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The great words of Admiral Ackbar come to mind when I think about certain Feats (particularly Skill Feats) in the current playtest.
Now, there were definitely Feat Traps in PF1 and really they go all the way back to 3.0/3.5.
In some way, with a system like this, there are always going to be some "trap" Feats, but minimizing those is something I feel is critical to this edition. The more solid choices there are, the more customization and diversity among the characters we can make.
Quality in this case will truly breed Quantity, as if more options are no longer traps, then those options widen your choices.
Now, on to the game:
List a Feat (or choice in general) that you believe to be a "Trap", explain why it's a trap, and then propose either a revised version or an approach that may develop greater results.
Here's mine:
Experienced Smuggler - This Skill Feat is extremely situational and the DCs against it are abysmally low. While they do scale, they scale on a weird interval (Expert is skipped entirely and the next increase is at Master to 15). This is actually worse than just taking Assurance, with the only upside being that you do get to attempt a roll. The last piece relative to Underworld Lore and practicing a trade doesn't have any numerical benefit and Smuggling isn't necessarily gated if you already have this Lore trained. It also only works on Small concealed items.
Proposed change: Grant the same increase levels as Assurance, but also with the roll, since this is a very specific activity you are trying to perform. Also increase the bulk of the item at Master and Legendary to allow something more difficult to conceal on your person. Allow the person to use the roll and "minimum" for Underworld Lore - Practice a Trade checks as well.
Thanks, and Happy gaming
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Actually, Experienced Smuggler does not have the "ignore all other bonuses, penalties, and modifiers" that Assurance does. You are actually getting a roll of 10, on top of your skill bonuses. This is vastly superior to Assurance. The problem I have is that... this really shouldn't require a feat in the first place. It shouldn't even be possible to detect a small concealed item with passive perception. This is literally "the guard glances in your general direction and notices you have a concealed dagger", which is utterly ridiculous. Quite frankly, I wouldn't even require a roll in the first place for any situation in which this feat actually applies.
Actually, Experienced Smuggler does not have the "ignore all other bonuses, penalties, and modifiers" that Assurance does. You are actually getting a roll of 10
I guess it depends on how you read the feat but I do not believe that is the case:
You often smuggle things past the authorities. When the GM rolls your Stealth check to see if a passive observer notices a small item you have concealed, she uses the number rolled or 10, whichever is higher.
It to me reads that you use the check as rolled or 10, whichever is higher (effectively giving you "10" as a minimum).
It does not imply you get your bonuses. If it does, that might make things a little less of a Feat Trap, but given the specificity of it, I would still like to see Bulk be factored in and these mechanics apply to Underworld Lore Practicing a Trade.
Side Note: Lets keep the focus on identifying Feat Traps, and correcting them! After all this is a game.
I'd personally say Experienced Smuggler is intended to be "when you're being casually searched" as what a "passive observer" for it should be, but that could stand to be quite a bit clearer.
I'd argue you should get your bonuses for Experienced Smuggler, given you always get your bonuses to rolls unless stated otherwise. It's not a flat check. Unlike Assurance, it's applying to the roll, not the result.
But I'd say I'd prefer for Assurance to be a lot more like Experienced Smuggler. Currently, it's giving you static numbers, which is incredibly bad after certain points. Spending a skill feat to get a minimum of 10 on the die whenever you roll would feel pretty solid to me. (Realistically, it'd probably need to be lowered for purposes of combat maneuvers, or just flat out doesn't apply in combat.)
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Almost every single skill feat is a trap. Some of us in Doomsday Dawn started after a few games to not choose them anymore, because they have so good as no impact to the game (and it was so boring and tedious to select them). There are some worthwhile like the Intimidate Feats, but they are the exception.
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In general: if it only works on a critical success (Charming Liar, Lengthy Diversion) it's garbage. Critical successes just aren't common enough to matter, and since you can't plan on critically succeeding the benefits often kick in when they aren't needed anyways.
Quiet Allies reality check: allies who are suffering ACP won't succeed their stealth check. You are wasting your feats helping them. In theory this wouldn't be bad if the entire party coordinates their builds, in practice that doesn't happen to this degree. Also at high levels legendary quality armor eliminates the ACP on all medium armor so few characters will be suffering any ACP whatsoever.
