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After the game, another player comes in and tells you "Hey, I took the Survey Wildlife feat, but that other guy didn't. If he can find out what animals are nearby with just Survival, then what does my feat do?"
What do you tell him? That his feat does nothing? That the other player will have to take Survey Wildlife? Do you tell him that Survey Wildlife's benefit is that you can make the check in 10 minutes, and not some other arbitrary timescale? If so, what is the alternative timescale? 15 minutes? 30 minutes? an hour? a day? Since you're running under narrative time, and not a strict clock, when will the ability to make that check faster come into play, and how will it be beneficial? If you say that you need Survey Wildlife to make the check at all, then does the other player who didn't know about Survey Wildlife get a chance to rebuild his character since he didn't realize that he needed one particular feat in order for his character concept to work within the rules?
Furthermore, how do you address the fact that your original ruling is mechanically more powerful than Survey Wildlife? You only asked for a Survival check, but Survey Wildlife requires two checks, one survival check, and then a recall knowledge check on top of that. Obviously Survey Wildlife, which cost a feat, has to be better than the alternative, so does that mean that you have to make the checks harder for anyone who doesn't have it?
The simple solution to...
The simple solution is that you admit you forgot about the feat, you’ll let the previous roll stand, but next time the character will need to make the rolls either with the feat or at a penalty (both increased time and at higher difficulty). Or if you’d rather just make the feat baseline, houserule it so it is a basic activity that anyone with survival can do, and let the person that took the feat get a different skill feat.
That’s my preferred solution for when I come across feats that I think should just be part of the skill: I go ahead and make them part of the skill. It’s the same principle as giving all players a free archetype, except with skill feats.
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Thorough Search - this just puts a mechanic around something that comes up all the time. The players guess that there is something here but just can't find it. So they take more time and try again.
That's not what the feat does. It very specifically deals with the Search exploration activity, and gives you the option of cutting your travel speed in half again in exchange for a +2 bonus on your Perception roll while Searching. (Which, I think, probably would apply your initiative checks when you transition to encounter mode as well.) It also combines with Expeditious Search to let you travel at half speed and still get the +2 bonus. From a practical standpoint, it doesn't really have anything to do with looting the room for treasure; as you and DMW have both noted, you can just roll your Search check again. It's about making sure you don't walk into ambushes or traps.
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It is codified implicitly. Imagine you're a new GM, and you have a player whose character concept is a wilderness tracker. He says "I'm an experienced tracker, so I want my character to use his Survival skill to check for dangerous animals." You say "sure, roll survival". He rolls a success, and you tell him there are dire wolves nearby.
After the game, another player comes in and tells you "Hey, I took the Survey Wildlife feat, but that other guy didn't. If he can find out what animals are nearby with just Survival, then what does my feat do?"
What do you tell him? That his feat does nothing? That the other player will have to take Survey Wildlife? Do you tell him that Survey Wildlife's benefit is that you can make the check in 10 minutes, and not some other arbitrary timescale? If so, what is the alternative timescale? 15 minutes? 30 minutes? an hour? a day? Since you're running under narrative time, and not a strict clock, when will the ability to make that check faster come into play, and how will it be beneficial? If you say that you need Survey Wildlife to make the check at all, then does the other player who didn't know about Survey Wildlife get a chance to rebuild his character since he didn't realize that he needed one particular feat in order for his character concept to work within the rules?
Furthermore, how do you address the fact that your original ruling is mechanically more powerful than Survey Wildlife? You only asked for a Survival check, but Survey Wildlife requires two checks, one survival check, and then a recall knowledge check on top of that. Obviously Survey Wildlife, which cost a feat, has to be better than the alternative, so does that mean that you have to make the checks harder for anyone who doesn't have it?
So, let's examine this in detail.
First, why would you tell him there were Dire Wolves? Recognizing creatures is very explicitly Nature rather than Survival and allowing people to do it with Survival is pretty weird.
Second, we need to deal with the 'finding out what creatures are nearby' part of Survey Wildlife.
