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2e in it's current form does not cater to the desire of players who wish to play as powerful, effective characters. See Deadmanwalking's superlative breakdown on his issues with the underlying maths of the game, or magnuskn's discussion about the issues with playing as an arcane caster for some very good deep dives on these issues, or just about any other thread about the feel of the game. Maths is very tight, to the point where it becomes difficult to build a character that would be "highly competent" in-world due to high rates of failure for equal level challenges. Casting has been hit by nerfs to every aspect of spells - duration, effect and number of spells per day. Martials are still often (until quite high level with a tiny minority of skill feats) locked to the idea of "can someone do this in real life" while facing aggressive siloing of fighting styles behind particular classes. Healing is much harder to come by outside of clerics, which means that either combats are brutal and punishing and the party needs to rest a lot or that someone must choose to play a cleric, regardless of their own preferences.
Pathfinder 1st edition, on the other hand, allowed powerful combos and high levels of competency for all characters, with the main disparities between equally well thought out characters being more of flexibility and options than outright numbers. This particular issue stemmed largely from a problem that I mentioned for 2e martials - an apparent desire to limit them to the world of the strictly mundane in terms of their capabilities. There are 3rd party supplements that address this - the ever popular Spheres of Might by Drop Dead Studios provides a mostly grounded take on it, and the Path of War content by Dreamscarred Press gives a much more over-the-top and flashy approach - but within core the options are relatively slim for a non-caster to have the same degree of problem-solving tools.
Yes, you may or may not like the style of play outlined as positive in this post, but that doesn't make it invalid. Just as if you prefer a low-power, gritty game my personal dislike of that style doesn't mean that it shouldn't be catered to. The two playstyles can even coexist in the same system - the (bafflingly, to me, obviously) popular E6 and E8 rules cater to a playstyle I personally find uninspiring.
To analogise, anyone who has worked in a field where measurement is important knows that it's better to be over measurement rather than under. If you want a piece of wood to be 500mm and you get one that's 700mm, you can shorten it. Nothing about the piece of wood being too long for your purposes prevents you from using it the way you want to. But if you need a piece of wood that's 500mm and you have one that's 300mm, you're out of luck. You can't lengthen that wood to 500mm. Too bad. Same for catering to both high power and low power play - low power play can take place in a system that scales to high power, but high power play can't take place in a system that only provides a low scale.
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...but high power play can't take place in a system that only provides a low scale.
Can a player get high power play out of a low power system? Not without exploits.
Can a GM set up the players for high power play in a low power system? Absolutely. I can see many ways to offer "high power" campaigns using the playtest rules - the tight math actually makes it a piece of cake, especially with the critical set-up.
If we're talking about the ability of a player to engage in "high power" play when GM isn't intentionally fostering it... Yes, that would be much more difficult in the playtest. If that's a positive or negative is largely a matter of perspective.
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So besides the inherent unreasonableness of a prepared full caster who prepares all the right and most powerful spells, was there really very much for players who want to push the power envelope in PF1 when all we had was the CRB?
Like it took some time for powerful fighters, monks, and rogues of any type to exist last go around.
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Can a GM set up the players for high power play in a low power system? Absolutely. I can see many ways to offer "high power" campaigns using the playtest rules - the tight math actually makes it a piece of cake, especially with the critical set-up.
The need for the GM to alter or go outside of the ruleset in order to allow a playstyle contraindicates the possiblity of that playstyle in the first place. Although E6 and E8 are developed rulesets that also go outside of the base rules, the ability to merely finish a game at lower level accomplishes the majority of the same goals. There's no equivalent way to "play up" in 2e.
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So besides the inherent unreasonableness of a prepared full caster who prepares all the right and most powerful spells, was there really very much for players who want to push the power envelope in PF1 when all we had was the CRB?
Like it took some time for powerful fighters, monks, and rogues of any type to exist last go around.
Yes, there was. You could get very high bonuses to either your attack rolls or skills such that you had a very low rate-of-failure in your chosen area of specialisation, which is not something that's currently possible in 2e.
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Yes, there was. You could get very high bonuses to either your attack rolls or skills such that you had a very low rate-of-failure in your chosen area of specialisation, which is not something that's currently possible in 2e.
But you have to admit that the number of ways to pump one's modifiers as high as can be have increased dramatically over the course of the product's lifespan. Like you could always take skill focus, but we didn't get that alternate racial trait for humans that gives you three different skill focuses for the price of your bonus feat. Once Ultimate Intrigue came out, we could put that on a Vigilante who takes Social Grace, so for two feat equivalent choices we could have +20 to 2 skills at level 10, and then you start adding everything else that's been added in the last 10 years into the equation.
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A decent interpretation. I expect this is by design, but it's still worth discussion.
