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What you really don't want the GM to say if you can avoid it is: "No. That's not the right answer." Because in a TTRPG there is no single right answer. There are unlimited possibilities.
Now, I think you hit one of the main problems of gating and feat base skills Skill downgrading when introducing new gating actions"
Let's say you have a player that says "I want to hold to the wall with just my legs while climbing so I can use both hands this round" the GM answers "That's a difficult check but roll Athletics" the GM sets a DC of 20 for this wall and the player succeeds.
Now a new splash book introduces a gated action if you are expert in Athletics you can hold to a wall with just your two legs. All of a sudden the player cannot longer achieve the action he has been succeeding until today.
That probably means that gating outside of the Core book will be very complicated to establish, and both gating and skill feats might work better when associated to automatic actions you succeed upon without a roll, or to roll bonuses, but might not be that good on setting what actions are achievable by reaching a certain DC.
Sure, let's look at Stealth for level 4 characters.
Wizard: Invisibility (2nd Level Spell). This simply makes you Unseen by all creatures unless they have a method of piercing invisibility. You can still be detected, but provided you're not doing anything crazy you will usually succeed with Invisibility alone.
Rogue: Let's say the Rogue has a Dexterity of 18 and is an Expert in their Stealth skill. They will have a +4 Modifier from their Dexterity, +4 from their Level, and +1 from their Skill Proficiency. That puts them at +9. While item support for Stealth is fairly non-existent at lower levels you do have the ability to pick up Boots of Elvenkind, though it would be a bit expensive. This provides you with an additional +2 if you do obtain them. That leaves you with a total skill roll of 1d20 + 9 or 1d20 + 11 if you can get those boots.
Alchemist: For this example we can assume a Dexterity of 16 and a Stealth that is Trained. In addition to this, if an Alchemist will frequently be using Stealth they would likley utilize a Mutagen to assist their rolls. This would provide them with a bonus of +4 from Level, +3 from their Dexterity, and +2 from their Mutagen. That would give them a total roll around 1d20 + 9.
With the standard difficulty chart you would be looking at a DC of 16 for a Medium difficulty or an 18 for a Hard difficulty. With these rolls as a standard the Rogue would succeed on a Medium difficulty challenge with a 5 or higher, and a Hard difficulty challenge with a 7 or higher. This is a success rate of 70-80% for Medium/Hard challenges.
When it comes to using the Encounter rules for dealing with enemies rather than straight skill challenges, we can look at a High Difficulty challenge for a level 4 Party.
This would involve an XP budget of 80. With this you would have 4 enemies with an XP budget of 20 for a standard party of 4. For this example lets use a party of Gnoll Warriors. Gnoll Warriors have a Perception DC of 17. This is in line with the 16-18 DC that we were looking at previously. That would give the Rogue a 75% chance of success if they were able to obtain those boots, and a 65% chance of success if they were not. The Alchemist we used as an example would have a roll of 1d20 + 7 to +9. That would give them a success rate of 55-65%. Wizards would simply be Invisible in this example.
While this is the case for most average encounters if you end up going against a single strong enemy as a group then your DC will be a fair amount higher. You will still have a reasonable chance but it will not be in the very high success chance range. For these encounters it's assumed that you will be approaching this as a group with tactics rather than looking at individual merits.
So it's actually harder for an expert in perception to notice the panel.
In the example that I provided there are actually two checks that are made. The first is the Complex Mechanical Trap's Stealth check against the party Perception DC. That check is made at a 1d20 + 10, so the party has a chance to notice the trap on that alone.
Outside of that there is another check that is made when a character performs a 'Seek' action to look around. They have a chance to notice the Control Panel of the trap which while not required to disable it does offer some extreme bonuses to someone who is skilled enough to find the Control Panel and knows how to disarm it.
