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Well, the good news is that literally nothing prevents there from being situations where more than one person having a skill would be valuable, so that's one problem solved.
I am otherwise unsure what's so bad about a skill specialist class being really good at skills, if I'm being honest.
You are skewing you analysis by assumping 18 is somehow required, and therefore Key Stat must determine highest stat.
Are Warpriests or Scoundrel Rogues assumed to start with 18 WIS/CHA? Not really, that's far from the only effective build.
Even having Key Stat co-equal with another at 16 isn't even necessary, it just comes down to how you use abilities.
The fact Key Stat may "cut you off" from putting 18 in another stat doesn't mean you can't prioritize other stats,
and ability to gain bonus to actions tied to other stats directly counters a <18 starting value in those stats.
The large amount of base skills is amenable to Investigator being "skillful" class WITHOUT significant INT bonus.
Their class bonuses appying to INT skills mean they can equal or exceed "max 18 starting INT" characters without starting with 18 INT themself.
I'm on the fence with that design as well. 8+Int at first level is a lot.
On later levels the Investigator gains 1 skill increase per level, as much as the rogue.
How about changing that both to 5(?)+Int at first level, and then 1 increase per level, +1 additional increase every 4th/5th level or so?
The Investigator could thus get even more skills to a higher proficiency than the rogue
Any class that gets lots of skill increases “needs” to start out with a lot of trained skills. Otherwise you need to start using skill advancements on making skills trained, which is very unsatisfying. Level 2-14, you need to be able to get six skills up to master in order to actually make good use of your skill advances from 15-20. That’s six skills twice, and one leftover, so you should have at least seven trained skills at level one- ideally including six freely chosen ones. That looks like what we got, with a little extra sprinkled on.
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But of course no Investigator will only have 10 Int.
I mean, its possible and why not? Investigator uses intelligence for almost nothing. A 10 intelligence investigator still gets to be trained in a bunch of skills with plenty of increases and other than intelligence skills, you'll be pretty good at your trained ones from the wider ability score spread.
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I think the investigator seems designed for the kind of game where lore skills become much more relevant (such as urban intrigues and mysteries) so if I played an investigator I would probably take some of the following lore skills over things like survival or nature or athletics.
Guild Lore
Legal Lore
Underworld Lore
(City the campaign is set in) Lore
Mercantile Lore
Government Lore
Business Lore
Politics Lore
Art Lore
Alchemical Lore
Alcohol Lore
Assassin Lore
In that specific kind of campaign (which the class is essentially designed for) it is actually helpful to be able to take a few extra lore skills, as a lot of what happens in those games is knowledge checks about sort of mundane and specific subjects (like knowing who to question about illicit activity, identifying a poison, knowing which politician has the most to gain by killing the victim, knowing that a drink tastes off because it is poison, or identifying a fake artwork left behind by an art thief)
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Unless you plan on increasing any of your lore skills beyond trained, there is hardly a reason to take any. Recall knowledge doesn't require training and an investigator can already roll any skill with a bonus equal to their level, so you can already roll all these lores, just at an effective -2 if you don't have them trained.
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Unless you plan on increasing any of your lore skills beyond trained, there is hardly a reason to take any. Recall knowledge doesn't require training and an investigator can already roll any skill with a bonus equal to their level, so you can already roll all these lores, just at an effective -2 if you don't have them trained.What you can recall is directly tied to your proficiency tier. There's even a table with examples based on if you're untrained, trained, expert, master or legendary.
Right, but like I said, if you don't plan on increasing these lore skills, it makes little difference if they are untrained or trained. It makes more sense to increase the base knowledge skills like society and arcana than lore nobles or lore golems.
Side note: I'm not sure if keen recollection being strictly worse than the human clever improvisation make sense. Keen recollection should at least let you count as trained for the subset of skill uses they offer like clever improvisation does for literally every skill and usage.
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What you can recall is directly tied to your proficiency tier. There's even a table with examples based on if you're untrained, trained, expert, master or legendary.
No, it isn't. That table is listing DCs. Remember that those are also listed in that way (Untrained means DC 10, Legendary means DC 40, and so on).
Technically, nothing prevents an Untrained check from knowing Legendary stuff by that table...except for the bonus not usually being high enough.
Side note: I'm not sure if keen recollection being strictly worse than the human clever improvisation make sense. Keen recollection should at least let you count as trained for the subset of skill uses they offer like clever improvisation does for literally every skill and usage.
This text would be completely pointless. The Recall Knowledge action can be used Untrained, and this text would thus be redundant.
