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My gaming group is working on playing through the play test adventures and I have some feedback about the skill and proficiency system. I'm going to attempt to keep this concise and avoid some of the circular discussions I've read on other similar posts.
Background - I'm an experienced gamer on the min/max end of the spectrum with experience in 3.5, pathfinder 1.0, and D&D 5E. I have so far play tested PF 2.0 at levels 1, 4, 5, 7, and 9
Thesis - I don't know how to be good at things in this game. My impression so far is that the underlying math of this system places more variance in uncontrollable factors than in choices the players can make for their characters. This makes it difficult or impossible to make a character that feels like they are good at something.
Math - Dice rolling games are about probability and variance. All checks in PF 2.0 use a d20 which has a flat probability curve and and a variance of about 5. Checks are resolved either against an arbitrary DC set by the DM, author, or developer or against another character's statistics. Since an arbitrary DC can be adjusted at any time, it's more useful to talk about opposed checks.
The numbers feeding into a check include several components, all of which are sources of variance in the result of the check. These are Dice, Level, Proficiency, Stats, Items and Conditions (including buff spells).
explanation of the magnitude of the variance
Dice: about 5, because math
Level: 5 (from -1 for easy encounters to +4 for deadly ones)
Proficiency: 7, skewed a the bottom (from -4 for untrained to +3 for legendary)
Stats: 6 (from -1 for a penalty to +5 for an invested specialist)
Items: about 3 (from 0 for basic to +3 for legendary)
Conditions: about 3 (this one is tricky to count, but in play it seems hard to stack too many conditions at once)
In practice what I have observed is that Dice and Level are the biggest sources of meaningful variance. Generally proficiency, stats, items and conditions only vary by a point or two each since everyone is generally trying to use skills (including attacks and such) that they're good at. Simplified down that leaves us:
Dice: 5
Level: 5
Other: 6
That means that all of the choices players are making in builds, gear and tactics are only slightly more impactful to their success than the level of the challenge they're facing and the whims of chance.
Impressions from play - My experience playing this system, unsurprisingly, supports this analysis. Characters succeed more when they're dealing with low level challenges and fail more with high level ones. When dice are hot, a character rarely fails and when dice are cold they rarely succeed. In many cases it's not even worth adding the bonuses. If the dice show 4, the check fails and if the dice show 17, the check succeeds. To my perspective it makes the game feel more like roulette than chess, and that makes it a lot less fun for me to play. I enjoy RPGs the most when the choices of the players and the characters have a significant impact on game and such a heavy focus on chance takes that away.
Suggestions - I suggest augmenting the bonuses from proficiency ranks. -4/0/2/4/6 seems about right, though I wouldn't be sad to see -6/0/3/6/9. This would allow characters choices to start to outweigh the die rolls.
I suggest reducing or removing the level bonus to checks. Half or even one third character level would be good. I find it disappointing to look at challenges 5 levels above or below my character level and know that they are not worth engaging because one side will roll over the other.
I also suggest, and this is something of a tangent, reworking class abilities that are tied to level appropriate DCs. It's unsatisfying to have spent build choices and actions on abilities that might or might not activate, depending on the dice. I'm specifically looking at the bard's Inspire Heroics and Lingering Performance.
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Thesis - I don't know how to be good at things in this game. My impression so far is that the underlying math of this system places more variance in uncontrollable factors than in choices the players can make for their characters. This makes it difficult or impossible to make a character that feels like they are good at something.
You are correct. They have explicitly tuned the math such that if you are "good" at something it means you will never improve against "DCs of your level" and that your chance of success will never exceed 60% (and most of the time be 50 or 55%).
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You know that, at least in a maxed skill, the success chance does increase over time to where you can get to like 85% success against on-level DCs come level 20. And even with only reasonably-invested skills (Basically missing one of high ability, item, or proficiency rank) can still hold about 60-70. And that's just with the current state of things, the devs have said they're working on tuning the math to be a little looser.
I've yet to actually see it. The effect is so slight that up through chapter 4 of doomsday dawn it hasn't made any impact.
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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In many cases it's not even worth adding the bonuses. If the dice show 4, the check fails and if the dice show 17, the check succeeds.
It is actually necessary in most cases to add up the bonuses, because it could make the difference between a failure and a critical failure.
I love the concept of the four tiers of outcome, but in practice I've seen that it does slow down gameplay. Because now instead of just rolling a 3 and saying, "Nope, I failed that", it's now "Hang on... I rolled a three, so that's... 16. No, wait, I'm enfeebled 2, so 14. Oh, wait, but the bard song makes it 15. Is that a critical failure?"
In many cases it's not even worth adding the bonuses. If the dice show 4, the check fails and if the dice show 17, the check succeeds.It is actually necessary in most cases to add up the bonuses, because it could make the difference between a failure and a critical failure.
I love the concept of the four tiers of outcome, but in practice I've seen that it does slow down gameplay. Because now instead of just rolling a 3 and saying, "Nope, I failed that", it's now "Hang on... I rolled a three, so that's... 16. No, wait, I'm enfeebled 2, so 14. Oh, wait, but the bard song makes it 15. Is that a critical failure?"
"I rolled a 3, I failed. Hang on I'm enfeebled 2, so that's a 1, but bardsong makes it a 2. I failed."
Remember: in order to fail by 10, and the base threshold of success is 11, you need to roll a 1 (modified by modifiers other than level, attribute, and skill).