So I'd say to the player that I screwed up (there should've been a Nature check as well as a Survival one), but also that he (the player) should've spoken up that he can Survey Wildlife, since that would be better in a couple of ways, and that the advantages of Survey Wildlife are as follows:
1. It only takes 10 minutes. So if he'd said 'Yeah, I do that too using Survey Wildlife' he would've rolled first. This low time frame also means you can retry it until you succeed if there's unlimited time, so that's cool. Heck, you can try it six times if you have only an hour. Someone without the Feat needs 'arbitrary GM decided time' and probably wouldn't have time to retry in most circumstances.
2. Survey Wildlife's Recall Knowledge check applies to all creatures in the area. I'd have a normal person's Nature check apply to one at a time like the rules say, and probably also at a -2 penalty since they're attempting to identify the creature without seeing it.
Both are very real advantages of the Skill Feat in question.
Now, that's just my own interpretation, but I feel it's a pretty reasonable one, and don't think it results in people not being able to do a basic thing due to a Feat's existence.
The only thing that is really lacking is a "normal" listing, as in how to handle such tasks *without* the feat in question.
I'm OK with a feat granting extra expertise above and beyond what skills already allow. It really looks like that is what is happening here. All these results should be obtainable, to a lesser degree and with a greater time and roleplaying investment, to anybody *without* these special feats. And I think the PF2 rules are open-ended enough to allow for that.
Yeah, that's definitely what I'd do for the most part as well. But I think the lack of a 'normal' entry is intentional, so that GMS can make their own decisions on what 'normal' is.
For better or worse, empowering GMs to make that kind of decision is a big part of how PF2 is structured.
Doublespeak - I can see the point in this feat if you are doing a lot of social encounters in your game, and you really want to put some numbers around this. I would always just do this as a simple roll, but fine there may be some games that will want this.
There certainly are. Any spy, political intrigue, conspiracy, or detective game will be able to make good use of this.
Eye For Numbers - This is so narrow. Really why is it here?
Because somebody might want it. It's a Skill Feat, not a combat option, and some people will want to have it. It doesn't need to be wildly popular to have a place in a game. On a mechanical level, the +2 to Decipher Script is also probably worth the price of admission on its own given what similar bonuses on specific Skill uses often cost in terms of resources.
Glean Contents - Opening Sealed letters. Reading from a glimpse. So narrow, why is it here?
This depends an awful lot on what sort of game you're doing, doesn't it? If you're playing Andoren spies in Cheliax who are going through Thrune agents mail, this is a great Feat.
Thorough Search - this just puts a mechanic around something that comes up all the time. The players guess that there is something here but just can't find it. So they take more time and try again. Now there is a mechanic and a feat for it?!? The benefit of this feat is half the time and a +2 circumstance check. The +2 is useful. But you can get that from Aid from another PC. The half the time when you are searching is of vanishingly small effect. This is very much a null feat.
As Shisumo notes, I think it's for situations like looking for traps where the GM wouldn't let you retry. It does actually have a use there, at least with strict GMs, but I'm not the biggest fan of it either in terms of mechanical effectiveness.
Underground Network - This does seem to be of benefit to this skill use for Gather Information. I'd have normally handled this with a simple Diplomacy Check, maybe a Deception check is the player asked to be more discrete and was taking time.
Sure. The point of the Feat is to eliminate the need for making extra checks (which they could fail), or taking extra time (that they might not have). It's an enhancer Feat, making them better at discreet information gathering.
No Cause For Alarm - A real mechanic to reduce fear. Now I can't improvise this action with a diplomacy roll. I guess it is useful to have it codified. Not one I'm likely to think worth while to take. Frightened reduces every round anyway. Probably an OK ability.
The Feat hits everyone in an area. Even if you allowed something similar on one target with just Diplomacy the Feat would be useful. But yes, Frightened goes away so fast it's a very niche Feat in some ways.
Doublespeak, Underground Network are things there is a small chance I might take in the right sort of diplomatically heavy campaign. Probably not even then though. Eye For Numbers, Glean Contents and Thorough Search never ever. So very very specific and narrow.
I'm 5 out of 6 with the original poster on these skill feats.
