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Many of the playtest Skill Feats are thoroughly underwhelming (though some are actually ridiculously powerful...Scare To Death is completely absurd, for instance). People said as much at the time and the odds seem pretty good that they fixed them by powering them up somewhat for the final game.
We've had no actual data on most Skill Feats since the playtest, though, so that's entirely speculative.
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Sooo, those skill feats in the playtest. Were those meant to be a sampling, or a full list of options? And 3ven if only a sampling, the number and effect of those feats seem pretty underwhelming; mostly occupying space that the feat should already exist in but possible with a penalty, or offering up utilities that I've never seen players take an active hand in, at least in my experience..
So, am I just estimating these badly? Are there promises of much more relevant skill feats once the real book shows? What's the community interpretation?
No, that was a pretty common opinion. Skill feats are a great idea but the specific examples in the playtest were lacking.
[uhttps://paizo.com/threads/rzs42f3h?Captain-Morgans-Revised-Skill-Feats]I actually rewrote the skill feat chapter to strengthen skill feats.[/url] That thread not only links to my rewritten version, but another thread where I reviewed the skill feats in detail to break down which ones were failing and why. A few different groups started playing with those, including the Dice Will Roll podcast.
We have been told that skill feats have improved, and we have been given some specific examples of how that sound promising, such as Quiet Allies and Survey Wildlife. We know that there is a feat called "Combat Climber" that probably combines a couple of previous climbing skill feats.
But I still have concerns, based on the single page of skill feats we saw from the Paizo Banquet, that they aren't going to be strong enough for my liking. However, if that is the case I am sure I will be able to adapt my playtest rewrite to the final version.
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Since skill feats are in their own silo and don't have to match general or class feats for power and utility, I'm not concerned if they don't knock my socks off.
As long as they are consistently applied and don't do things like completely carve out parts of their skill as if they were DLC made by EA I think I'll be content.
The potency tier for feats could well go Class, Ancestry/General, and then Skill.
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Well, I don't know about the situation of the skill feats, but I like this one that was revealed in Paizocon, must be awesome to trip or grab one ancient dragon with it.
Titan Wrestler (Feat 1) (General, Skill). Prereqs: trained in Athletics. You can attempt to Disarm, Grapple, Shove, or Trip creatures up to two sizes larger than you, or up to three sizes larger than you if you’re legendary in Athletics.
I hope that the other skill feats are something on the same level.
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I would imagine it is only a problem if there is a massive imbalance in skill feats where some are really powerful in combat options (as it sounded like from the playtest)
Because if they are all just a case of giving a little extra then they are effectively a complete added bonus from PF1 since most people wouldn’t take skill feats unless it was to exploit a loophole
So as mentioned above they probably don’t need to be amazing
Since skill feats are in their own silo and don't have to match general or class feats for power and utility, I'm not concerned if they don't knock my socks off.
As long as they are consistently applied and don't do things like completely carve out parts of their skill as if they were DLC made by EA I think I'll be content.
The potency tier for feats could well go Class, Ancestry/General, and then Skill.
That's pretty much where I am at on the topic as well.
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By carving out as if DLC do you mean them breaking off a pat that could be done as standard in 1E and locking it behind a feat ? I can see the fear here as this seemed to be what ancestry feats did in the playtest
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By carving out as if DLC do you mean them breaking off a pat that could be done as standard in 1E and locking it behind a feat ? I can see the fear here as this seemed to be what ancestry feats did in the playtest
Sort of. I don't actually care what could have happened in PF1, but things like Pickpocket being walled off completely from Thievery is what I mean. A skill feat should either enhance the use of the skill or provide something that a skill shouldn't be able to do as a baseline.
Somebody with X proficiency in Thievery should be able to attempt to lift items off of another characters person. The same person with a specific Pickpocket feat should be able to do it in broader circumstances, or even while being observed, or be able to replace an item with the same action... Something like that.
