I have just been listening to an actual play podcast where the GM mentioned that he didn’t like “skill dogpiling”.
I hadn’t heard the term but understood from the context. And then stumbled across Matt Colville’s video on this (clearly from a 5E context)
A large part of the points raised in the Colville video seem dealt with by 2Es skill proficiency system locking certain rolls to people
And then there is the risk of a critical fail to stop knowledge dogpiling
But do people still find this an issue? What skills are completely fine to let everyone roll? I know I used to get frustrated in 1E that if everyone rolled diplomacy or sense motive or perception then one person would usually succeed. By law of averages. So at that point it doesn’t become worth even having a skill check anymore
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Everyone likes rolling their dice. Having an encounter that can be solved by diplomacy means only one person gets to roll their dice.
Really it would just be better to convince your players to teamwork these things. One player with diplomacy, one player paying attention to others in the encounter with perception, one player making a distraction, that kind of thing.
Or, you know, if it's a situation where they'll eventually succeed, just let them succeed and move on with the story.
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PF2E addresses this in interesting ways.
For one thing, the rulebook addresses checks (like perception) likely to be attempted by the entire party, and potentially modifying DCs to compensate.
Beyond that the possibility of a Critical Failure will, once players have grasped how that interacts with the system, prevent people from rolling long shot tests with skills they aren't trained in (generally, unless a skill DC is Hard or Very Hard, merely being trained will make success far more likely than a critical failure, but considering the likelihood is now a part of play).
The other main observation I've had GMing PF2 is that once the first skill gates show up (say, in book 2 of an AP), the table starts to strategize and coordinate character development more. My players started talking about who wanted to pursue mastering Thievery, who was going to pursue Religion (great for a surprising number of Hazards), who had the skill feats for a career in medicine, etc.
I personally think it's a good thing that players are encouraged to find a unique place for themselves, as opposed to everyone deciding they all want to Master Diplomacy, and finding out there's not really any need for them all to have done so and traps are really taking a toll on the party...
Keep in mind that "skill dogpiling" and law of averages will work both ways.
As much as everybody in the group is usually entitled to his own sense motive roll to determine if the opposing NPC is telling the truth, or to his own perception roll to detect an ambush, they usually also need to make their individual deception rolls to pose as the kings guards or individual stealth rolls to sneak through the enemy keep.
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Keep in mind that "skill dogpiling" and law of averages will work both ways.
As much as everybody in the group is usually entitled to his own sense motive roll to determine if the opposing NPC is telling the truth, or to his own perception roll to detect an ambush, they usually also need to make their individual deception rolls to pose as the kings guards or individual stealth rolls to sneak through the enemy keep.
I actually really like resolving these (specifically, the social challenges) as skill challenges where the party needs at least 50% successes, with critical failures as a negative and critical successes as multiple successes.
Without trivializing anything, it let's everyone "contribute" according to how much they invested.
Non trained individuals are generally a "load" or drain that the highly skilled member(s) of the party need to cover for, without instantly losing the challenge. Characters in the middle have a good chance of contributing, or at the very least not hurting the party.
It still tends to be generally weighted toward party success pretty heavily (most characters I've observed end up at least Trained in a huge variety of skills), but there's often some suspense generated in the process.
The value of multiple people attempting to aid can vary based on a lot of things:
1. How the GM is handling Aid DCs. A lot of people seem to be treating DC 20 to aid as a static DC, like 1E's flat 10, instead of adjusting at all based on the difficulty of the task.
2. Whether the scenario is one where multiple simultaneous aid attempts are plausible.
3. Whether anyone has any feats that affect how much aid they can provide.
4. Whether the increased odds of someone critically failing will undo the benefits, since multiple successful Aid attempts do not stack.
5. Whether there is already a circumstance bonus in play.
The value of multiple people attempting to aid can vary based on a lot of things:
1. How the GM is handling Aid DCs. A lot of people seem to be treating DC 20 to aid as a static DC, like 1E's flat 10, instead of adjusting at all based on the difficulty of the task.
I'm personally loathe to move the bar on things like this where the game sets a "typical" value, for fear of disrupting player expectations of how things work.
I just got many of the convinced that teamwork, and aiding are a better use of action #3 than an attack at -10 - I don't want to disrupt that!
With proficiency gating and critical failures, 'dogpiling' is already kind of limited by nature.
The fact that skill increases are such a limited commodity and specialization is so important in 2e further disincentivizes the kind of overlap.
