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So I've argued in great detail that skill feats need to be improved. I thought I would put my money where my mouse is, and so I've begun the process of re-writing the general feats chapter. I'm doing this in a way that alters as few rules as possible outside of the feats chapter, so hopefully it can easily be tested out in my own game and anyone else who is interested.
Here it is. . Still a work in progress, but I'm quite fond of some of it. HIGHLIGHTS!
*Collapsed Adopted Ancestry and Cultural Familiarity into one non-skill feat, with a language to boot.
*Collapsed Quick Squeeze, Nimble Crawl, and Legendary Contortionist into one feat.
* Collapsed Powerful Leap and Rapid Mantel into one feat.
* Collapsed the rest of the climb feats into one.
*Collapsed Swim feats into one.
*Wild Empathy is now a Nature feat.
*Fantastic Leap is now a Legendary Athletics feat.
*Arcane Sense scales into the wizard/sorcerer Magic Sense feat.
*Collapsed Ranger Swift Tracker feat into Experienced Tracker. (Could be made into 2 skill feats instead.)
*Battle Cry extends the range of Demoralize by 30 feet.
*Used Occult Skill Unlocks of PF1 to create feats for Occultism and Religion.
*Added Faith Healing, Legendary Gatecrasher, Legendary Understudy, and Legendary Tumbler.
*Altered Forager to allow for usage in Exploration mode or while performing another downtime activity. I'm quite fond of this one.
*Assurance now simply treats failures as critical failures. This is more powerful, but my goal is to make all of the skill feats appealing enough to where mere risk mitigation isn't the most attractive strategy.
*Automatic Knowledge currently doesn't use Assurance, though I suppose it could be added back as a prerequisite. It simply allows you to roll a free action knowledge check when initiative is rolled.
*Removed Student of the Canon, unmistakable lore, Charming Liar, Shameless Request, Hobnobber, and Courtly Graces.
Hobnobber might get added back in. There are a lot of very situational feats like that left, which I can't quite convince myself to remove because they seem handy in certain sorts of campaigns.
Please, give me your thoughts! And forgive any current typos. I'm very tired and just want to get this up before I pass out. Also, nods to Fuzzypaws, at least one of these ideas came from him.
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That's actually amazing. I know you were curious about my version of this stuff, but I'm traveling non-stop for a month or so by now so it's kind of hard. But, really, yours is a lot better, I'm probably going to steal this for my upcoming PF2 Rise of the Runelords game.
This is awesome!
One thing I noticed, if you have assurance in acrobatics (no crit fail) and also steady balance (fall on crit fail) you are immune to falling?
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Glad you guys like it. :)
Dmerceless, I liked your idea about improving what proficiency unlocked, but it felt harder to implement easily. Adding a feat is easier to introduce to a system than default rules options. Now, almost all of the skill feats improve as your proficiency does, which creates a similar effect. It also means you get more bang for your buck with both a skill feat and a skill increase.
Morphail: as written, you are correct. Hadn't noticed that, but I'm not sure it is a bad thing. Assurance athletics pretty much renders you immune to falling while climbing, right? And that's with default Assurance, not Assurance 2.0. Two skill feats to never fail in a very specific scenario feels pretty OK. I mean, Cat Fall eventually negates all falling damage and Kip Up makes being knocked prone pretty irrelevant. They already take most of the sting out of losing your balance.
Another interaction that wasn't obvious is that Assurance and Dubious Knowledge means you always recall at least one correct piece of information on a knowledge check. That's also kind of fun. You could already do this with Lore but now you can do this with more broadly applicable skills as well. Still, Assurance means not taking Arcane Senses, Object Reading, Wild Empathy, or Faith Healing, and you still get some wrong info out of the deal.
When I redid the Feats there were some ones that I just removed, though, because they were... pretty stupid. An example: Quick Intimidation. I don't think the rules should really tell me how much the character need to talk to someone before trying to Coerce them, even less so should a feat exist that let's you... do it in less time?
Also, in most of the intimidation things you've put the entire effect of the feat in bold instead of just the word Prerequisites. Not something huge but a little formating issue.
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About Natural Healer, maybe make the bonus from foraging an item bonus instead of a circumstance bonus. This way people can Aid ("help me look for a root the color of blood, our friend is dying!") or inspire competence and so on.
It will also mean that it Does Not stack with bonuses from alchemical and magical medicines (so you don't forage for leaves if you have a Doctor's Marvelous Medicine, and real physicians and natural healers don't get along...)
When I redid the Feats there were some ones that I just removed, though, because they were... pretty stupid. An example: Quick Intimidation. I don't think the rules should really tell me how much the character need to talk to someone before trying to Coerce them, even less so should a feat exist that let's you... do it in less time?
Also, in most of the intimidation things you've put the entire effect of the feat in bold instead of just the word Prerequisites. Not something huge but a little formating issue.
Yeah, quick intimidation is weird. I felt that way more strongly about Group Coercion and Group Impression, because multiple people hearing the same words should probably not require a feat.
I'm not really sure why Quick Intimidation exists, as I'm pretty it isn't supposed to let you Coerce someone hostile mid-encounter. At least Glad Hand provides that defacto reroll, which is why I left it in. Might remove QI. I could buff it like Glad Hand, but Intimidate doesn't feel like it needs any more love...
morphail: LOVE IT. Done.
