The general feats chapter needs work.


Skills, Feats, Equipment & Spells


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

So it's probably known by now that I'm one of the more enthusiastic fans of the playtest rules. But the feats chapter feels like a misstep. Skill feats are a really interesting design space to have, allowing you to round out your character and let them do cool new things. But I've found they are the most fatiguing part of the process due to a combination of individual feats being too hard to find and not exciting enough.

First off, there are some layout issues making it harder to parse. The chart at the beginning of the table is helpful, but not as helpful as it could be. If I'm curious what my feat options are for diplomacy, I've got to consult the chart, flip to a feat, check the chart again, flip to another feat... I think breaking the actual layout of the skill feats by skills would be helpful. Imagine if the skills chapter listed individual actions alphabetically rather than by their relevant skill.

Feats which can apply to multiple skills can get their own section, and a notation to check that section under relevant skills. So anything for Recall Knowledge or magic recognition would be in it's own section, and Arcana, Nature, Occultism, and Religion would all have an asterisk pointing you to said section.

General (non-skill) feats too would be easier to parse if they had their own section. I also think there might be a way to make it easier to ignore non-options for your particular character. For example, recognizing that I don't need to look at Alertness, Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes, or Great Fortitude if I already have Expert in them. (Side note: If all characters are trained in all saves and perception, why do the save feats list it as a prerequisite while Alertness doesn't?) I think putting general feats in their own section to prevent the aforementioned page flipping will help with this, but there might be a secondary fix as well, like specifying in the prerequisites that you need to be "trained, but expert or above."

But the content of the feats is also a concern. Let's start with general feats. These are by far the least interesting feats in the book. However, they are as the name suggest useful in the most general sense. With the exceptions of breath control and ride they are all pretty functional. (Breath control is a little too niche, and Ride not doing anything for animal companions is weird.) Improved saves, weapons, armor, perception, speed, HP, resonance, bulk... all good things to have.

Maybe that's an OK place for general feats to be. Functional but boring. Maybe. I don't want to write off the possibility they could be more, but they seem mostly fine.

But skill feats? They have some serious problems. Skill feats are the best reason to allocate your skill increases in a given task, and they should be awesome. The problem is that once you have gone through the trouble of parsing the feats chapter to find most of these skill feats, they leave you pretty cold. In general, they seem to have two big problems: they are too situational, and their mechanics are too convoluted. These two problems intertwine in a variety of ways across multiple feats to create a net effect that I and my players often flip to a feat and say "OK, when is that actually going to come up exactly?"

In my next post, I'm gonna go through individual feats and try to highlight problems as I perceive them, because I hope specific feedback will be more helpful than just general feelings.


I really want skill feats to be listed under each skill, just as class feats are listed under each class and likewise for ancestries. The few feats that are truly general or multi-skill can get their own section at the end of the skill chapter.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Assurance: Lots of people have complained about this feat. It has some niche uses, like not falling while climbing or using combat maneuvers that ignore MAP on lower level enemies. Those uses are legit, but they are pretty hard to discover and it doesn't feel like the feat offers much to other skills. Just straight removing the possibility of a critical failure would be easier to understand without a spreadsheet and would make more people take the feat, I bet.

Dubious Knowledge: As GM, I actually find this one pretty interesting. The big problem is linked to the same issue the critical failure condition has: I need to remember to do every knowledge check in secret to make this matter. If you want the whole group to roll a Recall Knowledge check out of combat, its easier to have everyone roll. Now, a solution might be just giving the group all the information as a lump, rather than telling them who knows what. But still tricky.

Quick Identification: My only real issue here is that it is the errata. Honestly, I thought an hour was a fine time for the default setting. 10 minutes being the default means it lines up with the time to treat wounds, so there's probably time to do it. Unless you have more items to identify than wounds to treat, or need to ID items and move to the next fight FAST, it is hard to see people using this much.

Recognize Spell: Actually seems pretty good. The main problem is the errata has made it confusing to run by needing to check multiple sources, but that should be fixed in the final version. Well, that and anti-caster tech is always dependent on fighting casters.