So if there is any, trying to further limit people from rolling the same checks together seems like you're punishing something that's already not great and effectively depriving one of the characters of their skill in any group situation.
Better, imo, to look for ways to engage as many players as possible than worry about that like it's a bad thing.
It is my understanding that the DCs of 5th edition are much lower than they are in PF2, and that there is not the same metric for critically failing rolls, but I actually think that secret checks are the biggest difference built in to the game to keep some actions, like knowledge checks, to get from being pile on situations. So far it is working well in the games I am running.
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PF2E addresses this in interesting ways.
For one thing, the rulebook addresses checks (like perception) likely to be attempted by the entire party, and potentially modifying DCs to compensate.
Sometimes you get some funny effects from dogpiling.
I had a group of four all do (secret) Religion checks on an altar, and the three who were Trained all critically failed, while the fourth discerned the correct response. I gave them all reasons why their PC believed their answer was correct so, as I think it should be, the party was unsure which of the four gods the altar was to. Though obviously it's not that fourth guy's answer because he's untrained.
Much better than everybody automatically having the most certainty in the one whose die was highest! (Certainty has scant connection to accuracy, despite how it feels.)
I gave them all reasons why their PC believed their answer was correct so, as I think it should be, the party was unsure which of the four gods the altar was to. Though obviously it's not that fourth guy's answer because he's untrained.
It would've been hilarious if the untrained fourth guy had been the one who actually passed the check. Unlikely, but hilarious.
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For me the part of this that bugs me is the literal dogpiling that happens.
Usually it goes like this...
Quiet player speaking up for once: "Is it okay if I roll Perception to examine the statue?"
Literally everyone else: "OH I'M GONNA DO THAT TOO" *starts rolling dice and shouting their totals at me before the quiet player has even rolled*
It's led to a general rule that no one is forbidden from rolling, but the first person to ask for a roll gets to make the roll and learn the outcome before anyone else gets to jump in.
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I guess that "skill dogpiling" means letting everyone in the party attempt the skill check until someone succeeds.
For me the part of this that bugs me is the literal dogpiling that happens.
Usually it goes like this...
Quiet player speaking up for once: "Is it okay if I roll Perception to examine the statue?"
Literally everyone else: "OH I'M GONNA DO THAT TOO" *starts rolling dice and shouting their totals at me before the quiet player has even rolled*
It's led to a general rule that no one is forbidden from rolling, but the first person to ask for a roll gets to make the roll and learn the outcome before anyone else gets to jump in.
Since PF2 requires an action for skill checks, this cannot happen in encounter mode. If everyone spoke up at once in exploration mode, then I would say in my best firm parental voice, "Do you want to roll for initiative so that we can see who goes first?"
Let's look at the untrained skill activities in the PF2 Core Rulebook, Skills chapter, Table 4-1 on page 235.
Acrobatics: Balance, Tumble Through
Arcana: Recall Knowledge
Athletics: Climb, Force Open, Grapple, High Jump, Long Jump, Shove, Swim, Trip
Crafting: Recall Knowledge, Repair
Deception: Create a Diversion, Impersonate, Lie
Diplomacy: Gather Information, Make an Impression, Request
Intimidation: Coerce, Demoralize
Lore: Recall Knowledge
Medicine: Administer First Aid, Recall Knowledge
Nature: Command an Animal, Recall Knowledge
Occultism: Recall Knowledge
Performance: Perform
Religion: Recall Knowledge
Society: Recall Knowledge, Subsist
Stealth: Conceal an Object, Hide, Sneak,
Survival: Sense Direction, Subsist
Thievery: Palm an Object, Steal
I struck through every skill activity that affects only the character making the skill check. A success by someone else would not help.
Grapple, Shove, and Trip are attacks. Everyone attacking the same target during combat is an accepted method of combat. Demoralize is a combat tactic, too, much like an attack. Force Open is technically an attack, but it is more likely to occur outside the time pressure of combat.
Repair is an exploration or downtime activity where the same person can repeat the activity until success. Sense Direction is similar, because its only results are success or don't know. Having multiple people roll is not necessary. And I put Force Open into this category, too.
Imagining people trying to share a success for Conceal an Object and Palm an Object is laughable. "I failed to hide it well, so I hand it to Lefty to hide it." That would attract attention. But people could be trying to Conceal on Object while out of sight, in hopes of smuggling it through a city gate. That, however, falls under the case where the same person can try over and over again.