Actually, no. Or at least not based on what you said here. The original poster's comment, which I objected to, was that the Feats made things that should be easy require a Feat instead. Your complaint is that they aren't widely applicable or super useful.
Those are completely different complaints. I disagree with yours as well to some degree, because I think whether several of them are good varies by particular campaign, but you and the original poster are also just not complaining about the same thing at all.
In fact, I mostly agree with you on No Cause For Alarm and maybe Thorough Search. But that means I agree they are weak, not that I agree they set a bad precedent in regards to limiting PC actions. And the latter is what the OP was saying, and what I was responding to.
If this is how you play your game then go for it. There are a lot of different type of groups, and its right that we should play the game how we each want. But these are to my mind just infringing on common sense and how the GM will improvise and deal with what the players try to do. I don't especially need mechanics for these or want them in the game. Are these new features or new restrictions? Odds are, two years from now and several books done the track I'll forget these even exist. But then some player will bring them up ....
How do they infringe on common sense? All your complaints in this post have to do with whether they're powerful enough, not whether they place undue restrictions on those who don't have them.
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That’s my preferred solution for when I come across feats that I think should just be part of the skill:I go ahead and make them part of the skill. It’s the same principle as giving all players a free archetype, except with skill feats.
Yeah, it's very easy to do, too.
Instead of having to spell out exactly what each skill can possibly do, go with what seems reasonable and keep a list of feats that come up and get obsoleted.
You'll eventually find a boundary of what's plausible for a skill without a feat, and what really should be a feat, specific to your table. You can do this during the normal course of play, and get buy in from the party on a case by case basis.
Let me check my current list for examples:
Recognize Spell. Also, doing so is a free action. (Our group likes being able to use knowledge skills more freely)
Survey Wildlife. (actually changed the feat to give a +2 to the action, which is now a trained use of Survival)
Group Impression. (I often have the party address groups and I don't want to deal with individual impression attempts over many minutes. Example: convincing an angry crowd to settle down and listen to reason.)
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I just checked what Survival actually does, in the CRB:
You are adept at living in the wilderness, foraging for food and building shelter, and with training you discover the secrets of tracking and hiding your trail. Even if you’re untrained, you can still use Survival to Subsist.Nothing in there about checking for dangerous animals.
Without survey wildlife you should probably do the following:
Perception checks to find tracks of wild animals.
Nature Recall knowledge checks to identify those animals.
This is pretty spot on, the example above seems to depend on not reading the actual skill, which includes Downtime action: Subsist, Sense Direction, Cover Tracks and Track. In this case, allowing it to be used for checking what animals are around would turn it into homebrew usage of a skill. It kind of sounds like OP and the example depend on not fully reading the skills and feats and how they function, with a tad of hyperbole on the side.
Plus unlike PF1, everyone gets a few general and skill feats now. You don't have to give up the metamagic feats of a wizard to grab Combat Climber anymore if you want, it's a whole new world.
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Glean Contents - Opening Sealed letters. Reading from a glimpse. So narrow, why is it here?
It's here in the APG because it's presented alongside the Investigator class, they're in tandem based on the idea that if you're going to have an Investigator in your campaign you'll be building encounters suitable to the flavor of the class. This feat allows the other players to get in on the fun of scanning the room for clues to solve the mystery.
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I am having a blast with my forger character, who, with the Courier background, has access to and is able to study peoples' writing styles without needing to tamper with their mail.
He has already taken advantage of it in such a way as to, for all practical purposes, have taken control of a small town. Don't underestimate the power of misinformation.
"One missing person writing to his associates that he's moving away" here. "Forged legal documents transferring property ownership, with no one left to refute them" there.
Doesn't take much.
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It kind of sounds like OP and the example depend on not fully reading the skills and feats
Isn't that exactly their point though? That something that they feel should be a standard usage of a skill is relegated into special territory that requires further investment.
You're phrasing it like the person in question is making a mistake, but near as I can tell that's exactly their point.
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Isn't that exactly their point though? That something that they feel should be a standard usage of a skill is relegated into special territory that requires further investment.
You're phrasing it like the person in question is making a mistake, but near as I can tell that's exactly their point.
