But when I'm 10th level, I'm not dealing with Chelaxian customs. I'm dealing with genie courts, or the bureaucracy of Hell. Or, for that matter, giants - we have stone giants at level 8, frost giants at level 9, fire giants at level 10, and cloud giants at level 11.
So essentially, I need to choose whether to be able to know things about level-appropriate challenges by improving Society, or whether to be able to talk to them by improving Diplomacy.
The idea that as you level your character grows and is required to focus on new things to deal with the changing landscape and difference types of challenges in game is covered under the retraining rules. Finding you need more access to proficiency in Diplomacy at higher level because Society isn’t as useful to you in play? Retrain and shift toward Diplomacy.
But when I'm 10th level, I'm not dealing with Chelaxian customs...
I've played a Bard a pretty significant amount of time. I know that the skill squeeze for that class is limiting. Still, Bardic Lore and Versatile Performance are mitigating factors there. I personally played an elf to get a floating expert skill at 9. Ageless Patience also let me do a decent chunk of things with a good bonus. The are tools in the game to help you keep up outside of your base proficiency.
Still, I think the squeeze could optionally be looser; that is the purpose of this thread. Lowering skill DCs across the board by 1 would get you to where you want to be, I think.
I don't play much PFS, but I can see how the system base DCs could be less fun in that setting with a looser group composition. I think PFS should probably consider lowering DCs and checks for non-PCs by one to account for that, but I don't really know the crowd well enough to back that recommendation strongly. Individual tables that are more inclined towards stronger PCs could, of course, do the same. Personally, I extremely enjoy the balance the game is at in regards to skill checks.
Hmm, the GMG should have probably mentioned a difficulty slider of just adjusting the numbers up or down. Adjusting by 1 either way changes a lot due to the crits system. Borrowing difficulty from videogames was probably a good optional system to implement.
Lesser difficulty will allow for more freeform creativity/less optimization at the table. Higher difficulty requires a more tightly controlled creativity to try to overcome and circumvent challenges.
I do realize that wouldn't change the shape of the difficulty curve, so it might still feel wrong to some people, but changing the shape of the curve had you playing a different game where the results aren't easily predictable like just changing the numbers.
So essentially, I need to choose whether to be able to know things about level-appropriate challenges by improving Society, or whether to be able to talk to them by improving Diplomacy.The idea that as you level your character grows and is required to focus on new things to deal with the changing landscape and difference types of challenges in game is covered under the retraining rules. Finding you need more access to proficiency in Diplomacy at higher level because Society isn’t as useful to you in play? Retrain and shift toward Diplomacy.That's not my point. My point is that if I need to deal with a band of mercenaries at low levels, my broad competency as a bard works well. Society tells me who's in charge and what they want, and a combination of Diplomacy, Deception, and Intimidation lets me talk to them and get what I want. But if I'm 10th level and want to social-fu my way through a genie court or a fire giant army, I won't be as good at that as I was with the mercenaries at 1st level, because there's no way I can afford to keep up with all four skills (plus the Occultism and/or Performance I need to fulfill core bard functions).
It's a little vague.
"If you want to sneak by a lvl 16+"
There should be some more info
- Character lvl?
- Class?
- Build?
- Dexterity?
- Items?My baseline assumption is Trained proficiency, starting with stat 12, and no items or feats boosting things. This gets me 50% for level 1 challenges, and I think that's about right for a dabbler. I believe that, with boosting the 12 at appropriate levels, it ought to keep me at 50% all the way to 20, but it doesn't, and that's my issue.
At level 16, that's a total skill bonus of +22 (18 from proficiency and 4 from Dex). Creature building guidelines at that level give a "moderate" Perception of +28, which means I need a 16 on the die to succeed. I am literally more likely to critically fail than I am to...
At level 1, you don't have the option to trivially cast invisibility and silence. You don't have as many skills, but you do have other features to compensate. If you want more skill proficiency to be the features your are adding, you also have that option with a rogue archetype.
The progression of skills isn't as flat at in previous editions, but that's just a preference and not a definite problem.
Edit: I think the way skills are handled is part of why high level play is fun and actually works in PF2.