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I really like my new Forager. I feel like the way it scales with proficiency really captures the difference between someone who is trained but still has to devote most of their time and energy to the task, and an expert who can do this while traveling or working on relevant projects like crafting a spear. The latter would represent most heroes who successfully choose to live out in the wilderness, or nomadic communities.
For master I was shooting for Aragorn-- able to keep their party fed consistently, even if they are just disappearing for a while while the party is making camp and coming back with a stag in a silly amount of time. And a Legendary Forager can feed a small community solely on the literal fruits of their labor, perhaps as the Legendary Medic treats said community for their mysterious plague.
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I still think Weapon Proficiency as a feat needs changed, but it would require reworking weapon proficiency as a concept. One axiom I'm going to assert is that given an infinite number of feats, a character who begins proficient in no weapons or armor should be able to recreate the starting proficiencies of any class. The current feat fails that because it makes you jump to "All martial", when classes can start with individual martial weapons.
What I would do is have proficiency be on a per-group basis, where you pick some number of groups to be trained in for every class, the fighter class abilities to advance proficiency let you raise so many groups by one step, and, pertinent to this thread, the Weapon Proficiency feat reads along the lines of:
I would have liked a much more thorough change to the weapon proficiency system. "All Martial " is a bit boring. I think that proficiency should be weapon group based. for examples that barbarians are trained with 2+int weapon groups plus the brawling group, rangers are experts with 1 weapon group (not including brawling, pole arms and flails maybe), fighters are experts with more weapon groups and not limited in their choices, and so on.
In this case the weapon proficiency feat will be "if you are Trained with at least one weapon group you are trained with an additional weapon group. Your proficiency with this weapon group increases to the maximum weapon proficiency you have (so when you advance to Master with a particular group, this group is advanced to Master too).Same idea would work for classes that have individual weapon training (add more specific weapons at your highest proficiency)
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I really like these! Might consider using them over the skill feats as written in the podcast I'm running...
Nice! Has the first episode dropped yet?
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I like what I see! (ok, I didn't get a chance to read EVERY item but ...)
I've promised my PF2.0 playtest group a free rebuild after they finally finish the intro quest (we play ... infrequently).
Barring an official update in the next couple weeks (fingers crossed), I'm now planning on offering yours!
While the Playtest was quite brisk, (ok, Frantic), I'm impressed with the sheer number of people, like yourself, who have stepped up to
"put my money where my mouse is"
and created something to help the burgeoning PF2.0 community, and better the inevitable final product.
Thanks Garnackle. BTW, the mouse line was totally a typo for mouth, but it actually kind of works in the context of click-baity thread titles. :)
I have noticed a potential problem. Assurance (Thievery) removes any chance of setting off a trap when you Disables Device. Essentially that means that if you the minimum proficiency and tools you will automatically succeed at disabling any trap eventually with no real risk, which makes having a DC at all kind of pointless. This basically prevents disabling devices from ever being an interesting moment, even more so than in PF1. (PF1 Take 10 meant you had a very narrow range between "this trap is auto-success" and "this trap is undoable" based on your PCs bonus, which of course didn't play nicely with all how much said bonuses could vary.)
Now, as discussed, Assurance preventing you from losing your balance, falling when climbing, or always successfully swimming seems all well and good. Those are rare enough that investing a feat to avoid them fine. But those are narrow uses of otherwise broad skills. Something about removing the interactivity of thievery's biggest use seems wrong.
Then again, traps are just tricky to make fun in general. I dunno.
Also, I have been enjoying having critical failure conditions on combat maneuvers while removing their multiple attack penalty, and I'm hesitant to lose those.
Thanks Garnackle. BTW, the mouse line was totally a typo for mouth, but it actually kind of works in the context of click-baity thread titles. :)
I have noticed a potential problem. Assurance (Thievery) removes any chance of setting off a trap when you Disables Device. Essentially that means that if you the minimum proficiency and tools you will automatically succeed at disabling any trap eventually with no real risk, which makes having a DC at all kind of pointless. This basically prevents disabling devices from ever being an interesting moment, even more so than in PF1. (PF1 Take 10 meant you had a very narrow range between "this trap is auto-success" and "this trap is undoable" based on your PCs bonus, which of course didn't play nicely with all how much said bonuses could vary.)
Now, as discussed, Assurance preventing you from losing your balance, falling when climbing, or always successfully swimming seems all well and good. Those are rare enough that investing a feat to avoid them fine. But those are narrow uses of otherwise broad skills. Something about removing the interactivity of thievery's biggest use seems wrong.
Then again, traps are just tricky to make fun in general. I dunno.
Also, I have been enjoying having critical failure conditions on combat maneuvers while removing their multiple attack penalty, and I'm hesitant to lose those.
I think the issue is any rapidly repeated skill use. The most common result when trying to disable a trap is "nothing happens.* Players are expected to just roll repeatedly while the GM says yes or no over and over. If Assurance could only could be used once when attempting a particular task, that would make it still beneficial since the trap disabler could always give a trap a go to see if the direct approach will work, but any attempts after that are at risk.
