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I would think that the online Society Guide could be edited to be in line with the Character Guide, and the Chronicle that grants a bonus to Pathfinder Society Lore could be addressed to apply to the published skill instead.
It's a bit problematic as it stands right now, though.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Maryland—Hagerstown
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As a GM I would have a really hard time arguing that a player could not roll Pathfinder Lore when a scenario called for Pathfinder Society Lore or vice versa.
Same. If any of the lore skills are close in name and the player can articulate, I usually let it go.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Maryland—Hagerstown
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Possibly. My concern is that some scenarios (and their chronicles) may also reference those lores, and I wouldn't want to produce a situation where a GM says "The scenario says "Thassilonian History Lore" and you only have "Thassilonian Lore"
I would allow it, same as I did before with the Pathfinder and Pathfinder Society Lores got clarified.
Is there a blanket statement that could be added to the guide to cover these lores that could be the same?
Or something that states table variation about lore skills?
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Since it's a Society-specific problem that the Society-created Lores don't match the Paizo-published ones, a Society clarification seems most appropriate to address it.
It could be in the GM Discussion for those specific scenarios, or the Product page, or the Character Options page, or the Legacy Backgrounds themselves can be updated (which is my preference) with an asterisk letting players know why it was changed.
Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Turku
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Also, remember that creative solutions are (almost always) an option, and generally it's a GM call if your lore applies. A GM saying that "no, your Thassilonian lore doesn't count for Thassilonian history lore" is pretty unlikely, since they'd be both denying a lore that clearly fits, and denying a creative solution. I've got a hard time imagining a GM saying that "No, your forest lore can't be used to know what kind of creatures typically live in a forest - you must roll nature instead" and the thassilonian/thassilonian history are even closer to each other.
Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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Also, remember that creative solutions are (almost always) an option, and generally it's a GM call if your lore applies. A GM saying that "no, your Thassilonian lore doesn't count for Thassilonian history lore" is pretty unlikely, since they'd be both denying a lore that clearly fits, and denying a creative solution. I've got a hard time imagining a GM saying that "No, your forest lore can't be used to know what kind of creatures typically live in a forest - you must roll nature instead" and the thassilonian/thassilonian history are even closer to each other.
Honestly, I think the OP's issue is the real problem. I am less worried about table GMs refusing to allow variations on a lore to count, but having two virtually identical but mechanically separate lores granted by character options is an issue.
The Early Explorer legacy background makes you Trained in Pathfinder Society Lore. The Pathfinder Agent Dedication feat makes you trained in Pathfinder Lore, or expert if you were already trained. If a character with the Early Explorer background took Pathfinder Agent Dedication, would they become expert in Pathfinder/Pathfinder Society Lore? Or would they be trained in two redundant lore skills?
Likewise, having a boon that gives you "+2 to X lore" and having the GM say it doesn't count because you have "X history lore" not "X lore" would be a problem.
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Ran into a different, but related issue. A PFS adventure called for Criminal Lore. Criminal Lore is not granted by any background or given as an example anywhere that I can find. However the Criminal background grants Underworld Lore (as do several others). The GM let me use it. It just seems to be another case where the term PFS is using doesn’t line up with the term used elsewhere in the game. Unless there really was meant to be a distinction. I suspect this is going to be something the editors/developers are going to have to deal with for a while.
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Using Lore, in general, is no different than using Profession in the other editions. GMs should be open-minded, and I think most are.
Calling for Criminal Lore and allowing Underworld Lore should be like calling for Profession (Herbalist) and allowing Profession (Botanist).
It's only when specific Lores are referenced in published materials that it becomes a problem. In that case, it should be the "made-up" Society material that adjusts to accommodate the "real" Paizo material.
Profession (Dancer) is a published Starfinder Profession. If the Starfinder Society Guide published a benefit for Profession (Ballet Dancer), I would expect the Guide to be amended to accommodate the "real" Profession.