The benefit is that instead of taking two successes at a DC 18 Thievery (Trained) check it takes a single success at a DC 16 Thievery (Expert) check. This both reduces the time that it takes to disable the trap and increases the odds of success as their attempt is made at a 10% better chance and they only need to succeed once.
There are other complex traps and hazards that have other means of disabling them such as this one:
Drowning Pit [Level 3 Hazard]
Detection: Stealth +8 (Trained) or DC 21 (Expert) to notice the water spouts once the pit opens.
Disable: Thievery DC 16 (Trained) to seal each water spout, Thievery DC 21 (Untrained) to open the trapdoor, or Athletics DC 21 (untrained) to force open the trapdoor.
Alternatively you can simply bash through the trapdoors using damage if you cannot make any of these checks.
What are you talking about? You should have more than enough party wealth to obtain a pair of those boots, though at level 4 you may have to stretch a bit to do it possibly by either borrowing a little from the group as an investment, or by sacrificing on other areas that you might not want to such as on your weapon.
It's still possible.
There is a reason I said it was a bit expensive and I included both the skill with and without it.
Market Rate cost of boots: 235 GP
By level four, just going by table 11-1 [Party Treasure By Level]
EDIT: This was corrected based on feedback by Gaterie.
Permanent Items
1st: 3
2nd: 4
3rd: 4
4th: 3
Consumables
1st: 12
2nd: 14
3rd: 10
4th: 4
Party Currency
196 GP
Of course, no one would create a level 4 adventure with a manticore (high difficulty encounter, perception DC 23).
Just stop shifting your goalpost. Now. A level 4 Stealth challenge consist in sneaking past a level 4 creature - because...
It's definitely a possibility for a DM to throw a 'High - Severe Threat Boss Enemy' at a level 4 party, and for that enemy to be a Manticore.
With a DC of 23 and a skill roll of 9 you would still be succeeding on a 14 or higher. That gives you a 35% chance of success on a straight roll without those boots. It has been pointed out several times in the previous interviews that DC's are set slightly higher than they want them to be right now and that they plan on redoing the Bestiary, so these numbers will possibly and likely change going forward.
With these numbers as they are right now, a DC of 23 constitutes a challenge greater than a level 4 'Ultimate' difficulty challenge and is on par with a level 6 'Incredible' difficulty challenge.
Additionally, considering it's designed as a boss encounter for your party you should be working together as a group to take it down and are not expected to be able to sneak past it easily.
EDIT: I have updated some wording in this post for clarity based on feedback from Gaterie.
Keep this in mind as well, whenever you have a single enemy facing a party while it may only be rated as 'Trivial' in difficulty it does also represent a Trivial Boss Encounter. Single enemies against a group are meant to represent more difficult challenges than a group of weaker enemies.
Having a DC of 18-20 on that Trivial Boss Encounter is definitely a thing that could happen and it would make sense to see.
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Market Rate cost of boots: 235 GPBy level four, just going by table 11-1 [Party Treasure By Level]
That's not what that table is for. You're also assuming that the entire party combines THEIR ENTIRE PARTY'S WORTH OF COMBINED WEALTH INCLUDING CONSUMABLES ASSUMED UNCONSUMED to afford a single item.
No, that's not how the game is balanced. The fact that you had to reach that far in order to make your point is ludicrous. No, beyond ludicrous. Its an actual human made out of literal straw borrowed from the future and animated with the hopes and dreams of unborn children.
The game is balanced around table 11-2 which says that a 4th level character owns:
One 3rd, two 2nd, one 1st as permanent items and 30 gp for consumables.
That in no way equates to a 6th level item.
...
You are correct that I made a mistake with the wealth by level chart and I have corrected my reply to reflect that.
With that said this will be my last reply to you unless you apologize either here or through a message. You have been nothing but disrespectful and insulting to me and I do not appreciate it.
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When you look at the recommendations for Skill Proficiency Gating on page 336 of the Rulebook it does specifically call out that you should not set a gate to be higher than what is possible to obtain by a specific level unless you want the test to be impossible to achieve.