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The thing that is turning me off is gated proficiency checks. It is ok if my chances to succeed as a dabbler are not that good to beginn with or even later on. If however I bought an item and possibly even raised the stat and I am not allowed to roll this is a entirely different issue. However I will reserve my judgement until I have witnessed the frequency of those gated checks that are not thievery in our current AP. To roll your 35% (or so) or not to roll at all (or otherwise be left in the rain) are two separate issues.
I think the possibility of critical failures is a good reason gor the game not to allow players to attempt low-probability checks. That's one thing gating is good for. DCs aren't revealed before the roll, so if there's a check that a PC only avoids crit-failing by rolling a natural 20, they can put themselves (or their party) in a bad spot by attempting checks they're extremely likely to crit-fail.
The thing that is turning me off is gated proficiency checks. It is ok if my chances to succeed as a dabbler are not that good to beginn with or even later on. If however I bought an item and possibly even raised the stat and I am not allowed to roll this is a entirely different issue. However I will reserve my judgement until I have witnessed the frequency of those gated checks that are not thievery in our current AP. To roll your 35% (or so) or not to roll at all (or otherwise be left in the rain) are two separate issues.
I agree with you.
I've also heard about the opposite: Checks you don't have to roll if you have a high proficiency. I think that is way better than proficiency gating, considering that a legendary character has no chance to fail such a check (even if, on paper, he would have had chances to fail).
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One thing worth noting in regards to skills 'falling behind':
There are ways other than your base Skill Ranks to get to Expert (or higher). The Skilled Heritage for Humans and Rogue Multiclass's Skill Mastery are the most obvious but there's probably Archetypes for this in the upcoming APG as well (indeed, many existing non-multiclass archetypes do this once for a specific skill), and Skill Mastery is actually absurd for this, you take it a couple of times and, in practice, you can easily have four extra Skills at Expert...only having two at Legendary and using the other for three at Expert gets you a total of 7...8 if you went Skilled Human.
Two Legendary and eight Expert Skills sounds workable on a generalist to me.
That's a pretty specific build with a heavy investment...but also, if you make them a Bard and give them Heroism in their repertoire, plus the cheap items I mentioned in my last post, you can get to the point where you're actually improving in all 10 of those skills as you level, and even by a fair amount if you do it right. At least, you are when it matters.
The thing that is turning me off is gated proficiency checks.
Outside Hazards, gated checks are really rare. Not nonexistent, but really, really uncommon.
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But if I'm 10th level and want to social-fu my way through a genie court or a fire giant army, I won't be as good at that as I was with the mercenaries at 1st level, because there's no way I can afford to keep up with all four skills (plus the Occultism and/or Performance I need to fulfill core bard functions).
Social-Fuing your way through a genie court or a fire giant army, as opposed to a group of bandits sounds like it should be a much higher level task, even more so than just because of the level of creatures involved. Your first level character would probably struggle to social-fu through a court of 1st level humans or an army of level -1 humans even because of the scale of what you are attempting.
To me this is a good thing, and it really centers how PF2 hasn't felt like a treadmill in play because the narrative weight of the tasks my character attempts as I level up feel like much greater challenges than what I was doing at level 1, and it happens at every level. Getting new skill feats every other level means, even with a skill at trained, that I make a lot of choices about what I want my character to be good at and what I am letting fall behind.
For example, even if your diplomacy is only trained, taking the skill feat group impression means that you can be twice as effective at making an impression on people than you were without the feat. If you decide to boost it later to expert, you are 4 times better, and are actually more effective than a character built otherwise exactly the same, who is a master in Diplomacy, but without the group impression feat. With expert and the feat you are making one roll to make an impression on 4 targets, the queen of court and 3 chief advisors, instead of just the queen. If the roll is bad, you can hero point the one roll to have a better chance against all of them and if you end up with a decent roll, but not good enough to sway the queen, it might have been enough to sway the other 3 advisors, who would speak up on your behalf.
Where some of this falls flat is that the robust and dynamic skill feat system of PF2 is pretty different than past RPGs and a lot of GMs are used to doing skill challenges differently. There is not yet a lot of consistency in how they are handled from table to table so it is easy as a player to be uncertain how well any given skill feat is going to work out in play. If you GM reduced the entire social encounter of the court to a single check against the queen, then almost all skill feats are going to be useless. If they set it up with influence points, your feat might essentially turn you action into an Area of Effect attack. This is another important area to talk to your table about. If your GM doesn't really like non-combat encounters, maybe they would be agree able to have something like a level 7 skill feat that lets you boost a trained skill to expert, because they don't want you combing the skill feat list for feats that will make them have to do more work in out of combat encounters? The game is modular and flexible enough that it really is easy for tables to collectively discuss what is happening that is not fun for your group and easily replace that aspect with something else.