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By carving out as if DLC do you mean them breaking off a pat that could be done as standard in 1E and locking it behind a feat ? I can see the fear here as this seemed to be what ancestry feats did in the playtestSort of. I don't actually care what could have happened in PF1, but things like Pickpocket being walled off completely from Thievery is what I mean. A skill feat should either enhance the use of the skill or provide something that a skill shouldn't be able to do as a baseline.
Somebody with X proficiency in Thievery should be able to attempt to lift items off of another characters person. The same person with a specific Pickpocket feat should be able to do it in broader circumstances, or even while being observed, or be able to replace an item with the same action... Something like that.
If it's any consolation, Pick Pocketing is going to be attempt-able by anyone, but a lot easier for someone with the appropriate Skill Feat (Mark somewhat confirmed this in a thread when someone mentioned "house ruling it that way" and he said it would be "impossible" to house rule that)
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I do remember that now, thank you.
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Since skill feats are in their own silo and don't have to match general or class feats for power and utility, I'm not concerned if they don't knock my socks off.
I'd be quite pleased to have them "knock my socks off" [not a lot in the playtest did], but I'd be happy enough if they even just raise the floor enough that the 'worst' ones are at least useful if not exciting.
If I really got my wish, skill feats would be focused solely on allowing you to new and fun things with your skills that those that don't have the feat can't do. What I'd rather not see is skill feats that allow you to do basic stuff you should already be able to do or equate to a simple plus/bonus to a skill that simply makes the skill rolls easier to make.
No matter what they've done, I'm sure it'll be a vast improvement over the playtest.
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I see skill feats as a place for Paizo to allow characters to really differentiate themselves. A way for my bard with skill feat - Diplomacy to be notably different than the sorcerer with diplomacy also trained but lacking the feat. It opens up a potentially really interesting design space.
But the ones in the playtest were generally SO bad that I ended up literally not even bothering to take them when I was creating higher level characters. Weren't worth the time to find them OR remember them in play.
I'm hoping that Paizo put enough effort in these to make most of them good. But I won't be surprised if 2 or 3 got changed and the rest are basically still garbage.
What I REALLY hope is that they don't put basic uses of a skill behind a feat. Ultimate Intrigue did that a LOT and there were quite a few of these in the Playtest too. Suddenly a feat exists that makes the base skill LESS useful. If they do this too much then skill feats will be a net subtraction as compared to PF1, NOT an improvement.
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Wow, I must have gotten a different impression from the playtest skill feats. I really enjoyed a space where I wasnt concerned about picking up a situational social feat over a combat improvement feat. Sure some skill feats didnt come up, or were more fluffy than anything (I'm looking at you, the only religion feat). Any buff to the skill feats, is icing on the cake in my book.
In fact, I just built a 1e character, and I lamented that there was no skill feat progression. I missed that play space to give my charming old man feats that reflect how neighborly he is.
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Wow, I must have gotten a different impression from the playtest skill feats. I really enjoyed a space where I wasnt concerned about picking up a situational social feat over a combat improvement feat. Sure some skill feats didnt come up, or were more fluffy than anything (I'm looking at you, the only religion feat). Any buff to the skill feats, is icing on the cake in my book.
In fact, I just built a 1e character, and I lamented that there was no skill feat progression. I missed that play space to give my charming old man feats that reflect how neighborly he is.
Oh, no, conceptually skill feats are great. Having a separate pool of feats that round out your character concept without taking away from your combat stuff is great, though many do have combat applications. And the ones that scale with proficiency (like Cat Fall, which might be the gold standard of skill feats) help to further distinguish your character's status as an expert/master/legend in a way other than numbers.
It is just it would be nice if they were more exciting than they were in the playtest. For example, I don't want to have to spend all 5 of my 10 feats just to be good at something as niche as climbing in combat. Hopefully, the new Combat Climber feat consolidates that somewhat.
It is just it would be nice if they were more exciting than they were in the playtest. For example, I don't want to have to spend all 5 of my 10 feats just to be good at something as niche as climbing in combat. Hopefully, the new Combat Climber feat consolidates that somewhat.
