Specialists should punch above their level.


General Discussion


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I think I've figured out why we have a big disconnect in a lot of discussions. People who specialize in things and expend resources to be better at things do so because they want to punch above their level.

Every time there has been a discussion about specialization/balance/mandatory investment to keep up/etc it's always been thrown back that 'Don't worry, you'll be mostly facing things below your level so you'll get a chance to feel powerful'.

That doesn't work. In order to feel powerful you have to feel like you're punching above your level. This applies to combat and skill checks.

If you aren't better than expected for someone else at your level when you invest in getting better at a skill or get a magic item that boosts you, it doesn't feel special. The current setup with DC's scaling with the expectation of a perfectly optimized character for at-level challenges doesn't work when taking this into account.

It's a psychological thing, but if (Keeping all the other number the same. Same DC's, same number of monsters encountered) but calling them as being 2-3 levels higher than they are now would do wonders for the perception of the game.

As an example. 4th level character specializing in picking locks. An 'on level' challenge would be (Don't have charts available at moment so going off memories) a DC 20 check. Instead of calling it a level 4 challenge, keep the DC 20 but call it a level 7 challenge. Players would feel a lot more powerful if this was true.

Dark Archive

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This edition wants to challange you all the time at all levels.High levels of investment in one thing making you awesome is PF1e.PF 2e is more gamist than that.So naturally even the very earth itself scales with you and on a level challange means that you have a chance of doing that thing %50-%60 of the time.


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Stealth is perhaps in the worst case right now. To understand the problem, consider a party of four players that needs to bypass three separate guard patrols as part of their infiltration. That means twelve stealth checks total, and a single failure means the party is detected and the stealth infiltration fails. The probability of at least one natural 1 out of twelve rolls is 46%. So even with arbitrarily high stealth modifiers, the natural 1 failure rule alone means that attempting to use stealth in a situation like this is a coin flip. This gets even worse if the GM switches to encounter mode while the party is sneaking past guards. You need to make one stealth check every time you move, so three stealth checks per round.

In PF1, the solution was to "take 1". You'd basically start with the presumption that you would flub your roll, then add bonuses and penalties to slant things in your favor until it looked like something you'd pass anyways. Just look at the perception modifiers table in PF1 and you'll see it's pretty easy to provoke a situation where your stealth check is gaining a +10 or larger bonus. Modifiers of this magnitude don't exist in PF2, and wouldn't stack with each other even if they did, so this avenue is closed to us.

Dark Archive

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Well...stealth isnt that much different than first edition. You usullay failed not because of your +900 stealth modifier but because of your fighter with 12 dex -5 acp and no investments to stealth anyway. Either that happened or that adventure turned into a hide and seek game while your party waits for you to finish it for like 30-40 minutes


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Lausth wrote:
This edition wants to challange you all the time at all levels.High levels of investment in one thing making you awesome is PF1e.PF 2e is more gamist than that.So naturally even the very earth itself scales with you and on a level challange means that you have a chance of doing that thing %50-%60 of the time.

I don't get that at all from reading the rules. From reading the rules I get that, for the example of lockpicking, a standard lock will have the same DC no matter what level you are, but when you're level 4 those will be easy to pick but you'll have graduated to picking high quality locks meant for securing really important places, and when you're level 20 you'll be able to pick those in your sleep but will have a tough time with the artifact puzzle locks engraved with fell runes of protection, wreathed with the most sensitive of alarm spells, guarded at all times by sleepless constructs and bound greater elementals protecting Tar Baphon's phylactery.

And, you know, that makes perfect sense to me.


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All DCs do not scale in P2. Static DCs remain static and leveled DCs do not change once their level is established. So, the early does not scale with you, but a level 17 challenge will adequately challenge a lvl 17 PC.

Specialists are the best at what they do. If you mosey on over to my Deconstructing threat in the forum you'll see how Monster's Skills and Skill DCs are designed. http://paizo.com/threads/rzs429il?Deconstructing-the-Problem-Monster-Skills

Once they fix the scaling problems due to assumed item bonus and the smoothing problem that pushes things off by ~1 things will look better. A specialist will be the best at that level for what they specialize in. Only a monster with that skill or opposing skill as their best skill will be their equal. Occasionally Monsters will have special bonuses that push them higher ie a Shadow at stealth. But, against other PC, and most monster a Specialist PC will be noticeable better. But, that is pretty hidden right now under the scaling issue and item assumptions, it really masks the differences that should be seen and felt.

Perception is the worst, as it does not function as a Skill for PCs and has lower values and available item while Monsters treat it very much like a skill.

