| 15 people marked this as a favorite. |
We — and by we I think I can include Paizo as well — all know that the proficiency system still needs some work, skill feats are mostly bland and very unbalanced (some skills like Acrobatics has awesome feats while others have basically nothing), and some other things. However, I'm here to tell a little story about how I've been using this system and why both me and my players are really loving it.
In both of the groups I DM for, I've written the following text to them and sent in our Whatsapp groups, explaining how the proficiency system is going to work at my table for skills:
"Your proficiency level basically determines the level of absurdity of the things you can try to do, and it grows exponentially with each new level. Some more in-depth explanation about each proficiency level with examples below:
Untrained - You are on the level of a normal person who has little to no experience doing that thing. You can try to do things that a normal human being can do naturally, things like trying improvised swimming, escaping a grapple, knowing rudimentary stuff about the most well-known religions, trying some improvised first aid or picking a pocket from someone who isn't paying much attention.
Trained - You are still on the level of a normal person, but one with training, being formal or informal. You can try to do a little more specific or demanding stuff, like trying to swim through a flowing river, moving through tree branches to find a spot to hide in a tree, knowing some more specific information about the most well-known religions, treating wounds like a person with proper training or picking a decent lock.
Expert - You are on the level of a skilled professional in that area of expertise. You can try to do things that a person without a lot of training wouldn't even bother with, like trying to climb a 2,5 meter wall and holding on top of it, jumping of said building and rolling when you reach the ground to take less damage, knowing things about religions that even most people from said religion don't, making a surgery or pick a lock that was specifically made to be extra safe.
Master - You are at the cap of normal human capacity in that skill, or maybe even a little bit superhuman. Some examples of that can be an olympic medalist, a member of Cirque du Soleil, the Winchester brothers in the last seasons of Supernatural, Doctor Strange before the accident or those escapists that escape from water tanks with their hands and feet locked while holding their breath. You can try to do things that are pretty absurd in the eyes of normal people, like trying to make an olympic-record long jump (30ft or 9 meters) through a cliff and grabbing the other side, tumbling between five scythe traps in a way that none of them hit you, knowing some secrets about religions that probably only the high-high-end hierarchy members know, making a surgery to stich an arm back to a person or picking an advanced lock with nothing but a quill.
Legendary - Now we are in the fantastic, absurd, "Bos taurus feces" level. Just go crazy, that's it, unless you try to absurdly bend the basic laws of the universe, I'm probably going to let you try it. You can try to do things like jumping from the ground to the top of a 3-storey building in one go, jumping off that building and falling without even taking damage, knowing ancient secrets of religion that were forgotten by society for centuries, saving a person that had their heart pierced (without spells or magic items) or steal things from a person who is just looking directly at you without them noticing (I'm looking at you, Dohvakin)."
If a player tried to do something that requires a lower level of proficiency, I would give a 1-tier lower skill check. If the required proficiency was a lot lower, I'd just let them auto-succeed. For instance, if a player was a Master in Athletics, I would let them swim without a check unless they were trying to swim naked in the Arctic Ocean with a 10kg weight attached to one of their legs or something.
For those of you wondering, yes, I had to remove and/or change a lot of Skill Feats like Powerful Leap for that to be possible, unfortunately. This was just an experiment after all, but the final result was: Both groups really loved it, they literally went from midly amused to "OMG this is the best skill system I've ever played with", and all that I did was interpret the rules a little bit more openly, adding one or two houserules and reworking some feats.
After this wall of text, my final message to Paizo is: You have created a GREAT concept for a skill system, and with a little bit more thought put into it, it can become 10 times greater. My personal suggestions would be either specifying the great stuff characters can do at high proficiency levels, or just let the GM decide but give a better guideline. Also, removing those boring "+1 to x in y situation" Skill Feats and creating more that let you auto-succeed at awesome stuf like Catfall would be great. But I'm not a Game Designer, I'm just a GM and homebrewer.
PS: Sorry if some of the things I say are kind of confusing, English is not my main language.
| 8 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'm a big fan of the tiers of proficiency, I just wish they had gone further with establishing proficiency gates for various things. Much like how in PF1 you had uses of a skill which could only be attempted trained, I want skill applications which can only be attempted by experts, masters, and even legends. I find "this challenge can only be attempted by someone with a good understanding of it" is vastly preferable to "setting the DC real high."
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'm a big fan of the tiers of proficiency, I just wish they had gone further with establishing proficiency gates for various things. Much like how in PF1 you had uses of a skill which could only be attempted trained, I want skill applications which can only be attempted by experts, masters, and even legends. I find "this challenge can only be attempted by someone with a good understanding of it" is vastly preferable to "setting the DC real high."
