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I disagree, a lot of human learning is simply observing, training involves both observing and then attempting, to the point where you become competent. Since any critically thinking human can glean useful information from observing and experiencing then I see no reason why any PC is not able to at least imitate trained people after years of observing trained people. Thus I prefer adding levels to untrained checks because experience counts for something granted I do it at -4 or if that’s still not a large enough gap -5.Can you provide ONE example of a real person who got better at being stealthy simply by watching someone else be stealthy?
Can you provide ONE example of someone who got better at climbing simply by watching others climb?
And they have to be seriously meaningfully better.
I'd note the irony of how you try to make -4 (or even minus 5!!!!!) sound like this serious give, when you casually embrace +20 over 20 levels as no big deal. But the core statement is so divorced from reality (and you are the one claiming to invoke how things really work) that this really doesn't matter.
And this is why martials aren't allowed to have nice things.
Please provide ONE example of someone who can rip a hole in reality and make another plane, or someone who can fight 20-ft-tall giants with swords to match.
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I disagree, a lot of human learning is simply observing, training involves both observing and then attempting, to the point where you become competent. Since any critically thinking human can glean useful information from observing and experiencing then I see no reason why any PC is not able to at least imitate trained people after years of observing trained people. Thus I prefer adding levels to untrained checks because experience counts for something granted I do it at -4 or if that’s still not a large enough gap -5.Can you provide ONE example of a real person who got better at being stealthy simply by watching someone else be stealthy?
Can you provide ONE example of someone who got better at climbing simply by watching others climb?
And they have to be seriously meaningfully better.
I'd note the irony of how you try to make -4 (or even minus 5!!!!!) sound like this serious give, when you casually embrace +20 over 20 levels as no big deal. But the core statement is so divorced from reality (and you are the one claiming to invoke how things really work) that this really doesn't matter.
Well considering I’m not talking to you, no. Also because you wouldn’t be willing to furnish a valid, non contrived example to support your position so why should I be held to a standard you don’t even hold yourself to? Good day hun.
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I disagree, a lot of human learning is simply observing, training involves both observing and then attempting, to the point where you become competent. Since any critically thinking human can glean useful information from observing and experiencing then I see no reason why any PC is not able to at least imitate trained people after years of observing trained people. Thus I prefer adding levels to untrained checks because experience counts for something granted I do it at -4 or if that’s still not a large enough gap -5.Can you provide ONE example of a real person who got better at being stealthy simply by watching someone else be stealthy?
Can you provide ONE example of someone who got better at climbing simply by watching others climb?
And they have to be seriously meaningfully better.
I'd note the irony of how you try to make -4 (or even minus 5!!!!!) sound like this serious give, when you casually embrace +20 over 20 levels as no big deal. But the core statement is so divorced from reality (and you are the one claiming to invoke how things really work) that this really doesn't matter.
Survival instructor Bear Grylls makes television shows about surviving in the wild. One such show, Running Wild with Bear Grylls, teamed him up with a celebrity guest. They would helicopter or parachute into a wilderness area and travel to a designated pickup point while surviving in the wild. Some of the guests were athletes, but he also teamed up with actors, actresses, and one famous politician.
I saw episodes where he talked his guest through a climb that was difficult enough to look impressive on TV, call it DC 12. In Pathfinder we could model this as Aid with an expert Climbing Kit, but in that case Bear Grylls would have repeatedly had a critical success, +4 circumstance bonus, because some guests were untrained in climb without a significant Strength bonus.
Does this train the person in climb? No, but it would be a start and it ought to be something that we can duplicate in Pathfinder. My wife referenced those episodes when she insisted I give her expert climber barbarian a way to aid other climbers: Expert Climber Aiding Trained Climbers.
I have seen someone else learn a complex skill by watching someone else. My younger daughter was an excellent mimic as a toddler. Her older sister learned to walk by months of trial and error, and some amusing false starts (The older daughter used to lie on her belly with her limbs lifted in a Superman flying pose. I imagined her thinking, "I have my head, arms, and legs off the ground. Now if I can get my belly off the ground, too, then I can go places!" Sleep-deprived parents have odd imaginations.). The younger daughter watched her sister, mimicked her movements once her limbs were strong enough, and quickly learned to walk with few tumbles. She mostly skipped crawling.
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Sure BD, I’ll take the bait! I am ONE of those persons as are a number of people I know. Observational learning is real and for many tasks it takes only a couple minutes to see large improvements. As it is one of the things that you HAD to use caps to ask. I hunted a fair bit with family in my early teens. Hunting requires you to be quiet among other things (stealth). Now my stepdad and grandfather never thought to tell me about how to quietly move through a forest in the middle of autumn. I tromped on in and almost immediately realized I was being too loud. So with no prompting I watched how my elders moved and within a minute I was walking as quietly as they were. Is that enough PROOF for you BD?
Now go crawl back under your bridge.
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This is all still feeding into the reading of skill points that is ignoring the fact that level bonus IS STILL NOT ABOUT PROFICIENCY.
Ant can drown in a puddle. I cannot drown in a puddle, and it is not because I know how to swim and the ant doesn't, I am a freaking human and the puddle is a size of my foot. It is about literal POWER LEVELS.
Accept the abstraction.
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This is all still feeding into the reading of skill points that is ignoring the fact that level bonus IS STILL NOT ABOUT PROFICIENCY.
Ant can drown in a puddle. I cannot drown in a puddle, and it is not because I know how to swim and the ant doesn't, I am a freaking human and the puddle is a size of my foot. It is about literal POWER LEVELS.
Accept the abstraction.
Problem is, this analogy implies that a level 20 character is to a level 1 character what you are to an ant. And this, before counting feats, skill increases, or spellcasting.