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This text would be completely pointless. The Recall Knowledge action can be used Untrained, and this text would thus be redundant.
Ah ok, that was based on the comment that there is a limit to information based on your training. That chart is kind of misleading because I definitely assumed that statement was correct based on it.
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Ah ok, that was based on the comment that there is a limit to information based on your training. That chart is kind of misleading because I definitely assumed that statement was correct based on it.
This text would be completely pointless. The Recall Knowledge action can be used Untrained, and this text would thus be redundant.
That's totally fair, just striving to be clear in regards to how the rules work.
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Those are DCs. DCs are listed in exactly that way throughout the Skills chapter, and most Recall Knowledge checks using the simple DCs (which is what the Proficiency listings are) is stated explicitly several times. When you require a certain Proficiency to do things, the book says so. Recall Knowledge at no point says anything of the kind.
If you assume it does, you must also assume that all other Sample Tasks in the skills chapter are similarly gated, since they are listed identically. This results in silliness like anyone untrained in Acrobatics automatically failing to balance on a wooden beam, or anyone untrained in Athletics automatically failing to climb all trees forever. That is not how the rules work or are intended to work.
You are misinterpreting the table in question. I understand why you're misinterpreting it, but it remains a misinterpretation.
And Clever Improvisation's 'count as trained' is absolutely not redundant because it applies to all Skills and thus many Trained Only actions, nor is the Investigator ability to count as a higher Proficiency level, since again it applies to everything and some things do have a minimum Proficiency requirement. But Recall Knowledge is simply not among those things.
Well, technically that's not true, since a GM can make any individual check have a minimum Proficiency if they feel like it. It's an entirely GM discretion rule. But certain listed hazards aside, it's not the default for anything and no text anywhere even implies it is.
I'm with DMW on this, they are just suggestions on how to choose an appropriate DC.
If you choose the lvl 15th DC of 34 in the last example, can an untrained PC attempt the roll?
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That example isn't gated, it's noting what barometer you should use to set the DC.
Let me quote p. 503 and the entire paragraph you're taking that example from:
Sometimes you need to quickly set a Difficulty Class. The easiest method is to select a simple DC from Table 10–4 by estimating which proficiency rank best matches the task (that rank is usually not required to succeed at the task). If it’s something pretty much anyone would have a decent chance at, use the untrained DC. If it would require a degree of training, use the DC listed for trained, expert, master, or legendary proficiency, as appropriate to the complexity of the task. For example, say a PC was trying to uncover the true history behind a fable. You determine this requires a check to Recall Knowledge, and that only someone with master proficiency in Folktale Lore would know the information, so you’d set the DC at 30—the simple master DC.
Emphasis mine.
The example you list follows immediately from this. It's clearly just using 'require' in the sense used in the second sentence above. As a determiner of DC.
It's also not an example from the section on Recall Knowledge, just the general Skill section, so if it is gated, and it being gated makes gating what you do most of the time, then all skill checks should be gated.
But they aren't. Indeed, Hazards aside, I can think of only a handful of gated check in any published Paizo adventure to date, and that includes many Recall Knowledge checks (which are almost always listed with a DC alone, no Proficiency notations). The people actually writing the game seem to agree with my interpretation, which makes yours pretty clearly wrong.
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page 234 at the beginning of the skill section seems to insinuate that the tables are the DCs to me.
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I'm not arguing that you can't gate Recall Knowledge checks behind Proficiency. You certainly can, you can gate anything.
I'm stating that 'Master DC' generally means DC 30, not that it requires Master level Proficiency. And that the ubiquitous tables in the Skills chapter are recommended DCs, not anything else.
Both of those are well supported by the text. The idea that all Skills are primarily composed of gated activities (the only logical result of the interpretation you're going with) is not supported at all, and indeed directly contradicted.
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again, i'm not saying that all "Simple DCs" are gated by tiers, it clearly states that some are and some aren't.
Sure. That's true enough.
i'm just saying that Recall Knowledge actions "usually" are Gated (i.e. the normal setting is that they are gated, but as everything, a GM can alter that)
And here you lose me. What evidence do you have of this? I'm seeing zero things that remotely even imply this about Recall Knowledge specifically any more than any other Skill usage.
The base rules already suggest Gating to be a normal thing that occurs ("Sometimes succeeding at a particular task requires a character to have a specific proficiency rank in addition to a success on the check"), it just leaves it up to the GM on what is and what isn't. And those tables are used as reference.