Facing monsters lower level than you, Specialists will be kind. Facing monsters higher leverl, Specialists should still compete against a non specialist monster even 2-3 levels higher. In this way Specialists will most often punch above their level, punch down harder, and still be able to punch up against non specialists.

Dark Archive

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Azih wrote:
Lausth wrote:
This edition wants to challange you all the time at all levels.High levels of investment in one thing making you awesome is PF1e.PF 2e is more gamist than that.So naturally even the very earth itself scales with you and on a level challange means that you have a chance of doing that thing %50-%60 of the time.

I don't get that at all from reading the rules. From reading the rules I get that, for the example of lockpicking, a standard lock will have the same DC no matter what level you are, but when you're level 4 those will be easy to pick but you'll have graduated to picking high quality locks meant for securing really important places, and when you're level 20 you'll be able to pick those in your sleep but will have a tough time with the artifact puzzle locks engraved with fell runes of protection, wreathed with the most sensitive of alarm spells, guarded at all times by sleepless constructs and bound greater elementals protecting Tar Baphon's phylactery.

And, you know, that makes perfect sense to me.

You are right.

When i was answering him i remembered this wrongly.

For instance, when the PCs’ level
is relatively low, they might be faced with climbing a stone
wall with handholds, but later in the campaign they should
encounter tougher obstacles, like a smooth iron wall.

CRB does mention skill dc's better than i remember. Sorry. Very earth it self doesnt scale with you.


Yeah, you're looking at those numbers way off, and I'm pretty sure this is a false dichotomy to begin with.
In PF1, unless your party is composed entirely of rogues, you probably have some fighter or paladin or something in heavy armor with a +1 dex mod and no ranks in stealth.
And the proposed comparison is up against equal level guards to the party, since they're so competitive with their stealth rolls...and by level 10 that whole idea becomes a little unfeasible without abusing Invisibility.
Because it's not unreasonable for level 10 guards to be sporting +16 to +20 on their perception checks in PF1. So the level 10 guy in armor either sits out the stealth section of he takes off his armor and tries to use his +1 stealth mod against people with at least +15 over him. You'd need to find some kind of circumstantial modifiers to toss him up +15 just to get him to 50:50 failure on each of the 3 checks he has to make (for an 87.5% failure rate on the total of the encounters, just from this one guy, it's worse if you have more than one), and you'd need another +10 to be reasonable sure to avoid the fights.
The only way you're getting that is probably Invisibility...and that has, quite frankly, a ridiculously large bonus to a skill check even by PF1 standards. And which is countered quite easily, so it's not really foolproof at that point. The moment someone walks by with some kind of see invisibility effect, it's game over.

Meanwhile, in PF2, you're in the same situation, except the guards have a raw bonus of only +5 to +7 over the untrained fighter by level 10, with magic items in play. So instead of going up against an average roll that's 6 to 10 higher than the highest he can possibly roll on the die, and instead of a best case of the guards rolling 1s and he's trying to roll 16 to 20; he's dealing with a raw DC of rolling 15 to 17 before any circumstantial modifiers or expended resources come in. It is actively easier for the fighter to join and contribute to this encounter.

As for the maxed out trained rogue in both systems, I'd hold that grabbing every little circumstantial modifier so one guy can sneak past through sheer number crunching and no rolling, with no real chance of failure and no actual threat, is far more gamey than an attempt to sneak past against people who are on your level being a proper and real danger to you, with real threat of detection.
If you're able to get to the point where you are rolling 1s on your checks and still succeeding, why bother even narrating that part of the tale; there's no journey and no threat of failure. You could just put the dice away at that point and let the DM regale you with how you snuck past as if it was nothing.

Oh, and by the way, 3 groups of 4 guards, equal level to the party, are probably APL-1 or APL+0, each. Especially if there's a threat of an even stronger encounter should you fail the skill checks, on top of the combat encounter on a failure. So you just had 3 encounters and gone up nearly a quarter level doing this sneak past. It probably shouldn't be a cakewalk.

EDIT: Stealth has problems, but aside from making it asymmetric between player and enemy encounters, it's probably not something that can be fixed.
If you make stealth checks a series of checks, where a single failure means total failure, then players sneaking into an area are penalized.
But if you make them a single check, where a single success means you can sneak through a whole area or past a specific group of people for an hour, then you penalize players when they travel into an ambush or are otherwise trying to perceive stealthy enemies.
So long as stealth and perception are symmetric between players and non-players, one of the two will pop up as a problem.