I thinking things over, at our tables, a frequent activity is Star Trek III: The Search for Reliability. With a given challenge, the party would work together to get as close to reliable as possible with any given plan. It might involve casters setting up several buffs to enable a martial to deliver an important grapple. It might involve martials setting up positioning to enable casters to do their work. It might involve casters ensuring that martials get to keep playing, or get back into a fight if they fall.
Everyone pulls together, throwing in everything from guidance to Aid Another to providing safe paths that provide cover against attacks of opportunity. There were hundreds of combinations by which a party could seek reliability, depending on circumstances.
PF2's design - again I believe deliberately - removes most of that. There aren't five or six different bonus types that can be stacked to Save The Day. And if there were, their durations wouldn't last long enough to Get Things Done.
The game is now: stand and whack things until they fall down. Which many, many, many people want. I cannot, and will not tell them they are wrong.
There's a lot of fun to be had with the PF2 chassis as a basis. I'd love to see PF1's style on the PF2 chassis, which is what we were promised. Pathfinder feel? No. Golarion feel? Yes.
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Yes, there was. You could get very high bonuses to either your attack rolls or skills such that you had a very low rate-of-failure in your chosen area of specialisation, which is not something that's currently possible in 2e.But you have to admit that the number of ways to pump one's modifiers as high as can be have increased dramatically over the course of the product's lifespan. Like you could always take skill focus, but we didn't get that alternate racial trait for humans that gives you three different skill focuses for the price of your bonus feat. Once Ultimate Intrigue came out, we could put that on a Vigilante who takes Social Grace, so for two feat equivalent choices we could have +20 to 2 skills at level 10, and then you start adding everything else that's been added in the last 10 years into the equation.
And? Sure, the number of ways to do so increased, but you actually could do so from the get go in 1e. You can't in 2e. That's my point.
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I think "the search for reliability" describes it well. Players often want to be able to focus their characters in a way to be able to do *something* reliably. It's frustrating to always have a 50% failure rate even in something you envision being good at.
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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PF2e seems to exist in this odd space where everybody gets better at everything, even if they don't want to, but no one can truly be great at anything, even if they want to.
My goal for character building in PF1e is to get my PC to the point where it succeeds on a 1-2 for the stuff I want to be good at. I'm also ok with being unable to succeed at other things that my character doesn't care about. I don't think this build paradigm is possible in PF2e as it currently stands.
Yes, there was. You could get very high bonuses to either your attack rolls or skills such that you had a very low rate-of-failure in your chosen area of specialisation, which is not something that's currently possible in 2e.But you have to admit that the number of ways to pump one's modifiers as high as can be have increased dramatically over the course of the product's lifespan. Like you could always take skill focus, but we didn't get that alternate racial trait for humans that gives you three different skill focuses for the price of your bonus feat. Once Ultimate Intrigue came out, we could put that on a Vigilante who takes Social Grace, so for two feat equivalent choices we could have +20 to 2 skills at level 10, and then you start adding everything else that's been added in the last 10 years into the equation.
Straight out of Core there were plenty of magic items that were rather cheap that added a +5 or bigger bonus to a skill. In addition some skills could be easily boosted by buffs or spell effects. Additionally, static DCs meant you didn't need to boost past a certain point to be assured of being effective for most skills.
Sure there were more ways to boost skills later, but there were plenty right from the start compared to next to none now.
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2e in it's current form does not cater to the desire of players who wish to play as powerful, effective characters....
Pathfinder 1st edition, on the other hand, allowed powerful combos and high levels of competency for all characters, with the main disparities between equally well thought out characters being more of flexibility and options than outright numbers. This particular issue stemmed largely from a problem that I mentioned for 2e martials - an apparent desire to limit them to the world of the strictly mundane in terms of their capabilities. There are 3rd party supplements that address this - the ever popular Spheres of Might by Drop Dead Studios provides a mostly grounded take on it, and the Path of War content by Dreamscarred Press gives a much more over-the-top and flashy approach - but within core the options are relatively slim...
I agree that PF1 allowed for far more optimization of characters. However, I don't see it as necessarily a good thing because I see it as exclusive to other styles of play entirely - because if the ability exists to hyper-optimize, then characters invalidate their own ability to coexist beside other characters who either do not hyperoptimize, nor to coexist with others who hyperoptimize in a different way.
So say you are the best ranged combatant who ever lived - your attack bonus, range, and damage are equivalent to a character six levels above your actual level. Your buddy has instead hyperoptimized diplomacy, such that she could take a -10 penalty and still talk someone in 1 round from hostile to indifferent.
(1) If combat does break out, you dominate the battlefield, and your friend does everything she can to just keep from dying to the overpowered creatures who challenge you.