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In the particular instance I’m referring to, it could just be that it’s an early adventure and things weren’t sorted out yet. Unlike professions, we have backgrounds in 2e that all grant a lore skill. It’s probably a good idea for scenario authors to look through those and see if there is something appropriate before just making up a new one.
At issue in the instance of Criminal is that had I not had the Criminal background, I might not have thought to speak up and ask if Underworld should work. I might have assumed Criminal Lore was something some other background grants, besides whatever gave me Underworld Lore. But when asked if I had Criminal Lore, my response was I am a Criminal! If I had gotten the skill from Bellflower Agent, for example, I might not have thought twice about it or even asked if I could use it.
Edit: Or worse, a GM treats it as a secret roll (no idea if the adventure says it’s supposed to be), and they don’t make the connection when they read Underworld Lore on someone’s sheet. Then the player never even knows they need to make their case for Underworld Lore to apply.
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Ferious in the example you provide the GM doesn't make the roll secret secret. They still have to declare that they're doing a roll because you can still use fortune effects.
Right, but if it calls for Criminal Lore, and the GM looks at your sheet and sees Underworld Lore, they may never make the roll at all. My GM happened to ask if anyone had Criminal Lore, which is how it got caught. Another GM might ask what lores the table has, or have you write them down ahead of time, etc. If the GM doesn't make the connection between the two skills and never mentions that a roll could be made, then the player can't argue that Underworld Lore should apply.
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Yeah, I mean, I hope that's how it plays out. I'm just pointing out an issue that could come up when the authors aren't careful about the skills they choose. In this instance, it's a roll to notice something is off about a situation. So it's not an active thing at all. Which is what makes me think it could get skipped entirely.
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One of the reasons why GMing is harder in 2E, especially in Organized Play, is because GMs have to know every character's details to fulfill the plethora of secret checks. It's happened to me every table I've GMed. You have to collect every Lore (at least two per player), their Proficiency level (because at least one check I've seen called for Expert), and then you have to collect every other skill for Exploration Mode rolls. You virtually need a new spreadsheet for every game. That not only takes time, but as Ferious's example highlights, you can still miss something. For now I'm sticking to GMing 2E via PbP, where my introductory post asks everyone to fill out a "Skill Matrix" that I can then copy and paste for all of the checks required. And if I need to know how some ability interacts with a secret check, I can research it, rather than ask in a face-to-face game and reveal that something's happening.
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Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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Ferious in the example you provide the GM doesn't make the roll secret secret. They still have to declare that they're doing a roll because you can still use fortune effects.Right, but if it calls for Criminal Lore, and the GM looks at your sheet and sees Underworld Lore, they may never make the roll at all. My GM happened to ask if anyone had Criminal Lore, which is how it got caught. Another GM might ask what lores the table has, or have you write them down ahead of time, etc. If the GM doesn't make the connection between the two skills and never mentions that a roll could be made, then the player can't argue that Underworld Lore should apply.
Right but that's such a horrible way to handle it because of the fact that he GM needs to carefully read a players character sheet in order to do that. A GM shouldn't be playing a guessing game over a decent number of abilities that a PC can have.
Venture-Captain, Nebraska—Omaha
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One of the reasons why GMing is harder in 2E, especially in Organized Play, is because GMs have to know every character's details to fulfill the plethora of secret checks. It's happened to me every table I've GMed. You have to collect every Lore (at least two per player), their Proficiency level (because at least one check I've seen called for Expert), and then you have to collect every other skill for Exploration Mode rolls. You virtually need a new spreadsheet for every game. That not only takes time, but as Ferious's example highlights, you can still miss something. For now I'm sticking to GMing 2E via PbP, where my introductory post asks everyone to fill out a "Skill Matrix" that I can then copy and paste for all of the checks required. And if I need to know how some ability interacts with a secret check, I can research it, rather than ask in a face-to-face game and reveal that something's happening.