No, they aren't. The section on Minimum Proficiency references the tables in the Skill Chapter zero times. They reference the by-level DC tables, but only to say you shouldn't make things impossible by having a level 10 check that requires Legendary or the like.
So yes, ALL skills can have gated checks. That's the normal thing.
'Can' and 'do' are different. Explicitly, most skill checks are not gated. There's no limit on what Skills can be gated, but none are by default.
Using the example in the "level based DC", it seems to me that both the option of Gating the athletic check to Master Athletics (same as the table) or not gating are both up to the GM and EQUALLY acceptable.
Hence the tables.
No. Again, the tables are to determine DC. The paragraph I quoted could not possibly make that more clear. You certainly can also use them for proficiency gating of you have a desire to do so, but it is clearly and explicitly intended that you usually don't.
Also, it makes little sense to include an example that differs from what the previous text said is typical. So if the text says usually checks using simple dc aren't gated then it stands to reason that the example should be illustrating a common scenario and not an exception.
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Umm.. Yeah, not agreeing, there, lots of checks aren't "gated", type of checks might require to be trained, but examples for skill use in book aren't.
Like, I haven't heard anyone else intepret it like this, not even the devs, so you are kinda arguing at loss there.
That table only shows how hard it is to know the thing, nothing about it said that you NEED to have legendary profiency to attempt remember legendary level facts.(though obviously if you are untrained, no chance at all in succeeding at dc 40 level stuff :P)
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Well, wow. I didn't really expect that much controversy there. I think the chart is very misleading if the knowledge checks aren't gated by training level. In my mind, the example shows what type of information a success gives for that training level, while a crit success bumps you up one more level. I haven't really seen much in the way of actual DCs for knowledge checks beyond monsters, so I think the examples make sense as good guidelines for successes. So maybe they aren't "gated" but a trained person probably can't get to legendary information just inherently because even a critical success wouldn't push their result high enough. Regardless, I can definitely see why this is confusing.
I'm with zer0darkfire on this one.
The 'table' is labled "Recall Knowledge Tasks", nothing there refers to the DC of the task. The proficiencies can be seen as requirements or in reference to the simple DC chart, but it could also be both.
Page 503 says:
Sometimes you need to quickly set a Difficulty Class. The easiest method is to select a simple DC from Table 10–4 by estimating which proficiency rank best matches the task (that rank is usually not required to succeed at the task). If it’s something pretty much anyone would have a decent chance at, use the untrained DC. If it would require a degree of training, use the DC listed for trained, expert, master, or legendary proficiency, as appropriate to the complexity of the task. For example, say a PC was trying to uncover the true history behind a fable. You determine this requires a check to Recall Knowledge, and that only someone with master proficiency in Folktale Lore would know the information, so you’d set the DC at 30—the simple master DC.
In addition, there's the paaragraph on Minimum proficiency on page 504:
Sometimes succeeding at a particular task requires a character to have a specific proficiency rank in addition to a success on the check. Locks and traps often require a certain proficiency rank to successfully use the Pick a Lock or Disable a Device actions of Thievery. A character whose proficiency rank is lower than what’s listed can attempt the check, but they can’t succeed. You can apply similar minimum proficiencies to other tasks. You might decide, for example, that a particular arcane theorem requires training in Arcana to understand. An untrained barbarian can’t succeed at the check, but she can still attempt it if she wants—after all, she needs to have a chance to critically fail and get erroneous information!
I do wonder if such checks in AP's have proficiency gates. I'd check book 5 and 6 of AoA, but haven't read them yet, might want to play them.
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"Explicitly" a lot of checks are gated.
No. Beyond those that require Trained, which are stated very specifically, some are, but not 'a lot'. Indeed, very explicitly, most are not.
I mean, you can ignore the whole rule section of it which directly states that:
"Sometimes succeeding at a particular task requires a character to have a specific proficiency rank in addition to a success on the check"
You can also ignore all the gated Recall examples in the book. Your game, your rules. But I do expect most specialised Recall rolls in the games will be Gated, as shown by the examples and the rule text.
Nobody is suggesting that Proficiency Gating isn't a thing. I'm suggesting it's intended to be quite rare outside of Hazards and how they work, and that it's not intended to be more common on Recall Knowledge than any other Skill usage.
None of the things you cite remotely prove otherwise, while several I cite strongly argue this as true. As do all published adventures.
I would expect the same as well. But I'm not reading that. I'm reading "only master proficiency".
Again, I believe the tables show examples of what can be gated and the thresholds, since ALL skill checks can become gated as judged by the individual GM and the individual check on a case by case scenario.