It's also a feat that's taken per skill, unless that's been changed. Making an exclusion for disabling traps with any skill, or similar situations where failure would have no impact other than maybe ten minutes of time used, is also an option.
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I think the issue is any rapidly repeated skill use. The most common result when trying to disable a trap is "nothing happens.* Players are expected to just roll repeatedly while the GM says yes or no over and over. If Assurance could only could be used once when attempting a particular task, that would make it still beneficial since the trap disabler could always give a trap a go to see if the direct approach will work, but any attempts after that are at risk.
It's also a feat that's taken per skill, unless that's been changed. Making an exclusion for disabling traps with any skill, or similar situations where failure would have no impact other than maybe ten minutes of time used, is also an option.
Yeah, you've hit the nails on the head. I'm just not sure what the most elegant solution is. Making a feat that works for all skills except one feels clunky and cluttered.
Adding a note that it can applies to your first roll against a given DC might work though-- it gives our trapsmith a one time safety net but still leaves them with a possibility to set it off. It also means there is a risk to continually badgering an NPC with Requests, or trying to grapple the same dragon over and over.
I think the issue is any rapidly repeated skill use. The most common result when trying to disable a trap is "nothing happens.* Players are expected to just roll repeatedly while the GM says yes or no over and over. If Assurance could only could be used once when attempting a particular task, that would make it still beneficial since the trap disabler could always give a trap a go to see if the direct approach will work, but any attempts after that are at risk.
It's also a feat that's taken per skill, unless that's been changed. Making an exclusion for disabling traps with any skill, or similar situations where failure would have no impact other than maybe ten minutes of time used, is also an option.
Yeah, you've hit the nails on the head. I'm just not sure what the most elegant solution is. Making a feat that works for all skills except one feels clunky and cluttered.
Adding a note that it can applies to your first roll against a given DC might work though-- it gives our trapsmith a one time safety net but still leaves them with a possibility to set it off. It also means there is a risk to continually badgering an NPC with Requests, or trying to grapple the same dragon over and over.
I will note that skills other than Thievery cab be required to disable a trap. Religion is needed to get rid of ghosts, for example.
"X times per day, you may turn a critical failure into a failure for a skill check using this skill."
Not quite as useful to skills that have milder and more frequent critical failures, though. Crafting benefits a lot since it's a downtime activity and you can't fail more than once a day anyways.
"You must wait X hours before using this ability again."
Requires the GM to track time which is always annoying.
"Just don't make disabling traps take forever and be boring gosh."
Wow I love that feat use that one.
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Perhaps something like
Assurance
As a reaction, when you critically fail a check with the associated skill, you can make another attempt: use the second result instead.
It adds a cost, a condition (having a free reaction) and a hance of failure...
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Perhaps something like
Assurance
As a reaction, when you critically fail a check with the associated skill, you can make another attempt: use the second result instead.It adds a cost, a condition (having a free reaction) and a hance of failure...
Yeah, but it also means you can potentially turn a critical fail into a critical success. Unless your reaction is needed elsewhere it actually makes rolling a critical failure better than a normal failure. You generally aren't making more than one skill check a round anyway.
"Once per challenge" is still my favorite so far. It also has fun interactions with another potential house rule I've been toying around with: only critical failures on a stealth check make you seen if enemies are completely unaware of you. On a failure you just arouse their suspicion, probably enough for them to Seek you. You may become "sensed" and the GM may have you roll stealth vs perception for initiative, but you still have a chance to re-hide and get away.
Having Assurance will work like it does for Thievery: one extra shot before the poop hits the fan on a nat 1, but still leaves you with a danger of screwing up.
Edit: Actually, that house rule could make a pretty decent skill feat. Might add it in as a way to codify it.
So this is what I have so far for the stealth feat:
FAST FADE FEAT 1, Reaction1
Prerequisites trained in Stealth
Trigger: You fail a Sneak Check against a creature that was unaware of you and initiative hasn’t been rolled yet
You quickly duck and hope they didn’t actually see you. When initiative is rolled, the enemy isn’t sure of your presence yet and must succeed at a Seek action on their to verify it. They otherwise treat you as sensed in your current location. If you act before them, you may attempt to Sneak away to avoid being discovered. If the creature fails to Seek you, they may decide it was only their imagination or otherwise dismiss you. It is up to your GM if and when they decide this,
Some especially canny creatures may not make it obvious they have spotted you. These creatures may attempt a Deception check against your Perception DC before initiative is rolled; on a success you don’t know they spotted you and can't use this reaction.
It leaves an awful lot of stuff up to GM interpretation (is this creature canny enough to hide its reaction? Is it canny enough to not give up searching for the noise after a couple rounds?) but I feel like that seems hard to avoid. Stealth being a secret roll means this concept of an enemy not being sure they spotted you and acting accordingly calls for stuff from both sides of the GM screen. By making it a 1st level feat, hopefully it isn't a very costly investment, and you can retrain it if you discover your GM doesn't play nice with it.
Came up with a couple new feats. Nods to Lightning Raven for the speed blitz feat.