While it is true the rulebook says this, its really a pretty bad guideline leading to absurd results like the one the OP points out. A better guideline would be to not gate at Expert until level 7, master until level 15, where it is actually likely a character has the required training.
One thing I'm hoping for (and will likely implement in my PF2 games if it doesn't make it to the final rules) will be a slightly different skill gating, where at a certain level or above instead of a certain skill level only ALLOWING you to even attempt it, instead having a skill level be the point where you automatically succeed at a task.
This is SO MUCH BETTER than prohibitive gating! After all, RPGs are entertainment, and for that to be true in PF2, PCs should be expected to succeed. The playest rules are moving WAY too far into a gamist pseudo-wargame mindframe.
Also keep in mind that the skill level of the thing may not be tied to the level of the party. A lock that was level three at low levels will still be a level 3 lock when it is come back to. The person that owns the lock could replace it with a higher level lock, but that is something that costs that person money and may not be feasible for that NPC.
The designers have by their actions proved this to be false numerous times. First we have the auto-scaling DCs of things like Medicine and Lingering Composition. Then we have the increased "level appropriate" DCs of the revised The Mirrored Moon scenario. I'm sorry to say, but auto-scaling CDs is the rule and not the exception.
We got to this door in the playtest today. I have a rogue in my party, but turns out she prioritized other things above becoming Expert in Thievery. Expecting the players to try some remote triggering of the door trap, but we took a break at this point.
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I have two big problems with TEML plus gating:
As a player of a character who is invested in specific skills, I want to have situations where what is hard for the other PCs is easy for me. Instead, either the task is nearly equally hard for everyone, or it is hard for me and impossible for everyone else. (In theory you could have easy gated challenges, but will we ever see any? They feel unnatural and I doubt module authors will put them in. It's hard to understand what a task is that is trivial for an expert but the merely trained can never do it at all.)
"Nearly equally hard" is an understatement, too: my cleric with Expert Religion is worse at it than the Trained wizard is, due to stats. Obviously ordinary skill rolls will never make her feel like an Expert.
I guess for Religion you model it as cult secrets the wizard isn't allowed to know. I don't see how that works for a lot of other skills, though. Why is he better than me, except for a small subset of tasks he can't do at all? (And if we ever see any Gated Religion tasks I bet they won't fit the "cult secrets" model anyway; it's not like my cleric of Torag is any more privy to cult secrets of Asmodeus than the wizard is.)
As a GM, I hate trying to assign the gates. I already have to assign difficulty and I don't know how to separate the two: this is merely difficult, whereas this is both difficult and only doable with Expert. (It's easier with Trained, but four levels are too many for me to be able to do it across the board.) I also feel a pressure to adapt to exactly which skills my PCs have at various levels, but this practice is disliked by our groups, and does not work for advantures written in advance of knowing the PCs.
I would be hugely in favor of rolling skill feats into TEML. This lets the player know what her Expert skill is worth. As it stands, she has no idea: it might only be worth +1, or it might be essential for hordes of rolls, or anything in between, depending on GM fiat.
I have two big problems with TEML plus gating:
As a player of a character who is invested in specific skills, I want to have situations where what is hard for the other PCs is easy for me. Instead, either the task is nearly equally hard for everyone, or it is hard for me and impossible for everyone else. (In theory you could have easy gated challenges, but will we ever see any? They feel unnatural and I doubt module authors will put them in. It's hard to understand what a task is that is trivial for an expert but the merely trained can never do it at all.)
"Nearly equally hard" is an understatement, too: my cleric with Expert Religion is worse at it than the Trained wizard is, due to stats. Obviously ordinary skill rolls will never make her feel like an Expert.