It is an abstraction I can accept without much trouble. But there are a number of people who find it breaks immersion for them. Hence all this talk of learning to stealth from watching someone do it, swimmers born in deserts, smooth wall climbing, etc. I personally find these debates are often misguided, because attempting to closely mirror real world physics quickly leads into a rabbit hole of contradictions. But there's no denying that such feelings exist, and telling people to stuff it rarely helps anybody.
I prefer the more grounded view: Level reflects not just raw power, divine favor, and sheer luck, but also experience in the broadest sense. Many monsters tried to hit the wizard (often succeeding), he survived, so, perforce, he had to learn something about how to dodge blows. Watching the rogue climb the wall taught the basics to the fighter (indeed, this is how humans learn, for a great part). The barbarian acquired a modicum of religious knowledge from listening to the cleric's stories of her god around the campfire. Etc.
This is how things always worked for BAB and saves. There is no reason why it shouldn't work in the exact same way for skills and AC.
Also, we should remember that basic proficiency doesn't make anybody great at any skill. Tasks that require training remain out of reach. This also means that a GM can always decide the wall is so smooth that there's no hope of climbing it without some level of training. A well-run game doesn't need to break immersion, as PF2 gives the GM all the tools to prevent it.
This is all still feeding into the reading of skill points that is ignoring the fact that level bonus IS STILL NOT ABOUT PROFICIENCY.
Ant can drown in a puddle. I cannot drown in a puddle, and it is not because I know how to swim and the ant doesn't, I am a freaking human and the puddle is a size of my foot. It is about literal POWER LEVELS.
Accept the abstraction.
This is the crux of the issue I think. How much of an abstraction is "proficiency" supposed to be/how well are players able to accept it as such, especially when it is placed is such a direct relationship with another big and nebulous abstraction, "level."
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Don't apologize - pedantic solutions can be amazing solutions.
Just ask the World of Warcraft devs about the difference between "fatigued penalty" and "well rested bonus"...
Sure BD, I’ll take the bait! I am ONE of those persons as are a number of people I know. Observational learning is real and for many tasks it takes only a couple minutes to see large improvements. As it is one of the things that you HAD to use caps to ask. I hunted a fair bit with family in my early teens. Hunting requires you to be quiet among other things (stealth). Now my stepdad and grandfather never thought to tell me about how to quietly move through a forest in the middle of autumn. I tromped on in and almost immediately realized I was being too loud. So with no prompting I watched how my elders moved and within a minute I was walking as quietly as they were. Is that enough PROOF for you BD?
Now go crawl back under your bridge.
I'd argue that's really more a case of training. Your stepdad and grandfather were helping you learn how to move stealthily through the forest by providing physical, living examples for you to compare to and compete with. I'd argue you probably earned Trained levels of proficiency from this, whereas if you had a smarmy cousin who didn't want to hunt tagging along, and he/she refused to try to learn from your stepdad or grandfather, he/she would probably still count as untrained.
And maybe that terminology is part of the argument here.
I'm not a big fan of +lvl for untrained... but I've noticed that most of the arguments in its favor suggest that it makes sense for a character who has spent so much time hanging around sneaky rogues would have learned how to be stealthier, or lie better, or swim better or whathaveyou from all of their adventuring time. But isn't that training?
Likewise, the arguments against it are that it doesn't make sense for a wizard *without training* to dance around orcs without getting hit. And that makes sense -- if you've learned how to dance around orcs without getting hit, you're *trained*.
This isn't a TES game, and PF2's XP system doesn't have or support a "learn by doing" system, but the argument has so far...
It is my sincerest hope that another level of proficiency is added to the UTEML system.
If I can quick throw my 2 copper pieces in (having read none of the replies here because wow there's a lot):
I was really hoping that +1/level would be removed only from certain untrained skills.
One of my other favorite RPGs, Tenra Bansho Zero, got this. It had "general" skills and "trained" skills. With the former, everyone started with one point in the skill (meaning they needed to roll a 1 on a d6) and if you had a reasonably high attribute that corresponded to the skill, you didn't need to invest in it to succeed at basic tasks because you were rolling a crap-ton of dice. For instance, a PC might have high "Senses" but not invest in the skill "Notice", and he'd still succeed pretty reliably on Notice rolls. Similarly a strong character only invested in melee weapons could still fight reasonably well after being disarmed, since Unarmed is a general skill. "Trained" skills had zero points to start, and were impossible for anyone without, well, training. But becoming trained in a skill always bumped it up to two points, whether it started at zero or one.
To apply this idea to the playtest: skills like Perform, Lore and Thievery would be "training-required skills" that don't grant 1/level until you're trained. "General" skills would be Acrobatics and Athletics and other things that anybody can "pick up on the road", at least in a normal adventuring party. Having them be level-4 again would create weirdness at first level, so we could use level/2 or something. (Will not miss having so many negative skill values at first level, adding to the perception of PCs being incompetent by default)
I guess one issue here is whether you think someone being "trained" in a skill like athletics at first level should be more valuable than a character being naturally strong/dexterous/intelligent. I'm fine with it actually. The training is still valuable, and it comes with the promise the trained character will overtake the untrained, and the gap will widen.
I'm even okay with the "leap" from training in a new skill at high level. The PC has been around quite a while and has a lot of previous learning they can apply to the new thing they're trying to get good at.
The bonus that characters get from leveling is supposed to denote the overall experience they've gained while adventuring and becoming more capable in everything that they need to do. This is pretty much an abstracted version of what you're suggesting as a "Practiced" proficiency.
It was really simple using the proficiencies that the playtest provided to represent all gamuts of characters.