I think Corvo's point is that the rules are actually really explicit that identifying animals is Nature and getting to use Survival for it is a really bad idea mechanically even in isolation and separate from the existence of Survey Wildlife.
And likewise for the other 'this is not normally Survival' stuff in Survey Wildlife.
I mostly agree on Nature and am not as sure on the other stuff, but I think that's what they were saying.
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Oh yeah, identifying is absolutely Nature.
But pointing out that the default uses of Survival don't let you look at scat and damage to vegetation to tell if there are any animals in the area and that that's instead a component Survey Wildlife seems precisely the thing the people are complaining about as something that feels wrong.
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The one thing I do worry about feat creep with is the growing number of "you have to take this at first level" ancestry feats.
Formerly if you wanted to be a Hellspawn Tiefling who also has darkvision, that was just part of the package. But now you can't be both of those things unless your GM gives you an extra ancestry feat.
You can still be a hellspawn. You just don't necessarily get anything special out of it like if you'd taken the Lineage, much ike how they worked in 1e.
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Oh yeah, identifying is absolutely Nature.
But pointing out that the default uses of Survival don't let you look at scat and damage to vegetation to tell if there are any animals in the area and that that's instead a component Survey Wildlife seems precisely the thing the people are complaining about as something that feels wrong.
Sorry, my point was that the example was a wrong one by mixing elements of Knowledge (Nature) into Survival as if the later is expected to do what the former one does as a baseline. And that the example was written as if doing a mistake is set in stone and cannot be discussed and dealt with later, if that makes sense?
Others have given better examples, but as for OP's mention of feats, a lot of them seem maybe a lil weak but interesting. For example, I like the idea of a ruffian rogue with Underwater Maurader. Bring them into water, have them always flat footed while you're not. But it's a weak skill/reduntant skill feat if there's no water around.
Same thing with most of the feats OP mentioned, you need to select them where they fit, often keeping the character aesthetic in mind. I wouldn't see it out of place to pick Gleam Contents on a fighter if I knew we'd have social intrigue being part of the game, if he could KO a courier and check the contents of the mail, he'd have a massive edge with such a "weak" feat if he got lucky?
I guess to boil down, OP seems to mention the feats he doesn't like in a way that makes them sound much weaker and reduntant than they actually are, and doesn't factor in difference between games, where some tables do more combat, and some do more intrigue. A lot of the feats OP mentioned would be great on a rogue or investigator with vigilant archetype for me, or even a dandy oracle of lore perhaps.
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You can still be a hellspawn. You just don't necessarily get anything special out of it like if you'd taken the Lineage, much ike how they worked in 1e.
I think generally my complaint is that I'm fine with either/or choices (e.g. if you're a dwarf you can be an elf) it just is pretty weird when those mutually exclusive choices aren't the same sort of thing.
The other thing about lineages is that if I see my character as a pitborn or a dream may or whatever, I'd like to be able to write that down somewhere on my character sheet.
Even if it is weak, it can be a fun feat. Especially since these do not complete with combat. (And hopefully we will not see combat skill feats. Scare to death should be a general feat IMO).
Though I feel they should be written with the base rule assumption in mind. Something like
"When you would roll ... You can instead ..."
And just a flat "treat it as one degree better" would work in most situation.
I.e.
When you roll to read something, such as a paper upside down, or in a sealed envelope, treat your result as degree better.
Or
When you would roll nature to identify an animal, you can roll survival instead.
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* P.S. I really expected there to be more actions gated behind expert or higher without requiring a feat. I always viewed the proficiency system as an upgraded version of the Signature Skills feat, but that hasn't panned out.
Full agreement there. I'm more than a little disappointed by that, though I'm sure there are reasons for it.
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Confabulist is a “you failed but you can immediately try again” ability, that is fully within the purview of feat territory.I was using it as an example because its very easy to imagine, and its often done on TV. The scenes where the liar messes up and tries to lie his way out of it.
I do agree that the way the feat is written makes it a valid feat. But its also something that would make a lot of sense to attempt even without a feat.
Possibly, but "oh I missed up let me try again" is certainly not a given nor expected.