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High level characters increase their percentage chance of success at skills they focus on quite a bit.
I mean a specialist starts at 65% (+7 vs. DC 15) and have hit 85% by 10th level (+23 vs. DC 27), and 95% by 20th (+38 vs. DC 40).
That's a pretty large increase, especially since it ignores buff spells entirely. A Bard with Heroism can do a lot better than that, hitting a 95% chance of success as early as 11th level.
And, as I mentioned, I think you're overstating the 'fall behind' factor, especially between 1st and 10th. Between those levels, in skills they care about most PCs fall behind a single point (DCs rise by 12, but bonus rises by 9 from level, and usually by 2 from Ability Score), and even that they can easily compensate for with a buff spells or a cheap magic item (+1 items are very affordable by 10th, the only real limit is max number of magic items). 10th to 20th has a somewhat higher 'fall behind' factor, but even there it's probably only a point after taking items into account.
It's really just not that bad.
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He can't do that at 10th level, at least not as well. As to whether a genie court or fire giant army encampment is an appropriate 10th level challenge is beside the point, the point is that people fall behind on skills as they level up.
@Staffan, I know a lot of people echo this sentiment and I do understand where it comes from conceptually, but it really doesn't sit right with me to think of skill encounters as purely white room situations of "level 1 social encounter" or "level 10 social encounter."
The narrative element does matter because it contextualizes why the level 10 social encounter may be more difficult for a character that has not invested in any one of many different ways to be prepared to handle it. Skill increases are limited for most characters, but you also have magic items, spells and ability boosts that could make you better at a specific skill, in addition to skill feats. At level 1, your access to these things is incredibly limited. By 10 it really is not, and it makes sense that level 10 opposition would also be making use of similar resources to be better prepared against the kinds of challenges they would face as well. This feels nebulous when you just ascribe it flavorless "level 10 challenges," but when it is contextualized in game, it has yet to feel arbitrarily punitive to me.
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Come to think of it, that might be my main disconnect. I believe that regular DCs should challenge dabblers, Hard DCs those who invest some in a skill but don't specialize, and Very Hard DC those who specialize. But as the game progresses through levels, it slides more toward regular DCs challenging those who invest, and makes dabblers near irrelevant.
Except this simply isn't true. As Deadmanwalking most recently (and myself, and others) has shown repeatedly, it takes barely any investment for a dabbler to stay exactly as relevant at skills as you go. Boosting your bad stats and keeping up to date with below level skill items is all you need to stay relevant - and your focus/legendary skills will straight up trivialize at-level checks easily.
No, you can't just invest in a skill and then avoid that stat and never pick up an item and not fall a little behind. But that's not actually what happens when you play the game. You effectively have to choose two stats to avoid (as opposed to choosing which stats to raise), and you should end up with plenty of pocket gold to spend on things like lower level skill items.
This complaint keeps coming up, but it simply doesn't reflect actual play experience (or the game's design in general) in published adventures.
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No, you can't just invest in a skill and then avoid that stat and never pick up an item and not fall a little behind.
In fairness to Staffan, that's exactly what he says he wants to have happen. He wants to be able to pick up the odd skill at trained, and then never invest in it or the related stat in any way, and still beat regular DCs.
And by that metric, he's correct. A level appropriate challenge needs 12 to succeed at 1 (assuming trained and a 10 in the appropriate ability), and 15 at level 10.
Of course, that metric does ignore that at level 1, there's not really much you can do besides putting a rank into that skill or using a boost to increase the relevant ability, so getting that trained rank is actually a substantial degree of specialization. A dabbler at that level should really be someone rolling untrained, which would require the same roll of 15.
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In fairness, there's a definite cap on how many low level skill items you can have. It's one of the few things that runs into the cap on Invested Items, so you generally can't afford more than half a dozen or so, maybe less for some characters.
Now, that's enough for most of your Trained Skills on most characters, but it is a bottleneck and worth noting.
I'll concede that it does require minimal investment to stay relevant, and that you can't apply this to every trained skill in some cases.