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It seems like the simplest way to fix the "specialists should excel more" is to just increase the proficiency modifier.

Like if Expert, Master, and Legendary are +2/+4/+6 instead of +1/+2/+3 someone who is legendary at a task is 15% less likely to fail at that task.

Problem is whether this is too much of a power boost to the fighter versus other people who want to fight with weapons, since for example barbarians already have accuracy issues.


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I would like specialists to excel more than in PF2, but less than PF1.

Dark Archive

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You bother because there are other people in your party.
An adventurer group isnt made of people with the same specialization fields. You know some of the plans people make might rely on the rogue never failing that check(well they could because you know spells,blindsight,etc). While some plans might rely on wizard never failing at his job or fighter never failing at whatever his field of expertise is. I think pf 1e is more than just your modifier but i guess that is just me.


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Lausth wrote:
Well...stealth isnt that much different than first edition. You usullay failed not because of your +900 stealth modifier but because of your fighter with 12 dex -5 acp and no investments to stealth anyway. Either that happened or that adventure turned into a hide and seek game while your party waits for you to finish it for like 30-40 minutes

I realize a lot of people just turn their nose at it the moment they see that fighter with a -4 stealth check, but it is completely doable. Let's just use the hypothetical example of say... a party climbing a mountain only to discover they've stumbled into a manticore's hunting grounds :-)

So the PF1 manticore has +9 perception and your fighter has -4 stealth. So the first thing I'd do is have the party hear the beating of large wings. They look and see a large flying creature approaching from the distance. There's a rocky outcropping nearby, and I ask them if they want to try to hide. I have the manticore pass within 200 feet and have it take 10. This works out to DC -1, so even the fighter can succeed on a roll of 3. This is a scare roll, the party isn't meant to fail it. The party has seen the manticore and now has a chance to discuss how to deal with it. They could take time to observe the manticore's hunting patterns, choose to take more secluded paths up the mountain, or use any other abilities at their disposal. The idea is to put themselves in a position where even with the fighter's non-existent stealth skill they can still avoid being spotted. This doesn't invalidate the rogue, either. While the fighter might have to dash between areas of total concealment, the rogue could hide behind cover to scout for the manticore and give an all-clear sign when it's safe to scamper up to the next position.

This creates an interesting dynamic where the party can use the distance rules to take informed risk, use the strengths of characters who are good with stealth, and work around those who don't have competency with the skill. In PF2 you can't have this kind of give-and-take, because bonuses and penalties on that kind of scale don't exist.


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Lausth wrote:

You bother because there are other people in your party.

An adventurer group isnt made of people with the same specialization fields. You know some of the plans people make might rely on the rogue never failing that check(well they could because you know spells,blindsight,etc). While some plans might rely on wizard never failing at his job or fighter never failing at whatever his field of expertise is. I think pf 1e is more than just your modifier but i guess that is just me.

It is relevant to point out that depending on the plan, people will not do it if they arent sure everyone can pull off their part.

Lower level the consequences are smaller, but as the game goes foward, often so do the consequences. So if you fail at X at the village, it wont have the same repercursions ingame as failing in the kings casttle.

This also brings into the game a PC looking foolish over and over again to his party and them outright denying him the chance after a while and going in other directions instead. Cause when peoples PCs are on the line, dont expect everyone to sit there and let others put them at risk by sucking.

If you failed that check at the village, pretty sure the party will think twice about the whole thing when it comes to the kings bedroom.

So the game goes from, well let the rogue try, to ok we need to find a way to do it without the rogue doing anything.


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Vic Ferrari wrote:
I would like specialists to excel more than in PF2, but less than PF1.

I'm in agreement with this. I'm just afraid that +/-10 system is really the enemy here, while I find it genius for effects, I think it creates too many problems with the number tightness and treadmill.

Dark Archive

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If people are not sure about the plan then there is no plan.

EDİT:At that point only plan is you going to castle.Swing your sword,cast your fireball,throw your bomb until it is dead or move on to a different part adventure.


necromental wrote:
Vic Ferrari wrote:
I would like specialists to excel more than in PF2, but less than PF1.
I'm in agreement with this. I'm just afraid that +/-10 system is really the enemy here, while I find it genius for effects, I think it creates too many problems with the number tightness and treadmill.

Yes, I could do without the 4-tiers of success deal (also a time-sink) and +Level treadmill. Critical hits favour monsters, a fact, why on earth they would make the whole critical/fumble thing so core is astounding, to me.