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I.e.
When you roll to read something, such as a paper upside down, or in a sealed envelope, treat your result as degree better.
Respectfully, I disagree with this. A rule that says you treat your result as one degree better while referencing a non-existent rule (one degree better than what, exactly?) is not in itself a viable rule anyone can really work with. GMs everywhere, if they bothered with such a feat at all, would basically be making it up as they went along, which is not good for table to table rules consistency.
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* P.S. I really expected there to be more actions gated behind expert or higher without requiring a feat. I always viewed the proficiency system as an upgraded version of the Signature Skills feat, but that hasn't panned out.Full agreement there. I'm more than a little disappointed by that, though I'm sure there are reasons for it.
This is sort of where my head is too. I don't think many of the examples the OP mentions are THAT bad, but it does strike me as sort of a missed opportunity to not introduce options that can expand with proficiency and not just feats.
Skill feats are limited, so as more and more options come out I sort of feel like players might start to feel hedged in by these choices.
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Imagine...
There are all kinds of hypotheticals one can postulate, but those are specific cases. You could "what if" the game to death if you wanted to. The issues I took was with the general application of the idea that unless the rules specifically permit you to do something, the GM should automatically deny it. That is patently ludicrous and not at all the way GMs have been encouraged to run their games going all the way back to Gygax.
New rules are always coming out that did not exist before. If a feat is created to codify how a certain action can be performed, and the existence of that feat invalidates the actions of what you want to allow your characters to do without said feat, then leave it out of your game. As some are keen to say, there is no such thing as RAW (rules as written). There is only rules as interpreted by the GM. As long as the GM is consistent in their rulings, do whatever is in the best interests of your game.
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A lawyer would read the Survival entry and make the assertion that you could live and survive in the wilderness, and learn to track, without knowing anything about the animals you're tracking. That's what a strict, non-permissive interpretation of the rules says, after all. Any sane person would argue otherwise..
The deeper and deeper we go into this particular analogy about Survival the less and less we’re talking about flaws with rules as written and more we’re talking about selectively avoiding reading sections of the five paragraph entry under Survival so that we have SOME information at our disposal but not all of it, and placing the blame of someone making a selective reading of Survival their default assumption without having glanced at Nature somehow the fault of the designers.
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Because Survival training, as the book describes, means you're adept at living and surviving in the wilderness. Part of surviving in the wilderness is not being eaten. In fact, Survival allows you to track creatures, which suggests you know how to identify such tracks.
By that logic you can use Diplomacy to lie, since it specifies it is about influencing people through 'negotiation and flattery', which generally involve lying to some extent in real life.
Except that the rules very specifically say that lying is Deception. Just like they say knowing about animals is Nature. This isn't a hidden or obscure rules interaction or something to do with a Feat, it's knowing the very basics of what skills do what.
A lawyer would read the Survival entry and make the assertion that you could live and survive in the wilderness, and learn to track, without knowing anything about the animals you're tracking. That's what a strict, non-permissive interpretation of the rules says, after all. Any sane person would argue otherwise. That's why if you play under a permissive GM style, where players are allowed to do things that their characters should logically be able to do, it's natural to assume that someone who lives out in the wilderness will know how to recognize and avoid dangers, especially if they can follow animal tracks.
A sane person who read the basic description of all the Skills would understand that people who live in the wilderness need multiple skills to be successful at doing so, just like people who live in cities do. Generally, in all RPGs, how specific capabilities are divided among different skills is unique to each particular game system and making assumptions about it without actually looking through the Skill list is always a bad idea.
Indeed, who creates a Survival-based character without at least reading the description of the Nature skill? That's a weird as hell situation I've never seen occur in play.
If you do play with a permissive DM, where players can do things their characters should logically be able to do, then every feat that makes assumptions about what players can do by default becomes a hassle of rules that must be untangled and reconciled with your own assumptions. Feats which provide a benefit over and above the default, such as Glad-Hand, work fine under this paradigm, however.
Survey Wildlife provides such a benefit under such circumstances. It allows quicker analysis of creatures, and allows one Recall Knowledge to apply to all of them.