Its not exactly hard to argue, however, that things do effectively work as he stated he wants them to. Its easy to maintain Trained skills such that on level DC's are challenging for them, and its easy to get Legendary skills to the point that on-level challenges are trivial and Very Hard on-level challenges are reasonable and reliable.
Thats how the game is set up currently, for all practical purposes.
I understand how someone could not like the mechanic of expecting higher level characters to consider where they are investing their resources, and that not investing in something is choosing to grow less effective at it over time, but I thoroughly appreciate that decision and think it helps prevent over specialization.
And I also don't think it is that bad. Narratively, within the context of the game, your character never does get worse at doing the things you have done in the past, without having some kind of major event happening, likely tied to magic. Climbing a specific wall, fighting a specific enemy never gets harder as you level up. What changes is the difficulty of higher level challenges, and it goes up just a little hair faster than a default +1 per level, because that +1 per level is the absolute minimum growth that can occur per level.
The game would feel very flat if DCs did not respond to how easily characters can advance many things past the +1 per level benchmark. I appreciate that PF2 is a game where your character, by themselves especially, is not going to be good at everything, and that being good at something means more than investing as minimally as possible in that thing. It makes teamwork more important, it makes every +1 more important, and it makes specialization feel special.
I very much like the skill feats. They are an interesting way of adding coolness at higher levels.
I repeat myself: my main objection is that my 1st level bard who is Trained in Society will be better at doing 1st-level-appropriate Society tasks than he will be at 10th-level-appropriate Society tasks at 10th level, unless he specializes in increasing Society instead of skills that are vital to various class functions. Even if he does increase Society so he knows who to talk to, he will not be as able to persuade them through various means as he was at 1st level. At 1st level, he would know who to talk to, and how to talk to them. He can't do that at 10th level, at least not as well. As to whether a genie court or fire giant army encampment is an appropriate 10th level challenge is beside the point, the point is that people fall behind on skills as they level up.
I recognize that there are three possible goals for high-level skills:
1. Less-focused characters will be as good at skills at high level as at low.
2. Specialists are still challenged by high-level skill checks.
3. Skills increase automatically per level.It is impossible to fulfill all three goals at once. The PF developers have clearly chosen goal 2 over 1. My preference would be the other way around – high-level characters only get to specialize in a small number of skills, so let them be awesome at those.
But you'll be able to easily accomplish 1st level challenges when you're able to accomplish 10th level society skill checks. The difficulty is set up by level so that lower level dealings will be easy for a 10th level character, but when he is dealing with 10th problems he has a 10th level of difficulty.
It's up to the adventure designer to ensure that a 10th level character in a level 4 town is making level 4 society checks to get done what he wants to get done thus illustrating his greater ability to handle lower level challenges.
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Many tasks also use different DC scaling - notably hazards and the Perception scores of various creatures. Hazard DCs are generally 2 points higher than regular skill DCs at low levels, and increase faster to the point where they are 8 points higher at level 20. Hazards are really scaled to the point where anyone who doesn't want to completely max out Thievery need not apply. This situation is worsened by a complex hazard only being half of a "moderate" encounter by itself, so the game strongly urges you to use a higher-level hazard which will be even harder to find/disable.
A creature with moderate Perception at level 1 has +7 (leading to a Perception DC of 17, 2 higher than a regular skill DC) and increases to +33 at level 20 (DC 43, 3 higher than regular skills). So moderate scaling mostly keeps track with character abilities, albeit at a lower level than I'd prefer. I also see that Perception diverges more at higher levels – at 1st level there's a 4-point difference between Extreme and Moderate Perception, and at 20th level...
On Hazards - I don't think its a game design flaw that Hazards are targeted at specialists, and not dabblers. A dabbler messing with a Hazard should be a long shot. Hazards are tasks for the best of the best, otherwise they don't challenge the best of the best and aren't really a valid encounter. That said, most Hazards in the Age of Ashes that I've seen have a non-Thievery skill option or two, which in many cases is an easier check than trying to do it with Thievery.
On the second point... I'm concerned I'm not exactly clear what you are saying, but I'll speak to Stealth. Stealth is actually one of the easiest skills to 'keep up' on because of how Follow the Expert works. Simply by being Trained in Stealth and Following the Expert, most characters can get into the range of being reasonably successful at Stealth. Sneaking, as well, is one of the skills where a Failure isn't the end of the world - you remain Hidden even on a Failure which may allow you to recover or still disappear before your sneaking run is completely ruined.