If the DM at any point in time thought that someone should not be able to perform a specific check without at least being trained in the skill then they could have simply made the challenge require someone be either trained or be able to succeed.
Untrained: The character has not dedicated any training to this skill. They can attempt basic challenges but are not able to attempt complex or niche uses of the skill.
Trained: The character has dedicated a portion of their time to training this skill more thoroughly. They are now capable of picking up some simple tricks that use this skill and are able to participate in more complex skill challenges.
Expert: The character has dedicated more of their time to training this skill and can be considered an expert. They are capable of picking up more advanced tricks that use this skill and are able to participate in complex skill challenges. Their proficiency may also grant them advantages when attempting certain challenges due to their depth of experience.
Master: The character has dedicated a significant portion of their time to mastering this skill and can be considered a true master. They are capable of picking up master level skill tricks that can allow them to attempt possibly supernatural uses of this skill. When attempting most skill challenges their depth of experience can afford them with possible shortcuts.
Legendary: The character has risen to legendary proficiency in this skill. They can be capable of truly supernatural feats such as falling from any height without damage or being able to scare someone to death through their intimidation. Their depth of experience is so vast that even niche uses of their skill should not be out of their reach.
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The majority of people were arguing that there wasn't a huge difference between Untrained and Legendary were only looking at the proficiency bonuses and not at the skill feats or the fact that raising the proficiency rank unlocks a LOT more uses of the skill.
I think the focus after that was put more onto people who were untrained being able to attempt fantastical things, while I think the majority of the complaints people had were that people who were trained or better didn't seem like they had that much of a better chance to succeed as opposed to the proficiency ranks below them.
I do definitely agree with the change that they're doing to the numbers. Though I'd suggest the following instead.
Untrained: -2 + Level
Trained: 2 + Level
Expert: 4 + Level
Master: 6 + Level
Legendary: 8 + Level
Doing this puts a 10 point difference, which can turn a 40% chance of success into a 90% chance of success. And it still leaves people who are untrained able to participate in level appropriate basic and trivial challenges.
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As far as the +level and UTEML mechanics go, I am sick to death of the endless, largely pointless debates. While my post could be easily used as an example for the pro +level side, in all honesty that was not its intended purpose. I was simply addressing BD’s interrupting call for proof that observational learning exists. Which anyone with even the loosest background in psychology or education (being a parent applies) knows it does and then as demanded provided an example.
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I've always thought of levels as showing the improvement in your general capability of entering deadly situations and combat and surviving.
HP -> Directly related to your survival
AC -> Directly related to your survival
Saves -> Directly related to your survival
Attack Bonus -> Being able to hit targets with spells and attacks -> Indirectly related to your survival
But skills? It's highly dependent on the situation, isn't it? One person might use a skill to improve their chances of survival while another might never even look at it. Certainly some skills are very loosely connected to your basic ability to survive a deadly situation, and more about making money or doing something useful. Given that there's such variety in skills, I think it makes sense to let players choose which skills are important for their survival and therefore they get better at as they level.
The concept that you're better at every facet of life just because you're a higher level character is extremely foreign and unwelcome to me.
Now I could be persuaded that certain basic uses of skills, like swimming to avoid drowning, or breaking out of a grapple to avoid getting choked to death, or other things that are very survival oriented could be considered directly related to survival and increase naturally with level. The problem is that untrained uses of skills can include inappropriately impressive stuff unless the "trained" gate is used to arbitrarily section off high DCs, in which case we don't need +lvl to untrained because the high DCs never come up for untrained people.
Here are some untrained uses of skills that at high +lvl, represent an uncharacteristically canny ability in a skill. These are things you can do just because you're high level but ostensibly untrained.
Balance/Maintain Balance: Cartwheel across an oiled tightrope in a hurricane while being hit with rocks
Break Open: You can smash through a wall
Climb: Scale a perfectly smooth wall in a rainstorm
Long Jump: Make a standing jump across a 30 foot chasm
Swim: Swim up a waterfall
These are just not things I want a high level character doing without any investment. A wheezing, 8 str 80 year old wizard shouldn't be able to punch down a wall just because they're high level. Again, if they were locked behind training, that's fine, but there are yet no guidelines about what DC the cutoff would be, and if there was I'd wager it would be in a range low enough that +lvl to untrained is unnecessary.
The majority of people were arguing that there wasn't a huge difference between Untrained and Legendary were only looking at the proficiency bonuses and not at the skill feats or the fact that raising the proficiency rank unlocks a LOT more uses of the skill.
I think the focus after that was put more onto people who were untrained being able to attempt fantastical things, while I think the majority of the complaints people had were that people who were trained or better didn't seem like they had that much of a better chance to succeed as opposed to the proficiency ranks below them.
I do definitely agree with the change that they're doing to the numbers. Though I'd suggest the following instead.
Untrained: -2 + Level
Trained: 2 + Level
Expert: 4 + Level
Master: 6 + Level
Legendary: 8 + LevelDoing this puts a 10 point difference, which can turn a 40% chance of success into a 90% chance of success. And it still leaves people who are untrained able to participate in level appropriate basic and trivial challenges.
I agree with your interpretation of the rules, and felt like it worked well to represent the gonzo high fantasy of Golarion.
The issue was that a lot of people couldn't see past the high numbers on every proficiency when looking at the character sheet and feel like it was impossible to get a measure of whether a character was good or bad at a thing objectively, like it was in PF1.
