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By 9th level the Aid action becomes almost automatic to succeed at on a DC 15. We began section 4 last night and our group began exploring hexes using Perception. The module mentions that each character can perform Perception or Survival check to explore. My players asked if they could do an Aid action to help one player on his check and I deemed this reasonable. Not all DM's would follow this logic and that's fine, but that's what I went with. Since players have a level bonus of +9, and they have a bonus from their attribute, and possibly a small magical bonus, it is conceivable that some characters can only fail on a 1. Even characters who are as bad as they can be, still only need a 5. As you gain levels, say level 14, players can only fail on a 1. This simply becomes a dice rolling exercise.
I don't want this thread to derail into a "get rid of +1 per level" as this is not the intent. It's more to shed light on an Action that works on lower levels but doesn't feel right on higher levels.
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I'm fine with this. As they level, they get better at working as a group and as their repotoire of abilties grow it's more likely they can justify helping with a skill.
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Conceptually this may seem fine.
The play experience didn't feel right tho. On top of that, critical successes are achievable 50% of the time and the higher level you go the greater the critical success becomes to the point that you almost can't miss getting a critical success.
The other weird part is that the task that the primary character is doing can still be a high skill DC. It's the Aid action itself that is super easy. So you have the helping character getting critical successes, and the primary character only achieving a success.
I don't know..it feels weird in the play experience.
were super easy so those bonuses can really alter play experiences pretty easy.
It didn't feel right or fun and that is where the issue really is here.
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A car has fallen over, pinning a random kid, oh no!
Everyone rushes over to help. This is gonna be a hard task. Who thought filling a car with cement was a GOOD idea?!
Bob isn't the strongest there, but he finds a good spot to wriggle under and apply good pressure at an ideal angle, he's helping!
Joe isn't the strongest, but he spots something in the way and heaves it out of the way while everyone else is working, making it easier, good job Joe!
Tim isn't the strongest, but he holds the part just over the kid so it doesn't crush the tyke more than it already has.
George is the strongest! With all the help, he barely heaves the car up and over with a grunt of effort and bulging veins.
They did it, yay! Everyone critted, except george.
What's the problem again?
A car has fallen over, pinning a random kid, oh no!
Everyone rushes over to help. This is gonna be a hard task. Who thought filling a car with cement was a GOOD idea?!
Bob isn't the strongest there, but he finds a good spot to wriggle under and apply good pressure at an ideal angle, he's helping!
Joe isn't the strongest, but he spots something in the way and heaves it out of the way while everyone else is working, making it easier, good job Joe!
Tim isn't the strongest, but he holds the part just over the kid so it doesn't crush the tyke more than it already has.
George is the strongest! With all the help, he barely heaves the car up and over with a grunt of effort and bulging veins.
They did it, yay! Everyone critted, except george.
What's the problem again?
Try it in play. You may feel different. If not, that's cool. My feedback is that something feels off.
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Um, Aid gives a circumstance bonus that does not stack, so once a single person crits, no others can improve further on the result.They did it, yay! Everyone critted, except george.
Ah, that's a pity, but understandable, but also a different problem than what seemed to be talked about?
Even in PF1, many checks were not doable with the entire party assisting in picking a lock.
Um, Aid gives a circumstance bonus that does not stack, so once a single person crits, no others can improve further on the result.They did it, yay! Everyone critted, except george.
Thanks for mentioning that. I overlooked that it doesn't stack.
It does lessen my concern, however, the Aid check is still a wierd play experience.
I really can't find the words to explain it which is why I fall back on "you need to experience it".
Aid works great on lower levels when the check is an actual check and is in doubt. On higher levels, players will roll to see if they get a critical success or a critical failure and success being the only other option. You simply cannot fail an Aid check on high levels. Something that succeeds 95% of the time feels wrong in play.
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We made it a tad harder to Aid than in PF1, but it still does get to the point where a high level PC is going to make it easily as you say (except for checks where the GM shifts from the default DC). To be fair, I suppose, a bard with inspire competence auto-crit-succeeds on Aid starting from level 2. This is a good insight into how Aid is changing, and it's another piece of the puzzle for some of these no-pressure exploration skill checks and how some of the higher level skill checks can have pretty high DCs for, say, severe (and especially extreme), since once they have +14 on the check, as you said above, you have a 50/50 chance to critically succeed per ally and no chance to critically fail.