The only thing it's presence shows is forbidden is using Survival to identify specific animals which anyone who read Nature and Survival should already be aware of.
I'm sure it is a reasonable interpretation, but it requires a ton of effort to unpack the rules implications behind the feat. Determining things like "how much time does it take to identify tracks without Survey Wildlife" or "Why do I need to make a Nature check AND a Survival check" is a bunch of tedious busy-work that you have to be a game designer to reverse-engineer properly. For the average person, this is all painful tedium which makes feats like Survey Wildlife an actively negative part of their game, and leads to the simple solution of just banning them.
Reading Nature and Survival and seeing what each actually allows is not a huge amount of interpretation, and frankly seems like it should be a baseline level thing for most players who have those Skills, as well as all GMs.
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You could argue that athletics should allow you to be good a gymnast stuff, but that is covered by acrobatics. The division of skills is part of the ruleset. You shouldn't assume survival can let you identify animals entirely because another skill does so.
Not to mention, survival works in cities. It is not as narrowly defined as "survival in nature".
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That's something you had to reverse-engineer through implications, guesswork, and creativity. Not something that's written anywhere. People play RPGs with rules so they don't have to be a trained game designer just to run the game.
No, it isn't. I would never have assumed that I could do an analysis of all creatures in an area in ten minutes in the first place. That's a step or five beyond what I'd remotely expect Survival to do on its own.
A lawyer would read the Survival entry and make the assertion that you could live and survive in the wilderness, and learn to track, without knowing anything about the animals you're tracking. That's what a strict, non-permissive interpretation of the rules says, after all. Any sane person would argue otherwise..The deeper and deeper we go into this particular analogy about Survival the less and less we’re talking about flaws with rules as written and more we’re talking about selectively avoiding reading sections of the five paragraph entry under Survival so that we have SOME information at our disposal but not all of it, and placing the blame of someone making a selective reading of Survival their default assumption without having glanced at Nature somehow the fault of the designers.
I fully agree that this problem exists as well. Part of it due to the sheer volume of the books. Part of it is due to the segementation of the rules. For this example its not, but it can be hard to get accross them all. Many a PF1 game I played, was limited to books X,Y and Z and not others. Half because of this issue, half because of power creep.
At least there seems to be only minor power creep in this expansion. It really does seem to be about more variety. Which I applaud, and is the real reason I support this game.
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That's something you had to reverse-engineer through implications, guesswork, and creativity. Not something that's written anywhere. People play RPGs with rules so they don't have to be a trained game designer just to run the game.No, it isn't. I would never have assumed that I could do an analysis of all creatures in an area in ten minutes in the first place. That's a step or five beyond what I'd remotely expect Survival to do on its own.
But only because you put the ten minutes in there. Giving a couple of days, you would expect to be able to do this. In ten minutes I'd expect Survival to give me a couple of things like signs of deer and rabbit. But miss a dozen other animals that are common in the area. A nature roll could provide some background information.
When you think of it like this it is a very difficult ability, that just wouldn't be normally possible.
But do I really need this ability? If I want the information I can take more time. Why is it so urgent? For sure you can think of a circumstance. But even if I was playing a druid or a ranger I would not pay anything to take this feat. It is just so so narrow. Why does this rule even exist?
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Personally, it seems like the Skill Feats would have been benefitted from expanded skill usage section or "Normal: ..." paragraph clarifying how the situation would be handle normally without the feat.
For example, Doublespeak could have included a line saying "Normal: without this feat you can only convey basic meaning equivalent to a one word message with innuendo"
Humbly,
Yawar
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I had Doublespeak come up last week before the book.
"What check is it to secretly communicate something with hand signs?"
"I'll go take a look. Hmm. Not seeing anything. All right, we'll go with Deception if you want to fit it into speech, and Stealth if you want to pass it secretly with hand signs. You're out of line of sight of the onlookers, though, and it's easy to mime, so no check."
Now, I'd go look, probably miss the feat, and run the same thing. If I did see the feat, its benefit would be requiring enemies to make a critical success to understand the message. The "automatically succeed on communicating" would possibly be a benefit as well.