Legendary Performer most of the other legendary feats are suitably legendary. This one is almost completely fluff.
Courtly Graces this feat has a lot of words, but none of the effects actually do anything useful. Its only purpose seems to be as a prerequisite to the more useful Connections feat.
Almost every single skill feat is a trap. Some of us in Doomsday Dawn started after a few games to not choose them anymore, because they have so good as no impact to the game (and it was so boring and tedious to select them). There are some worthwhile like the Intimidate Feats, but they are the exception.
The problem is that the Doomsday Dawn scenarios are very combat heavy, and very light on the sort of non-combat challenges that skill feats are intended for.
In general: if it only works on a critical success (Charming Liar, Lengthy Diversion) it's garbage. Critical successes just aren't common enough to matter, and since you can't plan on critically succeeding the benefits often kick in when they aren't needed anyways.
Quiet Allies reality check: allies who are suffering ACP won't succeed their stealth check. You are wasting your feats helping them. In theory this wouldn't be bad if the entire party coordinates their builds, in practice that doesn't happen to this degree. Also at high levels legendary quality armor eliminates the ACP on all medium armor so few characters will be suffering any ACP whatsoever.
Legnedary Performer most of the other legendary feats are suitably legendary. This one is almost completely fluff.
Courtly Graces this feat has a lot of words, but none of the effects actually do anything useful. Its only purpose seems to be as a prerequisite to the more useful Connections feat.
First of all, Thank you for actually participating in the original focus of the thread!
Secondly:
Quiet Allies - I think you have a point, especially since the participation problem was generally at higher levels. Perhaps a "fix" could be "Those within 30ft are considered Trained in Stealth for the purposes of making checks" which helps alleviate the -4 from Untrained bonus and still mattering at later levels. Perhaps limiting the number of targets by proficiency (2 if Expert, 4 if Master, and unlimited if Legendary)
Legendary Performer - Totally agree. There needs to be something more substantial than "the GM dictates how popular you are"
Courtly Graces - It's not too bad, but I find it particularly awkward given that its tied to a Background that gives you Lore Nobility. I don't think Skill substitutions in general are great, but the idea that you can use Society to Recall Knowledge about a target is probably a good theme to run with. Perhaps granting a numerical bonus against targets you successfully Recall Knowledge against for other Society checks (or checks related to the knowledge).
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(Repost, since this seems like a good thread for it)
Disarm is a worthless mess. Sorry, but there is no better description for it, except maybe a few words that won't get past the profanity filter.
First, you have to have an empty hand. So forget about using Disarm if you have a weapon and shield or a 2H weapon or even a weapon and torch.
Second, you need a critical success which, as the math demonstrates, is close to requiring a natural 20 against most equal-level enemies.
Third, it's an attack so it gets MAP so just forget about it unless you do it on your first attack or you're fishing for 20's. Even as a first attack, you'll rarely have more than 5% chance to succeed so you're really just making a zero-damage attack that imposes the MAP against your first real attack of the round.
Fourth, you have about a the same chance of becoming flat-footed for a whole round.
Fifth, if all you do is a normal success, then your opponent suffers a penalty that means absolutely nothing unless you have allies who:
1) go before that opponent
2) have a free hand
3) are trained in Athletics
4) have a high enough athletics check to make it worth their time to try
5) accept the risk of being flat-footed
6) are willing to waste an action attempting to disarm with about a 15% chance of success
7) won't bother unless THEY have more allies who:
a) go before that opponent
b) have a free hand
c) are trained in Athletics
d) have a high enough athletics check to make it worth their time to try
e) accept the risk of being flat-footed
f) are willing to waste an action attempting to disarm with about a 15% chance of success
Etc.
It's turtles futility all the way down...
Yikes.
Not even worth thinking about it.
Now, if it ignored MAP, well, then I would never even think about it.
But, if it also applied that penalty to the opponent's attack rolls, you know, because his grip is weakened and all, well, then I (finally) would consider using this action.