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I really can't find the words to explain it which is why I fall back on "you need to experience it".
Aid works great on lower levels when the check is an actual check and is in doubt. On higher levels, players will roll to see if they get a critical success or a critical failure and success being the only other option. You simply cannot fail an Aid check on high levels. Something that succeeds 95% of the time feels wrong in play.
If I had to guess, I'd suppose it was because nearly every other PC check or roll in PF2 is balanced for 50%-60% chance of success, and as such DC scales by level. Having a static DC in this system is exceedingly rare (aside from flat checks, which also gain no bonuses), so it sticks out as unusual.
We made it a tad harder to Aid than in PF1, but it still does get to the point where a high level PC is going to make it easily as you say (except for checks where the GM shifts from the default DC). To be fair, I suppose, a bard with inspire competence auto-crit-succeeds on Aid starting from level 2. This is a good insight into how Aid is changing, and it's another piece of the puzzle for some of these no-pressure exploration skill checks and how some of the higher level skill checks can have pretty high DCs for, say, severe (and especially extreme), since once they have +14 on the check, as you said above, you have a 50/50 chance to critically succeed per ally and no chance to critically fail.
Yeah, I ran the numbers for the skill DCS of the first four parts and noted that while they were hard to achieve solo there were a lot of ways to buff those checks. I noted Aid was one of them but I hadn't even taken into account how easy it was to Aid or critically Aid.
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We made it a tad harder to Aid than in PF1, but it still does get to the point where a high level PC is going to make it easily as you say (except for checks where the GM shifts from the default DC). To be fair, I suppose, a bard with inspire competence auto-crit-succeeds on Aid starting from level 2. This is a good insight into how Aid is changing, and it's another piece of the puzzle for some of these no-pressure exploration skill checks and how some of the higher level skill checks can have pretty high DCs for, say, severe (and especially extreme), since once they have +14 on the check, as you said above, you have a 50/50 chance to critically succeed per ally and no chance to critically fail.Yeah, I ran the numbers for the skill DCS of the first four parts and noted that while they were hard to achieve solo there were a lot of ways to buff those checks. I noted Aid was one of them but I hadn't even taken into account how easy it was to Aid or critically Aid.
Yeah, just because I wanted to playtest the possibility of it, I decided to stick with a really hard, far above level-appropriate lock near the end of War for the Crown (one of the doors is not locked, but the PCs were hoping to come through a sneakier way by getting the ridiculous lock). I wasn't actually sure if my level 3 group had a ghost of a chance against an Extreme 9 DC (that they needed to hit several times with critical failures negating a success), but they knew it would be a serious lock that they might not be able to open from NPC scouting that was in the adventure. They brought lots of spare picks, and they nailed it without using even one spare pick. The rogue picked the lock with the wizard/rogue casting knock for +4 and then aiding. If the bard had taken inspire competence instead of multiclassing paladin, it would have been even easier, with +4 from the bard stacking with +4 from knock. They then proceeded to massacre a relatively challenging encounter thanks to coming in from a weird direction, which was cool.
This is a good insight into how Aid is changing,.
Are you saying “how Aid has changed in comparison to PF1” or “the Aid action is going to change how it currently works in PF2”?
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This is a good insight into how Aid is changing,.Are you saying “how Aid has changed in comparison to PF1” or “the Aid action is going to change how it currently works in PF2”?
How Aid is changing over the course of leveling. Looking back I can totally see how you could read it that way; know that I will not be discussing unrevealed changes to PF2 in messageboard post responses like these (those discussions will come from more visible venues like blogs).
Thanks for the clarification. It certainly is interesting how Aid changes as characters level. I’m eager for more players to see this and for their feedback.
Yeah, just because I wanted to playtest the possibility of it, I decided to stick with a really hard, far above level-appropriate lock near the end of War for the Crown (one of the doors is not locked, but the PCs were hoping to come through a sneakier way by getting the ridiculous lock). I wasn't actually sure if my level 3 group had a ghost of a chance against an Extreme 9 DC (that they needed to hit several times with critical failures negating a success), but they knew it would be a serious lock that they might not be able to open from NPC scouting that was in the adventure. They brought lots of spare picks, and they nailed it without using even one spare pick. The rogue picked the lock with the wizard/rogue casting knock for +4 and then aiding. If the bard had taken inspire competence instead of multiclassing paladin, it would have been even easier, with +4 from the bard stacking with +4 from knock. They then proceeded to massacre a relatively challenging...