If you are speaking of the adventure that I am thinking about, yes there was a lot of secret rolls with a lot of different skills that could be used. Hope they don't make too many of those adventures.
I have found that most adventures don't have too many secret checks.
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Right but that's such a horrible way to handle it because of the fact that he GM needs to carefully read a players character sheet in order to do that. A GM shouldn't be playing a guessing game over a decent number of abilities that a PC can have.Ferious in the example you provide the GM doesn't make the roll secret secret. They still have to declare that they're doing a roll because you can still use fortune effects.Right, but if it calls for Criminal Lore, and the GM looks at your sheet and sees Underworld Lore, they may never make the roll at all. My GM happened to ask if anyone had Criminal Lore, which is how it got caught. Another GM might ask what lores the table has, or have you write them down ahead of time, etc. If the GM doesn't make the connection between the two skills and never mentions that a roll could be made, then the player can't argue that Underworld Lore should apply.
It’s not a guessing game. I’m not sure how you got to that. The adventure calls for Criminal Lore. No one is going to have that. (Ok, it’s possible someone will have also made that Lore up for themselves, but extremely unlikely). A GM can look at a list of lores, ask the players what lores they have, etc. and it’s not a guessing game whether or not someone has the Lore that is listed. What it is is table variation over what other lores a GM allows to substitute for the one that is used in a scenario that doesn’t exist anywhere else. And that’s not a good thing for the campaign.
The check I’m referencing would, in PFS1, probably have been knowledge local. Maybe the author should have provided for a Society roll with a higher DC. That’s another thing they can consider when writing in a Lore skill that doesn’t otherwise exist. What alternate standard skill could be used instead.
EDIT: Ok, I finally bought the adventure to see how the call for the check is actually phrased. It does ask for Society or Criminal Lore. So that’s good. That should remove a lot of the table variation. It still would be a good idea for scenario authors to check what lores exist before making new ones up, but as long as they continue to provide an alternate standard skill, it should ultimately be ok.
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So what is wrong with just asking the players what Lore they have when it comes time for a secret check?
That's the big (for me, at least) distinguishing difference between Pathfinder 1 and Pathfinder 2. The point of secret checks is that they happen behind the scenes, and players aren't supposed to know they're being rolled.
Example 1 of many: Exploration Mode in a cave complex. Players tell the GM what rolls they're doing. But GM is secretly rolling Stealth for everyone, regardless, because that determines whether the dragon wakes up.
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Venture-Captain, Nebraska—Omaha
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So what is wrong with just asking the players what Lore they have when it comes time for a secret check?That's the big (for me, at least) distinguishing difference between Pathfinder 1 and Pathfinder 2. The point of secret checks is that they happen behind the scenes, and players aren't supposed to know they're being rolled.
Example 1 of many: Exploration Mode in a cave complex. Players tell the GM what rolls they're doing. But GM is secretly rolling Stealth for everyone, regardless, because that determines whether the dragon wakes up.
Your example holds true for 1e as well. But I understand the gest of what you are saying.
It will be up to the GM how much prep work they feel is needed to run an adventure and plan according.
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Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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The adventure calls for Criminal Lore. No one is going to have that.
I have a character that can make a Lore Criminal roll. :) It's why I made that suggestion in the first place because I doubt most people are familiar with how you can roll that.
Edit:
Also Nefreet reread the secret check rules. That isn't how the case we're talking about works.
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The adventure calls for Criminal Lore. No one is going to have that.I have a character that can make a Lore Criminal roll. :) It's why I made that suggestion in the first place because I doubt most people are familiar with how you can roll that.
Edit:
Also Nefreet reread the secret check rules. That isn't how the case we're talking about works.
Did you just decide to take Criminal Lore on your own as one of your limited number of skills? Or did that actually come from somewhere? If you decided to take it... why? Especially when Underworld exists.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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So we have two kinds of secret checks: checks that the players decide to make but don't know sure whether they passed, and checks that the players don't know they're making, and they'll only find out if they did/didn't pass.