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Dasrak wrote:
Lausth wrote:
Well...stealth isnt that much different than first edition. You usullay failed not because of your +900 stealth modifier but because of your fighter with 12 dex -5 acp and no investments to stealth anyway. Either that happened or that adventure turned into a hide and seek game while your party waits for you to finish it for like 30-40 minutes

I realize a lot of people just turn their nose at it the moment they see that fighter with a -4 stealth check, but it is completely doable. Let's just use the hypothetical example of say... a party climbing a mountain only to discover they've stumbled into a manticore's hunting grounds :-)

So the PF1 manticore has +9 perception and your fighter has -4 stealth. So the first thing I'd do is have the party hear the beating of large wings. They look and see a large flying creature approaching from the distance. There's a rocky outcropping nearby, and I ask them if they want to try to hide. I have the manticore pass within 200 feet and have it take 10. This works out to DC -1, so even the fighter can succeed on a roll of 3. This is a scare roll, the party isn't meant to fail it. The party has seen the manticore and now has a chance to discuss how to deal with it. They could take time to observe the manticore's hunting patterns, choose to take more secluded paths up the mountain, or use any other abilities at their disposal. The idea is to put themselves in a position where even with the fighter's non-existent stealth skill they can still avoid being spotted. This doesn't invalidate the rogue, either. While the fighter might have to dash between areas of total concealment, the rogue could hide behind cover to scout for the manticore and give an all-clear sign when it's safe to scamper up to the next position.

That's great and all, but once the manticore ceases to be 200 ft away, for whatever reason, the fighter isn't the only one rolling dice and he isn't trying to roll a 3 anymore, he's trying to roll a 23. Which is significantly harder to do on a d20, let me tell ya.

If your conceit is that PF2 doesn't have distance modifiers on perception checks and doesn't have working total cover, I guess you've got it all figured out. But since your conceit seems to be against the system itself, and not the missing features, well, I'd have to say that the fighter probably has a better chance of not setting off a combat encounter that everyone is trying to avoid in PF2, especially if he continues to employ all of those same tactics and strategies. He's not really a match for the rogue, since the rogue probably has +5 or more to stealth over the fighter when the fighter isn't wearing his armor (and heading towards double digits when he is), but that's okay. The rogue doesn't need to have to be auto-succeeding at rolls the fighter auto-fails at to be better at stealth. Just needing to roll 10 instead of needing to roll 15 means you're already twice as good as the other guy.

Liberty's Edge

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I don't necessarily think "punching above their level" is how I'd put it, but I agree with the sentiment. Right now, the tuning is very bad. At the table I was running for DD2, the players tried to stealth past the manticore with its 23, but the rogue optimized for stealth had only a +9. They failed. Badly. Even then, having everyone in the group roll for stealth is a generally poor option as the variability of the dice will, as mentioned above, give you natural ones quite often.

In the end, that's two problems.

Problem #1 is that collective checks (especially in Exploration mode) are a terrible idea.

Problem #2 is that the tuning such that an optimized character succeeds on of-level tasks 50% of the time is also terrible.

I'd like to see Problem #1 addressed by something more like the way trailblazing was handled in DD2. One PC rolls for the group (as long as they're moving together) and that's how well the tactic works.

For Problem #2, I'd really like the skill DCs to shift toward a 70% success rate for of-level challenges. 70% is good enough that the optimized character is reliable, the not terrible person is still worth rolling for (at 50-60%), and there's still a chance of failure in there.


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Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

How about a corollary:

1) specialists should do better at the thing they specialize than generalists
2) generalists (like the classic bard) should be a valid build mathematically


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KohaiKHaos wrote:
If your conceit is that PF2 doesn't have distance modifiers on perception checks and doesn't have working total cover, I guess you've got it all figured out.

PF2 could well provide its own solution to the same problem; I've got nothing against trying new things. As it stands, though, stealth is basically unusable in all but the most trivial of circumstances due to these problems. My point is that stealth certainly was workable in PF1 despite its failures, but in PF2 it's unworkable.

KohaiKHaos wrote:
But since your conceit seems to be against the system itself, and not the missing features, well, I'd have to say that the fighter probably has a better chance of not setting off a combat encounter that everyone is trying to avoid in PF2

Where'd I ever say I have a problem with that? Maybe you're confusing me with another poster, but I have no problems with stealth and perception auto-scaling to keep everyone in the party at least relevant on the check. I may have my reservations about the skill system in a variety of respects, but keeping people from becoming completely irrelevant in important ways is definitely a good thing.

KohaiKHaos wrote:
The rogue doesn't need to have to be auto-succeeding at rolls the fighter auto-fails at to be better at stealth. Just needing to roll 10 instead of needing to roll 15 means you're already twice as good as the other guy.