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Staffan, this is clearly an issue that you care about and you don't really seem interested in considering any of the ways in which people have suggested that the game doesn't feel this way in play for them, so I am not really sure what you are expecting to get out of a further discussion of this one particular issue.
If a player wants to try to look at the math of skill challenges and DCs, completely in disregard of narrative context, skill increases, skill feats, attribute boosts and magic items, they might feel like they are on an endless treadmill that is moving faster than they are.
MY advice to other GMs concerned that their players are going to feel that way is to make sure that you provide a variety of skill challenges to your players and don't just make them face equal level challenges all the time. As the players level up they will associate the specific narrative of the challenges with being difficult or easy and if the encounter the same basic challenge that was really difficult, a few levels later, they will really feel like they have accomplished some progress when it is a lot easier this time.
One of the things I really like about PF2 is how easy it makes it implement simple modular house rules to get the kind of feeling you want. For example, to get skills to feel like Steffan et al etc would like, one can simply add the following house rule:
Then your success rate against on-level challenges will stay the same without investment, and you can keep everything else as is.
But at 1st level, I was able to deal with 1st-level challenges of maybe eight types, if I had a moderately skilled class (e.g. bard). At 10th level, I will be better than I was at 1st level at two types of challenges, or better in one and more-or-less the same in two, and worse at the other five or six.But you'll be able to easily accomplish 1st level challenges when you're able to accomplish 10th level society skill checks. The difficulty is set up by level so that lower level dealings will be easy for a 10th level character, but when he is dealing with 10th problems he has a 10th level of difficulty.
It's up to the adventure designer to ensure that a 10th level character in a level 4 town is making level 4 society checks to get done what he wants to get done thus illustrating his greater ability to handle lower level challenges.
How is this relevant when you can set the challenges where appropriate?
Ok, so, your example - "Sneaking By", with the entire party, a fifth level creature at fifth level is equivalent to bypassing the encounter. Unless there's a compelling reason to come back, challenge overcome.
That should be flipping difficult!
Your example didn't capture a regular bonus that your hypothetical party should have if exploring "using stealth to bypass the encounter" as a encounter resolution as a goal. For one thing, cover bonuses apply to Sneak. Many traditional uses of Sneak will allow for cover. A +2 to all checks is a pretty solid modifier to your odds.
Beyond that, you didn't address the fact that a normal Failure on your check does not result in the enemy identifying you and responding with violence - you simply go to Hidden instead of Undetected.
If your GM is going straight to combat at that point if the players don't want to, they may be doing you a disservice...
That should be flipping difficult!
Why?
If the party has invested in the appropriate resources, is working together intelligently, and makes a pretty good roll, why should that be difficult?
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Because not fighting something you don't want to fight is usually a lot easier in terms of the pacing of the adventure than actually getting in to a fight, triggering alarms, getting a lot of trouble...
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That should be flipping difficult!Why?
If the party has invested in the appropriate resources, is working together intelligently, and makes a pretty good roll, why should that be difficult?
One Expert, one Trained, and two untrained party members with no stat investment does not meet the "has invested appropriate resources" portion of your statement.
A party that builds for stealth across the board (at 5th level, let's say trained, +2 dex on the low guy - thats not a big investment, really) with Quiet Allies is rolling at +11 against that same encounter. With a hero point banked, that's good odds for success.
But that should not be free for a party where two members have invested nothing at all in Sneaking...
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As far as the common trope of sneaking past the enemy that is too hard to fight, there is almost always mitigating circumstances in narratives that help explain why the heroines of the story are able to sneak past.
The issue that I could see folks having with sneak in PF2 is that there is not massive tables explaining how to calculate the exact circumstance penalty to apply to creatures perception checks or Perception DCs for things like distance from the target and environmental noise, so that, on the surface, it would appear that a sleeping dragon in a rainstorm would have the exact same odds of discovering a party as an awake dragon in its lair keeping a look out for trouble.
On the one hand, I am glad that the game got rid of the added complexity of all those modifiers, but it is clear that some players and GMs might miss that and not give the party any circumstance bonus for sneaking past a sleeping creature at a distance.