Lie, in contrast, has a failure mode of "The target doesn’t believe your lie and gains a +4 circumstance bonus against your attempts to Lie for the duration of your conversation. The target is also more likely to be suspicious of you in the future." I think that if that target does not believe a lie told by the first person, then the target does not believe the lie no matter who tells it. Thus, a second attempt will automatically fail. Steal is the same. After a failed Steal the target is on guard so a second attempt by anyone is not possible.
That leaves Recall Knowledge, Gather Information, Request, Coerce, Administer First Aid, Command an Animal, and Subsist.
Recall Knowledge, Gather Information, Administer First Aid, and Subsist feel like activities where everyone should contribute.
RANGER: Before we set up camp, let's go hunting for dinner.
FIGHTER: Fine with me, fresh meat is much better than iron rations.
CLERIC: Erastil would approve.
WIZARD: Wait a minute, I don't know how to hunt.
RANGER: If you see a rabbit, hit it with Produce Flame. Don't use Acid Splash. That leaves a sour taste. You don't have to butcher it yourself, just bring the body to me and I will prepare the carcass.
During the PF2 playtest chapter Affair at Sombrefell Hall, the players wanted to stop at the town nearest Sombrefell Hall and ask about the place and its occupants. The elf noble bard talked to the high society, the half-elf barkeep cleric of Cayden Cailen talked to the merchants, the dwarf barkeep monk (more a brawler) talked to the laborers and servants, and the half-elf esoteric-scion cleric talked to local dabblers in the occult. They all received different views of Sombrefell Hall with their Gather Information checks. It was good roleplaying, though irrelevant to the playtest.
In my Ironfang Invasion campaign, the party and the refugees they protected were hoping for shelter in an abandoned, half-collapsed farmhouse. The ranger spotted signs (tracks) of a centipede swarm. He made his Recall Nature Knowledge check to remember that centipedes had a venom attack. The thief rogue also made her check and remembered something from her criminal background about the properties of centipede vemon. Each successful person had a different piece of information that depended on their class or background. My wife had homebrewed rules about Recall Knowledge that personalized the knowledge to the character.
Request, Ccoerce, and Command an Animal would have the target react to multiple influences.
HUMAN CHAMPION: Sheriff, we truly need to search Fencrest Manor. People could be in deep trouble there. (rolls a success on Request)
SHERIFF: Very well. But I have several conditions you have to meet first.
HALF-ELF ROGUE: You know we really don't have to do this legally. This is just to be nice. (rolls a failure on Request)
SHERIFF: Wait, we can't let you just break in.
CUTE HALFLING SORCERESS: Pretty please. (makes puppy eyes and rolls a criticial success on Request)
DWARF MONK: (keeps quiet)
There is no reason that a success, failure, and critical success combine to give a critical success.
SHERIFF: Of course I will let you, Miss Halfling, but here are the conditions. I will send my toughest deputy with you, and he is going to stick tight to your rogue. No looting for treasure, not even if you find a secret cult of Lamashtu or Norgorber there. And I know that the monsters you fight could kill my deputy in one blow. I want your personal promise, Champion, that he will return alive.
Yeah, about that.PF2E addresses this in interesting ways.
For one thing, the rulebook addresses checks (like perception) likely to be attempted by the entire party, and potentially modifying DCs to compensate.
I mean, in general all DCs are set to create uncertainty in the game as opposed to just narrating. If you don't like adjusting them in scenarios where success is all but certain because everyone is going to get a Perception check, more power to you.
But it is a valid way to make it fail like failure is actually a possibility on checks where everyone has proficiency (for free in the case of Perception) and the normal level based DC is irrelevant...
For me the part of this that bugs me is the literal dogpiling that happens.
Usually it goes like this...
Quiet player speaking up for once: "Is it okay if I roll Perception to examine the statue?"
Literally everyone else: "OH I'M GONNA DO THAT TOO" *starts rolling dice and shouting their totals at me before the quiet player has even rolled*
It's led to a general rule that no one is forbidden from rolling, but the first person to ask for a roll gets to make the roll and learn the outcome before anyone else gets to jump in.
This is a good point and happens quite a lot. And annoys me as well
Also I wasn’t looking at further punishing players. More raising the discussion because I have heard a 2E pod trying to restrict it but upon learning more think that (as discussed) the nature of the 2E rules limits it
I think secret checks help a lot whenever people are rolling knowledge checks.