The problem is, "twice as good" is still not good enough. Let's presume, again, that we need to bypass three different guard patrols. The fighter has a 50% chance of succeeding each time, for a total of only a 12.5% chance of overall success. The Rogue has a 75% chance of succeeding each time, for a total of 42.1% chance of success. So the rogue is actually three times better than the fighter in this situation, but he's still not good enough to pull it off consistently.


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Dasrak wrote:
KohaiKHaos wrote:
The rogue doesn't need to have to be auto-succeeding at rolls the fighter auto-fails at to be better at stealth. Just needing to roll 10 instead of needing to roll 15 means you're already twice as good as the other guy.
The problem is, "twice as good" is still not good enough. Let's presume, again, that we need to bypass three different guard patrols. The fighter has a 50% chance of succeeding each time, for a total of only a 12.5% chance of overall success. The Rogue has a 75% chance of succeeding each time, for a total of 42.1% chance of success. So the rogue is actually three times better than the fighter in this situation, but he's still not good enough to pull it off consistently.

I'd say that the rogue is doing pretty amazing if he can beat 3 APL+0 encounters in a row without any expenditure of resources 40% of the time.

He's not sneaking past worthless mooks with those numbers, he's sneaking past guards that are as elite as he is. And that seems to be the hole here: these guards are at the rogue's level, not below him. If he's sneaking past a series of them successfully, the logical setup is that they're not on the same level as the rogue.

If equal level enemies should be massively inferior at stealth and detection than players, then shouldn't they also be significantly worse at combat?

If I could, I'd say the fix for stealth is to make it assymmetrical as such:
Player stealth as follows:
Perception always starts as a DC for stealth to beat.
Failure on stealth should not break stealth, it should make people suspicious and have them start rolling.
Critical failure on stealth does what failure does now.
And critical success on stealth breaks suspicion.
Similar things should be applied for deception and pickpocketing, actually interacting with the whole +-10 system

Player perception:
Works as per now, with single success determining detection, so ambushes aren't crippling and players don't get everything stolen off them by attrition


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Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
KohaiKHaos wrote:

If equal level enemies should be massively inferior at stealth and detection than players, then shouldn't they also be significantly worse at combat?

This is the problem with the +level to everything on the monster side.

It leaves little room for a monster like a big dumb giant who is great at smashing things with his club but not so good at perception.

I.e. where the sensible choice is to send the halfling rogue to try to sneak past him rather than the whole party walk up and fight.

Or conversely the alert guard dog with great perception but weak will save, where sending the rogue is a terrible plan but the ranger with a juicy chunk of meat or a wizard with a sleep spell is better.


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KohaiKHaos wrote:
I'd say that the rogue is doing pretty amazing if he can beat 3 APL+0 encounters in a row without any expenditure of resources 40% of the time.

That's actually pretty terrible, because that means 60% of the time the rogue is thrown into life-or-death peril because he's suddenly detected while in the middle of an infiltration and separated from the rest of the party. Smart players don't take dumb risks like that.

This also doesn't mean you actually bypassed those encounters. This could be as simple as scouting the patrol routes and getting caught while doing so.

KohaiKHaos wrote:
He's not sneaking past worthless mooks with those numbers, he's sneaking past guards that are as elite as he is

Of course he's sneaking past mooks. The enemies as elite as he is are bosses and important encounters. They aren't patrolling corridors.

KohaiKHaos wrote:
If he's sneaking past a series of them successfully, the logical setup is that they're not on the same level as the rogue.

Not necessarily; if the Rogue has maximum investment in stealth, relatively few enemies of his level should have the same investment in perception. That's kinda the primary subject of the thread, that specialists should punch above their weight class. That's not to say you can't have an enemy as skilled as perception as the rogue is in stealth, but they should be exceptions.

KohaiKHaos wrote:

Player perception:

Works as per now, with single success determining detection, so ambushes aren't crippling and players don't get everything stolen off them...

Strongly disagree; rules working differently for NPC's and PC's should be avoided at all costs. I already feel this is an incredible weakness of the death rules, as it currently leaves the GM with no middle ground between "instantly dead at 0" and "whack a mole that won't die"


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I again feel like this is because of the misunderstanding between how the Creatures lvl vs the parties lvl worked in P1E and how it works in P2E.

In P1E making lower level Guards try and spot the players was basically not even worth their time. Their bonus was so low that even a moderate investment into stealth would usually mean success unless you rolled less than 5 and they rolled more than 15. So the smart thing to challenge the players was to use same level enemies, even though it was supposed to be a challenge the players were supposed to get past.