That and scaling feats based on Prof and it would be perfect.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm a big fan of the tiers of proficiency, I just wish they had gone further with establishing proficiency gates for various things. Much like how in PF1 you had uses of a skill which could only be attempted trained, I want skill applications which can only be attempted by experts, masters, and even legends. I find "this challenge can only be attempted by someone with a good understanding of it" is vastly preferable to "setting the DC real high."
I like the look of it in principle too. I wonder if it’ll take some time (for both players and designers) to appreciate there’s kind of a second dimension to work with beyond just cranking up the target number.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So basically each check, you are basically making a call on what category it requires. As long as it is in scope based on that, you let them roll, and if their action falls into the scope underneath their proficiency level you try to make it easier for them, or just let them potentially auto-succeed on the action.
By viewing every action/check as a certain tier it gates who can accomplish things, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. As long as it isn't that hard to make the choices, it should flow somewhat naturally. Granted, anything falling on this sort of common sense, can have two people run into very different opinions. That is certainly a weakness, but the better one can define the scopes of skills/proficiencies the better you should be able to reduce that issue.
One really big controversy really early was the untrained skill checks, which gave the full level advancement. People were worried about high level Barbarians passing the Bar exam and trouncing the local magistrate. The problem as I understand it was that in order to allow certain things to call for someone to make some kind of check to save against something, for its DC to remain manageable, they felt it had to stay in their normal math range, which needed to include full level.
Here is my suggestion. Make a differentiation between passive (normally saves) and Active checks (normally tied to conscious actions)
At least at first glance, the primary difference is only seen below the trained level. Passive values are always calculated as per the playtest, using full level. Active values, for untrained get limited to something less than that (maybe half? Or if you love math could make it the square root, probably via a table)
So if something forces a particular save, it will normally by default be against a Passive value. That way it doesn't break some of the mechanics.
All this, instead of things only having a numeric value/DC, if their was an associated proficiency tier, you can have people whose proficiency tier is higher than the situation make it a little easier, and those who are having to do a passive save vs. something of a higher tier, things get a little more difficult. (normally, active rolls aren't allowed for an action that is in a higher proficiency tier, due to skill gating)
When you are at least 1 tier above a particular action/check you can roll up to two dice and take the better roll. If you are more than two tiers of proficiency above, the GM may have reason to just let you auto-pass. But otherwise you would still simply roll two and take the better roll.
If you are below the necessary tier, things get harder, you roll twice and take the worse result.
This would actually make people who are optimized for something have them have the chance to be a tier up from others and give them a better chance to shine in their area of expertise, without making tasks impossible for those not specialized in that area.
You could also allow the Aid other action to do offer the option of providing a conditional bonus, or treating the person's proficiency one step higher for purpose of comparing tiers.
So someone trained in stealth, could aid someone in stealth, either getting a conditional bonus, or choose to allow them to boost their comparative proficiency up to trained, so they can make the stealth check without rolling twice and taking the worst. Or someone with expert stealth could help someone who is trained, to make the check as if they were comparatively an expert, allowing them to roll twice an take the better result. Granted, two experts in stealth aiding one another would not be able to boost their comparative proficiency since they are the same, so they would simply stick with the conditional bonus.
This sort of mechanic would allow teamwork to potentially really shine. Letting someone who has an advantage, share it with others, opening up the opportunity to have someone help all of the party members across a slippery edge one at a time, since they are so good at acrobatics?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Loreguard, something you've pointed out is true, this leaves a lot subject to the DM, but IMO this is not a problem, at least not on its own. If Paizo gives players CLEAR guidelines on what should be possible within each proficiency level of each skill, this problem can probably be mitigated to a point where the system only doesn't work if you have a bad GM that doesn't have any sense for this kind of stuff and/or immature players that try to repeteadly contest the DM's decisions. However, I don't think the game should be based on these type of people, for obvious reasons. Also, it's not like this type of thing doesn't happen to every other system in existance (in different degrees, of course).
I also had this problem of "Level 15 untrained barbarian being better at Arcana than a level 5 expert Wizard" before, but now that I've analyzed that system a lot more and tried those different ways of using it, this is a non-issue for me and my players. Why? Because that Barbarian may have a lot of accumulated knowledge about arcane stuff that he gathered through experience and adventures (I guess that's what level is supposed to be), but all of that knowledge is still rudimentary, I wouldn't let him try to do half the things related to that skill that the Wizard can.
About your suggestions... I liked the idea of getting two dice and picking the highest/lowest result if your proficiency is higher/lower than needed, however, I think Paizo is never going to do that since that just screams 5e Advantage and Disadvantage. The one about Passive and Active checks I didn't really like, but it's not that the idea is bad, it's just that I really hate Passive checks and I barely use them, haha.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
There just isn't any need, and why these arbitrary 5 degrees of separation, what does it all mean?
Because one dimension (modifier) is how effectively you can complete the tasks you know how to do, and one dimension (proficiency) is what tasks you understand how to do.