SPEED BLITZ FEAT 7
Prerequisites master in Acrobatics
Trigger You dart around the battlefield so fast you are a blur. You are treated as concealed against reactions triggered by or during actions with the move trait that you can use.
CALMING DEMEANOR FEAT 7
Prerequisites master in Diplomacy
You are deft at nonverbal communication and have made fast friends who never understood a single word you said. Make an Impression loses the Lingual trait for you with any creature intelligent enough to have a language. This does not let you Make an Impression on animals unless you already have that ability (such as from the Wild Empathy feat.) You also get a +1 circumstance bonus on Seek actions to evaluate a creature’s feelings towards you. If you are legendary, this bonus increases to +2.
Also improved the pick pocket feat's scaling rate.
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Speed Blitz: I would probably put a "you must have moved x feet" before it kicks in (the whole idea that you can't move at a constant rate and need to accelerate first). At legendary you could drop that requirement. And makes it scale a little, which people like.
Hmm...
Trigger: You dart around the battlefield so fast you are a blur. After you have moved 10 feet on your turn (leaving 3rd square, including the one you started in), you are treated as concealed against reactions triggered by or during actions with the move trait that you can use. If you are legendary this feat takes effect before you have left your starting square, but still must move a total of at least ten feet during your turn.
Essentially it means you can't use it to get away from an enemy until 15th. That is, Step remains valuable, but the distance moved by it still counts. 10ft was arbitrary. Even at legendary it isn't quite as good as am air elemental (which says "reactions? Pah! I don't trigger reactions"), but is certainly getting close.
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Speed Blitz: I would probably put a "you must have moved x feet" before it kicks in (the whole idea that you can't move at a constant rate and need to accelerate first). At legendary you could drop that requirement. And makes it scale a little, which people like.
Hmm...
Trigger: You dart around the battlefield so fast you are a blur. After you have moved 10 feet on your turn (leaving 3rd square, including the one you started in), you are treated as concealed against reactions triggered by or during actions with the move trait that you can use. If you are legendary this feat takes effect before you have left your starting square, but still must move a total of at least ten feet during your turn.
Essentially it means you can't use it to get away from an enemy until 15th. That is, Step remains valuable, but the distance moved by it still counts. 10ft was arbitrary. Even at legendary it isn't quite as good as am air elemental (which says "reactions? Pah! I don't trigger reactions"), but is certainly getting close.
I like where your heads at, but I feel like Concealed isn't THAT strong. It's only a 20% miss chance. By comparison, the monk's guarded movement gives you +2 AC, which I think translates to about 20% less damage as well. (Yeah, it's a class feat, but honestly I think that level of power is more appropriate for a skill feat anyway.) If we were talking sensed (50% miss chance) I would absolutely agree with you.
Edit: Also, added another new feat!
Booming Challenge FEAT 2
Prerequisites expert in Intimidation
Your demoralizing taunts can be heard over the din of the battlefield. You may Demoralize creatures 10 feet further away. If are a master of intimidation, you can increase your Demoralize range another 10 feet, and then another 10 feet if you are Legendary. When you use this feat to Demoralize outside of the standard range, the action must have the auditory trait, and you still take a penalty if the creature doesn’t understand your language.
I've found that Battle Cry doesn't happen consistently because you often start fights further than 30 feet from an enemy. This feat helps with that. It also presents an alternative path to Intimidating Prowess-- while the barbarian gets right up in there to Demoralize and gets a nice bonus for doing so, your more squishy sorcerers can hang further back and still use their skill.
In general, I want to make sure there is at least one feat at every level of proficiency for every skill. I haven't prioritized the big 4 magic skills because they have a lot of the varying skill feats, but I like the ones I have added a lot and will continue to try and think of more.
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So I'm mulling over Rangers and snares. I moved Wild Empathy and Swift Tracker into skill feats, because frankly they ARE skill feats. Doing so not only improves build flexibility for other classes who want to specialize in such things, it improves the Ranger by reducing the strain on their class feats. Rangers can still be the best trackers because they get that Hunt Target bonus. (I feel like they should maybe get some kind of edge for Wild Empathy as well. I was considering either having it take master proficiency for non-rangers/druids, or letting hunt target apply to it as well.)
That leaves the ranger with some stealth and snare class feats. The former feel OK to leave as is for now-- they are pretty strong and feel specific enough to the Ranger. For the latter... I'm not sure. I like the idea of Snares, but they don't seem good enough for to justify 4 class feats on. At the same time, I don't want to erase the Ranger being able to be the best at them. With that mind, my current thoughts are:
1) Make Snare Savant and Powerful Snares into skill feats.
2) Leave Quick Snares and Improvised Snares as class feats, or perhaps make them into one scaling class feat.
3)Update snares to reflect 1.6 errata alchemical items. If you use 3 higher level bombs to make an Exploding Snare, it will do the damage of the 3 bombs you use to make it. So using 3 moderate alchemist fires in an Exploding Snare would deal 9d8 fire damage plus 9 persistent fire damage.
4) Give Rangers either a skill increases or skill feats at the rogue rate, but not both.