(2) However, what happens if it never comes to that? What happens if you specced for the most deadly archer ever, but every hostile enemy is quelled by five words that come out of friend's mouth on a MINIMUM of initiative roll 14 every time (more usually init 24 or higher)? Your deadly archer sits out all four encounters in the whole session because you can't even roll a 10 consistently to aid another - not that it matters whether you aid her or not, because her diplomacy usually carries the day anyway.
That's the kind of hyperoptimization possible with PF1 all the time - at lower levels it wasn't so terrible most of the time, but above about level 8 it continued to get worse and never stopped - and I'll forgo the old hat discussion of "...but a wizard could have ended the whole adventure with three spells off of their scrolls, anyway" because it just compounds the issue.
In our last big Paizo AP my group played (Hell's Rebels) the MVPs were a hyperoptimized Warpriest melee combatant and hyperoptimized Inquisitor archer - my Oracle of life could spray geysers of healing energy to everyone, and I did feel like I contributed somewhat, but if there was an enemy to be fought, forget it, because their Save bonuses were in the high teens and their ACs and hit points were low 40s and triple digits, usually - at 12th and 13th level. Why? Because the warpriest and archer were averaging something like a +25 to attack and usually did upwards to 70 to 90 damage a round (and triple digit damage if the crit-fishing paid off). On the other hand, the archer literally left the scene for 30 minutes any time diplomacy was required, and that's when the Warpriest and I did our thing.
My group had pages and pages of house rules to neuter this optimization -- and it wasn't just "stick to the core rule book." As noted, the issue is baked into the core assumptions of the 3.x system. As awesomely flexible as it is, it is a pretty complex issue to resolve and yet still allow both optimization and equal opportunity contribution of all characters to a scenario. I'm not sure hyperoptimization and a play experience that involves everyone can necessarily exist within the same system. If my group wound up making multiple pages worth of changes, were we really playing the same game? A bunch of people in our group have issues with D&D5, but they also didn't like the level to which characters could outdo one another unchecked, so what we came up with looked an awful lot like PF2.
What PF2 with its tighter math does do is allow some optimization (around 15 to 25% worth) without making it so far outside the realm of other characters that someone literally goes to make a sandwich while others deal with the threat.
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My goal for character building in PF1e is to get my PC to the point where it succeeds on a 1-2 for the stuff I want to be good at. I'm also ok with being unable to succeed at other things that my character doesn't care about. I don't think this build paradigm is possible in PF2e as it currently stands.
That's probably my biggest point of difference in play style. To me, if one always succeeds, no matter how difficult, then why play? I can see being able to succeed, say, 65% of the time if hyper-optimized, where everyone else would need a 35 or 40%, but if there is no failure at a task, the GM should just rule "you succeed without needing to roll" and move on. And if one is OK with being unable to succeed no matter what at a given challenge, what is the point at which this is no longer true? If someone obviates every challenge by being good at a skillset that pre-empts all other paths, would this make it no longer OK? If being unable to succeed at a thing meant you sat and watched for 30 minutes of time at the table, would this impact a person's enjoyment? Would it be more desirable to have no task that a person is unable to accomplish take more than 5 minutes of table time?
For me, any system that promotes one or more players having no viable actions to take for more than a few minutes of real time means something needs to be redesigned. It was something I saw in Shadowrun's Decking mini-game, something I saw in 3e Wizards who bypassed all challenges with a few spells, and something I see in hyperoptimized PCs very frequently.
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I have the same opinions as ENHenry. It might feel good to be that crazy optimized damage dealer, but please think of the other people at the table. It's a co-operative game, and I think Paizo is really trying to bring the co-operative part of it back. You can't just do everything by yourself. You have to rely on allies to set the opponents up for your attacks.
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A decent interpretation. I expect this is by design, but it's still worth discussion.
I thinking things over, at our tables, a frequent activity is Star Trek III: The Search for Reliability. With a given challenge, the party would work together to get as close to reliable as possible with any given plan. It might involve casters setting up several buffs to enable a martial to deliver an important grapple. It might involve martials setting up positioning to enable casters to do their work. It might involve casters ensuring that martials get to keep playing, or get back into a fight if they fall.
Everyone pulls together, throwing in everything from guidance to Aid Another to providing safe paths that provide cover against attacks of opportunity. There were hundreds of combinations by which a party could seek reliability, depending on circumstances.
PF2's design - again I believe deliberately - removes most of that. There aren't five or six different bonus types that can be stacked to Save The Day. And if there were, their durations wouldn't last long enough to Get Things Done.
The game is now: stand and whack things until they fall down. Which many, many, many people want. I cannot, and will not tell them they are wrong.