Scribe Scroll seems fine, as does Skill Training.

Trick Magic Item is pretty specific and seems a little convoluted, but should definitely exist as an option and seems fine enough.

Automatic Knowledge Cool feat. The problem is it is linked to Assurance, and Assurance has problems.

Magical Shorthand You can see Trick Magic Item, really. Hard to know how often this is relevant but hopefully in a campaign where will be relevant it will be obvious enough to opt or retrain into this feat.

Quick Recognition Seems fine.

Cat Fall is a good feat. Useful in obvious ways, awesome, scales with proficiency. If I was doing a color guide this would be sky blue.

Steady Balance: The problem here is balance seems to be a newish mechanic and I'm not sure how often adventures are going to make it a thing. It seems like PF2 is going to push it, and it might be interesting, but right now it seems too niche to justify.

Nimble Crawl just straight seems too niche. Being prone sucks, you should really just stand most of the time. If the legendary effect kicked in earlier, or the crawling didn't provoke reactions, it would be MUCH better.

Quick Squeeze has the same issue as Steady balance, but seems even less likely to come up. If we start getting combat spells or terrain that requires squeezing mid-combat, this becomes much better.

Kip up is pretty good, and is probably fine for its level.

Legendary Contortionist suffers all the problems of Quick Squeeze, and frankly should just be a scaling effect of Quick Squeeze. (As a general rule, if one feat invalidates another, consider making them the same feat. Looking at Legendary Climber, Swimmer, and Impersonator, maybe Quick Squeeze was supposed to be a prerequisite. But really just make them the same feat.)

Arcane Sense is OK, but considering how few characters will be trained in arcana and not already have this cantrip it should AT LEAST scale like a normal innate cantrip does. Honestly, I think the Magical Senses class feat should get rolled into this, perhaps with a proficiency gating a la cat fall. I think being able to detect magic as a full speed tactic at Master seems fine, for example, given other tactics speed up around then too. Also, it makes me sad that this is the only Arcana specific feat right now.

Legendary Climber and Swimmer are good effects but way too high a level, especially considering a barbarian feat 4 gets both. Considering how niche combat swimming is, all of the swim feats should really be condensed into one scaling feat. Most or all of the climb feats should get the same treatment-- you could maybe make it two feats to encompass all of Leg. Climber, Rapid Mantel, Quick Climb, one handed climber, and defensive climber. But that's really it. As individual feats they are too incremental to be worth it.

Quick Jump would be good except Long and High jump DCs break down compared to a simple Leap action. The only good non-Leap jump seems to be Sudden Leap and Flying kick and this feat doesn't interact with those at all.

(While I'm there, I love Sudden Leap. It is an awesome feat and the sort of thing a feat shoud let you do, but could we maybe move it to skill feats? Class feats have too much competition and skill feats don't have enough love.)

Powerful Leap is good. The leap action is good, and this makes it better. With enough Leap investment you can jump good.

Wall Jump is a great. A player understands what this does at a glance and it is exactly the sort of power a feat should enable. I don't even know how useful it is practice but I don't care. It is cool to be able to do.

Alchemical Crafting, Magival Crafting, Snare Crafting, and Inventor all seem good. I like that we don't have a million different magic item crafting feats like PF1 and the perquisites are easy to buy into. Any problems I have here aren't really related to the feats but crafting or specific items. (And off the top of my head the only issue I have is Snares, and Snare Kits being too bulky.)

Quick Repair: See Quick Identification.

Specialty Crafting and Impeccable Crafting feel fine I guess, if niche by design. Honestly, I'm intrigued by the idea of taking a skill feat automatically providing a numerical bonus to a skill, but that is a larger discussion.

Charming Liar How many characters with good Deception don't have good Diplomacy anyway? And I've seen PF1 adventures often allowed bluff and diplomacy to be used for certain key checks interchangeably anyway.

Close Match: Not only do you have no idea how often this would come up, I have no idea what sort of penalty it is offsetting. Also, the gender politics of it costing a feat to be androgynous makes me feel a little icky. How about making it Nondescript, "you have a face that is forgettable and is easy to distract from," that just grants a flat bonus to disguise? Disguise doesn't come up as craft or perform anyway. Throw it a bone.