Finally, to put things in perspective, this is already a situational feat because many monsters we fight won't have weapons; we can't disarm teeth or claws. This is fine, I expect it to be situational. But if we are going to invest in a situational feat, knowing it will be useless in many encounters, we should expect it WORK in the encounters that we can use it.
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(Repost, since this seems like a good thread for it)
Disarm is a worthless mess. Sorry, but there is no better description for it, except maybe a few words that won't get past the profanity filter.
While Disarm isn't a feat itself, because it can be the subject of a lot of Feat trees (particularly the Riposte line) I think that's a great point.
Of course Disarm suffers from all the same issues that traditional Save or Suck spell where the strongest effect is so binary for the enemy that it can be a real game changer.
However, in PF2, AoO's are not standard anymore and there are 3 actions which can be spent to pick up your weapon.
This makes the effect of a successful disarm, a lot less strong.
I think the Failure could be moved to the Success metric, Failure can become Critical Failure, and Critical Failure can then take the "You may move the weapon to a square adjacent to the target. If you move it into your own square, and you have a hand free, you may choose to hold the weapon."
And then just remove the hand free requirement and give Unarmed Strikes the Disarm attribute.
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While not fully worthless, I think Lightning Reflexes, Iron Will, and Great Fortitude fall into this weird catch 22 area that makes them far less useful. Each makes you expect in the relevant save, no more, no less. And each requires a 14+ in the associated attribute. So to get Iron Will you need to have a pretty decent will save, but not a good will save.
I've already had a couple of players with poor saves want to take one, only to find that they don't have good enough attributes. And the ones that already have good saves don't need or can't use it. Even with the tight math in PF2, I seems reasonable to just give a flat +1 to the save.
Why is this in General Discussion instead of the feats section?
While not fully worthless, I think Lightning Reflexes, Iron Will, and Great Fortitude fall into this weird catch 22 area that makes them far less useful. Each makes you expect in the relevant save, no more, no less. And each requires a 14+ in the associated attribute. So to get Iron Will you need to have a pretty decent will save, but not a good will save.
I've already had a couple of players with poor saves want to take one, only to find that they don't have good enough attributes. And the ones that already have good saves don't need or can't use it. Even with the tight math in PF2, I seems reasonable to just give a flat +1 to the save.
While they have problems, they aren't traps. +1 to a save is a passable effect. I expect that they will become underpowered once we get more published content, however, as right now they only get picked because there is pretty much no competition. I mean, Fleet and Toughness are the premier choice for general feats. The pickings are pretty slim, and I suspect a lot of the stuff that looks fine now will be hopeless underpowered once there are actual alternatives.
Why is this in General Discussion instead of the feats section?
It's not exclusive to feats, as Dm Blake has already discussed Disarm.
Traps can exist in all forms, but Feats are the most common.
It also applies to all types of Feats and thus covers ancestry, class, general and skills which are all separate categories.
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Almost every single skill feat is a trap. Some of us in Doomsday Dawn started after a few games to not choose them anymore, because they have so good as no impact to the game (and it was so boring and tedious to select them). There are some worthwhile like the Intimidate Feats, but they are the exception.
The skill feats seem like a missed opportunity so far.
While they have problems, they aren't traps. +1 to a save is a passable effect. I expect that they will become underpowered once we get more published content, however, as right now they only get picked because there is pretty much no competition. I mean, Fleet and Toughness are the premier choice for general feats. The pickings are pretty slim, and I suspect a lot of the stuff that looks fine now will be hopeless underpowered once there are actual alternatives.While not fully worthless, I think Lightning Reflexes, Iron Will, and Great Fortitude fall into this weird catch 22 area that makes them far less useful. Each makes you expect in the relevant save, no more, no less. And each requires a 14+ in the associated attribute. So to get Iron Will you need to have a pretty decent will save, but not a good will save.
I've already had a couple of players with poor saves want to take one, only to find that they don't have good enough attributes. And the ones that already have good saves don't need or can't use it. Even with the tight math in PF2, I seems reasonable to just give a flat +1 to the save.
They don't give +1 at this time, they give you expert proficiency. If you already have expert proficiency then it does nothing at all.
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They don't give +1 at this time, they give you expert proficiency. If you already have expert proficiency then it does nothing at all.