I think if you want to prevent dogpiling on skills like diplomacy, you can simply say that the individual in question isn't going to listen to 4 party members one after the other. The first person get's to try and anybody else can either aid or the person is going to stop listening after the first try. There's no NPC requirement that someone listen to your attempts at convincing them to do something that aren't already inclined to do.
The influence subsystem is great for handling social encounters where you want there to be more than a yes/no outcome from the party attempting to make a request from an NPC. Sure everyone can roll diplomacy, but bad rolls will have consequences and a well constructed encounter will have ways for characters to contribute more effectively than having each player attempt to make every check, no matter how badly they are prepared for it.
With proficiency gating and critical failures, 'dogpiling' is already kind of limited by nature.
I just watched Matt Colville's video, and yeah, these are big counters to his complaints. He specifically calls out restricting to folks with proficiency, and that's baked into PF2 - a lot of skill actions specifically require trained in PF2, never mind the other things like hazards that are gated to higher levels.
Same also for the note about different DCs for stuff where the party benefits from any one of them succeeding vs. subsystems like the influence system Unicore called out requiring aggregate successes.
I think the one thing than no one else has really mentioned but shows up in published material are varying DCs based on *which* skill gets used, including super appropriate skills like Lore skills.
My experience is that when the party skill dogpiles certain things, they get a lot of contradictory information (especially due to critical fails).
Another brake on dogpiling is that exploration tactics limit you. If you want to Search, you're not also Scouting, Defending or Avoiding Notice.
Technically correct, however if you do want maximum chances of finding stuff (ambushes, hazzards, secret doors, hidden treasures) everybody in your party should be using the Search exploration activity, respectively as many people as possible should be using it (you might have one low perception char using Detect Magic in order to not bypass any magical stuff).
It sure is a preference thing, however many do consider doubling or tripling up on Perception checks is very well worth not being able to use stealth for initiative, having +1 group initiative or your shield raised when an encounter starts. Detecting danger before it can jump you is usually a lot better than just being prepared to be jumped.
Another brake on dogpiling is that exploration tactics limit you. If you want to Search, you're not also Scouting, Defending or Avoiding Notice.Technically correct, however if you do want maximum chances of finding stuff (ambushes, hazzards, secret doors, hidden treasures) everybody in your party should be using the Search exploration activity, respectively as many people as possible should be using it (you might have one low perception char using Detect Magic in order to not bypass any magical stuff).
It sure is a preference thing, however many do consider doubling or tripling up on Perception checks is very well worth not being able to use stealth for initiative, having +1 group initiative or your shield raised when an encounter starts. Detecting danger before it can jump you is usually a lot better than just being prepared to be jumped.
This is where you may be justified with that optional ruling mentioned above about a higher DC . If everyone is trying to search in the same place then it is more likely someone could be lax from being “overconfident” that someone will find it. Or they would get in each other’s way
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What kind of list is there so far of checks that are gated by proficiency level? So certain levels of trap seem quite well established. But I can’t recall if many others are described or codified
For example people have been mentioning diplomacy. It would be reasonable for it to take expert or higher to talk to certain people and sway them. More for their attitude than anything
For example I could go up to real world politicians and put forward the best argued case ever. But as a random accountant with no real experience of decision making at their scale they would probably nod benignly and then forget everything i said
What kind of list is there so far of checks that are gated by proficiency level? So certain levels of trap seem quite well established. But I can’t recall if many others are described or codified
For example people have been mentioning diplomacy. It would be reasonable for it to take expert or higher to talk to certain people and sway them. More for their attitude than anything
For example I could go up to real world politicians and put forward the best argued case ever. But as a random accountant with no real experience of decision making at their scale they would probably nod benignly and then forget everything i said
In principle every single skill is subject to "proficiency gating" and many those skills (not all) have an appropriate entry in their description.
For example take Acrobatics and the Balance skill action:
Sample Balance Tasks
Untrained tangled roots, uneven cobblestones
Trained wooden beam
Expert deep, loose gravel
Master tightrope, smooth sheet of ice
Legendary razor’s edge, chunks of floor falling in midair
It is the GM who needs to remember to apply those as he sees fit.
Those entries are not related to proficiency gating though, they are referencing the simple skill DCs from page 234 and page 503. Similar, but not identical purposes.
I give you that, but as per my ingame experience there sometimes is little difference in between skill DC and level gating at that DC.