Confabulator seems OK. I haven't played in a campaign where it would matter in a long time, but it definitely makes you better at lying if you want to be better at lying. It also scales with level, and unlike several skill feats explains the penalties it helps you avoid explicitly. So I think it probably makes the cut.

Lengthy Diversion should really just be part of the Create a Diversion action. Critical successes are too rare to make build choices around.

Lie to Me: I guess I sort of feel the same way I do about Confabulator, except this doesn't scale. The feat has a cool premise, but I'm not sure how much it come up in play. Seems like it could have some additional benefits tacked on.

Cruel Deceiver seems to effectively create a ranged feint, which I'm into. Seems like it should maybe work for spell attacks too? Lots of flavor to use little puffs of magic to distract people and such. I'd lower it to an expert feat at most though. It's a neat play style you shouldn't have to wait until 7th to use. Make it the intimidating glare of Deception.

Slippery Secrets: Niche, but good the option exists for those that need it.

Legendary Impersonator should really just be proficiency scaling from Quick Disguise.

If Group Impression didn't exist it would never occur to me that you couldn't Make an Impression on a group, honestly. And I don't know how often one needs to do that. Usually there's a leader of any given group and that's who you need to convince.

Bargain Hunter is simply too convoluted. I am still not sure if it rocks or it sucks.

Glad-Hand needs work. The "needing 1 minute to make an impression" clause always felt like something to prevent Diplomacy once initiative is rolled, which is worthwhile. Glad-Hand doesn't work there though. I wouldn't have ever thought I'd need a stop watch for a conversation in game were it not for this feat. I can't imagine a situation where I'd allow a Diplomacy check but only if this feat was used. All that means the REAL benefit here is that gives you a secondary chance to make an impression at a -5 penalty. Why not just make that the feat and save the space?

Shameless Request is a cool idea, but just make the effect part of Assurance and have it do something more interesting. This is super niche anyway. I... guess it lets you run around asking the world of people without the GM being allowed to institute any consequences? But it doesn't do anything to actually make people fulfill your request, so that it just seems weird.

Legendary Negotiator I'm into. Hard to know how well it work in practice given how contextual and open to GM interpretation it is, but I'm into it.

Intimidating Glare One of the best low level skill feats. Demoralize is great.

Quick Intimidation has the glad-hand problem but not the actual glad-hand benefit. Unless you can Coerce a hostile creature, and I'm pretty sure you aren't supposed to be able to.

Group Coercion See Group Impression.

Intimidating Prowess is excellent. It is an upgraded Intimidating Glare that factors in your character's physicality and it scales. A+. It is functionally and conceptually pleasing.

Lasting Coercion seems super niche, and it seems kind of arbitrary that you can only intimidate someone for a week without this feat, and if you have it then you ONLY get a week. I'M reminded of the ogre pappy Jaagrath Kreed and various other monster leaders, who definitely put some Lasting Coercion on their Group. It feels like these feats are trying to enable that sort of thing, but I don't think the mechanics really bear it out right now. Now, if we can create mechanics to scare enemies into becoming your own personal army, I'm super into that. ;)

Battle Cry Demoralize is good, action economy is god, this feat is good.

Scare to Death is what Legendary should be. A+.

Additional Lore is neat, IF your campaign gives you enough heads up to what Lore will be useful. In that case, it is actually very good.

Experienced Professional Again, couldn't this just be Assurance (lore)?

Unmistakable Lore See above, plus Dubious Knowledge.

Legendary Professional is cool I guess but it kind of feels like a ribbon that should be awarded in the story, not as a feat. I'm reminded of Leadership in PF1.

Battle Medic still retains some use post Treat Wounds. Could maybe restore more since it is only once per day. I dunno, feels OK, but like there is probably room to improve it.

Robust Recovery is all right, though I wish it referenced the original bonus like Confabulator does.

Legendary Medic seems pretty good. There's a case some of these effects should be curable earlier I guess, but I like this kind of direction for skills.