Someone can have solid knife skills and be good on the grill (high modifier), but have no idea how to assemble a turducken, a baked alaska, a beef wellington, or a croquembouche. Someone can be super, duper at long division but not have the faintest idea how to find the Jordan decomposition of a given signed measure. I am pretty efficient at changing my oil and I know how to change a tire, but I will never attempt to rebuild a transmission since I wouldn't know where to start. Perhaps someone is the world's best lock-picker, but that doesn't mean they know how to crack a safe or that they know anything about electronic security.
In order for a task to be considered tractable the person attempting it must first have some idea what it is they are trying to do and how they can accomplish it. Modifier alone doesn't represent this well. Like I want a mechanic by which someone can complete a basic (if difficult) task with enormous accuracy without automatically implying they are able to do the advanced task, even if it's easy for someone who knows what they are doing.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I love dmerceless' distinctions. I hope flavor text to that effect will appear in the final rules, and mechanical effects to support them.
I think the majority of skill feats, as they stand, should be folded into the proficiency levels as automatic bonuses for achieving them. For instance, maybe anybody with Mastery in climbing gains One-handed Climber.
The notion of levels of mastery automatically opening up new abilities is much more evocative and engaging than the current situation, where achieving a level of mastery merely allows me the OPTION to spend my feat resources on some lackluster new ability.
Every new increase in proficiency level should open a lot of new toys for that skill. And the skill feats that right now seem too limited and lame would seem really cool if they were bonuses for achieving a particular proficiency level.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
I've been doing something like Loreguard suggests in my PF1 game and it works well in PF2 also. I call it shepherding. The point is for an entire party to overcome a skill-based obstacle if they all agree to follow the direction and tips of the most skilled party member. It can never be used in encounter situations--this is only possible in the more leisurely timeframe of exploration mode.
Shepherding can be used for climbing, balancing, social encounters, research, and (most importantly) stealth.
First, everyone in the party must agree to strictly obey the point character for the duration of that task. (This means that a chaotic, lonewolf sort of character, who never acts like a team-player, can't benefit from this at all.) The point man is assumed to be giving detailed, verbal guidance to the team to manage the task, and they are assumed to be following direction exactly.
Second, everyone must attempt to Aid Another at their normal skill bonus. Every failure incurs a -2 on the point character's check, but a success gives no bonus at all.
Last, the point character rolls the skill normally, including all of the penalties incurred in step 2. If failure occurs, blame/consequences first fall on a random team member who failed to Aid Another, and only after that on the Team Leader.
For skill tasks out of Encounter mode, I allow the entire task to operate on a larger timescale. Thus, no Stealth checks for every MV action; no Climb checks for every MV action (these only occur in Encounter mode).
This allows me to run a team climbing up a cliff face, for instance, with a single skill check--the failure of which means somebody falls from a random height.
Or a single Stealth check for a team attempting to sneak through a half-mile of forest past an orcish encampment, failure meaning one of the armored characters is heard or seen.
Or a knowledgeable character sends all of his friends into certain sections of the library to scan books for a particular reference in order to benefit her research: again, one check.
Or a diplomatic character instructs everyone ahead of time how they can contribute when she presents their petition to the Queen.
The advantage of this is that difficult skill challenges can still challenge the entire party, with everyone participating, without everyone in the group having to have level-appropriate skills in everything. It allows the specialists to shine without stopping the adventure for everyone else.
My group has had a lot of fun with it.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Digging those shepherding mechanics, Yolande.
We — and by we I think I can include Paizo as well — all know that the proficiency system still needs some work, skill feats are mostly bland and very unbalanced (some skills like Acrobatics has awesome feats while others have basically nothing), and some other things. However, I'm here to tell a little story about how I've been using this system and why both me and my players are really loving it.
In both of the groups I DM for, I've written the following text to them and sent in our Whatsapp groups, explaining how the proficiency system is going to work at my table for skills:
"Your proficiency level basically determines the level of absurdity of the things you can try to do, and it grows exponentially with each new level. Some more in-depth explanation about each proficiency level with examples below:
Untrained - You are on the level of a normal person who has little to no experience doing that thing. You can try to do things that a normal human being can do naturally, things like trying improvised swimming, escaping a grapple, knowing rudimentary stuff about the most well-known religions, trying some improvised first aid or picking a pocket from someone who isn't paying much attention.
Trained - You are still on the level of a normal person, but one with training, being formal or informal. You can try to do a little more specific or demanding stuff, like trying to swim through a flowing river, moving through tree branches to find a spot to hide in a tree, knowing some more specific information about the most well-known religions, treating wounds like a person with proper training or picking a decent lock.