I guess for Religion you model it as cult secrets the wizard isn't allowed to know. I don't see how that works for a lot of other skills, though. Why is he better than me, except for a small subset of tasks he can't do at all? (And if we ever see any Gated Religion tasks I bet they won't fit the "cult secrets" model anyway; it's not like my cleric of Torag is any more privy to cult secrets of Asmodeus than the wizard is.)
As a GM, I hate trying to assign the gates. I already have to assign difficulty and I don't know how to separate the two: this is merely difficult, whereas this is both difficult and only doable with Expert. (It's easier with Trained, but four levels are too many for me to be able to do it across the board.) I also feel a pressure to adapt to exactly which skills my PCs have at various levels, but this practice is disliked by our groups, and does not work for advantures written in advance of knowing the PCs.
I would be hugely in favor of rolling skill feats into TEML. This lets the player know what her Expert skill is worth. As it stands, she has no idea: it might only be worth +1, or it might be essential for hordes of rolls, or anything in between, depending on GM fiat.
I agree.
The core problem with TEML+level feels off and in practice the numbers are too close to a flat-line.This is what gives rise to all of these issues with untrained characters potentially being better at a task than an expert of lower level.
Bottom line is that your level is given too much weight.
@OP: Gating what skill DCs you can attempt by proficiency doesn't feel heroic and outright removes the possibility of exciting moments in the narrative where a PC can beat the odds in desperate situations.
IMO gating advanced skill uses for untrained is fine.
Beyond that anyone that is at least trained should be able to attempt any skill use.
And, if it were up to me, I'd stop trying to pigeonhole skill, weapon, armor, perception, and save proficiencies into one model.
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Haven't read through the whole discussion but I dislike gates.
What I'd prefer is more interesting options being made available by having increasing proficiency tiers. Perhaps done by the granting of free skill feats in advancement.
You become an expert in acrobatics for example. Congratulations you get a free athletics skill feat, which you could use to pickup Catfall. Congratulations, you now have a non-obvious non-trivial use of a skill that allows you to fall and take less or no damage from doing so.
What we need is more and better skill feats and for gaining greater degrees of proficiency to manifest by obviously "linked" abilities.
But right now, the actual increase is usually pretty meaningless until you select a feat tied to it.
And the whole gated action thing just leads to issues where a GM is left too often to decide if an action requires a certain level of proficiency or not.
I mean, I strongly disagree that it requires you to be trained in acrobatics to attempt to cross a narrow ledge, as is indicated in the original post.
And in fact, if the only difference between a trained person and a non-trained person is that proficiency level (which only creates a +1 bonus otherwise) it feels very arbitrary to say that they can't attempt the check. They're already at a -5 bonus. It's very likely they might fail, but they should be able to try.
Unless Paizo is going to write explicit lists of what each tier of proficiency allows you to do, then it's just going to be a mess.
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I don't mind the skill gates, in fact I'd like to see expert/master/legendery get more special uses so its not just the +1's. However I also really, really want to see some of those being something like "Lead climber" -- While climbing your speed you fashion ropes/handouts/etc that allow others to follow you more easily, everyone else treats their training as one level higher". Basically ways that the person highly invested in a skill can make solutions using that skill more narratively possible for the group.
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UTEML is only good if its theoretical advantages are made real.
So, task gating shoul be more clear and used, but more than everything we need more master and legendary skill feats that make you crave that level of training.
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I think it's worth saying, that skill gates and special abilities can seem similar, but the differences are important.
An example of a skill gate, not sure if this is accurate to current game rules but it was an example in the original post:
Using acrobatics to not fall off a narrow ledge.
That would be an example of a skill gate if you have to be at least trained to perform it.
To me that is a very obvious and intended use of the acrobatics skill. That's it's most basic purposes.
An example of a special ability would be Cat Fall skill feat, which lets you take less damage. That's not what most people would consider an innate use of acrobatics.
Of course the problem is defining what seems like obvious and intended uses of a skill (and thus avoiding skill gating IMO) and coming up with special abilities to reward invest in increasing proficiency.