The easy way to reconcile this though is to remember that the GM should have control over how difficult or easy it will be for the party to bypass an entire encounter with a single stealth check. GMs should reward players that want to try different strategies and build, as a team, to implement them. But they don't have an obligation to let a party try something that they are bad at and make sure that there is a 50% or better chance of failure.
That's not a random party facing a random stealth-based challenge. That sounds more like a party that's highly focused on stealth. A party like that should be nearly guaranteed success at something involving stealth, but even your highly-focused party only gets a 50% chance without using a hero point.
At level 5, every member of the party just got 4 stat bumps. If the party wants to be proficient in stealth, it is trivial for everyone to bump Dex and Int in addition to their class stats (Dex is already a great stat) and pick up Trained in Stealth if they didn't have it. One person needs to have gone expert Stealth at 3 and Quiet Allies at 4 (also just plain good decisions for at least one party member - and if you don't have at least one person this specialized, you're not trying at all for the group stealth thing).
None of the above is a significant drain on a 5th level parties resources to be competent at Group Stealth.
A party that is 'highly focused' is going to have multiple experts, invest in Stealth items even at level 5, have a range of Terrain Stalkers for cheesing auto-sneak in multiple terrains, etc.
That should be flipping difficult!
Why?
If the party has invested in the appropriate resources, is working together intelligently, and makes a pretty good roll, why should that be difficult?
Because not fighting something you don't want to fight is usually a lot easier in terms of the pacing of the adventure than actually getting in to a fight, triggering alarms, getting a lot of trouble...
My party avoids fights all the time. They scout ahead, evaluate the situation, and decide whether a fight would serve their mission or not.
For example, in the House of Withered Blossoms in Forest of Spirits one direction from the entrance led to a meaningless encounter that had nothing to do with the party's quest and the other led to their goal. The stealthy members of the party checked the easy route (the useless one) in stealth, overheard some converation with Comprehend Languages, and realized they had no need to go that way.
And I was perfectly happy with that. The House of Withered Blossoms was a slow dungeon crawl and I wanted the story to proceed faster to be more interesting.
Since you get the same experience whether you go "There's some baddies! We should avoid them" or "There's some baddies! Let's kill 'em all!" both approaches need to be fair options.
Nope, in my games if the party dodges an encounter then they don't get the experience points. Note that sneaking past a guard is not dodging the encounter. Killing the guard is not the mission, getting past the guard is the mission. Therefore, sneaking past the guard is a legitimate solution that earns the xp.
An example of skipping the xp occurred in Valley of the Brain Collectors. The party was supposed to search the valley for a lost artifact. They originally skipped some caves the module assumed they would search. Those caves were a wild goose chase to level them up. Instead, they talked to the residents first. When they learned of the brain collectors, they decided that stopping them was more urgent than their search, so they went after the brain collectors one level early. And guess who had the artifact? The party never went to the caves, since they had no reason, and began the next module short one level.
My party regularly fought as well as a party one level higher, so I increased the CR of the encounters. Therefore, they earned more xp than the adventure path intended. Letting them dodge unnecessary encounters and skip the xp balanced out their extra xp. If they skip xp when I don't increase the CR, as with the brain collectors, I sometimes added a side quest to earn the xp elsewhere.
I agree that an untrained party should not be able to sneak past a level-appropriate sentry. However, not all sneaking is past alert sentries. Perhaps the sneaky party members can watch the pattern of patrols and enter the villain's walled estate during a gap between guard patrols. Then inside the manor house all they have to avoid are servants who have lower perception than the guards. Or maybe the party is sneaking into an orc stronghold where the orcs foolishly gave boring and unrewarding guard duty to their weakest (lowest level) members.
On the subject of hazards, I view them as challenges that fit certain stories. For example, in two separate modules the party could enter a castle by going in through a secret escape tunnel. They had to talk to the retired groundskeeper or a similar person who knew about the tunnel's exit and persuade him that they were the good guys. Only a fool would leave a route into the castle unguarded, living guards would reveal the secret, and unliving guards would be too creepy (undead) or expensive (constructs). Locked doors and traps fit the need.
Also, the ranger in my PF2 Ironfang Invasion campaign decided to try out rhe ranger Snare Specialist feat. She has learned to set up snares and then the trickier members of the party lure their enemies toward the snares.