Then there was also the issue of gms (Misreading the rules) and seeing those higher numbers on everything, and arbitrarily using PC levels for determining the numbers on narrative challenges, making it feel like all characters were always on a treadmill because trees were becoming more difficult to climb without narrative explanations for why. The DD adventure itself made this mistake at times, because it was fundamentally a playtest, and about helping players test mechanics instead of narrative construction (something Paizo probably feels they have under control). Thus DCs for some things feel rather arbitrary, because the test was more about whether a DC of x level was a hold up here or not, and sometimes those numbers didn't make sense.
I am not sure if taking away level bonus to untrained proficiency is really going to fix the first problem, and fairly certain it wont fix the second problem.
Overall, I think that this is probably us going back and forth about a solution to fix a symptom of the larger issue of whether or not the proficiency system gives people the breadth of options and the specificity of focus to feel like they can create the characters they want within a fairly simple and mostly unified system. But PF2 is pretty committed to that system now, so it may very well be the case that dialing minor solutions to the symptomatic issues are going to be enough to bring enough people along for the ride of the new edition.
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At the very least, I still think that the PF2 Playtest got this right in an extremely simple and elegant way.
Problem:
This is a high level encounter against a basic use of a skill, but I don't believe that someone who is untrained should be able to attempt this.
Solution:
Apply a Proficiency Gate on the skill.
Examples
Balance/Maintain Balance: Cartwheel across an oiled tightrope in a hurricane while being hit with rocks.
Break Open: You can smash through a wall.
Climb: Scale a perfectly smooth wall in a rainstorm.
Long Jump: Make a standing jump across a 30 foot chasm.
Swim: Swim up a waterfall.
It's much more intuitive than trying to force realistic numerical gaps in a skill to represent what you feel some of those DC's might be. And it allows you to still challenge extremely skilled characters with normal challenges, even if they do have a much better chance of a success or critical success.
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To be sure, the proficiency gates are a very, very good idea. However, the lack of guidance on what constitutes a Trained action as opposed to an Untrained one kneecaps the system.
For example, maybe cartwheeling across an oiled tightrope in a hurricane while being pelted with rocks is a legendary task (I would personally say expert or master), but what about cartwheeling across a *dry* tightrope in a hurricane while being pelted by rocks?
9 times out of 10 a GM will err on the side of asking for a high DC but allowing the attempt, because the alternative is to just say no, which is never fun. This means, for quick GM rulings, what might be considered Legendary for us drops to Master in the heat of the moment, or even lower.
I think it's better to allow most things with just the Trained checkbox, with the higher proficiency levels unlocking very specific capabilities and feats. This way the trained folks don't keep bumping into the "No!" of proficiency gates unless they're trying to do very specifically limited things, and Untrained people don't have huge +lvl bonuses that only let them auto succeed at normal things.
The majority of people were arguing that there wasn't a huge difference between Untrained and Legendary were only looking at the proficiency bonuses and not at the skill feats or the fact that raising the proficiency rank unlocks a LOT more uses of the skill.
Depends on the skill. Arcana, for instance, has one skill feat in the playtest (Arcane Sense), while Deception and Acrobatics have a fair number (9 and 11, respectively). If we're going by skill feats, some of the skills have more "unlocks" than others. More skill feats will no doubt be added over time, but I don't know if that solves the underlying issue. (I really like the idea of skill feats, but I feel like some of the skill feats themselves may need some tuning.)
If we're going by GM discretion, that can vary from table to table--which is fine if you have a regular group and GM, but could be a problem for people who routinely play with different groups or in organized play. (PFS scenarios will most likely have to indicate what level of proficiency is required to make a check, I'm guessing, but that won't help with things players come up with on the fly.) There's not really a lot of guidelines for what constitutes an appropriate check at each level, which I believe is intentional, but may cause GMs (especially inexperienced GMs) difficulty determining what proficiency is needed for tasks that aren't obviously either really easy or really difficult.
I wonder if removing crit fails/successes for skills would help, in the absence of +level/skills? That way, you might not succeed at the check, but at least you don't make the situation worse. That could encourage the whole party to try helping with aid another in situations where it makes sense (e.g., Diplomacy to talk to someone).
EDIT: ninja'ed by WatersLethe, I see. :-)
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I disagree, a lot of human learning is simply observing, training involves both observing and then attempting, to the point where you become competent. Since any critically thinking human can glean useful information from observing and experiencing then I see no reason why any PC is not able to at least imitate trained people after years of observing trained people. Thus I prefer adding levels to untrained checks because experience counts for something granted I do it at -4 or if that’s still not a large enough gap -5.
My point was not to say that you can't learn from observation. The point isn't a matter of observation; it's a matter of a person putting in an effort to not only learn something but retain what they have learned.
It doesn't matter if someone gives me thorough instructions how to do something if for the next five years I never use that training and forget about it. With the automatically scaling abilities regardless of what your character does or the effort they put into something they will be getting better at it.
I would rather provide the player a choice of what they're progressing in than just doing it for them automatically because "reasons". A tabletop system is never going to accurately represent real world situations, but that doesn't excuse a mechanic that comes off as not only counterintuitive but serves to diminish the investments of other players.
This is besides the point that I believe +/level is wholly unnecessary to begin with, still I'd rather be terrible at things with a choice to not be than be seemingly adequate at things until I realize that number is really just fake (because even with my +20 relative to my level I may as well hope for a natural 20 anyways).
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How about a General Feat that allows any PC to make a DC X/Y/Z Check with a Skill they are Expert/Master/Legendary to give that PC a boost equal to YOUR Class Level?
This would in effect allow a Expert Stealth use "Helper Feat #1" to grant the Fighter with no training a +5 Class Bonus to the person they're helping. This will allow them to "catch up to speed" with the Trained User, but they still won't get a Proficiency bonus for the check.