Train Animal seems good, but we don't have a lot of guidance on what constitutes a "trick" this edition.

Bonded Animal is pretty neat. Seems weird it can't be done if you have a familiar or animal companion, and I wish the Handle Animal mechanics weren't so confusing, but the feat itself is good.

Natural Medicine The errata has made this one pretty good still with Treat Wounds. Personally, I think Medicine should maybe be Int based, which would give this more punch, but that's another matter.

Oddity Identification seem too niche, but I guess its cool in the right campaign.

Fascinating Performance is pretty dang good.

Virtuosic Performer is.... OK? I mean it is good, but It feels like Weapon Focus for bards. Locking them into using a particular type of perform or wield only certain instruments. I think this and Specialty Crafting are meant to differentiate Craft and Perform being catch all skills now, but I'm a little skeptical.

Impressive Performance See Charming Liar. The only reason I see to use this is too min max Virtousic Performer and skill items. Which... I guess at least exist for Performance in a way they don't for other skills.

Legendary Performer See Legendary Professional.

Student of the Canon See Unmistakable Lore. Also, how often are roll scriptures going to be a thing? How bad is misinterpretation? On top of that, these feats require you to to flip to the relevant skill use to double check the consequences on a critical failure, which is bad, and in this particular case you still don't really know once you've looked.

Society Skill Feats Level Traits Prerequisites

Courtly Graces seems to serve very little purpose that the Additional Lore feat doesn't already serve. Just take Nobility Lore and call it a day, unless you REALLY need that item bonus.

Cultural Familiarity is too niche for a +1. Maybe if it also packed that culture's language-- which seems to be worth half a feat.

Multilingual Well, languages are harder to get now, and this is a step up from the old system where they were too cheap. Are they too hard now though? Not completely sure.

Read Lips is generally too niche, but it does actually seem like something appropriate for a skill feat, as it is a very specific thing you learn to do. Many hard of hearing characters would HAVE to take this feat. I'm cool with this.

Sign Language is an underrated talent in these games. Worth a feat if you can get your team to commit to it.

Streetwise seems solid enough. Niche, but you know when not to take it at least.

Connections: Kind of weird that this is a feat, as it isn't super consistent with most PF feats, but I don't actually hate the sort of shenanigans they are trying to create here. Feels like something out of a 2d6 game. I can dig it. Courtly Graces as a prerequisite bums me out though.

Legendary Codebreaker: Well, Decipher Writing has been surprisingly useful in various PF1 APs. I'm not sure how much reading it faster matters though, and it makes me flip the action to actually try and understand the benefits.

Legendary Linguist NICE. Honestly, I'm OK with this having a prereq. This is awesome.

Experienced Smuggler seems good if that's your thing I guess. It's very niche but it seems like it turns you to autosuccess territory pretty quickly, so.

Terrain Stalker actually seems really good, but it took me a while to understand why. Out of encounters (or whenever you can afford to move very slowly) this is basically auto success on stealth within certain terrain. If the terrain is right you can past anyone or anything. That's especially good considering how overtuned monster perception is. I think those benefits just need to jump out more.

Quiet Allies Good in the right parties. Probably needs to be retrained if ACP drops to 0 eventually.

Foil Senses On the one hand, special senses do become pretty ubiquitous at higher levels. On the other, if you know what senses you are going up against you don't seem to need this feat anyway, as far as I can tell.

Swift Sneak is good. You can make a case it should be lower level, but it is a good feat.

Legendary Sneak seems solid.

Forager needs clarification on whether it can be used while traveling and what not. If so, good enough for a low level skill feat. If not, pass.

Survey Wildlife Not bad. Can let you roll knowledge checks before combat begins and prepare appropriate tactics.

Experienced Tracker Fine enough. Seems rare to use, but it is another example of a talent which should exist and I'd rather it be a skill feat than a core Ranger thing I guess.

Planar Survival seems golden in the right campaign.

Legendary Survivalist is cool... but does seem a little niche for most adventures.

Pickpocket looks good.