Example Case 1: someone decides to spend an action to Recall Knowledge about a monster.
Example Case 2: the PCs enter an area with a clue in plain sight, but it takes a check to recognize the significance.
In both situations the GM may hesitate to tell the players all the possible skills that are called for. For example, if the players want to recall knowledge about the stuffed owlbear that's attacking them, when the GM calls for Arcana or Religion that gives a bit of a hint whether it's undead or an animated object. And when the players enter an area and the GM asks super casually "does anyone here have Criminal Lore" that also sets a tone.
Case 2 existed in Pathfinder 1 as well; there were some adventures where you're accompanied by someone who isn't as they seem for example, and you might notice that. I think the same remedies work in PF2 as in PF1: for such scenarios you just need a list of what peoples' relevant scores are so you can make the secret checks. So yeah, you do need to make a list of peoples' lores.
Case 1, well the question "do I tell the players what skill to use" came up in PF1 as well. But in PF2, doing a recall knowledge check is more costly - there's a risk of false information, and it costs an action. Personally, I think the GM should be open about which skills could be used, and then let the players decide whether they want to spend the action.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Regarding how strict we should parse lores.
It seems that already several scenario writers have referred to lores that aren't exactly in the list of lores players are generally directed to choose from. Not that surprising since in Starfinder and PF2 you occasionally find calls for checks using skills from PF1.
And lores are not a very closed off list - new lores show up in new books, and players can (within some bounds) make up their own lores.
I think for character creation purposes, we should endeavor to keep the rules clear, and clean up glitches. Like Pathfinder Lore vs. Pathfinder Society Lore. In this case it matters because other feats will improve one of them to Expert if you were already Trained, and then it becomes important to know whether they're equivalent.
For adventures I think we need a looser policy. If we restrict it only to exact matches (and writers make up some lores of their own) the system becomes rigid and dumb. I think the Guide should contain a guideline for GMs on how to handle adjacent lores. For example:
- Say a scenario calls for Thassilonian History Lore, but a player has Thassilon Lore. That should probably be compatible.
- Another scenario has an Influence skill challenge where one NPC can be swayed with Heraldry lore and another with Genealogy lore. Here they probably shouldn't be interchangeable, since the author apparently wanted them to use different lores.
- The GMG assigns special importance to Sailing, Piloting and Driving lore. In PFS1, Profession Sailor was used quite a lot as the skill needed to control a boat, but that's a trained-only skill in PF1 which I'm not sure all authors were really aware of when they required those skill checks in their scenario.
So what I think we need is for the Guide to give the GM guidelines on how to judge when one Lore can be substituted for another; guidelines that encourage the GM not to be too narrow, but also make clear where the limits of permissiveness should be.
Organized Play Developer
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Thank you!
What about Thassilonian History Lore and Thassilonian Lore?
Or would it be easier to just edit the Guide to reflect the published options?
I'll double-check with the design team on this one, but as I recall from my last conversation with Seifter on the subject, these actually would be two different lores, since Thassilonian History Lore would tell you about ancient Thassilon while Thassilonian Lore would be more about the modern day New Thassilon.
Re: Pathfinder Lore vs. Pathfinder Society Lore, Pathfinder Society Lore was first published in the Pathfinder Hopeful background from the Doomsday Dawn playtest adventure, which is also the background that was used for our Fumbus pregen. The use of Pathfinder Society Lore significantly predates the use of Pathfinder Lore, which appeared in a book that was still in development while the boons, pregens, etc. were already being finalized and well after the Pathfinder Hopeful background had been published. I suspect that Pathfinder Lore might have started as Pathfinder Society Lore and ended up losing a word in copyfit or something similar. These lores should probably be considered interchangeable, but I'll ask the design team for clarification before making an official statement about how/if they're going to be sync'd up.