So wait, how much of a chance did they actually have? Assuming that they needed to hit 3 consecutive successes as per DD example:
With Knock, the effective DC is reduced from 30 to 26. A 3rd level character with 18 dex and expert in Thievery gets +8 to Pick a Lock. It seems to me that the class doesn't even matter here. Let's assume they also each had a set of Expert Thieves' tools for a +9.
So, per action, the wizard gets a 50% chance to aid the rogue with a +2, and a 25% chance for a +4, 20% of failing and a 5% chance of hindering him with -2.
Without aid, the rogue has a 15% chance of success / 5% chance of crit success/ 50% chance of crit fail.
With a +2 aid, the rogue has a 25% chance of success / 5% chance of crit success/ 40% chance of crit fail.
With a +4 aid, the rogue has a 35% chance of success / 5% chance of crit success / 30% chance of crit fail
With a -2 hinder, the rogue has a 5% chance of crit success / 60% chance of crit fail.
The overall chances per action then are:
crit success = 5%
success = 25%
fail = 29.5%
crit fail = 40.5%
and the chances of succeeding on 3 actions in a row, or critting and succeeding in a row:
(1/4*1/4*1/4)+(1/20*1/4) = 1/64+1/80 = 2.8%
what if one of the dice was a failure and we need to roll 4 times without getting a crit fail:
(0.595)^4 ~ 12.5% to avoid crit failing on any of 4 dice
out of those outcomes:
critting 2-4 times: 3.77%
critting once: 25.82%
out of those outcomes, succeeding on at least 2 of 3 other rolls: 43.82%
not critting: 70.4%
out of those outcomes, succeeding on at least 3 out of 4 rolls: 25.32%
putting this all together: 0.125*(0.0377 + 0.2582*43.82 + 0.704*0.2532) ~ 4.3%
so it.s 7% chance to succeed on 3 or 4 rolls.
Instead of repeating those calculations for bigger die count I will go out on a limb here and assume that the limit of total probability of success for infinite number of rolls will be somewhere in the ballpark of 15%.
Sorry if my math failed me here.
So wait, how much of a chance did they actually have? Assuming that they needed to hit 3 consecutive successes as per DD example:
Does DD actually specify "consecutive"? Because the Thievery skill doesn't, and in fact since it says on a crit fail you undo one success there's no way it could somehow mean the successes must be consecutive. Obviously that makes a massive difference to the probabilities.
So wait, how much of a chance did they actually have? Assuming that they needed to hit 3 consecutive successes as per DD example:Does DD actually specify "consecutive"? Because the Thievery skill doesn't, and in fact since it says on a crit fail you undo one success there's no way it could somehow mean the successes must be consecutive. Obviously that makes a massive difference to the probabilities.
Sorry yes - I meant total successes before a crit fail. But doesn't a crit fail reset the lock? That's how we played in the DD game I'm in.
If the crit fail only undoes one success the probability essentially becomes 100% with unlimited lockpicks and the relevant metric becomes average roll count/lockpick count to succeed.
So wait, how much of a chance did they actually have? Assuming that they needed to hit 3 consecutive successes as per DD example:Does DD actually specify "consecutive"? Because the Thievery skill doesn't, and in fact since it says on a crit fail you undo one success there's no way it could somehow mean the successes must be consecutive. Obviously that makes a massive difference to the probabilities.Sorry yes - I meant total successes before a crit fail. But doesn't a crit fail reset the lock? That's how we played in the DD game I'm in.
If the crit fail only undoes one success the probability essentially becomes 100% with unlimited lockpicks and the relevant metric becomes average roll count/lockpick count to succeed.
No reset, just a single undo (or else breaks your lockpicks).
Critical Failure You either undo one success you have already gained, or, if you have no successes, you break your tools. The tools can be used while broken, but are treated as poor-quality tools. Repairing them...
BTW, even the probability of getting three successes in a row goes to 100% as the number of rolls goes to infinity.