However, the lack of guidance on what constitutes a Trained action as opposed to an Untrained one kneecaps the system.
For example, maybe cartwheeling across an oiled tightrope in a hurricane while being pelted with rocks is a legendary task (I would personally say expert or master), but what about cartwheeling across a *dry* tightrope in a hurricane while being pelted by rocks?
This is something that would be up to the judgement of the DM.
Right now, because of the way that skill checks were handled in D&D 3rd Edition, 3.5, and First Edition Pathfinder many people have tied difficulty solely to the DC. In those systems the more impossible a challenge is, the higher the DC.
The best expression of this would be looking at the Epic Level Handbook for D&D 3.5. It lists pretty much impossible uses of skills and then assigns a suitably ridiculous DC to the attempt. It is then expected that with the correct skills, feats, equipment, and or magical support a character will be able to get to the necessary skill rating to meet or beat those DCs.
With Second Edition Pathfinder however it offers Dungeon Masters a much simpler way to generate skill challenges that better represent the "Difficulty" of impossible checks using two separate values.
The first value that should be assigned is the proficiency required for a particular task.
This is something that should be specified by a module or adventure path developer when they are building them, and in the case of on the fly challenges the DM should use their best judgement to determine what would be appropriate. This could definitely use a little bit more guidance in the rulebook, though there will never be a 100% defined list.
The second value is the DC.
This is the measure of how difficult a particular check would be for someone who is proficient enough in the skill to achieve it. You can generate these numbers using the updated chart 10-2 on page 9 of the 1.6 Rulebook Update. This will likely be revised again when they change proficiency bonuses in the final book.
This chart will give you an idea of what an Easy, Medium, Hard, Incredible, and Ultimate challenge would represent for a given character level.
I am using the current numbers and not the new ones since they have not yet printed a new chart for 10-2 and those numbers are not yet final. Generating a challenge would look something like this.
Example Challenge
Lethe is currently level 12 and is a Master in Acrobatics. Her Dexterity Modifier is currently a +4 and she has an item that boosts her Acrobatics by an additional +2. This leaves her total modifier to her Balance check of +20.
Lethe the Monk is attempting to cartwheeling across an oiled tightrope in a hurricane while being pelted with rocks.
Based absurdity of what is going on in the description we will say that this will at the very least require a Master in Acrobatics.
Her group is currently adventuring in an area that is designed to be appropriate for their level though the tightrope was not designed to be an on level encounter. The fact that it's oiled, that there is a hurricane, and that she is currently being pelted by rocks however we'll say that it's just above their level at 13 and that if someone is proficient enough this would still qualify as a Hard challenge.
Using these facts we would set the challenge to the following.
Cartwheeling across an oiled tightrope in a hurricane while being pelted with rocks: Level 13 Hazard.
Acrobatics DC 30 (Master)
This means that Lethe would succeed by rolling a 10 or higher leaving her chances at:
5% Critical Success (20)
45% Success (10-19)
45% Failure (2-9)
5% Critical Failure (1)
When you look back and consider what would this encounter look like had the tightrope been Dry as opposed to Oiled, you could say that it's still just as absurd but it may be considered a Medium Challenge as opposed to a Hard giving it a DC of 28.
That would have changed her chances to roughly 60% chance to succeed.
15% Critical Success (18-20)
45% Success (8-17)
35% Failure (2-7)
5% Critical Failure (1)
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I disagree, a lot of human learning is simply observing, training involves both observing and then attempting, to the point where you become competent. Since any critically thinking human can glean useful information from observing and experiencing then I see no reason why any PC is not able to at least imitate trained people after years of observing trained people. Thus I prefer adding levels to untrained checks because experience counts for something granted I do it at -4 or if that’s still not a large enough gap -5.My point was not to say that you can't learn from observation. The point isn't a matter of observation; it's a matter of a person putting in an effort to not only learn something but retain what they have learned.
It doesn't matter if someone gives me thorough instructions how to do something if for the next five years I never use that training and forget about it. With the automatically scaling abilities regardless of what your character does or the effort they put into something they will be getting better at it.
I would rather provide the player a choice of what they're progressing in than just doing it for them automatically because "reasons". A tabletop system is never going to accurately represent real world situations, but that doesn't excuse a mechanic that comes off as not only counterintuitive but serves to diminish the investments of other players.
This is besides the point that I believe +/level is wholly unnecessary to begin with, still I'd rather be terrible at things with a choice to not be than be seemingly adequate at things until I realize that number is really just fake (because even with my +20 relative to my level I may as well hope for a natural 20 anyways).
Well said, however I disagree on a few grounds. First, simplicity, it’s much easier to tell a player you always add your level and a bonus or penalty based on how proficient you are at the subject than it is to explain to them you have a list of 20 some odd skills. You don’t get a bonus outside of a stat unless you invest a point that you get every level but you only get a small amount, unless you’re a rogue, and you can never invest more points in one skill than your level. Second, playability, it’s just plain faster to calculate PF2’s skills. They have less variables to work with and show all of them. With PF1 you have to take extra time to lookup and check your math because there is no consistency to begin with. Heaven forbid you have a player with an outdated sheet as well due to loss, I’ve had that happen both in PF1 and 2, we had a much easier time getting a PF2 character back from an outdated backup sheet.
Third, consistency, I like having everything run on the same engine, it’s easier to build for and sets some expectations about how a thing works.Fourth, adjustability, it’s easier to adjust PF2’s Proficiency Engine than it is to adjust the myriad systems that make up Pathfinder.