Point 1 is done with the same reasoning as Wild Empathy or Swift Tracker. Point 2 still leaves Rangers with a niche-- they are the only class who can use Snares mid combat. Point 3 is really just a logical extension of update 1.6 but can also make Snares strong enough to be worth the set up.
On Point 4, I'm not entirely sure which way I lean, but I DO think this general direction is the right move for the ranger. The ranger's interesting bit of its identity, IMO, is it's skill mastery. It shouldn't be as good at straight up fighting as the Barbarian or Fighter, but it should be ahead of them in other areas. The problem is as written they only start out with a couple more trained skills. If they want to really pull ahead of the other martials they must invest class feats or their hunter's edge, both of which takes away from their combat potential. This puts them further behind the martial power curve and doesn't feel very good.
If you give either more skill increases or more skill feats (but not both) the ranger still isn't as good at skills as the rogue, but actually pulls further ahead of the other classes as it levels up. I'm just not sure which way to go with it. Getting skill feats feels more exciting now, which can offer more breadth, but improving proficiency triggers more scaling benefits, improving depth.
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Also make snare kits lighter.
You have a lot of really good ideas here, and I hope many of them get used!
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Made another feat:
Arcane Analysis FEAT 1
Prerequisites trained in arcana
Studying the law of the arcane has sharpened your mind to detecting incongruities and subtle signs of alteration and concealment by magical means. You gain a +2 circumstance bonus on Arcana checks to Identify Magic with the morph, polymorph, visual, or auditory trait. This bonus increases to +4 if you’re a master of Arcana.
If you’re Legendary, when you are within 10 feet of an active magical effect with one of these traits, you automatically get an Arcana check to Identify it. You must observe the subject for however long it takes you to identify Magic with Arcana and the GM may need to roll this check without your knowledge.
I used Oddity Identification as a starting point but took some additional inspiration from 5e warlock invocations to jazz it up. I gave Oddity Identification a similar make over to match. I'd like to come up with an equivalent feat for Religion-- I was thinking of using the alignment traits for it, and/or maybe curse or necromancy stuff. I also like the idea of a Religion feat that gives you some sort of advantage when identifying or dealing with fiends and/or undead.
I also made a ritual feat for stories involving a lone caster.
RITUALISTIC RISK FEAT 2
Prerequisites Expert in Occultism
You have studied the Occult and discovered shortcuts that can be taken to bypass some requirements for rituals, but they make the proposition even more harrowing than normal. You may cast a ritual without secondary casters; a missing secondary caster is treated as a failure on the relevant check. You may also cast a ritual in half the time, but doing so inflicts a -2 conditional penalty on any checks related to performing the ritual. If you are a master of occultism, it only take a quarter of the time, and if you are legendary it takes a tenth of the time.
I considered making it a "Varying Skill" like Quick Identification, but frankly it just screams Occult too hard for it to call for anything else.
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Added a scaling bit to Magical crafting: when you are a master of crafting you can roll crafting to identify magic. I was going to make it into its own feat with Magical Crafting as a prerequisite, and tbh still might. Crafting feats kind of already scale with quality bumps.
I like the idea that you can be so good at magical crafting you don't actually need the standard arcane training to identify an item's property, and can use your item bonus from a crafter's eye piece and such. But I feel like it should be the sort of thing you opt into with a skill feat rather than an automatic benefit just so someone can consolidate their resources more into one score.
Added a scaling bit to Magical crafting: when you are a master of crafting you can roll crafting to identify magic. I was going to make it into its own feat with Magical Crafting as a prerequisite, and tbh still might. Crafting feats kind of already scale with quality bumps.
I like the idea that you can be so good at magical crafting you don't actually need the standard arcane training to identify an item's property, and can use your item bonus from a crafter's eye piece and such. But I feel like it should be the sort of thing you opt into with a skill feat rather than an automatic benefit just so someone can consolidate their resources more into one score.
Maybe instead of identify magic you can identify items? With your eye you can roll a crafting with an DC equal to the item and if you succeed you know the activation and some details?
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Maybe instead of identify magic you can identify items? With your eye you can roll a crafting with an DC equal to the item and if you succeed you know the activation and some details?Added a scaling bit to Magical crafting: when you are a master of crafting you can roll crafting to identify magic. I was going to make it into its own feat with Magical Crafting as a prerequisite, and tbh still might. Crafting feats kind of already scale with quality bumps.
I like the idea that you can be so good at magical crafting you don't actually need the standard arcane training to identify an item's property, and can use your item bonus from a crafter's eye piece and such. But I feel like it should be the sort of thing you opt into with a skill feat rather than an automatic benefit just so someone can consolidate their resources more into one score.
Yeah, I forgot to mention that you can only identify magic on items.
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Just a quick question: Some feats like Fantastic Leap and Wile Empathy were taken from some class feats. Should I remove the class feats in those cases or make them avaliable to be picked both ways?
Perhaps something like
Assurance
As a reaction, when you critically fail a check with the associated skill, you can make another attempt: use the second result instead.It adds a cost, a condition (having a free reaction) and a hance of failure...
Yeah, but it also means you can potentially turn a critical fail into a critical success. Unless your reaction is needed elsewhere it actually makes rolling a critical failure better than a normal failure. You generally aren't making more than one skill check a round anyway.