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This is where you may be justified with that optional ruling mentioned above about a higher DC . If everyone is trying to search in the same place then it is more likely someone could be lax from being “overconfident” that someone will find it. Or they would get in each other’s wayAnother brake on dogpiling is that exploration tactics limit you. If you want to Search, you're not also Scouting, Defending or Avoiding Notice.Technically correct, however if you do want maximum chances of finding stuff (ambushes, hazzards, secret doors, hidden treasures) everybody in your party should be using the Search exploration activity, respectively as many people as possible should be using it (you might have one low perception char using Detect Magic in order to not bypass any magical stuff).
It sure is a preference thing, however many do consider doubling or tripling up on Perception checks is very well worth not being able to use stealth for initiative, having +1 group initiative or your shield raised when an encounter starts. Detecting danger before it can jump you is usually a lot better than just being prepared to be jumped.
I don't think I would though. To start with, what is actually the problem that you're trying to solve? Is it an aesthetic one ("dogpiling looks silly") or a game balance one ("it gets too easy")?
Also let's think about reasons not to dogpile
- There's a consequence for (critical) failure, so if you don't stand a good chance of helping, stay away so you don't harm.
- There's limited access to the thing to roll checks for. The councillor will only listen to one talking head at a time, and only has time for three appointments before the council meeting. Only one person can access the control panel to inspect it at the same time.
- There's an opportunity cost to it. While you were searching the room, you couldn't also treat wounds on your allies. If you want to do both, you're going to have to do one after the other.
So if dogpiling is happening, something is awry with the reasons not to dogpile. Is everyone Searching? Maybe the other exploration tactics aren't giving the players any good results; there's never anything to find with Detect Magic for example. Or the cost of missing a trap detection are too severe to do anything else, because the GM is using high level traps that hurt a lot?
Searching as an exploration tactic actually does have some limits built in. Succesful searching guarantees that you find something before you step into it. It doesn't guarantee anything about the person in front of you. So only the frontline of the party can Search for traps truly effectively.
It's also got an opportunity cost: a rogue who's Searching isn't getting to use the Surprise Attack ability.
Finally, if the party is saying "we're not moving forward until we've truly searched every inch of this place", and they don't actually have to keep moving, then they should just find the hidden thing. The GMG advises automatic success in such cases, and instead using checks to see just how long it takes to find the hidden thing. (p. 18)
If it bothers you, you could raise the DC by 5 each time an additional PC wants to check. However personally I've not found it to be a problem, we've just learned as a group not to do it.
I gave them all reasons why their PC believed their answer was correct so, as I think it should be, the party was unsure which of the four gods the altar was to. Though obviously it's not that fourth guy's answer because he's untrained.It would've been hilarious if the untrained fourth guy had been the one who actually passed the check. Unlikely, but hilarious.
I suppose it wasn't clear, but that is what happened.
So the three "scholars" (1st level Trained) naturally think they're right (while the players likely know they're wrong).Amused me when I saw the rolls, yet it ended poorly since it jammed up the conversation. Not that they spent much time discussing thankfully.
One quick and dirty hack you can do if everyone rolls on a knowledge check and you don't feel like it being secret: give the players all the information they recall (correct or otherwise) but don't tell them who remembered what. Not perfect, but can be handy.
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I have the opposite problem. I dislike GMs that don't let everyone participate. It's a team game, everyone that wants to should get to roll the dice.
That's not how teams work. Not everybody handles the ball. Group game may be a better descriptor re: participation. I'm reminded of when young children swarm a soccer ball, not recognizing how important positioning is.
That said, everybody should have a task that can contribute to the team "scoring", which many of the PFS scenarios strove to do. In a social situation, a lot of non-social skills became useful, i.e. Arcana to speak with the scholarly mage. So I think Paizo has a mind for this, though it can be a bit harder to construct intuitively.
Yet some players have flat out made PCs that cannot contribute in certain situations. How much should an ignorant PC's roll contribute to the knowledge of the party? Even when they roll fine (albeit in secret) shouldn't the rest of the party be skeptical about what they say because they're more likely to spout misinformation?
And why should the antisocial PC who adores stringing their own snot through their beard have any reasonable chance of aiding in nuanced negotiations? (Assuming that's unfortunately the only method.)
If somebody wants to roll, they should build toward competency, not incompetency. Otherwise even an adventure with many routes to success may not align with that PC's limits. And sometimes those with mastery do want that investment to pay off, to shine as a hero when their particular obstacle challenges the party. Why should they have to share the limelight at all times? That's not how ensembles work.
In short, the onus is both upon the adventure writer to allow many ways to contribute or paths to success (even if fail forward); and upon the player to build a PC with at least some competencies to overcome several types of obstacles.