Now obviously your miles will vary, as wha people enjoy is subjective, and in our case it looks as though we fundamentally disagree as to what is enjoyable, you preferring(based on only what I can gather from your posts mind you) a complex and difficult system that uses numbers to enforce narrative (PF1), and I preferring a simple uniform system that enforces narrative with non numerical elements and numerical elements working in conjunction) PF2 and to an extent Starfinder) in this split I see little chance of compromise from our end so I bid you good day and wish you the best of luck and the most fun possible at your table.
If we're going by GM discretion, that can vary from table to table--which is fine if you have a regular group and GM, but could be a problem for people who routinely play with different groups or in organized play.
Yeah, I can definitely agree with you here. When playing in homebrew campaigns you'll usually want to at least train the skills that you intend to use for your character. While leveling up you can feel out how the Dungeon Master for your campaign judges proficiency before you make any specific commitments. If you do make mistakes though Retraining is always an option!
I’m just dropping by to remind you all that this thread is a big ‘I like it / I don’t like it’ rather than about whether or not this change is good for the game or how it affects it.
S’all.
*tips fedora*
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I disagree, a lot of human learning is simply observing, training involves both observing and then attempting, to the point where you become competent. Since any critically thinking human can glean useful information from observing and experiencing then I see no reason why any PC is not able to at least imitate trained people after years of observing trained people. Thus I prefer adding levels to untrained checks because experience counts for something granted I do it at -4 or if that’s still not a large enough gap -5.Can you provide ONE example of a real person who got better at being stealthy simply by watching someone else be stealthy?
Can you provide ONE example of someone who got better at climbing simply by watching others climb?
And they have to be seriously meaningfully better.
I'd note the irony of how you try to make -4 (or even minus 5!!!!!) sound like this serious give, when you casually embrace +20 over 20 levels as no big deal. But the core statement is so divorced from reality (and you are the one claiming to invoke how things really work) that this really doesn't matter.
And this is why martials aren't allowed to have nice things.
Please provide ONE example of someone who can rip a hole in reality and make another plane, or someone who can fight 20-ft-tall giants with swords to match.
As I specifically noted, he was specifically claiming that this mechanic was consistent with the way things really work. So your reply moves the goal posts into another stadium where they are playing a completely different game.
If you do want to go there, I'll simply point out that I have clear genre based expectations of what character should and should not be able to do. Super feats of magic are included in those expectations. Clanky dwarves sneaking around just because they have a big number is not within that genre expectation. Bookworm wizards climbing cliffs and swimming great rivers without magic is not in that genre expectation. Naked wizards dodging orc greatswords while in an antimagic zone is not within that genre expectation.
So, if you want to look at reality as a guide, the model fails.
If you want to look at fantasy as a guide, the model fails.
If you are going to say one and then bait and switch to the other, then your approach fails.
Martials have a lot of great things in my game. Just ask the players. They just don't have silly genre busting big numbers for no reason.
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Sure BD, I’ll take the bait! I am ONE of those persons as are a number of people I know. Observational learning is real and for many tasks it takes only a couple minutes to see large improvements. As it is one of the things that you HAD to use caps to ask. I hunted a fair bit with family in my early teens. Hunting requires you to be quiet among other things (stealth). Now my stepdad and grandfather never thought to tell me about how to quietly move through a forest in the middle of autumn. I tromped on in and almost immediately realized I was being too loud. So with no prompting I watched how my elders moved and within a minute I was walking as quietly as they were. Is that enough PROOF for you BD?
Now go crawl back under your bridge.
Yes, the classic "there are no blue zebras" which is immediately followed by people coming out of the woodwork to say they see blue zebras all the time.
No. It isn't proof at all. I have no idea how stealthy your stepdad and grandfather were. But claiming you became an expert in stealth within a minute is a remarkable claim requiring quite a bit more than saying so.
The superbowl is in a few weeks. Apparently everyone will be a star quarterback come February 4.
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Devlopmentally speaking. Basically everyone got better at things by simply watching others do so. Almost every child does this naturally.
They only get better at things they practice a lot.
To use the model, all children are experts or better at walking and talking by the age of 4 and they have many many dozens of hours practice.Children do not remotely become good at everything they see.
There is a persistent fallacy here that because we virtually always require instruction and/or examples to emulate in practice that you can then ignore the practice part. So people are pointing to watching and waving there hands and saying "don't look at that guy spending hundreds of hours practicing behind that curtain". Watching + a ton of practice is not remotely learning by simply watching.
I know of a lot of great guitar players who were never trained. Thus you can claim they learned to play the guitar simply by copying. But you would be ignoring the massive time spent practicing.
Learning the idea by observation is common. Becoming expert at a skill without working at that skill is virtually unheardof, with maybe some really extreme "savant" type stories.
Not a single example provided in this thread has skipped the training portion, save the wild claim of personal mastery of stealth in a minute. And a lot more evidence is needed in that case.
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Edge beat me to it. But yes BD if you look at the post of yours that myself and others were responding to we fulfilled the criteria you asked for and now you’re just moving the goalposts. It’s hilariously blatant.
Also, as a side note. When did I claim that I was an expert in stealth? Now you’re not just being contrary but putting words in my mouth.
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Devlopmentally speaking. Basically everyone got better at things by simply watching others do so. Almost every child does this naturally.They only get better at things they practice a lot.
To use the model, all children are experts or better at walking and talking by the age of 4 and they have many many dozens of hours practice.Children do not remotely become good at everything they see.
There is a persistent fallacy here that because we virtually always require instruction and/or examples to emulate in practice that you can then ignore the practice part. So people are pointing to watching and waving there hands and saying "don't look at that guy spending hundreds of hours practicing behind that curtain". Watching + a ton of practice is not remotely learning by simply watching.