The issue that I could see folks having with sneak in PF2 is that there is not massive tables explaining how to calculate the exact circumstance penalty to apply to creatures perception checks or Perception DCs for things like distance from the target and environmental noise, so that, on the surface, it would appear that a sleeping dragon in a rainstorm would have the exact same odds of discovering a party as an awake dragon in its lair keeping a look out for trouble.
As a side note, sleeping gives -4 to Perception.
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Nope, in my games if the party dodges an encounter then they don't get the experience points. Note that sneaking past a guard is not dodging the encounter. Killing the guard is not the mission, getting past the guard is the mission. Therefore, sneaking past the guard is a legitimate solution that earns the xp.So... no, but yes.
Because I'm not talking "let's just not do that part of the adventure" - I'm just talking about using stealth to overcome obstacles you've actually encountered.
The party has overcome obstacles by Athletics (climbing or swimming to bypass an encounter), Deception, Diplomacy, and Stealth without fighting and earned full xp.
One classic episode occurred deep in some caves in Lords of Rust. The party was walking along, when suddenly a chuul emerged from a pool of opaque toxic waste and grabbed the human fighter in its claws. The strix skald was next in initiative order and she rolled Knowledge(Dungeoneering) to see which languages they had in common (I gave a free Knowledge roll to each PC upon encountering a new creature). They both spoke Common. The fighter was screaming, "What are you doing? Just hit it!" Instead, she used Diplomacy and asked the chuul what it wanted. I thought fast. This chuul lived in a tunnel controlled by the Lords of Rust, so it must have had some deal with the Lords or they would have killed it. Therefore, it made deals. The chuul explained it was hungry and was going to eat the fighter. While the rest of the party--even the fighter--waited, the strix offered it several freshly dead bodies from a previous room in exchange for the fighter. The chuul agreed and the party settled down to have lunch with the chuul, talking about its life on the tunnel and what it knew of the Lords of Rust.
I gave the party full xp for dealing with the chuul, despite only the fighter and the skald being active.
For a more recent example, the party in my PF2 Ironfang Invasion campaign was exterminating a cave of evil xulgath cultists. The final room on the first level was dark, so a party member with darkvision entered the room in Stealth. All that was in the room was a sleeping giant monitor lizard (PF2 Bestiary 1, page 229). The module had put two Xulgath Warriors there, too, but I had moved them to reinforce another fight. And I left the lizard asleep because a trivial fight that could temporarily cripple one PC would be anticlimactic right before the big battles on the second level. The scout successfully slipped out of the room without waking the lizard.
However, since their goal was to clear the caves, they came back after the second level and fought the lizard. I delayed giving them the xp until they did so. I would have given them full xp for taming the lizard with Animal Handling, but they decided that that was too risky. Successful Recall Knowledge (Nature) rolls had forewarned them of the giant monitor lizard's Gnashing Grip and Monitor Lizard Venom. An ambush that avoided the lizard's venomous bite with grab was much safer.
This thread is about "Controlling difficulty and balancing player expectations." Adding dramatic tension to the encounters is part of managing player expectations. Having every encounter be a fight provides only one kind of tension. Accepting alternative solutions keeps the players alert to consider many possibilities.
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I think we might be coming at this with different calibrations of what a challenge is. Where I'm coming from, 50% chance is bad. If you're doing something you're good at, your success rate should be in the 65% to 75% range. That's why I think a good benchmark is that if you're only dabbling in something (trained, small stat bonus, no items) 50% is about where you should be. If you put actual effort into focusing on a skill your success rate should be way higher than that.
In other words, Han Solo trying to talk his way out of trouble? Yeah, 50% sounds about right for that. Han Solo piloting the Millennium Falcon in between the teeth of a giant space monster? He's got that.
This pretty exactly describes how skills work at mid to high levels in PF2 if you take into account that due to how many ability ups you get, most stats are pretty decent even without being a real focus.
I mean, at 10th level, Trained Skills with a +4 modifier (ie: something you're pretty okay at) you have a +16 bonus and exactly a 50% chance vs. on-level opposition (55% if you bought a cheap +1 Skill Item), actual specialty skills you've got a +5 Mod, Master, and a +2 item and thus +23 and an 85% chance of success vs. on-level DCs.
At very early levels (1st, and 2nd for non-Rogues) you haven't had the chance to really specialize yet since you aren't an Expert at anything, and your best odds of success vs. on-level stuff is only 65%, but that's still within the range you're talking about.