There's a lot of fun to be had with the PF2 chassis as a basis. I'd love to see PF1's style on the PF2 chassis, which is what we were promised. Pathfinder feel? No. Golarion feel? Yes.
the problem for PF2 is that one can't really search for reliability when it cannot be found: having the entire party pitch in to get a single action done, such as "hitting the boss' hyperinflated statistics" or "climbing this 15' cliff without dying" is a huge drain on both time and resources--the wizard/cleric/etc only get a precious, precious few spells now, and simple base utility is incredibly hard to justify when their entire repertoire has been kneecapped as well already--unless you're camping for the night after every encounter or challenge.
with the whole party devoting their entire set of resources to completing one task, that's three or more tasks (assuming party of 4) that the other players may have wanted to attempt, like picking a lock/disarming a trap, or harrying other enemies, and so on, that simply cannot be attempted, per round, every round.while i know some masochists may enjoy being so weak and ineffectual that only the power of friendship and action economy can save them, most people would simply grow frustrated that their rogue with 100% investment in lockpicking cannot do the one thing they really want to do more than half the time--or less, more often than not, since thievery DCs are impossibly high from the get-go.
minor lost star/part 1 spoilers:
while i feel some teamwork in the system is nice, being grossly incompetent without the rest of your party catering to you is just a drag on everyone.
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To me, if one always succeeds, no matter how difficult, then why play? I can see being able to succeed, say, 65% of the time if hyper-optimized, where everyone else would need a 35 or 40%, but if there is no failure at a task, the GM should just rule "you succeed without needing to roll" and move on.
65% of the time? If I'm a great acrobat, should I fall off the narrow ledge 35% of the time? If I'm a great detective, should I fail to spot 35% of clues? If I'm a great musician, should I play badly 35% of the time?
I'm quite comfortable with a ratio like 5% fail, 50% success, 45% critical success for the one thing I'm hyper-specialized in.
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I have the same opinions as ENHenry. It might feel good to be that crazy optimized damage dealer, but please think of the other people at the table. It's a co-operative game, and I think Paizo is really trying to bring the co-operative part of it back. You can't just do everything by yourself. You have to rely on allies to set the opponents up for your attacks.
Emphasis on bold part. Problem with mandatory heavy cooperation is that it's an advanced part of playing a game, that requires a significant system mastery, and I can guarantee that "casual, new gamers" Paizo are trying to pick up are not people who will do that well, at least at first. And that's a significant problem in getting a wider audience.
On the nonbolded first part, you just have to keep optimization levels of people in the same tier, rather than having a Pun-Pun and underwater basket weaver in the same group. While I think that levels of optimization and number difference can be brought down from PF1 levels, the way everyone is almost the same numerically and no-one can be excellent in something in PF2 is really unappealing for me.
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I have the same opinions as ENHenry. It might feel good to be that crazy optimized damage dealer, but please think of the other people at the table. It's a co-operative game, and I think Paizo is really trying to bring the co-operative part of it back. You can't just do everything by yourself. You have to rely on allies to set the opponents up for your attacks.
The crazy optimized damage dealer is crazily good at their one job: damage dealing.
They probably aren't good scouts, party face or textbooks.They chose one area in which they want to shine but they still have to rely on others to help them with other aspects of the game.
It's still a co-operative team effort to play the game.
What ryric said, emphasis mine: My goal for character building in PF1e is to get my PC to the point where it succeeds on a 1-2 for the stuff I want to be good at. I'm also ok with being unable to succeed at other things that my character doesn't care about.
This is the idea we are trying to push forward when we ask for the ability to build optimal characters that have a high chance of success, in their chosen area.
We're not asking for the ability to do-it-all by ourselves, as you seem to imply.
We just want to shine in our respective fields and have other players do the same.
I was never the highest damage dealing character at the table in 1st edition.
I was very often, however, the character with highest Charisma or Intelligence.
I could safely take 10 on almost any skill or Bluff check and sill be able to identify that baffling artifact of another time or pull off a big fat lie to get that hostile NPC to help the party.
Other players never felt that they were useless because they had their own areas of play in which they were just as good and could shine just as much.
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I don't think you need a whole lot of system mastery to know : Oh my teammate is hurt and dying I should go heal him, or I have an ability that makes someone flat footed that means my party should benefit from it as well.
As for keeping people in the same "optimization level tier" you must know how difficult this is right? You have character that wants to play a god wizard and one player that has a really cool concept but it's not as strong. You really want to either tell the god wizard to make a weaker character or tell the other person excited about their character concept that it's too weak and isn't as good as the wizard so they can't play it.... Yeah I wouldn't be able to do either of those things to my players. I'd just feel like a crappy GM.
I have the same opinions as ENHenry. It might feel good to be that crazy optimized damage dealer, but please think of the other people at the table. It's a co-operative game, and I think Paizo is really trying to bring the co-operative part of it back. You can't just do everything by yourself. You have to rely on allies to set the opponents up for your attacks.The crazy optimized damage dealer is crazily good at their one job: damage dealing.
They probably aren't good scouts, party face or textbooks.
They chose one area in which they want to shine but they still have to rely on others to help them with other aspects of the game.