I'm personally a bit worried with consolidating the feats into each other. I'm having trouble coming up with words that would describe why that is.
I've rewritten this like 5 times, so here is my best shot at explaining my unease:
If all feats become evolutionary (improve with proficiency), then feat choice will start to become less meaningful. You just pick up a feat to cache it for later. A theoretical example with no basis in reality would be a player taking 5 acrobat feats, and by lvl 15, they take no fall damage, can jump mid air for free, can squeeze into a 1 inch hole, can escape any grapple, and stand up and take a free Step action. All of this for a whopping 5 feats and improving acrobatics to legendary. This isn't particularly engaging to me.
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Just read this week's blog. I admit that catfall is pretty much EXACTLY what I hope skill feats will be. It scales, it has flavour, it isn't overpowered, it doesn't weaken the base skill, and it will actually come up in play often enough to be noticed and remembered.
I don't remember what the playtest version was. But if all skill feats are about like this I'll be very happy
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The playtest was very divisive and arguments were had about pretty much everything, but "Catfall is the high water mark for skill feats" was one thing basically everyone agreed on. :P
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The playtest was very divisive and arguments were had about pretty much everything, but "Catfall is the high water mark for skill feats" was one thing basically everyone agreed on. :P
Yup. Just went back to the playtest and Cat Fall was identical in the playtest to the released version. So we don't know if they actually changed skill feats in general or not.
The fact they chose this feat to show makes me nervous. If other skill feats were of this quality you'd think they'd show one of them instead.
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The fact they chose this feat to show makes me nervous. If other skill feats were of this quality you'd think they'd show one of them instead.
Well, I mean, the post is literally Mark remaking an old character of his. He clearly went a little out of his way to show some Monk Styles not made for that character, but I wouldn't read too much into a Monk having Catfall.
I hope, with the introduction of retraining as a thing that characters can easily be expected to do, that skill feats stay relatively situational and extremely good for those situations, and that players learn to expect taking some down time between major adventures to figure out what kinds of challenges they are likely to face in the near future and have a reason for taking the time to retrain their skill feats easily and without being stuck in massive chains of feats that can't easily swap around, rather than have 5 or 6 skill feats that are obviously the best/most necessary for each specific build and then use 1st and 2nd level magic to make all other applications of skills relatively meaningless.
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The playtest was very divisive and arguments were had about pretty much everything, but "Catfall is the high water mark for skill feats" was one thing basically everyone agreed on. :PYup. Just went back to the playtest and Cat Fall was identical in the playtest to the released version. So we don't know if they actually changed skill feats in general or not.
The fact they chose this feat to show makes me nervous. If other skill feats were of this quality you'd think they'd show one of them instead.
Well, I will say there was a tiny change in regards to the showcase, but it was actually in reference to the Background itself.
Now Backgrounds actually grant you training in the skill associated with the Skill Feat instead of just the Lore Skill and the Feat.
This is actually huge for me personally, makes Animal Whisperer a lot better on non-animal oriented classes.
So while showing Cat Fall might be a bit concerning, the Background associated with providing it shows they've put a lot of thought into the cohesion of the new Skills system they built.
It shows they've listened, that much is sure.
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I do think Cat Fall and Quick Jump are better choices for the generic martial background than Quick Repair, since only shield users really need to repair things. (Well, assuming Quick Jump is better in the final version. The original suffered greatly because the long jump and high jump DCs compared badly to the distances you could just Leap without rolling.)
It is just it would be nice if they were more exciting than they were in the playtest. For example, I don't want to have to spend all 5 of my 10 feats just to be good at something as niche as climbing in combat. Hopefully, the new Combat Climber feat consolidates that somewhat.I'm personally a bit worried with consolidating the feats into each other. I'm having trouble coming up with words that would describe why that is.
I've rewritten this like 5 times, so here is my best shot at explaining my unease:
If all feats become evolutionary (improve with proficiency), then feat choice will start to become less meaningful. You just pick up a feat to cache it for later. A theoretical example with no basis in reality would be a player taking 5 acrobat feats, and by lvl 15, they take no fall damage, can jump mid air for free, can squeeze into a 1 inch hole, can escape any grapple, and stand up and take a free Step action. All of this for a whopping 5 feats and improving acrobatics to legendary. This isn't particularly engaging to me.