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Venture-Captain, Nebraska—Omaha
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What I do if someone doesn't have the specific Lore but makes a case for something that is different is allow the check but with a penalty. And I will tell them that I will allow the use of the lore but they have a small negative.
I never impose more than a -2, but the players don't know that.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I'll double-check with the design team on this one, but as I recall from my last conversation with Seifter on the subject, these actually would be two different lores, since Thassilonian History Lore would tell you about ancient Thassilon while Thassilonian Lore would be more about the modern day New Thassilon.Thank you!
What about Thassilonian History Lore and Thassilonian Lore?
Or would it be easier to just edit the Guide to reflect the published options?
If they're intended to be different, maybe it should be called New Thassilon Lore then?
I mean, you could be forgiven for thinking York Lore and York History Lore will overlap, while New York Lore is clearly something else.
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Organized Play Developer
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I'll double-check with the design team on this one, but as I recall from my last conversation with Seifter on the subject, these actually would be two different lores, since Thassilonian History Lore would tell you about ancient Thassilon while Thassilonian Lore would be more about the modern day New Thassilon.Thank you!
What about Thassilonian History Lore and Thassilonian Lore?
Or would it be easier to just edit the Guide to reflect the published options?
If they're intended to be different, maybe it should be called New Thassilon Lore then?
I mean, you could be forgiven for thinking York Lore and York History Lore will overlap, while New York Lore is clearly something else.
But how would we know if that's lore about New Thassilon or just lore about what's new with Thassilon, including all the hottest topics and trends?
I'll pass your feedback along to the design team.
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Organized Play Developer
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Okay, OFFICIAL clarifications per discussion with the design team-
Pathfinder Lore and Pathfinder Society Lore are the same thing and should be treated as such. If you took the Pathfinder Hopeful background and then took the Pathfinder Agent Dedication, the Pathfinder Society Lore you gained from the background would be bumped to Expert by the dedication.
RE: lores- You cannot have a lore about an extant nation; the largest this category can be for modern-day knowledge is a settlement, such as "Magnimar Lore" or "Xin-Edasseril Lore". This would mean that "Thassilon Lore" and "Thassilon History Lore" are functionally the same thing, because to have a lore category that encompasses an entire nation, that nation would need to be one that doesn't currently exist. Similarly, you could have "Ancient Osirion Lore" or "Jitska Lore" but not "(modern) Osirion Lore".
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Venture-Captain, Nebraska—Omaha
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We as Players and GMs need to remain flexible and not allow us ourselves to get bogged down with the little shades that can be found in the rules.
There is no need to slow the table over a Lore. The GM makes the call and we continue. This is nothing new.
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Okay, OFFICIAL clarifications per discussion with the design team-
Pathfinder Lore and Pathfinder Society Lore are the same thing and should be treated as such. If you took the Pathfinder Hopeful background and then took the Pathfinder Agent Dedication, the Pathfinder Society Lore you gained from the background would be bumped to Expert by the dedication.
RE: lores- You cannot have a lore about an extant nation; the largest this category can be for modern-day knowledge is a settlement, such as "Magnimar Lore" or "Xin-Edasseril Lore". This would mean that "Thassilon Lore" and "Thassilon History Lore" are functionally the same thing, because to have a lore category that encompasses an entire nation, that nation would need to be one that doesn't currently exist. Similarly, you could have "Ancient Osirion Lore" or "Jitska Lore" but not "(modern) Osirion Lore".
Marking to add to guide.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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We as Players and GMs need to remain flexible and not allow us ourselves to get bogged down with the little shades that can be found in the rules.
There is no need to slow the table over a Lore. The GM makes the call and we continue. This is nothing new.
Yeah, so I would like the Guide to say something to that effect: encourage the GM to make judgement calls on when alternate lores can be used. I know you don't need it, but some GMs are very RAW-minded and without "permission" they feel they can't.
Basically, a Lore analogue to the "creative solutions" section.