It's still a co-operative team effort to play the game.What ryric said, emphasis mine: My goal for character building in PF1e is to get my PC to the point where it succeeds on a 1-2 for the stuff I want to be good at. I'm also ok with being unable to succeed at other things that my character doesn't care about.
This is the idea we are trying to push forward when we ask for the ability to build optimal characters that have a high chance of success, in their chosen area.
We're not asking for the ability to do-it-all by ourselves, as you seem to imply.
We just want to shine in our respective fields and have other players do the same.I was never the highest damage dealing character at the table in 1st edition.
I was very often, however, the character with highest Charisma or Intelligence.
I could safely take 10 on almost any skill or Bluff check and sill be able to identify that baffling artifact of another time or pull off a big fat lie to get that hostile NPC to help the party.Other players never felt that they were useless because they had their own areas of play in which they were just as good and could shine just as much.
If pathfinder was perfectly balanced roleplaying experience I would agree with this. But the game is built around combat primarily. You can go multiple sessions without ever needing to make a diplomacy or bluff check meanwhile it would feel weird to NOT have a combat after 2 hrs of gameplay.
I don't think you need a whole lot of system mastery to know : Oh my teammate is hurt and dying I should go heal him, or I have an ability that makes someone flat footed that means my party should benefit from it as well.
As for keeping people in the same "optimization level tier" you must know how difficult this is right? You have character that wants to play a god wizard and one player that has a really cool concept but it's not as strong. You really want to either tell the god wizard to make a weaker character or tell the other person excited about their character concept that it's too weak and isn't as good as the wizard so they can't play it.... Yeah I wouldn't be able to do either of those things to my players. I'd just feel like a crappy GM.
If people are willing you can mitigate the difference, going by your examples a god wizard can be all about enabling the martials (which a true god wizard actually is), while the guy with the weak concept can be brought up (unless the whole concept is that the character is weak, which is not even possible in PF2). And let's face it, some people are just incompatible to play together. And PF2 doesn't fix that problem, because people who are all about being average will like PF2 while those who like being exceptional will not like it, so again you have two people who cannot play with each other.
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To me, if one always succeeds, no matter how difficult, then why play? I can see being able to succeed, say, 65% of the time if hyper-optimized, where everyone else would need a 35 or 40%, but if there is no failure at a task, the GM should just rule "you succeed without needing to roll" and move on.65% of the time? If I'm a great acrobat, should I fall off the narrow ledge 35% of the time? If I'm a great detective, should I fail to spot 35% of clues? If I'm a great musician, should I play badly 35% of the time?
I'm quite comfortable with a ratio like 5% fail, 50% success, 45% critical success for the one thing I'm hyper-specialized in.
If you're talking about acrobatics, I'm talking about the kind of check to fall off of a ledge less than 2 inches wide in bad conditions, not just any narrow ledge. If you are so good you can't fail on a 1 walking on an icy rope in high winds, then there's no point for the challenge to even be there. More to the point, either no one but your character can even attempt such a feat, in which case everyone else is stuck finding another plan, or more likely someone with other skills has obviated the challenge, such as the wizard using dimension door to carry the whole party to bypass the narrow ledge.
The great detective has a 35% chance to fail to find the grey scroll case hidden behind the waterfall 50 feet up a wall, not just any random clue peeking out from under the rug.
Now, for the sake of argument, let's say that you CAN fail a skill roll in PF1; goodness forbid you actually fail that 1 in 20 roll to find a clue. Now, what happens to the rest of the group? No one else has an even remote chance to find that clue - it's more likely you just fail, or the GM has to "fail forward" to keep the scenario from being a bust. (In my local PF1 games, I enacted a house rule similar to the skill rules from Robin Laws' Gumshoe system - basically, anyone at least trained in a skill were able to find the most basic clues to keep things going, rather than enforcing a roll. Any extra clues to paint a clearer picture were just gravy for the high-enough rolls.)
But we're not just talking about something as specific as a narrow ledge or a clue; we're talking about someone super-specialized in all athletic abilities, or someone so specialized they can only miss on a 1 in combat. Either they leave others completely unable to succeed, or they wind up getting tossed aside themselves for long stretches of game because that's the only thing they can do.
Suppose your combat monster who can hit anything and turn it to dust fails their will save, and are now on the opposing side? Ignore that you can probably wipe the party out by yourself, if you just stand there and do nothing, your party is doomed against the combat threats that were merely a challenge for you, but an impossible threat to them. Some might think this far-fetched, but I know of two campaigns local to me that ended that way, with the barbarian or fighter who had a poor will save because they optimized every other way but that, being dominated or vampire-charmed, and the rest of the forces were too strong for the now-more-average group.
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The need for the GM to alter or go outside of the ruleset in order to allow a playstyle contraindicates the possiblity of that playstyle in the first place.