Subtle Theft feels like it might be good, but is too convoluted to really imagine how it plays out IMO.

Wary Disarmament feels pretty boring to me, but it might be someone's jolly.

Quick Unlock Seems all right. Niche, but if you want to pick locks...

Spell Thievery is wacky. I'm into it.

Legendary Thief is wackier, and I'm even more into it.


Captain Morgan wrote:
Bonded Animal is pretty neat. Seems weird it can't be done if you have a familiar or animal companion, and I wish the Handle Animal mechanics weren't so confusing, but the feat itself is good.

It's obvious why you can't use this with an AC. The AC is a minion, and the bonded animal isn't. So it's just rubbing the AC's face in the fact that it's inferior to some random beast you found in the woods. That sort of insult just means that it'll never talk to you again.

Otherwise I think you analysed the spells OK, except that most of them are weak and lacklustre, and some are simply useless or so incredibly niche that they'll never come up.


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Captain Morgan wrote:
Assurance: Lots of people have complained about this feat. It has some niche uses, like not falling while climbing or using combat maneuvers that ignore MAP on lower level enemies. Those uses are legit, but they are pretty hard to discover and it doesn't feel like the feat offers much to other skills. Just straight removing the possibility of a critical failure would be easier to understand without a spreadsheet and would make more people take the feat, I bet.

It'd have to be different though. "Instead of rolling, take the Fail Effect" is not a feat anyone will ever want. Most skill-based checks have a fail effect of "you don't make any progress."


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Mudfoot wrote:


It's obvious why you can't use this with an AC. The AC is a minion, and the bonded animal isn't. So it's just rubbing the AC's face in the fact that it's inferior to some random beast you found in the woods. That sort of insult just means that it'll never talk to you again.

Incorrect. A bonded animal only responds to your commands on a 1 to 1 basis. This an improvement over the normal Command an Animal, where you had to spend an action to get its attention, and you could only give it 2 commands for your 3 actions. It is still inferior to an animal companion, who gets 2 actions for you spending one.

A bonded animal can technically take 3 commands in a round, but it requires you spending all 3 of your actions, which you should never do unless you GM has let you bond with an animal so it not only has more power than an animal companion but the PC as well.

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Otherwise I think you analysed the spells OK, except that most of them are weak and lacklustre, and some are simply useless or so incredibly niche that they'll never come up.

Oh, joy, more generic complaining that doesn't actually pinpoint specific problems. That's helpful.

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It'd have to be different though. "Instead of rolling, take the Fail Effect" is not a feat anyone will ever want. Most skill-based checks have a fail effect of "you don't make any progress."p

To clarify, I am not suggesting Assurance let you skip rolling a la the take 10 style. I'm suggesting it work like Student of the Cannon and Unmistakable Lore-- you treat critical failures in the selected skill as a failure. I'm suggesting Assurance become a one size fit all feat you can take for any skill and remove the critical failure condition.

That COULD be considered OP if there are skill uses that are supposed to ALWAYS have that chance of critical failure, but honestly even then Assurance doesn't make you do it better, you just don't fail as hard. If you make skill feats more potent (like collapsing the various climb feats into one, for example) then the cost of not critically failing would still feel sizable.


Captain Morgan wrote:
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It'd have to be different though. "Instead of rolling, take the Fail Effect" is not a feat anyone will ever want. Most skill-based checks have a fail effect of "you don't make any progress."p

To clarify, I am not suggesting Assurance let you skip rolling a la the take 10 style. I'm suggesting it work like Student of the Cannon and Unmistakable Lore-- you treat critical failures in the selected skill as a failure. I'm suggesting Assurance become a one size fit all feat you can take for any skill and remove the critical failure condition.

That COULD be considered OP if there are skill uses that are supposed to ALWAYS have that chance of critical failure, but honestly even then Assurance doesn't make you do it better, you just don't fail as hard. If you make skill feats more potent (like collapsing the various climb feats into one, for example) then the cost of not critically failing would still feel sizable.

While fair, it's still a bad feat. It doesn't make you good at something, it doesn't give you something you can do that no one else can, it just mitigates (a rare occurrence of) bad luck.