Expert - You are on the level of a skilled professional in that area of expertise. You can try to do things that a person without a lot of training wouldn't even bother with, like trying to climb a 2,5 meter wall and holding on top of it, jumping of said building and rolling when you reach the ground to take less damage, knowing things about religions that even most people from said...
Could you share your skill feat changes with us? I'm pretty curious.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
You sure dug deep to find this thread, eh, Captain? Even I didn't remember it existed, haha.
Well, I need to get my Fantasy Grounds files in my computer to check them, I'll give you more detailed information when I'm able to, but in general I removed or reworked most feats that just let you do things you should be able to do by just being Expert/Master/Legendary (in my opinion, of course), things like Wall Jump or that one that lets you jump 5 feet longer. Since now proficiency lets you do cool stuff on its own, I added mostly passive but significant feats that improve your general capabilities in that skill. One example I can remember is a Legendary Athletics feat that makes you passively immune to the Hampered condition and difficult terrain. You are such a good runner that nothing can slow you down.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Ain’t nothin’ gonna break a Legendary stride?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Ain’t nothin’ gonna break a Legendary stride?
I was thinking about Don't Stop me Now when writing this but that was waaay better, lol.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I believe strongly in auto-success based on proficiency. The rogue might have the worst Perception modifier in the group, but with Master training at low levels, she can auto-spot traps the clerics are hard pressed to notice.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Second, everyone must attempt to Aid Another at their normal skill bonus. Every failure incurs a -2 on the point character's check, but a success gives no bonus at all.
Very nice!
Been using something very similar, with larger penalties (success gives -2, failure gives -4) but everyone can roll and we use the best result. For two competent sneakers, the odds are better than for one. But taking the entire party along is HARD.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I think expert, master, and legend should be +1, +3, and +6 instead of +1, +2, and +3.
Or at least +1, +2, and +4.
Being Legendary by gaining another +1 over your last rank.... meh.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Currently, proficiency has a range of -4 to +3. Item bonuses have a range of -2 to +5. I'd suggest swapping these ranges. Give proficiency a range of -2 to +5 (possibly -4 to +5) and item bonuses a range of -2 to +3. This would move emphasis from a character's equipment and to the character themselves. Heroes should be central to their own stories. Items are just props.
This would keep the numbers of the restricted math, and allow proficiency and item bonuses to have the same range across all proficiencies; weapons, spells, armor, and magic.
Having a separate proficiency and/or item bonus range between skills and other proficencies is a bad idea that does not fit the PF2 model. This suggestion does fit the current math, keeping the range of total bonuses the same.
We'd need more proficiency rank names, something like
Untrained (lvl 0)
Trained (lvl 1)
Able (lvl 3)
Expert (lvl 6)
Master (Lvl 9)
Superior (lvl 12)
Legendary (lvl 15)
Currently, proficiency has a range of -4 to +3. Item bonuses have a range of -2 to +5. I'd suggest swapping these ranges. Give proficiency a range of -2 to +5 (possibly -4 to +5) and item bonuses a range of -2 to +3. This would move emphasis from a character's equipment and to the character themselves. Heroes should be central to their own stories. Items are just props.
This would keep the numbers of the restricted math, and allow proficiency and item bonuses to have the same range across all proficiencies; weapons, spells, armor, and magic.
Having a separate proficiency and/or item bonus range between skills and other proficencies is a bad idea that does not fit the PF2 model. This suggestion does fit the current math, keeping the range of total bonuses the same.
We'd need more proficiency rank names, something like
Untrained (lvl 0)
Trained (lvl 1)
Able (lvl 3)
Expert (lvl 6)
Master (Lvl 9)
Superior (lvl 12)
Legendary (lvl 15)
I LOVE the idea of swapping item and proficiency bonus tracks, since (as I've stated in a previous thread) that you can't make Lancelot very well in this system, since his gimmick is being such a badass he took out an entire bar full of armed knights with nothing but a bar stool and a iron ale tanker. I also like the auto-feature addition from proficiency that OP came up with, ith the caveat that it should really only apply to skills, and not arms, saves, or spells. (maybe spells, you can pull some creative BS with simple cantripping, and some of that might need restricting/enhancement with progression)
You sure dug deep to find this thread, eh, Captain? Even I didn't remember it existed, haha.
Well, I need to get my Fantasy Grounds files in my computer to check them, I'll give you more detailed information when I'm able to, but in general I removed or reworked most feats that just let you do things you should be able to do by just being Expert/Master/Legendary (in my opinion, of course), things like Wall Jump or that one that lets you jump 5 feet longer. Since now proficiency lets you do cool stuff on its own, I added mostly passive but significant feats that improve your general capabilities in that skill. One example I can remember is a Legendary Athletics feat that makes you passively immune to the Hampered condition and difficult terrain. You are such a good runner that nothing can slow you down.
Would love to see what you had here. I'm considering making some new skill feats of my own.