Fair enough. Following that logic, I'd contend that Pathfinder First Edition RAW (or even RAI) didn't support a balanced play style between classes and was severely imbalanced in favor of certain character options at mid to high levels. Many GMs intervened with house rules to balance this out but the necessity of GM intervention contraindicates the possibility of balanced play in the first place. The possibility of "high play" innately undermines "balanced play". Including the option to build Superman or a Super Saiyan renders normal options obsolete.
I think this thread resonates with Lyricanna's complaint that Pathfinder Second Edition has shifted genre from High Fantasy towards Sword & Sorcery. It's a fundamental shift away from a system that RAW (or even RAI) offers extreme power to mechanically optimized characters to the point that non-optimized characters are left to running errands/acting as an audience.
As a GM, I'd prefer a system with a narrower range of optimized vs non-optimized imbalance than Pathfinder First Edition...though I'm not convinced that I want the range to be as narrow the playtest is currently.
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If you're talking about acrobatics, I'm talking about the kind of check to fall off of a ledge less than 2 inches wide in bad conditions, not just any narrow ledge. If you are so good you can't fail on a 1 walking on an icy rope in high winds, then there's no point for the challenge to even be there.
Reasons for that challenge to be there:
(1) To make me look awesome. Where's the fun in making a character who is the world's greatest acrobat if I don't get the opportunity to show off my acrobatics sometimes?(2) For the hilarity that will ensue if I roll a natural 1.
(3) To create a dangerous obstacle for skilled but not ultra-optimized acrobats.
(4) To give the Wizard an opportunity to use a Spider Climb spell if no acrobat is in the group.
(5) To create an interesting environment for the battle with the ice elemental that breaks out when I'm half way along the ledge on my way to the treasure chest.
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All of those are still more interesting if you actually CAN fail on a roll of 1-3.
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If you are so good you can't fail on a 1 walking on an icy rope in high winds, then there's no point for the challenge to even be there.
No point... other than perhaps being awesome.
But seriously, I'm partly on your side here. When I Search for Reliability, I'm aiming for 100% but am absolutely, positively, content with most-of-the-time. And even then I'm not talking about every-round, every-combat type activities. I tend not use to slumber Hex for instance.
But if four characters work together to stack circumstances, there should be very high odds of success. Not necessarily guarantees, but great odds.
One BBEG-slaughter one of my groups pulled off (details fuzzy over time) involved the fighter getting silence cast on him, plus some arcane buff I've forgotten, plus another party member provoking an AoO so that fighter stood a good chance of being able to succeed at Grappling said BBEG. In silence. We won, pretty much immediately, but only because everyone pulled together.
That's part of reliability.
The opposite of reliability though, is that if you've got 50/50 odds of succeeding at something... say... telling lies in social settings, you have a 25% chance of succeeding twice in a row. And 12.5% chance three times in a row. Coming up with an infiltration plan is pointless at 50/50, because you're virtually guaranteed to fail OVERALL.
Just saying, aside from direct one-shot abilities, having a few high-reliability ones isn't (always) a bad thing.
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All of those are still more interesting if you actually CAN fail on a roll of 1-3.
Why?
"I get to show off that I'm an ultra-optimized acrobat" is lost if I roll a 3 and fail."It's hilarious if I fail on a natural 1" is lost if I fail that sort of thing on a regular basis.
"A dangerous challenge for less optimized acrobats" - You're reducing the chance of me succeeding; I'm not sure what you're doing to them.
"The wizard can use a spell to get around it" - unaffected. He probably has a 100% chance of success for less investment than I used on mundane skills, so why should I have only 85%?
"Interesting environment for when the fight breaks out" - If I fall off before I even get to the encounter, there's no encounter.
Because it adds tension. If you're on a narrow slippery ledge when an encounter breaks out, what makes it any different if you can't fall off it anyways? And you seem to be using rules where if you roll a nat 1 you auto fail skill checks. That's a house rule not RAW in pathfinder 1e.
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Coming up with an infiltration plan is pointless at 50/50, because you're virtually guaranteed to fail OVERALL.
Good example.
Let's say I'm the ultra-optimized acrobat I've been talking about. The task before me is to sneak across the slippery ledge, stealth past the guard, perceive the magical alarm trap, disarm it, unlock the chest, then stealth back across the slippery ledge again. That sounds like the sort of thing a thief in fantasy fiction could pull off. But it's about 7 skill checks and I have to pass them all.
If I've got 95% chance of success on every roll, there's still about a 30% chance of failure overall. And since I can't realistically be ultra-optimized in every single skill, the chances of failure will probably be slim even in a system where ultra-optimized = 95% success.
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And you seem to be using rules where if you roll a nat 1 you auto fail skill checks. That's a house rule not RAW in pathfinder 1e.
I was under the impression we were talking about the desirable rate of success in 2e.