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Reverse gating
Somebody came up with a very nice method to reverse gating, I thought it was in this thread, but seems it was not. Anyway:
Instead of having gating to be allowed to even attempt a task, gating means you auto-succeed at said tasks. Lesser heroes need to roll, but the Expert at Thievery is assured of success when removing this trap. With reverse gating, the requirements can be quite harsh and it is still carrot instead of stick.
Resonance became Focus to make it a carrot and not a stick. The same should work for skill gating.
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Reverse gating
Somebody came up with a very nice method to reverse gating, I thought it was in this thread, but seems it was not. Anyway:
Instead of having gating to be allowed to even attempt a task, gating means you auto-succeed at said tasks. Lesser heroes need to roll, but the Expert at Thievery is assured of success when removing this trap. With reverse gating, the requirements can be quite harsh and it is still carrot instead of stick.
Resonance became Focus to make it a carrot and not a stick. The same should work for skill gating.
Neat idea but it will never fly. Too may people insist that there must be a chance of failure for everything.
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Neat idea but it will never fly. Too may people insist that there must be a chance of failure for everything.Reverse gating
Somebody came up with a very nice method to reverse gating, I thought it was in this thread, but seems it was not. Anyway:
Instead of having gating to be allowed to even attempt a task, gating means you auto-succeed at said tasks. Lesser heroes need to roll, but the Expert at Thievery is assured of success when removing this trap. With reverse gating, the requirements can be quite harsh and it is still carrot instead of stick.
Resonance became Focus to make it a carrot and not a stick. The same should work for skill gating.
Unfortunately, you're right.
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Copying/tweaking my post from another thread:
If they want to keep the targetted pass/fail success point near 50-60%, I think one useful skill gate/proficiency tweak is more changing of "failure" means. Change failure from a "no" to a "yes, but" for experts and above. This might require more word count or more GM fiat, but it would allow something like:
CS: You disarm the trap and get some of its components/can make it look like no one was here/re-arm it safely after plundering/etc
S: You disarm the trap.
F: You disarm the trap, but 'damage some of the things inside the chest'/'make more noise doing it'/'get exposed to a weak version of the poison/damage'
CF: You set off the trap.
(for an expert -- this was originally written as a solution for the 'you need to get N successes to pass' to just reduce it to a single die roll out of combat at least).
The point is to fail forward. But acknowledge that an "expert" is unlikely to outright fail. they'll succeed with consequences.
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I don't mind the skill gates, in fact I'd like to see expert/master/legendery get more special uses so its not just the +1's. However I also really, really want to see some of those being something like "Lead climber" -- While climbing your speed you fashion ropes/handouts/etc that allow others to follow you more easily, everyone else treats their training as one level higher". Basically ways that the person highly invested in a skill can make solutions using that skill more narratively possible for the group.
My wife made a climbing-expert barbarians for In Pale Mountain's Shadow and insisted that I provide lead climber rules. Expert Climber Aiding Trained Climbers
And later, I generalized the ability to belay climbers to an expert-only action, Save Other.
[[R]] SAVE OTHER
Trigger An ally has critically failed a skill check or saving throw and the consequences have not yet occurred.
Requirements The ally is willing to accept your aid, and you have prepared to help (see below). You must also have expert or better proficiency in the skill or save, or trained proficiency and a Lore that directly relates to the skill check or saving throw.
You intervene in an ally's activity to prevent the consequences of a major failure. To use this reaction, you must first prepare to intervene, usually by using an action during your turn. You must explain to the GM exactly how you could intervene, and she determines whether you can prevent the consequences.
When you use your Save Other reaction, attempt a skill check or saving throw of the same type and DC as the ally's failed check. During the preparation, the GM may have chosen a different skill check for the intervention check, if intervening with the other skill is more feasible, such as an Acrobatics skill check to intervene on a Reflex save.
Success You convert your ally's critical failure into a failure.