It seems like you're assuming the skill feats aren't worthwhile at the level you get them, which absolutely shouldn't be the case. And given the retraining rules, it feels weird to pick feats at level 2 that won't pay off until level 15.
If your complaint is that in general that seems too powerful, well, that's certainly the balancing act when designing any feat. I can tell you for example that the examples you list wouldn't happen with my own versions of the skill feats. But for example, a single skill feat making you not flat-footed while climbing which then lets you climb one handed when you become an expert in athletics feels better to me than spending 2 feats for both of those effects. Similarly, "Improved" versions of feats are quite often things that feel like they could be made part of the basic feat. For example, Legendary Climber could really just be what happens when Quick Climber gets upgraded to Legendary.
I often feel that way about class feats too. Improved Brutish Shove really just feels like it should be part of Brutish Shove, much like how I don't need Improved Power Attack to gain another damage dice from Power Attack when I hit level 10. Mileage may vary of course!
It seems like you're assuming the skill feats aren't worthwhile at the level you get them, which absolutely shouldn't be the case. And given the retraining rules, it feels weird to pick feats at level 2 that won't pay off until level 15.If your complaint is that in general that seems too powerful, well, that's certainly the balancing act when designing any feat. I can tell you for example that the examples you list wouldn't happen with my own versions of the skill feats. But for example, a single skill feat making you not flat-footed while...
Perhaps I still havent grappled with the unease I have, or havent expressed it well yet. I'm worried that a 1 feat dip into these legendary effects will devalue skill feats as a whole, or will make it too easy to perform way too many legendary skill effects. Maybe I'm just worried because at launch there isn't a lot of diversity in feats.
I should also say that I think its wonderful that feats keep giving you bang for your buck, but there are two sides to the coin
Edit:
I think I touched on the heart of my worries with my "1 feat dip" comment. I'm worried that it will be similar to taking a 1 level dip in a class and getting that classes capstone. (Granted that version of multiclassing is gone, but the point stands)
It seems like you're assuming the skill feats aren't worthwhile at the level you get them, which absolutely shouldn't be the case. And given the retraining rules, it feels weird to pick feats at level 2 that won't pay off until level 15.If your complaint is that in general that seems too powerful, well, that's certainly the balancing act when designing any feat. I can tell you for example that the examples you list wouldn't happen with my own versions of the skill feats. But for example, a single skill feat making you not flat-footed while...
Perhaps I still havent grappled with the unease I have, or havent expressed it well yet. I'm worried that a 1 feat dip into these legendary effects will devalue skill feats as a whole, or will make it too easy to perform way too many legendary skill effects. Maybe I'm just worried because at launch there isn't a lot of diversity in feats.
I should also say that I think its wonderful that feats keep giving you bang for your buck, but there are two sides to the coin
Edit:
I think I touched on the heart of my worries with my "1 feat dip" comment. I'm worried that it will be similar to taking a 1 level dip in a class and getting that classes capstone. (Granted that version of multiclassing is gone, but the point stands)
I don't really think it is analagous to dipping, though. If anything, I'd compare it to gestalt. You're able to fully explore two things instead of dipping into one.
The biggest critique I can think of is just balance. This is a big upgrade; character skill grows quadratically instead of linearly because as you level up you don't just gain new feats but squeeze more juice from your old feats. But the nice thing is skill feats don't impact combat enough to break it, usually.
I don't really think it is analagous to dipping, though. If anything, I'd compare it to gestalt. You're able to fully explore two things instead of dipping into one.The biggest critique I can think of is just balance. This is a big upgrade; character skill grows quadratically instead of linearly because as you level up you don't just gain new feats but squeeze more juice from your old feats. But the nice thing is skill feats don't impact combat enough to break it, usually.