In P2E using lower level guards isn't such a bad idea anymore. It's appropriate. A 4th lvl rogue would have +9 stealth and a lvl 2 guard would have maybe +3 or +4 perception? That's a DC of 13 or 14. The Rogue easily makes that.

It makes more sense for the GM and it makes more sense story wise.

The GM can now devise appropriate challenges where the invested still have a large chance of success and everyone as at least has a chance.

Story wise now you don't have to make up a reason why all the basic guards of the city are like lvl 4 instead of 2 and the captain of the guard is lvl 6 instead of 4. If that was the case then why are the heroes even needed if they've got a dozen lvl 4 guards walking around with a lvl 6 captain? The first scenario makes much more sense.

Numerically it might not "feel" as good but don't look at it from the numbers. Look at it from the role play perspective. And then look at it from the GMs perspective. I should all make more sense then.

Also lastly you have to remember skill feats. If they bring more of what they showed us for the playtest then skill feats should work out really well. Making up for those smaller numbers with cool abilities.


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JulianW wrote:
KohaiKHaos wrote:

If equal level enemies should be massively inferior at stealth and detection than players, then shouldn't they also be significantly worse at combat?

This is the problem with the +level to everything on the monster side.

It leaves little room for a monster like a big dumb giant who is great at smashing things with his club but not so good at perception.

I.e. where the sensible choice is to send the halfling rogue to try to sneak past him rather than the whole party walk up and fight.

Or conversely the alert guard dog with great perception but weak will save, where sending the rogue is a terrible plan but the ranger with a juicy chunk of meat or a wizard with a sleep spell is better.

But monsters aren't built like PCs. What's stopping a GM from building a giant with really low perception or a dog with really low will.


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Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Rameth stated it well. You're not expected to fight monsters of equal level most of the time. You're expected to fight between -4 and +2 (for bosses). With a heavy weighting towards the -4 side.

Also if you're investing in Stealth, I expect you to have a least one type of Terrain Stalker feats to avoid the roll entirely.

And Quiet Allies to reduce the ACP of your friends.

On top of that you're likely heavily invested in DEX with little or no ACP. But let's say that you don't have any applicable feats.

At level 7 (+7), you're likely 18+ DEX (+4), master Stealth (+2), and have Shadow armor (+2). So you're already at +15 against the first several group of enemies against a Perception DC of 18/19. You fail on a 3 or less -- hardly catastrophe. And for the hardest non-boss encounter, you're looking for a DC 22 (with a +15). So you fail on a 6 or less.

At level 10, as a rogue you can even make it so no longer fail Stealth checks, which means you only fail via Critical Failure on a 1 most of the time.

So this idea that it's a coin flip even for those heavily invested in a skill just doesn't hold true with the actual content presented. At the very worst you're looking at 30% chance to fail against the hardest non-boss enemies with zero consumable expenditures. Frankly, that seems fine.


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So with all that stealth investment, your rogue goes out to scout out enemy patrol groups. He passes by four separate patrol groups. Four separate checks, 15% chance to fail each, and... for an overall 48% chance to fail. We're right back to coin flipping territory. So long as stealth checks require you to keep rolling, it doesn't matter how high your stealth bonus or how low the stealth DC's are, your chances of being caught will become unacceptably high after only a handful of checks.

This worked in PF1 because, with careful planning, you could avoid having a chance to fail in most circumstances (exactly how much you can get away with depended on your level of investment) and thus only needed to actually roll when you were up against foes with very keen perception or you were taking a risky approach. In PF2 this is not the case, and until that's dealt with stealth is completely unusable in the vast majority of situations.


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Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Dasrak wrote:

So with all that stealth investment, your rogue goes out to scout out enemy patrol groups. He passes by four separate patrol groups. Four separate checks, 15% chance to fail each, and... for an overall 48% chance to fail. We're right back to coin flipping territory. So long as stealth checks require you to keep rolling, it doesn't matter how high your stealth bonus or how low the stealth DC's are, your chances of being caught will become unacceptably high after only a handful of checks.

This worked in PF1 because, with careful planning, you could avoid having a chance to fail in most circumstances (exactly how much you can get away with depended on your level of investment) and thus only needed to actually roll when you were up against foes with very keen perception or you were taking a risky approach. In PF2 this is not the case, and until that's dealt with stealth is completely unusable in the vast majority of situations.

Except in this case they would be in encounter mode and would only be making one check probably. Or perhaps if they're going to be out awhile, go ahead and expend some expendables and drop it down to failing on a 1.