There's a thread on Student of the Canon and its lackluster mediocrity already.


Only going to comment on some of these; for others I either agree with you or don't really have an opinion. :)

Captain Morgan wrote:
Assurance: Lots of people have complained about this feat. It has some niche uses, like not falling while climbing or using combat maneuvers that ignore MAP on lower level enemies. Those uses are legit, but they are pretty hard to discover and it doesn't feel like the feat offers much to other skills. Just straight removing the possibility of a critical failure would be easier to understand without a spreadsheet and would make more people take the feat, I bet.

Fumble mitigation does not an exciting feat make. It could be a viable part of an improved Assurance, but it should also do something else. Players would want a feat that expands their options or improves their successes.

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Dubious Knowledge: As GM, I actually find this one pretty interesting. The big problem is linked to the same issue the critical failure condition has: I need to remember to do every knowledge check in secret to make this matter. If you want the whole group to roll a Recall Knowledge check out of combat, its easier to have everyone roll. Now, a solution might be just giving the group all the information as a lump, rather than telling them who knows what. But still tricky.

What I decided to do in response to Dubious Knowledge being a thing is that every Recall Knowledge check gives two pertinent pieces of information. Success gives two correct pieces of information, critical success gives broader and more important information, failure with dubious knowledge gives one correct piece and one incorrect piece, critical failure gives two incorrect pieces.

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Quick Identification: My only real issue here is that it is the errata. Honestly, I thought an hour was a fine time for the default setting. 10 minutes being the default means it lines up with the time to treat wounds, so there's probably time to do it. Unless you have more items to identify than wounds to treat, or need to ID items and move to the next fight FAST, it is hard to see people using this much.

Quick Repair: See Quick Identification.

We played the first few sessions before the errata, and the players chose not to identify anything at all until they retreated to town, because the original time was so punitive and they had multiple things to identify and repair. I'm good with the revised time.

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Recognize Spell: Actually seems pretty good. The main problem is the errata has made it confusing to run by needing to check multiple sources, but that should be fixed in the final version. Well, that and anti-caster tech is always dependent on fighting casters.

Identifying as a reaction should be the standard for someone trained in the relevant skill. This feat should make it a free action that doesn't eat your reaction.

Quick Recognition in turn should cease to exist.

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Automatic Knowledge Cool feat. The problem is it is linked to Assurance, and Assurance has problems.

Agreed. Would rather see it lose the prerequisite and just be an automatic take 5 or take 10.

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Cat Fall is a good feat. Useful in obvious ways, awesome, scales with proficiency. If I was doing a color guide this would be sky blue.

Scare to Death is what Legendary should be. A+.

Agreed. These are two of the benchmark standards for what a skill feat should be.

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Nimble Crawl just straight seems too niche. Being prone sucks, you should really just stand most of the time. If the legendary effect kicked in earlier, or the crawling didn't provoke reactions, it would be MUCH better.

Quick Squeeze has the same issue as Steady balance, but seems even less likely to come up. If we start getting combat spells or terrain that requires squeezing mid-combat, this becomes much better.

Legendary Contortionist suffers all the problems of Quick Squeeze, and frankly should just be a scaling effect of Quick Squeeze. (As a general rule, if one feat invalidates another, consider making them the same feat. Looking at Legendary Climber, Swimmer, and Impersonator, maybe Quick Squeeze was supposed to be a prerequisite. But really just make them the same feat.)

Nimble Crawl and Quick Squeeze would work thematically combined into a single feat, making it much more likely to be useful than either feat on its own.

Legendary Contortionist should probably have this new feat as its prerequisite, yes. I feel it could actually work as its own feat if it picks up an additional use case, like squeezing through / out of magical barriers and seals and bindings and forbiddances and the like, something possible at epic level in 3.x.

An in between feat, maybe Master tier, that removed all penalties to you and benefits to your enemies for you being prone would be thematic and work well.

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Specialty Crafting and Impeccable Crafting feel fine I guess, if niche by design. Honestly, I'm intrigued by the idea of taking a skill feat automatically providing a numerical bonus to a skill, but that is a larger discussion.