I know of a lot of great guitar players who were never trained. Thus you can claim they learned to play the guitar simply by copying. But you would be ignoring the massive time spent practicing.
Learning the idea by observation is common. Becoming expert at a skill without working at that skill is virtually unheardof, with maybe some really extreme "savant" type stories.
Not a single example provided in this thread has skipped the training portion, save the wild claim of personal mastery of stealth in a minute. And a lot more evidence is needed in that case.
But where does it talk about spending time doing an activity being a requirement of training in that activity in any version of pathfinder? The game has never represented learning in a realistic or time based manner. Should my character hit level 4 overnight and suddenly get to be a wizard? Maybe not, but making rules that say I can’t has never worked out well for D&D like game systems. Level has always represented somewhat arbitrary benchmarks of competency and growth based on what the player wants the character to become, not what they have been. I am not attempting to invalidate your overall sentiment that you don’t enjoy play with automatic and universal progression, but PF1’s system represented an equally unreal system based upon player desire with the equally serious issue that players could easily make right choices and wrong choices for development, based upon the player’s system mastery.
But where does it talk about spending time doing an activity being a requirement of training in that activity in any version of pathfinder? The game has never represented learning in a realistic or time based manner.
Point of order. Training was always carrying the retroactive assumption of having been practicing. This is most evident in wizards learning new spells, the wizard is assumed to have been working on spells during an adventure. Languages were another similar abstraction.
Skill ranks were just a way to put into the hands of the player the ability to say what their character has been training.
But where does it talk about spending time doing an activity being a requirement of training in that activity in any version of pathfinder? The game has never represented learning in a realistic or time based manner.Point of order. Training was always carrying the retroactive assumption of having been practicing. This is most evident in wizards learning new spells, the wizard is assumed to have been working on spells during an adventure. Languages were another similar abstraction.
Skill ranks were just a way to put into the hands of the player the ability to say what their character has been training.
The issue with this for the sake of determining whether or not a character would be able to apply their life experiences to a specific task at hand, (ie add +level to something that they might be untrained in), is that it essentially allows the decision to come down to player choice then, as to whether their character is objectively terrible at something, i.e. has never considered doing it, or whether they have been observing well enough to possibly succeed at the check. This supports a system of skill gates for GMs to say no your character can't do that + the ability for players to voluntarily not succeed at those checks. Why would it be ok fro characters to decide this at level markers (by actively deciding their character is going to become trained in at something they have never done before) and not generally in play?
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The issue with this for the sake of determining whether or not a character would be able to apply their life experiences to a specific task at hand, (ie add +level to something that they might be untrained in), is that it essentially allows the decision to come down to player choice then, as to whether their character is objectively terrible at something, i.e. has never considered doing it, or whether they have been observing well enough to possibly succeed at the check. This supports a system of skill gates for GMs to say no your character can't do that + the ability for players to voluntarily not succeed at those checks. Why would it be ok fro characters to decide this at level markers (by actively deciding their character is going to become trained in at something they have never done before) and not generally in play?
But where does it talk about spending time doing an activity being a requirement of training in that activity in any version of pathfinder? The game has never represented learning in a realistic or time based manner.Point of order. Training was always carrying the retroactive assumption of having been practicing. This is most evident in wizards learning new spells, the wizard is assumed to have been working on spells during an adventure. Languages were another similar abstraction.
Skill ranks were just a way to put into the hands of the player the ability to say what their character has been training.
I had been distracted by the discussion of how people learn, but Unicore has pointed out the heart of the issue and returned me to my senses. This is a discussion of a Pathfinder game mechanic.
The key comment on this issue was comment #346.
I disagree, a lot of human learning is simply observing, training involves both observing and then attempting, to the point where you become competent. Since any critically thinking human can glean useful information from observing and experiencing then I see no reason why any PC is not able to at least imitate trained people after years of observing trained people. Thus I prefer adding levels to untrained checks because experience counts for something granted I do it at -4 or if that’s still not a large enough gap -5.This has probably been said, but I figure I'll toss it in there. Much of the issues with training can be resolved by providing training feats towards things beyond just skills, such as "armor training" and "weapon training" with level gates that allow you to spend class/general/skill feats (whichever makes the most sense) to improve those despite your class not giving them to you automatically.
This way if you want to have a gishy wizard you can beyond multiclassing (at the cost of class features or some other benefit). This would also increase customization options.
I really don't see a problem that a 20th level monk who's never worn armor and has trained his whole life without it would have issue with putting something on as restricting as armor. Armor will limit your mobility in ways that someone not used to it would need to adapt to and thus justifies the +level being dropped entirely.
I also see the same as true for any kind of weapon beyond simple weapons. Martial and by extension Exotic/Rare weapons should always require devoted training to be competent with. It takes years of training to be good with swords, specialized polearms, bows and even axes. So yeah, a Wizard watching the Fighter hit things for 20 levels shouldn't magically make him better at swords any more than me watching HEMA duels would make me better at using a sword in an actual fight.
If Paizo wants to model that massive experience gradually increases proficiency bonus in untrained skills, then they can say that untrained grants +level/2 or that it grants +0 up to 5th level and +level-5 at higher levels. Either way, +0 for untrained, +level for untrained, or anything inbetween, we players will invent an explanation that suits our roleplaying. Emn1ty has an explanation for +0, MER-c has an explanation for inbetween, and beforehand we had many explanations for +level. Plausibility is not the issue.
Gameplay is the issue. A 15th-level party encounters a raging river that had been an obstacle when they were 7th level. The GM did not build a bridge across it while they earned 8 more levels, so they have to cross it again. The wizard can't swim (untrained in Athletics). He also exhausted the spells that would help.