Or they could take Assurance in Stealth and succeed against all of checks DC 20 or less, because as long as you fail on a 1, you're still going to have a 20% chance to fail at least one of 4 checks. Four checks in a row also seems pretty extreme, but perhaps succeeding 4 times in a row should be that difficult.


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A human rogue lvl 2, 1 Skill feat: Assurance (Stealth), Expert in Stealth, automatically makes a DC of 15.

A human fighter level 2, wisdom 12, expert in perception, bonus +4, has a DC 14 in passive perception.

If the rogue has the necessary surroundings to sneak and the guards are not actively searching. 0% chance to fail.

He can even sneak around a guard dog. Any goblin, ogre or orc except for the warchief.


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Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
vestris wrote:

A human rogue lvl 2, 1 Skill feat: Assurance (Stealth), Expert in Stealth, automatically makes a DC of 15.

A human fighter level 2, wisdom 12, expert in perception, bonus +4, has a DC 14 in passive perception.

If the rogue has the necessary surroundings to sneak and the guards are not actively searching. 0% chance to fail.

He can even sneak around a guard dog. Any goblin, ogre or orc except for the warchief.

My one complaint about Assurance is that is has gaps. I wish it was a smoother progression than it is.


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SuperSheep wrote:
Except in this case they would be in encounter mode and would only be making one check probably.

Encounter mode is even worse; it's 1 check every time you take an action to move, so 3 checks per round.

SuperSheep wrote:
Or perhaps if they're going to be out awhile, go ahead and expend some expendables and drop it down to failing on a 1.

Consumables grant item bonuses, which do not stack with shadow armor. Moreover the durations are really short. So to get a useful effect the very minimum you'd need is a greater quicksilver mutagen (a 13th level uncommon item that costs 400 gp), so you'd basically need an alchemist helping you out to do this.

But this underscores my point: you need to be very close to 100% success rate before stealth starts looking like a reasonable strategy.

SuperSheep wrote:
My one complaint about Assurance is that is has gaps. I wish it was a smoother progression than it is.

Assurance is a very weird feat, ping-ponging between a practically mandatory skill feat tax at some levels where it lets you reliably beat common DC's, and completely useless at others where DC's that low are fairly rare.

I'm still not sure what to make of it as a selection.

Silver Crusade

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vestris wrote:

A human rogue lvl 2, 1 Skill feat: Assurance (Stealth), Expert in Stealth, automatically makes a DC of 15.

A human fighter level 2, wisdom 12, expert in perception, bonus +4, has a DC 14 in passive perception.

If the rogue has the necessary surroundings to sneak and the guards are not actively searching. 0% chance to fail.

He can even sneak around a guard dog. Any goblin, ogre or orc except for the warchief.

So, that level 2 rogue can, indeed, sneak around almost all of the Rose Street Revenge and The Lost Star (both set for level 1 characters). Although in several cases it is close (the NPCs have a perception of +5 so he succeeds because stealth wins on the tie).

On the other hand, he auto fails almost all (I stopped looking after the first 4, it may well be ALL) stealth checks in the level 4 adventure.

So, if the level 2 rogue is playing down Assurance works. If he is playing at his level it will fail (those 15's will become 16). And if he is a level 4 rogue assurance GUARANTEES FAILURE in EACH AND EVERY CASE.

Assurance isn't the mechanism that you want to pin your argument to :-). Currently, it is almost totally broken


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It is a very good feat, especially for the rogue. There are plenty of DCs that don't grow. Many NPC's that do not grow and are present everywhere. You can always skip low level DC's for high levels you have to roll of course. And also utilize good planning and intel to avoid personell with higher perception DC's such as the captain of the guard.

I as a GM will definitely work with proficiency gates that have low DC's for assurance. Like a master gate that has a DC of 20.

I could see an upgraded version for assurance that you can pick when you reach master or level 5 to bridge those gaps. Potentially adding your ability modifier to it.

Liberty's Edge

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Has anyone in the thread actually defined what "specialist" and "punching at/above one's level" mean?


pauljathome wrote:
vestris wrote:

A human rogue lvl 2, 1 Skill feat: Assurance (Stealth), Expert in Stealth, automatically makes a DC of 15.

A human fighter level 2, wisdom 12, expert in perception, bonus +4, has a DC 14 in passive perception.

If the rogue has the necessary surroundings to sneak and the guards are not actively searching. 0% chance to fail.

He can even sneak around a guard dog. Any goblin, ogre or orc except for the warchief.