I think we might be coming at this with different calibrations of what a challenge is. Where I'm coming from, 50% chance is bad. If you're doing something you're good at, your success rate should be in the 65% to 75% range. That's why I think a good benchmark is that if you're only dabbling in something (trained, small stat bonus, no items) 50% is about where you should be. If you put actual effort into focusing on a skill your success rate should be way higher than that.
In other words, Han Solo trying to talk his way out of trouble? Yeah, 50% sounds about right for that. Han Solo piloting the Millennium Falcon in between the teeth of a giant space monster? He's got that.
I think that your example here details one significant issue, and that you're still only considering two degree of success. (Failure, Success).
For most mundane tasks, the type of thing that a dabbler should be attempting, Failure does not prevent you from attempting that task again. Even with only a 35% chance of success on an initial roll with no investment other than training, your chance of eventual success is way higher than 35% because you only have a 15% chance of not being allowed to roll again. If you work out overall odds of success in these scenarios, I bet you'll come up with a number that's actually in the area you want.
Though, again, its worth reiterating - at level 1, being Trained with no stat is someone dabbling. At level 10, that same person with Trained and no stat has actively avoided keeping up with that skill, as you get to increase more stats than stats you don't increase. They're choosing to let that skill fall behind - they were dabbling, but at level 10 they're actively letting that skill atrophy relative to their level. They're actually way better at the same tasks they would have been doing at level 1.
Things that must be succeeded at, and succeeded at first try, are dramatic tasks that should be attempted by someone good at that task. At level 1, that means training and maxed stat. At level 5, thats an expert with maxed stat and and an item. At 7, now we're talking a master. Or at the very least, the best person your party has for the job.
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That sounds horrible, and no fun at all. And I think the number of tasks that do allow re-rolls are fewer than you think. Social skills generally don't allow multiple attempts, for example, and mobility skills generally penalize you pretty heavily for failure (e.g. a long jump over something nasty).
Uh, ok, so, lets check this out (ignoring in combat uses, because those are fundamentally different).
No use of Diplomacy fails outright on a Failure. Both Make and Impression and Gather information allow you to try again. A failed Request results in a denial, but a possible less extreme alternative (also, doesn't forbid trying again).
For Deception, things are a little worse but the stakes are definitely higher. A success on a Deception check generally gets you what you want, or overcomes an obstacle (or more than one) instantly. Creating a diversion actually fails, Impersonation partially fails, and lieing solidly fails.
Indimidation's Coerce activity explicitly only doesn't allow retrying on a Critical Failure. Otherwise, they become unfriendly, but you can keep trying.
So, 2 out of three social skills totally mostly allow retries.
So lets look at Athletics, and its failure results -
Climb - Failure has no penalties at all associated with it. Keep trying.
Force Open - Again, no penalties at all on failure.
High Jump and Long Jump - No penalties for failure, you still get to leap normally. Don't take high stakes actions unless you're good at it - you couldn't convince your average high school track star to leap over a yawning chasm, methinks.
Swim - Nope, no penalties for failure.
Acrobatics
Balance - If you fail, you make no progress. Try again.
Maneuver in Flight - As above. Try again.
Squeeze - No penalty for failure.
Are you perhaps referring to some other Social or mobility skills, perhaps, that disallow multiple tries? Because the normal ones totally do for the most part, other than in-combat applications, and Deception.
I will put the numbers on the table because I am seeing a lot of assumptions here.
The table assumes starting starting stat of 14 and increasing it every 5 levels.
Lvl 1
Trained have to get a 10 in the die for a success, so a 55% chance.
Lvl 3, first expert boost
Trained have to get an 11 in the die. 50% chance
Expert an 9, 60%.
Lvl 7, first master boost
Trained needs an 11 in the die. 50% chance
Trained with item 10, 55% chance
Expert an 8, 65%
Master an 6, 75%
Lvl 15, first legendary boost
Trained 13, 40% chance
Trained Item 11, 50% chance
Expert 9, 60% chance
Master 7, 70%
Legendary 5, 80% chance
Lvl 20, max level
Trained 13, 40% chance
Trained Item 11, 50% chance
Expert 9, 60% chance
Master 7, 70%
Legendary 5, 80% chance