In another thread, I proposed an alternate version of the Craft Skill that basically had Specialty Crafting rolled right into it. I prefer the idea that when you take Craft you start knowing how to do one thing well, your area of focus, and then are not as good at other areas of crafting. I'm okay with the feat to expand the number of such areas that you are good at, of course.

And I like Impeccable's effect of an automatic crit.

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Close Match: Not only do you have no idea how often this would come up, I have no idea what sort of penalty it is offsetting. Also, the gender politics of it costing a feat to be androgynous makes me feel a little icky. How about making it Nondescript, "you have a face that is forgettable and is easy to distract from," that just grants a flat bonus to disguise? Disguise doesn't come up as craft or perform anyway. Throw it a bone.

Agreed; this sort of flavor rework would be much more palatable.

Moreover, I actually still think Disguise should be a Craft category! The person good at disguises makes the costumes and prosthetics for their team, while each person is then responsible to their own Deception or Performance to pull it off. This is how it works in real life and especially in show business. Actors don't usually make their own props.

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Confabulator seems OK. I haven't played in a campaign where it would matter in a long time, but it definitely makes you better at lying if you want to be better at lying. It also scales with level, and unlike several skill feats explains the penalties it helps you avoid explicitly. So I think it probably makes the cut.

As with my comments on Assurance, I am not a fan of feats where all they do is mitigate failure. That's not really the sort of thing people tend to want in a feat when it is all the feat does. Confabulator's basic structure is mostly fine, but it'd be nice if it did something more than help you recover from screwing up.

It might actually be good to just flat out combine this feat with Lie to Me.

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Cultural Familiarity is too niche for a +1. Maybe if it also packed that culture's language-- which seems to be worth half a feat.

This feat should basically replaced Adopted. Raise the bonus to +2, have it grant a language, and it lets you take feats from the chosen culture henceforth.

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Multilingual Well, languages are harder to get now, and this is a step up from the old system where they were too cheap. Are they too hard now though? Not completely sure.

I'd be more okay with this feat if training or raising Society granted languages, and this was just if you wanted even more languages on top of that.

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Read Lips is generally too niche, but it does actually seem like something appropriate for a skill feat, as it is a very specific thing you learn to do. Many hard of hearing characters would HAVE to take this feat. I'm cool with this.

Sign Language is an underrated talent in these games. Worth a feat if you can get your team to commit to it.

Read Lips and ESPECIALLY Sign Language should just be languages you can pick, not feats. Like, especially especially Sign Language. I can hold my nose and look the other way if Read Lips is a feat, but Sign Language being a feat is an actual insult and one of those things Paizo should have been more sensitive about, much like it using color coded rarity indicators that are useless to the colorblind without actually specifying rarity in text alongside.

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Quiet Allies Good in the right parties. Probably needs to be retrained if ACP drops to 0 eventually.

What I want is for an Expert+ in Stealth, Diplomacy etc to be able to cover for their allies, using their successes to cancel failures by allies. An expert should be able to mitigate a failure for one ally, with masters and legends affecting more people, and this should just be a base effect of the skill. With this sort of schema in place, Quiet Allies would become less of a required feat tax.

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Forager needs clarification on whether it can be used while traveling and what not. If so, good enough for a low level skill feat. If not, pass.

This should just be a base effect of the Survival skill. The default Survival foraging ability is awful. I would expect base foraging to work like this feat, then if this feat exists it basically makes success automatic for this one task or allows you to roll to provide for like 10 times more people than your auto success.

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Pickpocket looks good.

Another one that should be a base skill effect.

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Subtle Theft feels like it might be good, but is too convoluted to really imagine how it plays out IMO.

I actually find this feat's existence distressing, because as written it basically states that successfully stealing or palming an object while hidden makes you no longer hidden unless you have this feat. That's incomprehensible. As written, it's another feat tax on top of Pickpocket if you ever want to steal anything at all.


Bargain Hunter seems pretty great to me.
- Get the crafting discount, but while you're shopping.
- Use diplomacy as your "profession".