Its still only a rough guide, of course, but the math is so tight that it really is pretty much under/over 10.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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In many cases it's not even worth adding the bonuses. If the dice show 4, the check fails and if the dice show 17, the check succeeds.It is actually necessary in most cases to add up the bonuses, because it could make the difference between a failure and a critical failure.
I love the concept of the four tiers of outcome, but in practice I've seen that it does slow down gameplay. Because now instead of just rolling a 3 and saying, "Nope, I failed that", it's now "Hang on... I rolled a three, so that's... 16. No, wait, I'm enfeebled 2, so 14. Oh, wait, but the bard song makes it 15. Is that a critical failure?"
"I rolled a 3, I failed. Hang on I'm enfeebled 2, so that's a 1, but bardsong makes it a 2. I failed."
Remember: in order to fail by 10, and the base threshold of success is 11, you need to roll a 1 (modified by modifiers other than level, attribute, and skill).
Its still only a rough guide, of course, but the math is so tight that it really is pretty much under/over 10.
Let's say the character in question was level nine, rolling a Reflex saving throw. That seems about right to me for the above numbers (3 on the die + 9 level + 2 DEX + 1 Expert in Reflex + 1 item). If the party were fighting, say, a Young Red Dragon (level 10) which has a breath weapon DC of 25, then whether you had a 15 or a 16 does make the difference between a failure and a critical failure!
Yes, if you're fighting a perfectly-tuned opponent of the same level as you, it's likely a 50/50 shot. But quite often PCs face off against more powerful opponents, and the math slows down as people need to calculate whether they crit fail. The same happens on the opposite end, as they need to figure whether or not they critically succeeded against lower-level foes.
But quite often PCs face off against more powerful opponents
No, they're not.
*Breaks out the Bestiary*
A single level 10 red dragon (and nothing else) against 4 PCs is a low difficulty encounter ("typically use some of the party’s resources"). Add in, say, 6 kobolds at level 5, and you're looking at a Severe level encounter, even though the kobolds themselves are a virtual non-threat and quickly dispatched.
Severe-threat encounters are the hardest encounters
most groups of characters can consistently defeat, and
as such they are most appropriate for major encounters,
such as with a final boss.
(You could do the same thing by having the 4 PCs fight two level 10 dragons).
4 creatures against 4 PCs, in order to be a High threat encounter (High threat is the "bog standard, middle of the road, encounter") means that each of those creature is worth 20 EXP. Or 2 levels below the players!
The players are not regularly facing off against single foes. Even in the playtest it's come up....four times. The ooze in the first room (not meant to be a real challenge, but "welcome to the rules") the boss of that same adventure, the water elemental (there's an earth elemental in the same room and its possible, though unlikely, to trigger both at the same time), and the lake monster in chapter 4.
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They've explicitly acknowledged the math problem with the system, and are going to fix it (though likely post playtest).
They don't seem likely to change the variance between the skilled and unskilled a particularly large amount, though. The likely change is simply for people who are good at something to have a higher chance of success at it (this incidentally improves the chances for everyone else as well).
That pretty much solves my personal problems with the system in this regard.
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I think there's a tabletop gaming cultural divide between the dice-first approach and the ability-first approach.
"If there's no significant chance of failure it's not an exciting challenge, it's just a foregone conclusion."
versus
"I should succeed at this skill because I made a character who is good at this skill."
It's hard to satisfy both groups.
As long as you ensure that characters can't be good at everything, and that one single focus can't solve everyone's problems, you should be able to satisfy both groups. It requires some steep difference in ability based on encounter type and character specialization, but it should work.
I think there's a tabletop gaming cultural divide between the dice-first approach and the ability-first approach.
"If there's no significant chance of failure it's not an exciting challenge, it's just a foregone conclusion."
versus
"I should succeed at this skill because I made a character who is good at this skill."It's hard to satisfy both groups.
I feel the best way to express my desire for this dichotomy is that overall situations should be tough to resolve with a chance of failure, but many individual checks/actions you're specialized in should not have a significiant chance of failure. And if you manage to design a good approach to the situation which uses all the stuff you're specialized in, in a smart way, maybe the overall situation loses its significant chance of failure, and that's okay if you were smart enough and had characters perfect for the situation.
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They've explicitly acknowledged the math problem with the system, and are going to fix it (though likely post playtest).
They don't seem likely to change the variance between the skilled and unskilled a particularly large amount, though. The likely change is simply for people who are good at something to have a higher chance of success at it (this incidentally improves the chances for everyone else as well).
That pretty much solves my personal problems with the system in this regard.
Could you please provide a link to the discussion where they acknowledge the math problem?
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Could you please provide a link to the discussion where they acknowledge the math problem?They've explicitly acknowledged the math problem with the system, and are going to fix it (though likely post playtest).
They don't seem likely to change the variance between the skilled and unskilled a particularly large amount, though. The likely change is simply for people who are good at something to have a higher chance of success at it (this incidentally improves the chances for everyone else as well).
That pretty much solves my personal problems with the system in this regard.
Certainly, I'm pleased to be of assistance. It was in the Twitch Stream last Friday. It's mentioned briefly early on, but most notably right around 52:35, where Jason Bulmahn acknowledges it very specifically and explicitly.
I actually did a mathematical study of player attack vs monster AC scaling in PF 1e once. As it would turn out, AC actually keeps pace with 3/4 BAB, not full BAB, as long as you're using magic items. Specializing in combat by having full BAB is actually enough to keep up with AC on its own.
Were you calculating this for the first attack only?
By late levels, half your attacks have -5 or -10 iterative penalties, which means that 3/4 BAB probably needs buffs to get multiple hits.