"Once per challenge" is still my favorite so far. It also has fun interactions with another potential house rule I've been toying around with: only critical failures on a stealth check make you seen if enemies are completely unaware of you. On a failure you just arouse their suspicion, probably enough for them to Seek you. You may become "sensed" and the GM may have you roll stealth vs perception for initiative, but you still have a chance to re-hide and get away.
Having Assurance will work like it does for Thievery: one extra shot before the poop hits the fan on a nat 1, but still leaves you with a danger of screwing up.
Edit: Actually, that house rule could make a pretty decent skill feat. Might add it in as a way to codify it.
You can make Assurance cause the skill use to replace the normal critical failure of the use with the normal failure result plus the additional effect that Assurance cannot be used against that obstacle again, until after a natural success without assurance.
That way you aren't limiting assurance to only being used once, you are simply making it so they can't rely on it to repeatedly keep them from getting the impact of a critical failure, when it is a likely result, but it does make it easy for them to 'attempt' something quickly without risk of botching. If they have trouble, they can continue, but will know they are doing so with some risk.
That would certainly help a lockpicker, might be pretty powerful, but if a difficult enough lock, it might still provide risk trying to get to through multiple success requirements.
Loreguard, that's about where my head had been at for a fix.
Just a quick question: Some feats like Fantastic Leap and Wile Empathy were taken from some class feats. Should I remove the class feats in those cases or make them avaliable to be picked both ways?
Do what's in your heart. If you trust your players not to fall into trap options, you can leave them for both ways. Otherwise remove the class feats. You could also look to buff the class feats to make them relevant, but I have mixed feelings about spending class feats for stuff they could be skill feats.
On a related note, I could move some of the rogue options into skill feats. Thievery feats feel rather lackluster currently, and I haven't thought of anything worth adding yet.
I've also been trying to come up with some trained diplomacy feats.
Oh, and you'll note that fighters and Barbarians can get sudden leap benefits 7 levels early by spending their class feat. Sudden Leap is actually good enough to warrant it, IMO.
Loreguard, that's about where my head had been at for a fix.
Just a quick question: Some feats like Fantastic Leap and Wile Empathy were taken from some class feats. Should I remove the class feats in those cases or make them avaliable to be picked both ways?Do what's in your heart. If you trust your players not to fall into trap options, you can leave them for both ways. Otherwise remove the class feats. You could also look to buff the class feats to make them relevant, but I have mixed feelings about spending class feats for stuff they could be skill feats.
On a related note, I could move some of the rogue options into skill feats. Thievery feats feel rather lackluster currently, and I haven't thought of anything worth adding yet.
I've also been trying to come up with some trained diplomacy feats.
Oh, and you'll note that fighters and Barbarians can get sudden leap benefits 7 levels early by spending their class feat. Sudden Leap is actually good enough to warrant it, IMO.
You could also house-rule another bonus from having both of them.
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You could also house-rule another bonus from having both of them.Loreguard, that's about where my head had been at for a fix.
Just a quick question: Some feats like Fantastic Leap and Wile Empathy were taken from some class feats. Should I remove the class feats in those cases or make them avaliable to be picked both ways?Do what's in your heart. If you trust your players not to fall into trap options, you can leave them for both ways. Otherwise remove the class feats. You could also look to buff the class feats to make them relevant, but I have mixed feelings about spending class feats for stuff they could be skill feats.
On a related note, I could move some of the rogue options into skill feats. Thievery feats feel rather lackluster currently, and I haven't thought of anything worth adding yet.
I've also been trying to come up with some trained diplomacy feats.
Oh, and you'll note that fighters and Barbarians can get sudden leap benefits 7 levels early by spending their class feat. Sudden Leap is actually good enough to warrant it, IMO.
Indeed. There were already some examples of this in the Ranger feats. I just didn't really feel like the existing bonuses felt worth class feats or were better than the benchmark I thought skill feats should hit.
I don't hate the idea that there's a ranger feat for tracking, so that people can choose to really lean into that aspect of their character. But I am blanking on specific ways to make that happen because tracking is such a limited purvey.
One option to consider: A ranger feat which allows you gain the benefit of multiple Survival feats, a la Raging Intimidation. If you can spend one class feat to gain the benefits of Forager, Experienced Tracker, and perhaps Survey Wildlife, you can then spend your skill feats on other stuff to round out your character more. Making it a first level Ranger feat also means that any ranger could be a highly skilled woodsman from day 1, which IMO could be important for people's backstories. (Although Background skill feats do help with this already.)
The advantage of this model is it allows you to be accomplished at the iconic ranger stuff out the gate if your choose, but can also be ignored if you wanted to go for a more urban focus.
I removed the once per day limit on Object Reader. While in some contexts it is pretty powerful, there's a lot of GM fiat built in you can use to keep it from breaking your plot. And resonance can serve as a limiting factor that's much more flavorful.
I think most of the time what this feat will do is give you a device to tell backstory to your party. Often times APs have lots of interesting motivations for various monsters or history behind locations that simply doesn't have a way to naturally emerge during gameplay. This has been a common criticism of Rise of the Runelords, for example. This feat gives players a chance to uncover these secrets in a way that feels natural to the narrative.