It lets diplomacy/charisma characters be as good at earning money as the Wizard, and neatly rolls in shopping downtime.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I appreciate all the specific feedback. Posting from my phone so this won't be as pretty as I'd like.

I too won't respond to stuff I agree with or at least am fine with your solution.

Fuzzypaws wrote:

Only going to comment on some of these; for others I either agree with you or don't really have an opinion. :)

Captain Morgan wrote:
Assurance: Lots of people have complained about this feat. It has some niche uses, like not falling while climbing or using combat maneuvers that ignore MAP on lower level enemies. Those uses are legit, but they are pretty hard to discover and it doesn't feel like the feat offers much to other skills. Just straight removing the possibility of a critical failure would be easier to understand without a spreadsheet and would make more people take the feat, I bet.

Fumble mitigation does not an exciting feat make. It could be a viable part of an improved Assurance, but it should also do something else. Players would want a feat that expands their options or improves their successes.

Quote:
Dubious Knowledge: As GM, I actually find this one pretty interesting. The big problem is linked to the same issue the critical failure condition has: I need to remember to do every knowledge check in secret to make this matter. If you want the whole group to roll a Recall Knowledge check out of combat, its easier to have everyone roll. Now, a solution might be just giving the group all the information as a lump, rather than telling them who knows what. But still tricky.

What I decided to do in response to Dubious Knowledge being a thing is that every Recall Knowledge check gives two pertinent pieces of information. Success gives two correct pieces of information, critical success gives broader and more important information, failure with dubious knowledge gives one correct piece and one incorrect piece, critical failure gives two incorrect pieces.

Quote:
Quick Identification: My only real issue here is that it is the errata. Honestly, I thought an hour was a fine time for the default setting. 10 minutes being the default means it lines up with the time to treat wounds, so there's probably time to do it. Unless you have more
...

Assurance: I actually agree just mitigating critical failures isn't an exciting feat. However, some players are extremely risk averse and this gives them an option to avoid that. I would still never take it, but I think some folks would. Creating a generic feat you can take for any given skill saves space creating specific feats like Student of the Canon or Unmistakable Lore.

Dubious Knowledge: I like your solution.

Quick ID/repair: if 10 minutes is going to be the standard, that's fine. I just don't see a lot of reason for these feats to exist unless there's also a Quick Treat Wounds for example. Maaaaaybe there's some mid combat applications for them, but that's pretty specific.

On Sign Language: IIRC you can take any given sign language just like you can take another language. The skill feat gives you sign language for every language you know. That feels more appropriate to me than needing a feat to know sign language at all.

Quiet Allies: covering for an ally's failure does seem like an appealing solution, yes.

Pick pocket: the main reason I'm ok with this being a feat is because many people seem to object to the too much skill consolidation. The argument is that not all characters who can pick locks want to pick pockets. However, I think realistically speaking any character that picks pockets also wants to be able to pick locks. I don't personally object to skills doing more rather than less though.


I pretty much agree, Captain Morgan. I would much prefer skill feats that are more powerful and less situational. I would be super happy if paizo gave them a big buff and halved how often a character receives them. Currently, a level 10 rogue is bound to forget what feats they even have if they're situational and don't get used often.

Here's my big idea: a lot of skill feats should give "enhancements" (like the fighter feats give) or "critical specializations" to specific skill uses. No situational requirements, just unique effects to common, existing skill actions. Hopefully these can be tailored to each skill action to be flavorful.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Wild Empathy should really be a skill feat for Nature, IMO. It's not REALLY good enough for a class feat and 2 ancestry feats is still rather costly for it. Nature doesn't really have much once you take Natural Medicine, as currently Train Animal and Bonded Animal don't have any discernible applications.

Wild Empathy would make an exciting skill feat, though. Considering it runs off Nature but also requires diplomacy, I don't think it would be that powerful. There are few classes that have reason to invest in both wisdom and charisma, after all. An upgrade to the feat (perhaps when you become a Master of nature or requiring a second skill feat) could let you use your Nature bonus instead of Diplomacy.

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