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Because it adds tension. If you're on a narrow slippery ledge when an encounter breaks out, what makes it any different if you can't fall off it anyways?
Because other characters who didn't invest so heavily in acrobatic can fall off. And my investment seems worthwhile then.
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So regarding the "I want to succeed reliably at the thing I specialized in" I think one of the effects of having everybody advance in untrained skills, is that the GM is now able to intersperse regular "not very hard" climbing or stealth sequences and not have to worry about the Warpriest in Full Plate being left behind as they lack skill points to put anything in stealth or climb.
So if you have sequences which are somewhat challenging for non-specialists, this lets you provide opportunities for the specialist to feel "I am good at this" and when you have truly heroic challenges (like the aforementioned frozen waterfall clock) only the specialist has a realistic chance of succeeding so if they do, they feel *awesome*.
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PF2e seems to exist in this odd space where everybody gets better at everything, even if they don't want to, but no one can truly be great at anything, even if they want to.
My goal for character building in PF1e is to get my PC to the point where it succeeds on a 1-2 for the stuff I want to be good at. I'm also ok with being unable to succeed at other things that my character doesn't care about. I don't think this build paradigm is possible in PF2e as it currently stands.
I'd say I have similar character design goals in PF1. However, I'd be 100% behind a PF2 which made even the most optimized character able to succeed on a 6+. Unfortunately, PF2 seems geared to making it almost impossible to succeed on anything lower than a 10-11+ against equal level threats.
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There's also a huge, huge gulf between "so hyper-optimized that I trivialize the encounter, "good at my job," and "slightly above average." I tend to aim for the "good at my job" level, which means, yes, succeeding on hitting on a 2 or 3, and making skill checks in my target areas on a 1. That's not winning encounters by oneself. It also doesn't take much system mastery - you can make a PF1e martial character who hits on a 2 by level 10-12 using only obvious CRB options.
Look, long years of playing have taught me to build d20 characters as if every d20 roll will be a 4. If I can't make the character work under those conditions, I don't bother. Failing more often than that is just frustrating and not fun.
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The issue is that the specialist who puts everything into being the best at something has maybe a 60% chance of succeeding in 2E. Someone with less investment (Plus penalties due to ACP) has realistically no chance of succeeding currently.
I see nothing in the rulebook that says I can't set a DC for a challenge where the specialist has a 90% chance of succeeding, but the non-specialist has a significant chance of failure.
Like someone really specializing in a skill at level 7 in PF2 will have a modifier of +4 (stat) + 2 (proficiency) + 7 (level) + 2 (item) = +15.
Someone who is not remotely invested in a skill has a modifier between +1 (a full plate wearer untrained in stealth with 10 dex trying to be stealthy) and +9 (untrained in the skill but with 18 in the stat in question).
So if you set a DC 15 challenge the specialist will succeed 100% of the time while the "horrible at this" character has only a 30% chance to succeed while the "untrained but competent" character succeeds 75% of the time. A DC 20 challenge it breaks down to 20% chance of failure, a 90% chance of failure, and a 50% chance of failure for these same folks.
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There's also a huge, huge gulf between "so hyper-optimized that I trivialize the encounter, "good at my job," and "slightly above average." I tend to aim for the "good at my job" level, which means, yes, succeeding on hitting on a 2 or 3, and making skill checks in my target areas on a 1. That's not winning encounters by oneself. It also doesn't take much system mastery - you can make a PF1e martial character who hits on a 2 by level 10-12 using only obvious CRB options.
Look, long years of playing have taught me to build d20 characters as if every d20 roll will be a 4. If I can't make the character work under those conditions, I don't bother. Failing more often than that is just frustrating and not fun.
The fact you think you should be hitting on a 2 or a 3 is kinda sounds like you're a bit of a spoiled character (no offense but I couldn't think of a better term). Your GM never decided "hey this guy is doing a little too well, maybe I should bump up the difficulty" which is strange. Don't you get a little bored of auto winning every encounter?
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DCs are about the details of the challenge, not the level you are. "Ciimb over this rough stone wall" is not really a heroic challenge for a level 7 person, but if there's a rough stone wall there then someone might want to climb it.
A nice thing from a simulationist perspective is that the GM no longer needs to include things which make sense to be there like "inattentive guards" or "walls which are not very hard to climb" for fear a significant portion of the party will be hopeless at the relevant task. Now you can put those things anywhere they make sense to be.
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See, on the one hand, I really don't like the far extremes. I mean, sure it can be hilarious. But those type of shenanigans isn't exactly the type of shenanigans you would want to allow without a very, very good chain of rolls.
But on the other hand, I would likely have a better chance than to succeed on a 10 or 9 if its something I've really focused on. Like succeeding on a 7 or an 8 where the others would struggle to succeed with at 12, 13, maybe 14. I want a better chance to succeed than what 2E itself is giving me so far, but I don't want to go to the extremes of doing a difficult task on a 2 or 3.