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I've made additions to existing survival feats I'm really happy with.
Prerequisites master in Survival
You can attempt to Survive in the Wild on different planes, even those without the resources or natural phenomena you normally need. For instance, you can forage for food even if the plane lacks food that could normally sustain you, and you
could find your bearings on a plane that doesn’t have stars, a sun, or other normal aids to navigation. A success at Surviving in the Wild can reduce the plane’s damage as well, at the GM’s discretion.
You can also Track creatures when they use a teleport effect. If the creature moves through a plane which overlaps your current plane, such as the Ethereal Plane or when one Shadow Walks, you can Track their movement across your current plane. If they teleport to a completely separate plane (or simply teleporting to another location on the same plane), you can roll a secret Survival check to determine which plane they traveled to. The DC is based off the spell that transported the creature across the plane; use the DCs identifying or learning a spell from table 4-2 on page 146. If the effect wasn’t a spell, than use half the level (rounded up) of the creature or item generating it.
Success You get a strong hint towards the destination plane. Note that identifying the exact plane may be limited to your knowledge; a hint of brimstone might point to the Infernal plane, which is well documented, but your hint might not tell you the exact details of a secret private demiplane you’ve never heard of.
Critical Failure You get a hint pointing you to the wrong plane.
If you are legendary in survival, you may Track a creature’s teleportation trail to this or any other plane, but you must have the ability physically reach the destination. When you succeed on the Track check against the effect’s DC, you can tell what plane they traveled to and get a sense of the direction they traveled if you are on that plane. If you travel to that plane, you can home in on where they teleported to, although it is possible for the trail to go cold based on time passing or factors which might cause dimensional or divination interference.
LEGENDARY SURVIVALIST FEAT 15
Prerequisites legendary in Survival
You can survive indefinitely without food or water and can endure severe and extreme cold and heat without taking damage from doing so. You are not fatigued from lack of sleep. You still need a full night’s rest to recover spells or other daily resources, and you can become fatigued by other effects or from overusing fatiguing tactics, but with proper pacing you can keep traveling indefinitely.
Planar Survival was a feat that just begged to be retrained in and out of based on whether or not you had an upcoming extra planar quest you could prepare for. And like, its good for that. But a feat so impermanent doesn't really feel like it is saying something about who your character is. So I added some stuff that is more useful in every day adventuring. Being able to track a creature when it uses Ethereal Jaunt or Shadow Walk to flee (or even just to hide midcombat) is kind of awesome, and I think knowing what plane a creature hopped to is a pretty satisfying nugget of information to give players, especially if they are equipped to travel to that plane and use divination effects. And of course, when you hit legendary you don't need the divination effects. ^_^
The second feat's additions are just to add some punch to make the feat more interesting. Some folks wondered where we would get our "Beowolf swimming through the ocean for days" feat from, and this is it. (Though Underwater Marauder helps.) Combined, the two survival feats make you truly legendary. You are the Terminator. You will follow someone across the barriers of space and time, and you will never stop. Hell yeah.
I was considering whether some part of Planar Survival should become a Ranger class feat to give them some niche protection. But I feel like that also prescribes a certain flavor to the feat that isn't really necessary. A Ranger might do it through being in touch with natural forces, but a wizard might do it through a latent magic awareness, and a Rogue might just be that good.
Instead I lean towards giving Rangers twice as many skill feats. They may not have as many unique toys, but getting so many of them lets them explore more space. And with how tied my feats are to proficiency level, they will probably be doubling down on feats for specific skills where the Rogue would be able to jump all over the place. I imagine this will lead to them really leaning into the Ranger niches harder than anyone else can if they so choose, but other classes can play in that pool too, and the Ranger can do other stuff if they want.
Also, I had some musings on how I'm writing these feats in comparison to the playtest rulebook.
I'm not sure if this approach would be valid in a rulebook. The playtest's keyword referencing saves a lot of space by comparison. But I figure I don't need to sweat word count as much if I'm not making a print product. Just as long as people don't start tuning out from text overload.
I have a feat change you are free to steal, Multilingual, I changed it into two separate feats, because I have my characters being spawned into new bodies, (there are setting reasons) but maintaining the languages access (Currently have a Halfling who speaks Gnomish and Sylvan, and Dwarf who speaks Gnomish, but not their native tongues)
Multilingual: May learn all common languages with time and effort. (I am working with 1 downtime to get a basic understanding of the language AKA no change yet, and another one for each aspect of the language, like spoken, written, sign, etc)
Exotic Language: May learn one uncommon language with an available teaching source.
I don't have regional languages in my setting, but I would assume they'd fall under Multilingual and not Exotic Language.
The idea of learning a language as a downtime activity is that's occurred to me before, and makes a lot of intuitive sense. Having it be gated by a skill feat isn't a bad idea either. But on a similar note, it makes sense that someone could spend downtime improving in any given skill, which could make things hard to balance around.
I might just make multilingual improve with society proficiency for the moment.
Oh Captain my Captain,
With Jason saying on the interview that Pirate archetype benefits are likely going to be converted into skill feats, are you considering adding that in?