Presumably characters who are already expert won't take them. If you're actually taking this feat, it's a +1.
Still, I guess they can be thought of as traps in the sense that they don't actually function for characters who are already expert.
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The problem with Disarm is that it is literally broken. A GM doesn't know what sort of to hit or damage an unarmed attack of a monster is.
This has likely been recognised, so Disarm has to be unworkable that it will never come up.
Actually the bestiary has pretty explicit guidelines about this.
On Quiet Allies: It's pretty decent if people are willing to invest in stealth (which is usually actually not as hard to do for the non-skill monkey classes because you get more skills trained relative to the number of skills there are, and because of ample opportunities for extra skills, especially so for humans.)
It's main problem, eventual obsolescence as Mithral and high quality level armour renders ACP equal to 0, is in part remedied by robust retraining rules.
One absolute trap option I've found though: Long/High Jump and all support feats. The DCs are prohibitive and you're much better off improving your Leap instead. You're seriously better off taking Fleet to get up to 30 movespeed instead of taking Quick Jump or any other option that helps you with Long/High jumps.
Another trap option is the Crit specialization for the Knife and Dart groups. Because wounding is a bit weaker but works on non-crits. Which means it's nothing to consider building for.
I don't think you are really describing traps though, because I don't think there's much you can build into long jumps or crit specializations.
Quick Jump is the only thing I can think of that doesn't enhance leap in some way, and the long jump failure condition moves you the distance of the leap anyway. And generally speaking the only reason you'll ever attempt a long jump or high jump is because you need to jump further than leap allows for. The math does seem like it could use some tuning there, because if you invest in jumping your leap distance can get pretty crazy and you have to be rather high level to reliably beat that distance +10 or whatever. But it's pretty hard to build yourself into a corner there.
Similarly, I don't think you can build to focus on critical specializations at all. Crit fishing isn't a thing anymore, and specializations are just a nice little extra reward when you get that lucky roll. If one is using knives or darts, there's probably reasons besides the small possibility of bleed damage.
EDIT: I mean I guess technically a gnome could use their ancestry feat to get the critical specialization on kukris for example, but by and large critical specializations are a ribbon granted by martial classes automatically. Even then, such an ancestry feat might be cheaper than the wounding rune, especially on thrown weapon (like knives and darts) that wants returning first for example.
...On Quiet Allies: It's pretty decent if people are willing to invest in stealth (which is usually actually not as hard to do for the non-skill monkey classes because you get more skills trained relative to the number of skills there are, and because of ample opportunities for extra skills, especially so for humans.)
It's main problem, eventual obsolescence as Mithral and high quality level armour renders ACP equal to 0, is in part remedied by robust retraining rules.
One absolute trap option I've found though: Long/High Jump and all support feats. The DCs are prohibitive and you're much better off improving your Leap instead. You're seriously better off taking Fleet to get up to 30 movespeed instead of taking Quick Jump or any other option that helps you with Long/High jumps.
Another trap option is the Crit specialization for the Knife and Dart groups. Because wounding is a bit weaker but works on non-crits. Which means it's nothing to consider building for.
I don't think you are really describing traps though, because I don't think there's much you can build into long jumps or crit specializations.
Quick Jump is the only thing I can think of that doesn't enhance leap in some way, and the long jump failure condition moves you the distance of the leap anyway. And generally speaking the only reason you'll ever attempt a long jump or high jump is because you need to jump further than leap allows for. The math does seem like it could use some tuning there, because if you invest in jumping your leap distance can get pretty crazy and you have to be rather high level to reliably beat that distance +10 or whatever. But it's pretty hard to build yourself into a corner there.
Similarly, I don't think you can build to focus on critical specializations at all. Crit fishing isn't a thing anymore, and specializations are just a nice little extra reward when you get that lucky roll. If one is using knives or darts, there's probably reasons
Flying kick isn't a trap though. As long as you don't critically fail, it still saves you actions because you jump the leap distance. It also has synergy with a bunch of other feats, including powerful leap, crane style, wall run, and even dancing leaf. Although it is unfortunate dancing leaf is the same level because they'd work better together.
Quick Jump isn't very good, but it also doesn't have any synergy with Flying Kick.