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The fact you think you should be hitting on a 2 or a 3 is kinda sounds like you're a bit of a spoiled character (no offense but I couldn't think of a better term). Your GM never decided "hey this guy is doing a little too well, maybe I should bump up the difficulty" which is strange. Don't you get a little bored of auto winning every encounter?There's also a huge, huge gulf between "so hyper-optimized that I trivialize the encounter, "good at my job," and "slightly above average." I tend to aim for the "good at my job" level, which means, yes, succeeding on hitting on a 2 or 3, and making skill checks in my target areas on a 1. That's not winning encounters by oneself. It also doesn't take much system mastery - you can make a PF1e martial character who hits on a 2 by level 10-12 using only obvious CRB options.
Look, long years of playing have taught me to build d20 characters as if every d20 roll will be a 4. If I can't make the character work under those conditions, I don't bother. Failing more often than that is just frustrating and not fun.
How exactly does making my character hit on a 3 constitute auto-winning an encounter? At higher levels that's just basic competency. Monsters by that level have DR, SR, SLAs, and all sorts of nasty surprises such that hitting them easily doesn't exactly trivialize things. If martial characters need 10s to hit, then 3/4 BAB characters have basically no chance whatsoever unless they are in fact super optimized. It also make iterative attacks fairly worthless.
I assure you that just because my characters are good at what they do, that it doesn't mean that encounters are easy. Artificially inflating monsters' stats to undo a player's investment is bad GMing. Players should feel like their PCs are getting better, not running on a treadmill.
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The opposite of reliability though, is that if you've got 50/50 odds of succeeding at something... say... telling lies in social settings, you have a 25% chance of succeeding twice in a row. And 12.5% chance three times in a row. Coming up with an infiltration plan is pointless at 50/50, because you're virtually guaranteed to fail OVERALL.
In the infiltration example you assume that every opponent involved is at the same level as the party is. And if that is the case in would be madness to attempt such a thing. Not just because the opponents are very skilled but also because if something goes of the rails the group will certainly die.
However a carefully planned infiltration will look for weak spots, engage the lower level opponents. Find out first who is competent and who is not, scout the opponents in low stake area's, talk to a couple of mooks in a tavern with no possibility to fail. Try to avoid contact with higher ranking lieutenants or potential bosses. And if it is inevitable keep those encounters to a minimum and leave them to the specialist. Or let the non competent characters prepare a distraction for those the lieutenants.
Which I find way more challenging and rewarding than rolling dice on which you cannot fail but to each their own.
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How exactly does making my character hit on a 3 constitute auto-winning an encounter? At higher levels that's just basic competency. Monsters by that level have DR, SR, SLAs, and all sorts of nasty surprises such that hitting them easily doesn't exactly trivialize things. If martial characters need 10s to hit, then 3/4 BAB characters have basically no chance whatsoever unless they are in fact super optimized. It also make iterative attacks fairly worthless.
Hitting on a 3 should not be the baseline in a new system. That should be for trivial encounters that showcase just how powerful the character has become. You should also note that there are no more 3/4 BAB characters to be obsoleted.
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Suppose your combat monster who can hit anything and turn it to dust fails their will save, and are now on the opposing side? Ignore that you can probably wipe the party out by yourself, if you just stand there and do nothing, your party is doomed against the combat threats that were merely a challenge for you, but an impossible threat to them. Some might think this far-fetched, but I know of two campaigns local to me that ended that way, with the barbarian or fighter who had a poor will save because they optimized every other way but that, being dominated or vampire-charmed, and the rest of the forces were too strong for the now-more-average group.
Hey, my will save isn't that bad.
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A core problem of this is that the game is telling us the difference between "untrained" and "legendary" is only +5. That is a miniscule competency gap, and inevitably leads to the perception that the very best are not that much better than the worst, no matter how trained they are. There are of course other ways to increase that gap further, but there still remains the implication that it's entirely possible that the gap between "Billy Two-Left-Feet" and "Dave the Nimble" is a mere 25% chance of success.
I also don't at all agree that every die roll needs to be tense. I think it's fine - and this is as players doing this to me as a GM before people accuse me of wanting to munchkin - for a character to trivially succeed on all but the hardest rolls in their specialisation. It's not like there's only one form of challenge that can be thrown at a party.
In general I think the die roll should be less important, not more, even in PF1e - although I recognise that this is a controversial opinion. Make the actual choices of the players the major determinant of success and failure. You can adjust the difficulty up or down by introducing extra complications - hidden information, time limits, risky vs safe routes, multiple ways to deal with encounters, encounters that are strong against preferred PC tactics but weak to other options they have, Morton's fork, and so on and so forth. I love to encourage player agency, not dice making their decisions for them.