait. And the definition of the 'Concentrate' trait is just:
Concentrate It takes a degree of mental concentration and discipline to use this type of action.So what is the mechanical purpose of that trait for those powers? I haven't seen anything for it.
1. The disruptive feat for Fighters and a few monsters that have it or similar abilities (Mummy Pharoah, Balor, Pit Fiend, Devastator, Grim Reaper, Thanatotic Titan) allow an attack of opportunity when an enemy performs a concentrate action.
2. The Star Spawn of Chtulhu has an aura that can prevent all concentration actions unless you save.
3. The Synethesia spell requires a flat check to successfully perform an action with the concentrate trait.
4. The fascinated condition limits your ability to use concentrate actions.
There may be additional interactions with concentrate actions that I've missed or that will be created at a later date, like items, spells, or other abilities that enhance, trigger off of, or interfere with concentrate actions.
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I still think the "this trait is applied because there are rules that have immediate effect" should be categorically separate from the "this trait is applied because some other conditional effect uses it as a keyword."
I.e. the Fascinated condition prevents any action with the concentration trait and calls out "being unable to cast magic missile."
I looked at Magic Missile and couldn't find where concentration played into this. Turns out, it was in the Verbal Casting action. I'd much rather have the example say, "being unable to cast any spell with a Verbal component (because Verbal Casting requires concentration)."
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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I think that would help, but it doesn't address my primary concern that some traits mean "you need to look up a bunch of extra rules" and some are just keywords that are hooked into by other things (e.g. a monster's immunities).Both of those things mean that the trait interacts with other rules. There's not really a way to differentiate what requires looking up a bunch of extra rules, because all traits have mechanical effects. The importance of the mechanical effect can vary a lot depending on context.
You probably won't care about the Light trait most of the time, but there are also more complicated situational rules that hook into it for dispelling Darkness effects or when fighting a Shadow.
Or, going back to Fear effects, it's not immediately apparent what the "Fear" trait means. You'd have to know that some creatures may have a bonus against Fear effects from class features or feats, or that monsters with the Mindless trait are immune to it, and so on.
All of the traits have rules implications that aren't explained in the feat, spell, etc.
I think it does make a difference in terms of the "direction" the rules are coming from. Let's take Mental as an example.
When using an ability with the Mental trait, the player doesn't really need to know anything. They just say, "I use Intimidating Strike on the skeleton!"
The GM, who is reading the monster statblock, sees "Immunities: asleep, disease, mental, paralysis, poison". Does the thing that is trying to affect me have any of those traits? Oh, it has the Mental trait, so that means it's immune to this thing.
On the other hand, let's say the player says, "I use Furious Focus on the skeleton!"
The GM, who is reading the monster statblock, doesn't see any of the traits that Furious Focus has (Attack, Fighter, Press) in the monster statblock, so he thinks, "okay, doesn't look like there's any interactions here I need to worry about."
The GM has to "just know" that the Press trait means that the Fighter can't use Furious Focus on his first attack. Or else always look up every trait on every ability just in case it has some rules effect that means it can't be used in this situation.
I'm sure eventually a person could get to know all of the hundreds of traits in the game and how they all interact. But for a new player, that is a very daunting task. And a lot of people will get it wrong, such as the Fighter player in my original example who missed the Press trait even though the definition of the trait is literally right next to the feat he was using!
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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I still think the "this trait is applied because there are rules that have immediate effect" should be categorically separate from the "this trait is applied because some other conditional effect uses it as a keyword."
This is a much more succinct way of saying what I was trying to get across above.
In the former case, I should know that I need to look up the trait before I try and use that feat/spell/whatever, because the trait affects how it will work and/or whether I can use it!
In the latter case, I know that I don't need to worry about it in isolation, I just need to be on the lookout in case some other feat/spell/whatever tries to hook into that trait.