Let's use an actual example. The 8th level monk in my party has a +15 athletics bonus to jump. He packs boots of bounding and powerful leap. That gives him a leap of 25. Theoretically he could have taken crane style or dancing leaf on top of that and gotten up to 35. At which point, he will never be able to hit a DC 40 except on a 20. But he also doesn't need to. With flying kick, he can stride his full speed, and then take the long jump and move up to his 35 leap speed automatically and strike. The only consequence is that if he critically fails he lands prone, at which point he merely didn't save an action if he stands up, and even that can be bypassed with kip up for example.
Long jump and high jump aren't very good, as you correctly point out, and are way more confusing than they need to be (putting them at opposite ends of the book from leap was a bad call IMO) but the only trap option you identified was Quick Jump. Which is to say, Quick Jump may be a trap, but long jump is just not the best design in the book.
Long jump and high jump aren't very good, as you correctly point out
If something is not very good and it comes with diminishing returns, I think that certainly qualifies as a trap.
Especially since at 8th level, we're starting to get into the territory where jump based movement is only going to have so much value. It will allow you to ignore difficult terrain, but in terms of out of combat situations it is largely useless because almost no one is going to have the capacity to follow you across obstacles it allows you to pass.
And in any instance where the monk would be "bringing a rope" or something to allow the others across, the same could likely be accomplished with a grappling hook.
They certainly seem like "traps" as they aren't really optimal or good choices in most builds. Even with this instance of the monk, it doesn't amount to creating a more valuable action, just a slightly greater ability to achieve further distances.
Regardless of how useful they are in the context of their use, they are entirely too situational for value IMO. Outside of "look how bad ass my jumps are" it doesn't really have much other value.
Long jump and high jump aren't very good, as you correctly point outIf something is not very good and it comes with diminishing returns, I think that certainly qualifies as a trap.
Especially since at 8th level, we're starting to get into the territory where jump based movement is only going to have so much value. It will allow you to ignore difficult terrain, but in terms of out of combat situations it is largely useless because almost no one is going to have the capacity to follow you across obstacles it allows you to pass.
And in any instance where the monk would be "bringing a rope" or something to allow the others across, the same could likely be accomplished with a grappling hook.
They certainly seem like "traps" as they aren't really optimal or good choices in most builds. Even with this instance of the monk, it doesn't amount to creating a more valuable action, just a slightly greater ability to achieve further distances.
Regardless of how useful they are in the context of their use, they are entirely too situational for value IMO. Outside of "look how bad ass my jumps are" it doesn't really have much other value.
Leap is plenty useful. Get good at leaping and difficult terrain ceases to be difficult for you. By comparison Combine it with wall run and wall jump and you can leap up to strike or grapple flyers or vault over enemies to avoid provoking reactions from them. Flying can make it less useful, but flying is more expensive than it was in PF1.
Long jump is hard to pull off, but there's no reason for anyone to try and pull it off unless they HAVE to jump further than Leap allows. And even then odds they still get the Leap distance.
A trap in game terms is something you build into expecting good results and then getting bad results from. There's only one feat (Quick Jump) that improves long jump without also improving leap. If you attempt a long jump you still get your leap results. Ergo, you can only trap yourself with Quick Jump. Long jump and high jump are otherwise just things you can do sometimes if desperation requires it.
Like, it normally isn't worth it to knock your party's wizard unconscious, unless he's dominated and flinging fireballs at you. That doesn't make "attacking your allies" a trap option, unless you somehow built your character to specialize in friendly fire.
Edit: Also, in terms of only being situational... You know we are largely talking about skill feats, right? Almost every skill feat is only useful within its given context. The few things that enhance jumping outside of skill feats also do stuff like provide AC bumps, increase your speed, or negate falling damage.
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While they may not technically be traps, I do agree that these are good points about jumping. It's absolutely a problem that leap is on the opposite side of the book from high jump and long jump. Those rules need to be side-by-side. Also the DC's are senselessly high given the other things in the system. DC 30 to high jump 5 ft as a 2-action activity is already quite punitive, but when you can automatically succeeding at leaping 5 feet as a 1-action activity with a 2nd level skill feat it just doesn't make sense. Also we don't have a Legendary Leaper feat for some reason?