Critical Success You grant your ally a chance to reroll the skill check or saving throw. A critical failure on the reroll becomes a failure.
Critical Failure You suffer the same consequences as the ally.I have several motives in inventing Save Other:
1) Some of these actions, such as belaying a fellow climber, exist in the real world.
2) I like teamwork, and Save Other provides a stronger method of preventing catastrophic failures in group activities than Aid.
3) We need a set of actions that expert proficiency opens up, and Save Other is fairly universal. For example, it could be used with Recall Knowledge: "That big, red flying reptile that breathes fire is a fruit bat." "Idiot, bats aren't reptiles." "Oh, right. I don't know what it is."
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Unfortunately, you're right.Neat idea but it will never fly. Too may people insist that there must be a chance of failure for everything.Reverse gating
Somebody came up with a very nice method to reverse gating, I thought it was in this thread, but seems it was not. Anyway:
Instead of having gating to be allowed to even attempt a task, gating means you auto-succeed at said tasks. Lesser heroes need to roll, but the Expert at Thievery is assured of success when removing this trap. With reverse gating, the requirements can be quite harsh and it is still carrot instead of stick.
Resonance became Focus to make it a carrot and not a stick. The same should work for skill gating.
THAT'S SO GOOD THOUGH. It speeds up game-play, encourages interaction from characters who lack the proficiency and rewards players for investing.
I'm still thinking of the trap from Pale Mountain's Shadow, nobody in our party had the proficiency to even interact with the thing, our only choice was to take damage. But doing it the other way means that at least my alchemist who was Trained in Thievery could take a gamble.
Reverse-Gating is rad as heck. Let's get on it.
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Unfortunately, you're right.Neat idea but it will never fly. Too may people insist that there must be a chance of failure for everything.Reverse gating
Somebody came up with a very nice method to reverse gating, I thought it was in this thread, but seems it was not. Anyway:
Instead of having gating to be allowed to even attempt a task, gating means you auto-succeed at said tasks. Lesser heroes need to roll, but the Expert at Thievery is assured of success when removing this trap. With reverse gating, the requirements can be quite harsh and it is still carrot instead of stick.
Resonance became Focus to make it a carrot and not a stick. The same should work for skill gating.
THAT'S SO GOOD THOUGH. It speeds up game-play, encourages interaction from characters who lack the proficiency and rewards players for investing.
I'm still thinking of the trap from Pale Mountain's Shadow, nobody in our party had the proficiency to even interact with the thing, our only choice was to take damage. But doing it the other way means that at least my alchemist who was Trained in Thievery could take a gamble.
Reverse-Gating is rad as heck. Let's get on it.
Some time ago I proposed giving some extra when attempting a lower ranked task.
If a task is of trained level, an expert will treat a success as a critical success; or a critical failure as a simple failure; or roll twice and take the higher result.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Reverse gating
Somebody came up with a very nice method to reverse gating...
This was ENHenry. Honor where it is due. I came up with the name reverse gating. But on second thought, I thing positive gating (as opposed to the current negative gating) would be a better name.
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This positive gating concept looks like a very good idea to me. On top of that, it doesn't stop the designers from keeping negative gating as well, it could remain useful for traps of exceptional difficulty, when warranted by the story.
To extend on this idea, I would suggest merging the Assurance skill feat with the UTEML levels. For example, an expert will auto-succeed on anything DC15 or less in his field. This would save a lot of rolls that don't help the narrative today.
I like the positive gating idea.
But what would be the rule for just a DC20 skill obstacle without a TEML gate? Does everyone have to roll? That would be strange. Do only untrained people roll and trained auto-succeeds?
A weaker form of auto-succeeding would be to count your result as one step better. Succes becomes Critical Success and so on.
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There are some class feats that do this. Sneak Savant: treat a failure as a success. The problem is that they made it a class feat, when it should have been a skill feat. It is on page 124.