Oh Captain my Captain,
With Jason saying on the interview that Pirate archetype benefits are likely going to be converted into skill feats, are you considering adding that in?
Indeed. And I'm considering doing something similar to Rangers and other classes with skill based options for class feats. Adding a clause that you must be X class (or have its dedication) to take Y skill feat. Or giving X classes early access to said feat.
Perhaps you can add them as Perception related skill feats. Or, if it's too out of theme, give them a "Expert in X, or Trained in X and Y feature".
Perhaps you can add them as Perception related skill feats. Or, if it's too out of theme, give them a "Expert in X, or Trained in X and Y feature".
Something along the lines of the latter was what I had in mind. I suspect it will be some time before I make any changes to this effect though. I do have a player who wants to use a pirate for Red Flags, so I guess I ought to make some decisions there. But honestly, for Red Flags skills feats seem really valuable so I'm not sure if he'll want to use them instead of class feats anyway.
So I've been moving some more class feats into skill feats.
Monster Hunter, Monster Warden, And Master Monster Hunter are now one nature skill feat that scales. But it requires Hunt Target as a prerequisite.
Alchemical Savant became a Special clause on quick identification, allowing alchemists with the feat to use one action to identify alcehmical items with one action regardless of proficiency.
Snare Savant got a similar treatment with a Special Ranger clause, and Powerful Snares became an automatic affect when you hit legendary crafting. Quick Snares and Improvised Snares were collapsed into a separate skill feat.
Wall Run became a special monk clause on Wall jump, because those two feats should always be paired with each other anyway.
Raging Athlete became a skill feat that requires Rage.
The biggest downside I've seen to these changes is it actually leaves the Ranger class feat list rather anemic-- which is to say that was already an issue and this exacerbates it. A quick fix might be porting over some Fighter, Barbarian, or Rogue feats. Point Blank Shot, Felling Shot, Battle Assessment, Acute Vision/Scent, No Escape, and Sneak Savant all seem like thematically appropriate candidates.
Some of other Rogue and Ranger feats seem like they could make this jump, including the stealth, thievery, and hazard related options. But i'm not sure I'm going to take that step yet.
A note on Powerful Snares: Unless you provide snares a way to scale between levels 8-15, the issue isn't solved.
I allow the use of Crafting DC for crafted items, but that would make Powerful Snares useless anyways.
A note on Powerful Snares: Unless you provide snares a way to scale between levels 8-15, the issue isn't solved.
I allow the use of Crafting DC for crafted items, but that would make Powerful Snares useless anyways.
Mmmm, my goal wasn't to fix snares with this change, just free up some class feats for the Ranger. I used Legendary as the benchmark because it was a 16th level feat-- not because I thought that was an appropriate balance point. Although honestly, I wonder if their were some wires crossed over the prerequisites for snares. Powerful Snares is 16th level but only requires master proficiency, and Quick Snares is a level 8 feat that requires expert. It feels odd that they aren't paired up with more level appropriate proficiency levels.
But I think I might just lower the powerful snares effect to master. I like your idea for using the craft DC intuitively. I'm a little worried though because that can be several points higher than your class DC by several points. That seems pretty OK from a PC perspective-- it is so much harder to get a snare to go off than to cast a spell, so rewarding the investment with a higher DC makes sense. BUT NPCs could use it as well, which means they could set traps that easily outpace the hazard DC guidelines.
I might make the powerful snares effect a Ranger only prerequisite. Or perhaps allow Rangers to get it immediately and make other folks wait until legendary. Shrinking the range of NPCs that can utilize these super hazards might be for the best.
I'm considering making a Experienced Tracker 3.0, which reverts it back its original form but provides the benefits of Swift Tracker if you're a Ranger, much like I've done with Wall Run/Wall Jump and Snare feats. Having the Ranger get some more mileage out of some specific skill feats seems pretty on brand for them and helps them protect their niche, and serves as a nice little boost without changing their class progression.
Raging Athlete could get a similar treatment, though it representing two separate skill feats makes it harder.
I'm not sure if it's preferable for many existing skill feats to get a Special class effect, or to make new skill feats that are class locked. It's a question of whether its better to have some redundant feats cluttering up the book as a whole, vs having the existing feats getting longer and longer to read. Opinions?
I also have some formatting things I need to figure out. I think with the formatting of the actual rulebook it would be easy to add a class name trait to a feat to indicate A) you can only take this feat if you are this class, or B) you get additional benefits from this feat is you are this class. But this is a little harder for me to figure out using my limited skills in graphic design and a google doc.
I also need to figure out how multiclass dedications intersect with this. Raging Athlete and Monster Hunter are easy because they are tied to the class features, so if you get them through the multiclass archetypes you are good. But stuff like Wall Run, Snare Crafting, or Swift Tracker probably calls for a general rule being added. (Well, for those specific examples you could make Hunt Target the key factor for Swift Tracker, and you could make Wall Run kick in if you have a movement speed of at least 35-40, but I think the general point remains.)
Way I see it, class DC is a way to not require skill increases and allow you to use your key stat - if you do increase the skill, you get the higher DC, provided your intelligence is high enough.
+1 for having ranger use class DC for snares by default, but I would place it on Master for everyone else, so it progresses just about when it stops.