Gating is explicitly intended as an uncommon rules option taking all of one paragraph and in an entirely different section of the book than the chart in question, while the Simple DCs are listed as standard at the beginning of the Skills chapter itself and shown in an identical 'sidebar' type chart.
Now, ambiguous wording aside, which is more likely to be what the chart is referring to under those circumstances?
I'm with zer0darkfire on this one.
The 'table' is labled "Recall Knowledge Tasks", nothing there refers to the DC of the task. The proficiencies can be seen as requirements or in reference to the simple DC chart, but it could also be both.
Only if all the other, similar, charts in the Skills chapter work likewise and climbing trees is impossible for the untrained.
I agree the tables can be misleading, but every rule we have strongly indicates that they refer to DCs.
Additionally, reading the Skills chapter alone, there are no indications that Proficiency gating even exists,only that the Simple DCs chart is very important. I think that fact is pretty indicative.
That's a very weak guideline, but it's a guideline
Absolutely. The GM can apply gating to any check they desire. But it's not the default for almost anything. It is an unusual case, an exception.
I do wonder if such checks in AP's have proficiency gates. I'd check book 5 and 6 of AoA, but haven't read them yet, might want to play them.
A quick look through Book 5 reveals zero gated checks outside of Hazards, which are where they're expected per the rulebook (and that's including a host of DC 35 to DC 45 checks). That's not to say you can't do this, but it's clearly intended as a rare exception, not the rule.
The 'table' is labled "Recall Knowledge Tasks", nothing there refers to the DC of the task. The proficiencies can be seen as requirements or in reference to the simple DC chart, but it could also be both.Only if all the other, similar, charts in the Skills chapter work likewise and climbing trees is impossible for the untrained.
Well, that chart has "low-branched tree" in the Untrained row, so yeah.
I consider myself untrained in athletics, and a simple rope is very much an unbeatable encounter for me.|
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Well, that chart has "low-branched tree" in the Untrained row, so yeah.
I consider myself untrained in athletics, and a simple rope is very much an unbeatable encounter for me.
What about breaking ice? That's equally impossible by this standard. Or acquiring common rumors? Or finding an overgrown path in a forest? Or subsisting in a normal village?
All are listed as Trained on similar tables. All are probably not easy for an Untrained person, but should they really be impossible?
That said, this particular point is definitely a side issue. The actual text, and certainly all the published adventures, indicate that Proficiency Gating is intended to be quite rare outside Hazards. The text is slightly confusing in regards to that fact, but the evidence of every single adventure going with the 'determines DC' interpretation is hard to ignore.
Proficiency gating limits all character to their 3 Legendary skills (Rogues and Investigator excepted). And you get the third one at level 11. Which means that a party of 4 players with no overlap in skill choice can only roll half of the skill checks before level 10. And some skills are far more common than others (Acrobatics, Athletics, Stealth), so you won't even be able to roll half of the proficiency gated checks, if you ever even get to one third of them.
In my opinion, proficiency gating is a very bad idea, as it will most of the time be a synonym of autofailure.
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Proficiency gating limits all character to their 3 Legendary skills (Rogues and Investigator excepted). And you get the third one at level 11. Which means that a party of 4 players with no overlap in skill choice can only roll half of the skill checks before level 10. And some skills are far more common than others (Acrobatics, Athletics, Stealth), so you won't even be able to roll half of the proficiency gated checks, if you ever even get to one third of them.
In my opinion, proficiency gating is a very bad idea, as it will most of the time be a synonym of autofailure.
This is also correct. Occasional Proficiency Gating on non-vital checks just causes the occasional auto-failure to get extra information or the like. Which is fine. But making it widespread? That sabotages the whole way the game seems intended to operate on a fairly profound level.
I haven't mentioned it before because it's an argument about what the rules should be rather than what they are, and my discussion on this point has been exclusively about what the rules are, not what they should be. But it remains a true statement.
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Additionally, reading the Skills chapter alone, there are no indications that Proficiency gating even exists,only that the Simple DCs chart is very important. I think that fact is pretty indicative.
This is incorrect, and I'd like to apologize for that. Going through it again, Proficiency gating is indeed mentioned in the Skills chapter. It's mostly only in relation to the Untrained/Trained table, but does mention the possibility of other restrictions. The evidence (especially the aforementioned 'all published adventures') is still rather overwhelming that it's not supposed to be widespread, IMO, but that does make the tables even more potentially confusing.