So, that level 2 rogue can, indeed, sneak around almost all of the Rose Street Revenge and The Lost Star (both set for level 1 characters). Although in several cases it is close (the NPCs have a perception of +5 so he succeeds because stealth wins on the tie).

On the other hand, he auto fails almost all (I stopped looking after the first 4, it may well be ALL) stealth checks in the level 4 adventure.

So, if the level 2 rogue is playing down Assurance works. If he is playing at his level it will fail (those 15's will become 16). And if he is a level 4 rogue assurance GUARANTEES FAILURE in EACH AND EVERY CASE.

Assurance isn't the mechanism that you want to pin your argument to :-). Currently, it is almost totally broken

I don't have a huge argument, I answered the question about low level rogues being unable to sneak well on their level with an example. Specifically that with the city guards, which I (like Rameth) assumed to be level 2 fighters in arbitrarily large groups. He also does not play down against level 2 fighters.

Rameth argued that a level 4 rogue could reliably sneak past level 2 guards. Well level 4 is not needed.

Monster perception values are inflated (however the level 2 gnoll warrior with 10 wisdom having +7 perception is almost comical) and assurance has a certain gap between the proficiency upgrades and is not well suited for opposing checks on equal or higher level (if it would it would be broken). For non opposing checks or against lower level opponents it is reliable and good.


vestris wrote:

It is a very good feat, especially for the rogue. There are plenty of DCs that don't grow. Many NPC's that do not grow and are present everywhere. You can always skip low level DC's for high levels you have to roll of course. And also utilize good planning and intel to avoid personell with higher perception DC's such as the captain of the guard.

I as a GM will definitely work with proficiency gates that have low DC's for assurance. Like a master gate that has a DC of 20.

I could see an upgraded version for assurance that you can pick when you reach master or level 5 to bridge those gaps. Potentially adding your ability modifier to it.

The feat looks awful if you're playing the adventure put out for the playtest as it guaranteeing failure almost perfectly [at least for the ones I looked through]. If you as a GM work behind the scenes to manipulate the DC's you could make almost anything work.


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Dasrak wrote:
. In PF2 this is not the case, and until that's dealt with stealth is completely unusable in the vast majority of situations.

It's being pushed out so that the whole game plays like a WoW dungeon.

Creative approaches are gone, mandatory heal-bots are in. If you just expect 100% of encounters to be combat, 2e is damned near perfect.


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Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

The level four adventure is kind of messed up right now because it's all animals and dog men and things like that that have high perception. It should not serve as a baseline argument for perception versus stealth. To note the level 7 adventure has perception scores only one or two higher despite being three more levels and crossing the master threshold.

it's also a factor that in all of these scenarios were sneaking around in broad daylight. There's no bonus for lighting or distractions or anything else that could be a factor in trying to make you or four consecutive stealth checks.

If you can get a 100% success rate using no consumables, daily resources or prior planning then when is there ever going to be a real need to use them?

And all of this is really only a problem for the rogue until level 10 where the combination of Assurance and their sneak feat makes them virtually undetectable.


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SuperSheep wrote:
And all of this is really only a problem for the rogue until level 10 where the combination of Assurance and their sneak feat makes them virtually undetectable.

So they just have to survive that long with a mostly useless feat for it to pay off...

Silver Crusade

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SuperSheep wrote:


And all of this is really only a problem for the rogue until level 10 where the combination of Assurance and their sneak feat makes them virtually undetectable.

Personally, I think that "The system works for 1 class at level 10+" is essentially identical to "The system does not work except in some rare edge cases"


Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
graystone wrote:
SuperSheep wrote:
And all of this is really only a problem for the rogue until level 10 where the combination of Assurance and their sneak feat makes them virtually undetectable.
So they just have to survive that long with a mostly useless feat for it to pay off...

Not useless. It has problems, but it's not useless. And at level ten rogues become undetectable, which in some ways is kind of broken.


SuperSheep wrote:
graystone wrote:
SuperSheep wrote:
And all of this is really only a problem for the rogue until level 10 where the combination of Assurance and their sneak feat makes them virtually undetectable.
So they just have to survive that long with a mostly useless feat for it to pay off...
Not useless. It has problems, but it's not useless. And at level ten rogues become undetectable, which in some ways is kind of broken.

Ah... I've looked at the DC and the level you are when you meet them. Useless is an accurate description. Now if the DM goes out of his way to only send you against creatures 3+ levels lower than your, it might be useful however in the current adventures it's 100% useless.

So IMO, it goes from broken bad to broken good but always stays broken.

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