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While they may not technically be traps, I do agree that these are good points about jumping. It's absolutely a problem that leap is on the opposite side of the book from high jump and long jump. Those rules need to be side-by-side. Also the DC's are senselessly high given the other things in the system. DC 30 to high jump 5 ft as a 2-action activity is already quite punitive, but when you can automatically succeeding at leaping 5 feet as a 1-action activity with a 2nd level skill feat it just doesn't make sense. Also we don't have a Legendary Leaper feat for some reason?
Yeah I don't know why jumping was nerfed so hard. It already wasn't easy to get anime-tier jumps in PF1, but you could do them. One of my players who wanted to build Super Mario is very disappointed by this unwarranted change. For how superhuman some characters can end up, they can't jump at all! I would make the jump DC = distance (without the +5) and the height is equal to 1/3 the result. It was a lot more intuitive that way.
#Freejumping
While they may not technically be traps, I do agree that these are good points about jumping. It's absolutely a problem that leap is on the opposite side of the book from high jump and long jump. Those rules need to be side-by-side. Also the DC's are senselessly high given the other things in the system. DC 30 to high jump 5 ft as a 2-action activity is already quite punitive, but when you can automatically succeeding at leaping 5 feet as a 1-action activity with a 2nd level skill feat it just doesn't make sense. Also we don't have a Legendary Leaper feat for some reason?
See, I can agree with all of those points. Honestly, it occurred to me that Sudden Leap could be a skill feat and it doesn't seem like it would break the game. Class feats have plenty of other good picks and skill feats need love.
I forgot you get a stride with your long jump, I guess there are uses for flying kick after all.
I still consider both Flying Kick and Quick jump trap options due to how readily they compete with Leap improvements (which seem pretty powerful to me, I certainly got great use out of my 25 foot leap in DD part 2, flying Kick would've been worse than useless).
I consider it a trap option if it's presented as being a viable option for improving an aspect of your character but, due to any factor, is not.
Quick Jump is a trap because the few situations you want to long jump you're better off getting a stronger leap.
Flying Kick is a trap because again, increasing your leap distance (with the added benefit of conditional Legendary Cat Fall) is most often better.
And both options are worsened by the fact that they don't stack.
Another part that makes them trap options is that they encourage you to attempt things you can't (or will have difficulty to) succeed at.
They would be a lot better options if Long/High jump rules were not so awful. Flying Kick would still be a trap because Quick Jump exists and is better (because it's not once per turn and can be used without striking as part of it, and also because Quick Jump removes the running distance requirement for Long Jump (and also affects High Jump).
Anyway, yeah they have some unique utility you don't get with Leap increases. Leap is still better.
You completely misunderstood the utility of flying kick. You can leap during a flying lock. You can leap during a flying kick. You can leap during a flying kick.
If you fail the long jump DC, you move the leap distance.
Flying kick doesn't improve your long jump. It improves your action economy. It is basically a monk version of sudden charge.
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You can't do a more grounded - Lord of the Rings - style game if people can run around leaping like, as you put it, Super Mario.
Nothing spoils that Lord of the Rings flavor more than having a character running around doing Legolas-like acrobatics in combat...
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The fallacy here is that you can't do a more grounded tone and have anime style shenanigans in the same system. You absolutely can, you just need to keep the lord of the rings stuff to low levels and the super heroics to high levels.
Where that dividing line should be is up for debate. Some people sat you should be a super hero by 5, and others say it is by 15. But you can absolutely have both extremes coexist.
In order to keep the topic back on focus, I will bring up what I believe to be another trap:
Spell Thievery is just terrible.
Not only does the Feat not provide anything extra to the standard act of stealing an item, it's actually functionally has no benefit on a spell of level 2 or higher.
It's also so absolutely niche and specific that I can't see any circumstance where it would come up in actuality or give the user any benefits.
Anything someone of 7th level is going to be willing to steal instead of purchase with chump change is likely going to have a higher spell level than 1, which means your +2 circumstance bonus (the only benefit to the feat) is negated by the spell level of the actual item.
It also requires you to have an actual piece of parchment on your person to get the same results as just stealing the item outright.