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Yeah, no. It isn't suggesting you proficiency gate, it is just giving simple DC levels. Nor is it backed up by the paizo run play sessions, modules, pfsociety modules or APs.
https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=552
It takes a special misreading of intent to get otherwise imo.
The minimum proficiency segment even explains that people under certain levels should "almost never" be subjected to gated proficiencies of certain tiers.
E.G. flying familiars are SooL if they ever want to fly against the wind as they never get expert. Just a modifier. And ranger companions, gotta be a level 6 bird to try to fly against the wind.
Everyone who enters a hedge maze before becomeing an expert in survival is outright lost forever.
That said, as to why it works out for an investigator. Int knowledge checks for skills otherwise reliant on wisdom, personally I like having lots of skills available trained or higher though.
I still think having lores auto raise like they do if you pick up the skill feat would have been a better approach, but that isn't the world we live in.
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I feel like the Investigator has the right number of skills and that they should not get punished simply for favoring the Intelligence Attribute. No class should be punished on the number of skills they start with just because they are more likely to have a higher intelligence.
Besides, there are reasons to still put skill training into Lore beyond your normal skills since it can give you insight into much more than would normally be possible otherwise.
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I feel like the Investigator has the right number of skills and that they should not get punished simply for favoring the Intelligence Attribute. No class should be punished on the number of skills they start with just because they are more likely to have a higher intelligence.
Besides, there are reasons to still put skill training into Lore beyond your normal skills since it can give you insight into much more than would normally be possible otherwise.
I think its better to put increases in Arcana, Society, Religion, Nature, Occultism, etc. instead of lores because it nets you a bigger bonus to a wider variety of skills. Being a master of Arcana for say +17 is a lot better to me than being trained in lore (golems) for +13 or even worse, being trained in arcana and a lore that never comes up.
I think its better to put increases in Arcana, Society, Religion, Nature, Occultism, etc. instead of lores because it nets you a bigger bonus to a wider variety of skills. Being a master of Arcana for say +17 is a lot better to me than being trained in lore (golems) for +13 or even worse, being trained in arcana and a lore that never comes up.I feel like the Investigator has the right number of skills and that they should not get punished simply for favoring the Intelligence Attribute. No class should be punished on the number of skills they start with just because they are more likely to have a higher intelligence.
Besides, there are reasons to still put skill training into Lore beyond your normal skills since it can give you insight into much more than would normally be possible otherwise.
Definitely true, but it's nice to have the additional lores on top of those. Just saying that you don't have to train Athletics, Acrobatics, Stealth, Thievery, etc on an Investigator if you want to focus on more of the mental skills.
Keep in mind that skill training is not the same as a skill increase. I don't necessarily recommend blowing skill increases on picking up new skills.. though it is possible to do.
I would much rather have someone who is a Master in Arcana and trained in a rare and appropriate lore. Things like that could include Archeologist Lore or Sailing Lore. If you're ever dealing with old civlizations or need some direction when going through a ruin that Lore can provide a ton of helpful information where generic skills may not come close. Sailing Lore can also be very useful when navigating on the open seas or in an airship, and should probably also be used in place of some physical skills when performing checks aboard a ship.
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Yeah, DMW is correct about the proficiency gating.
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-rolls eyes-, stop with the all caps screeching. It doesn't endear anyone to giving you actual responses.
So far, not one has pointed a rule that even remotely says otherwise. As for how "rare" that is, the rules have a guideline for that as well: "sometimes", and in my book, sometimes is much more frequent than "rarely".
I sometimes do that, just rarely.
Sometimes mean that it's not often and more than once. So it can be rarely.And as mentioned above, using too much proficiency gating can be a synonym of autofail.
In my opinion, proficiency gating is only useful in one situation: If you have a very big table. When you start having 7 or 8 players at the table, you know each and every roll will be rolled 3 or 4 times. So you may decide to use proficiency gating to make the roll count more (and increase the feeling of specialization for your players).
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I still haven't see a SINGLE argument why the explicit RULE:
""Sometimes succeeding at a particular task requires a character to have a specific proficiency rank in addition to a success on the check"
somehow translates to "rarely on non-important stuff"
It doesn't matter much: the frequency of proficiency-gated checks depends on who writes the adventure, be it Paizo or yourself.
i haven't seen a SINGLE argument on the:
"only someone with master proficiency in Folktale Lore would know the information"
example.
The argument is that that sentence is there just to show how the adventure writer could think when they have to choose a DC.
"Who could reasonably know this information? Well, it's quite difficult, so I guess that only a master in Folktale Lore should have a good chance to: I'll use the standard master DC."It's an example, not a rule.