It is, in the end balance I suppose. And that will come down to the designers who I'm sure are way ahead of this
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I think I touched on the heart of my worries with my "1 feat dip" comment. I'm worried that it will be similar to taking a 1 level dip in a class and getting that classes capstone.
To me, it's not really a dip.
You have to take the feat and upgrade your skill proficiency to legendary. As far as we know, legendary proficiency in a skill is rather limited (unless / even if you are a rogue).
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As long as unnecessary and meaningless feat taxes are gone. I'm down for it.
In fact, if the feat gets more useful over levels, it's way easier to justify a "tax", since later on it will become more than just a prerequisite for some thing else.
I, for one, welcome a lot skill feats being impactful. If there's one thing I like is creating characters that have combat prowess but also can meaningfully interact with the world outside of it. I'm not a big fan of the "dumb and strong" or "illiterate savage" that martial characters often lean to because of the stat dumps and general dependency on multiple feats, it simply makes it impossible to make a satisfying general-type martial character or someone that's tactically cunning while also being really good at battling.
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Do agree that scaling skill feats can get a bit silly in specific scenarios. They sound amazing if you are taking them at the earliest opportunity and slowly see the feat grow. But imagine you're legendary in acrobatics and you grab a skill feat at like level 17. You suddenly get all of the powers instantly!
It's probably not that bad, but I can imagine it being silly depending on the feats. Having to work your way up from the first one made for sense as "organic" development, even if you call them "Feat Tax".
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Do agree that scaling skill feats can get a bit silly in specific scenarios. They sound amazing if you are taking them at the earliest opportunity and slowly see the feat grow. But imagine you're legendary in acrobatics and you grab a skill feat at like level 17. You suddenly get all of the powers instantly!
It's probably not that bad, but I can imagine it being silly depending on the feats. Having to work your way up from the first one made for sense as "organic" development, even if you call them "Feat Tax".
There's a solution to that: don't make scaling feats as good as actual legendary feats. Battle Cry might become better when you hit Legendary, but it won't let you Scare to Death. You aren't getting all that power instantly, either. You've been investing your skill increases and probably skill feats into the skill. It just finally pays off.
It is pretty similar to why heightened spells aren't as strong as on level spells.
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I'm not quite sure why it's a bad thing for a high level character to pick up a feat and gain a bunch of cool benefits. They're quite literally 'legendary' after all.
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I'm not quite sure why it's a bad thing for a high level character to pick up a feat and gain a bunch of cool benefits. They're quite literally 'legendary' after all.
Because I thought one of the cool parts of a scaling feat was that you watched it evolve together with your PC rather than jumping straight to the capstone. The other benefit, of course, would be to prevent it from becoming underwhelming at high levels.
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If I had Cat Fall as a feat, I probably would be looking for ways of taking advantage of it in almost every battle. It's really something hard to plan against and definitely will take anyone off-guard.
Feats should provide interesting tools and as such, they can be used well or not. Feats that only provide math enhancement are mechanically great and useful, but lack the "oomph" that a feat offering a new type of action or effect normally unavailable has.
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I can't really think of any that players have zero say over whether they come up or not.
Perhaps not "Zero say" but players have very little say on making Breath Control (from the playtest) useful. That is the feat immediately preceeding Cat Fall (which was the search process I went through :-)). It IS somewhat useful in the passive bonus it gives against inhaled poisons but that is NOT under player control either and probably falls into the "once a campaign it might actually matter" category.
I will admit that Charming Liar (the one immediately after Catfall) isn't totally useless. But its triggered by a crit and so mostly (not totally, mostly) out of player control. Certainly not something they can rely on.
That was the extent of my search process (looking at the feat before and after). So, out of this sample set of 3, 1 is very useful and very much under player control, 1 marginally useful but not at all under player control, and 1 moderately useful but not at all under player control (it is triggered by a crit).
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Breath control is easy, throw in an inhaled poison in to the room and waltz in while the enemies choke. This is actually a fairly common modern breach and clear tactic.