Can the wizard dog paddle across the river well enough because he is 15th-level? Can the rogue, expert in Athletics, help the wizard across while the fighter and cleric, trained in Athletics, swum across on their own? Do they have a portable raft in their backpack? Or do they camp for the night to refresh spells, delayed greatly by a hazard far below their level?
I prefer the expert rogue helping the wizard, because I like teamwork. A Pathfinder Society game has less opportunity to match up expert skills to untrained skills, so the game might need individual solutions, too.
Consider another scenario. The cleric loses his +3 mace due to a clever enemy Disarm. The fighter offers to lend him his +1 cold iron warhammer, which he carries only for the special material. Alas, the warhammer is a martial weapon and the cleric is trained only in simple weapons. But a warhammer is like a mace. Does any of the cleric's skill with the mace care over to the warhammer?
I myself would let the cleric use the warhammer as an improvised mace, dealing only 1d6 bludgeoning damage like a mace rather than 1d8 bludgeoning damage like a warhammer, and have it count as only a standard weapon rather than an expert-quality weapon for attack rolls because the cleric does not know how to take advantage of its superb balance (oh, wait, losing the +1 item bonus from expert does not matter when it gets a +1 item bonus from its potency rune. That's a shame, because now I have to explain it as a -1 circumstance penalty, which could have unexpected interactions). That makes more sense to me than saying that the cleric has +level-5 to hit and full damage for all martial and exotic weapons.
I improvise rules a lot. I view the roleplaying game rules as an approximation for what the characters are doing in the story, and if the rules have a gap, I fill the gap. Thus, I don't worry about the exact Pathfinder 2nd Edition rules. However, rules written in a flexible style are easier to improvise with.
Well said, however I disagree on a few grounds. First, simplicity, it’s much easier to tell a player you always add your level and a bonus or penalty based on how proficient you are at the subject than it is to explain to them you have a list of 20 some odd skills. You don’t get a bonus outside of a stat unless you invest a point that you get every level but you only get a small amount, unless you’re a rogue, and you can never invest more points in one skill than your level.
I don't think in a game with as many mechanics as PF2 saying that you only add your level to trained skills is any more complex than saying you add it to all of them. In fact, I'd argue it's simpler, because the player need only worry about updating skills relevant to their character each level rather than updating the 5-10 skills they never use or even care about.
Second, playability, it’s just plain faster to calculate PF2’s skills. They have less variables to work with and show all of them. With PF1 you have to take extra time to lookup and check your math because there is no consistency to begin with. Heaven forbid you have a player with an outdated sheet as well due to loss, I’ve had that happen both in PF1 and 2, we had a much easier time getting a PF2 character back from an outdated backup sheet.
It won't be any slower, in fact the current system is easier because -4 always was throwing me for a loop. And no you need to add even less because you don't have to do it on every skill just skills that matter. The only thing that would matter in the scenario you've described is remembering which skills were/were not trained. It's really not that hard.
Third, consistency, I like having everything run on the same engine, it’s easier to build for and sets some expectations about how a thing works.
Consistency is only desirable when it makes sense. And while adding +level to completely neglected skills makes sense or not is debatable I'd say let players focus on the positive, constructive and relevant things for their character rather than having them constantly bump up numbers for things they may not care about.
Fourth, adjustability, it’s easier to adjust PF2’s Proficiency Engine than it is to adjust the myriad systems that make up Pathfinder.
Now obviously your miles will vary, as wha people enjoy is subjective, and in our case it looks as though we fundamentally disagree as to what is enjoyable, you preferring(based on only what I can gather from your posts mind you) a complex and difficult system that uses numbers to enforce narrative (PF1), and I preferring a simple uniform system that enforces narrative with non numerical elements and numerical elements working in conjunction) PF2 and to an extent Starfinder) in this split I see little chance of compromise from our end so I bid you good day and wish you the best of luck and the most fun possible at your table.
The lack of a +level bonus to untrained skills is barely more complex than adding it to all of them. But to give you an idea I actually think +level is unnecessarily making the game more complex. It drowns the better and more interesting proficiency system under number bloat that isn't needed. I'd rather remove it all together so everything becomes simpler and more predictable.
One DC table, high AC is the same AC at every level, high hit modifiers are the same at every level, etc. I'm perfectly fine with PF2 only giving me a grand total of (using the new proficiency numbers) +15 to a Legendary Fighter with 20 strength and a +2 sword. Rather than the +25 or whatever they might actually get with level bonus added in.
You want to talk about simplicity and ease of play, why not drop having to update the entire sheet every level? But that's another topic and we as a community already know Paizo isn't going to drop +level. So instead they're trying to modify it to make the nonsensical pieces of +level go away when an easier solution is to drop it entirely.
Let's say your character is trying to listen in on a conversation between 2 NPCs in the local tavern.
He needs to move within earshot of the NPCs' table, without drawing attention to himself, and he also needs to be able to blend in with the crowd once he's there, and make it appear as though he is just another tavern patron.
I'd imagine that would fall under a very basic use of stealth, but I imagine that a character that was good at stalking prey in the woods might not necessarily be well equipped to complete the task.
Side question; how worried about needing a Feat to pick out just 2 voices in a crowded room should we be?
Cause that's something I could totally see needing a Skill feat for.
Warhammer as Mace..
In this specific example I'd likely just treat it as an untrained weapon.
While a Warhammer could potentially be seen as similar to a mace the balance of the weapon and the way that you need to strike with it is different enough from a mace to matter to the wielder.
I would however reward players for practicing with alternative weapons regularly in their downtime. Using the proficiency numbers as of playtest update 1.6 I would represent that as treating an Untrained Weapon as -2 instead of -4.