It states the GM normally applies a penalty to the check to notice unless the item is on display but gives no actual metric for how much the penalty is, or what qualifies as "on display".
It would make far more sense to take the Feat "Subtle Theft" (level 1 trained as opposed to 7 master) and simply steal the item while creating a diversion so no one notices.
It's one of those Feats where it sounds super cool, but in practice is just a huge waste of an investment. Such a niche scenario requires some pretty strong benefits (how often are people stealing Scrolls or Spell books honestly?)
Even in the case of stealing a book, you can't steal the whole spells in the book (indicated by the last line about DC increases) but it gives no rules for such a circumstance. That would make it actually reasonable if it worked similar to the old Spellthief from 3.5 (if you don't know what spell, you steal one at random).
Just seems like something a player would find interesting, take, and then never be able to use effectively (again, why not just steal the whole thing and attempt to go unseen?)
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While not fully worthless, I think Lightning Reflexes, Iron Will, and Great Fortitude fall into this weird catch 22 area that makes them far less useful. Each makes you expect in the relevant save, no more, no less. And each requires a 14+ in the associated attribute. So to get Iron Will you need to have a pretty decent will save, but not a good will save.Those are literally the weakest thing you can imagine as feat. Seriously, what can you imagine weaker than a +1 on one of the 4 defenses?
Sadly, quite a lot. This is Paizo, who have produced Prone Shooter and other feats that are indistinguishable from (or even have more penalties than) the default rules.
Some of the playtest skill feats are already leaning this way. Forager, experienced smuggler, and survey wildlife. Especially the last: survival skill doesn't let you determine a couple native animals after a lengthy study? I'm not an experienced outdoorsman in any sense, but if I go off into the woods behind my house, finding signs of deer would be trivially easy.
In practice, this means one of those two thing:
1/ future feats will be balanced against those feats. ie, the most they can do is a +1 in some narrow circumstance. Hooray for waste of space in the future books.
2/ future feats won't be balanced against those feats, making those feat a trap. Yay?
Personally, my big worry in the feats area (especially with skill feats) are more feats that invalidate normal player actions by suddenly requiring a feat to do an everyday thing. Currently Pickpocket is my go-to harbinger of worse to come.
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While they may not technically be traps, I do agree that these are good points about jumping. It's absolutely a problem that leap is on the opposite side of the book from high jump and long jump. Those rules need to be side-by-side. Also the DC's are senselessly high given the other things in the system. DC 30 to high jump 5 ft as a 2-action activity is already quite punitive, but when you can automatically succeeding at leaping 5 feet as a 1-action activity with a 2nd level skill feat it just doesn't make sense. Also we don't have a Legendary Leaper feat for some reason?Yeah I don't know why jumping was nerfed so hard. It already wasn't easy to get anime-tier jumps in PF1, but you could do them. One of my players who wanted to build Super Mario is very disappointed by this unwarranted change. For how superhuman some characters can end up, they can't jump at all! I would make the jump DC = distance (without the +5) and the height is equal to 1/3 the result. It was a lot more intuitive that way.
#Freejumping
I hate to be that guy, but...
I'm glad that we don't get a lot of Anime shenanigans. The reason being that allowing such ruins the tone of the game.
You can't do a more grounded - Lord of the Rings - style game if people can run around leaping like, as you put it, Super Mario.
One of the things that ruins Fantasy gaming for me is when people show up with goofy off-the-wall stuff like showing up as video game characters and/or comic book characters.
Bear in mind that I've adventured in PFS with Samus Aran, Simon Belmont, and Captain America.
Characters are already surviving falls from Orbit, lava, stealing people's worm clothes without them noticing, surviving in alien planets, etc. But jumping 50ft (or like 10ft upwards lol)? Now that's where they draw the line!
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You can't do a more grounded - Lord of the Rings - style game if people can run around leaping like, as you put it, Super Mario.Nothing spoils that Lord of the Rings flavor more than having a character running around doing Legolas-like acrobatics in combat...
Assuming you wish to emulate the books, this statement is quite correct.
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Lord of the Rings is fantasy Oregon Trail, I don't think it would make an enjoyable game outside of maybe a card game. "Aragorn Trail"?