You really think a +1 to your saving throw is enough to make that a viable tactic? I disagree.
Now, throw life bubble (which is what modern guys do with their gas masks) DOES make this viable. Or being a raging barbarian who fails fort saves on a 1. But a +1 on fort saves? Not so much
I've played just about every PFS scenario, most of the modules and at least 1/2 the adventure paths. In all that time I think the time to hold your breath has come up twice and on both occasions the difference between twice vs thrice con rounds wouldn't have mattered ( all that it mattered was that it meant things had to be resolved soonish).
Uhhhh...
I may be mistaken, but Breath Control would not make you basically immune for some turns against Stinking Cloud and Cloudkill? If someone in my party gets that feat and I was playing an Wizard or another spellcaster with acess to these spells I would certainly cast it on the area that the party member is in to take advantage of it and have some area denial.
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No, but you are ignoring most of the feat. It lets you take between 80-180 actions without breathing (unless the SRD has a typo which actually surely it must)Breath control is easy, throw in an inhaled poison in to the room and waltz in while the enemies choke. This is actually a fairly common modern breach and clear tactic.You really think a +1 to your saving throw is enough to make that a viable tactic? I disagree.
Yeah, so? Anybody can spend an action to hold their breath for double their constitution score actions. So, say 20 actions or 6 rounds. Really, how many fights last more than 6 rounds?
And I don't think holding your breath protects you against cloudkill, lizardman stink, etc etc etc. Certainly didn't in PF1.
With the way that Cloudkill was worded in the playtest rulebook...
"You conjure a moving ank of poisonous fog. This functions as obscuring mist, except the área moves 10 feet away from each round
You deal 7d6 poison damage to each breathing creature that starts its turn in the spell's área; each creature must attempt a fortitude save"
So yeah, I think that Breath Control feat would automatically activate in this case making you don't take damage from Cloudkill.
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I think there actually is a problem if all skill feats scaled with proficiency. Since you can only advance a small handful of skills past trained, you'd feel like you were missing out on most of the effects of your feats if you if you didn't put all your skill feats into skills you advanced. If I get 5 effects from an Acrobatics skill feat because I'm legendary but only one effect from a Diplomacy skill feat, I'm less likely to consider the Diplomacy feat than I would without everything scaling.
There's also the problem that when a feat scales, it has to be split across the proficiency tiers. A feat that might have given benefit X that was reasonable as a Master-level feat may now have that effect as the Legendary effect because it was the best effect the designers came up with. You lose some design agility when there are several tiers that must be filled.
I fully support feats scaling when it feels like a natural progression and the end result is not so powerful that it pushes you to only invest in feats for skills you're advancing. I think Cat Fall does this well. I could see having a character with Legendary Acrobatics and not taking Cat Fall.
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I think there actually is a problem if all skill feats scaled with proficiency. Since you can only advance a small handful of skills past trained, you'd feel like you were missing out on most of the effects of your feats if you if you didn't put all your skill feats into skills you advanced. If I get 5 effects from an Acrobatics skill feat because I'm legendary but only one effect from a Diplomacy skill feat, I'm less likely to consider the Diplomacy feat than I would without everything scaling.
There's also the problem that when a feat scales, it has to be split across the proficiency tiers. A feat that might have given benefit X that was reasonable as a Master-level feat may now have that effect as the Legendary effect because it was the best effect the designers came up with. You lose some design agility when there are several tiers that must be filled.
I fully support feats scaling when it feels like a natural progression and the end result is not so powerful that it pushes you to only invest in feats for skills you're advancing. I think Cat Fall does this well. I could see having a character with Legendary Acrobatics and not taking Cat Fall.
The thing is a feat doesn't have to actually scale at all 4 proficiency steps. It is cool if it does, but you don't need to fit stuff in just to check every box. Just generally increase the level of scaling.
You're right that it does encourage you to double down on investing in specific skills... but Pathfinder has always rewarded specialization and I am not sure that's a bad thing.
Some of them probably will only give an additional effect on legendary, like the Athletics one. That's not too bad.