Very disappointing trends in Advanced Player's Guide

[archangel135]

Ian Bell wrote:

Deadmanwalking wrote:

Glean Contents - As others note, this allows so much more than 'reading upside down'. Decipher Writing is a specific action used only on things that are really hard to understand, and that normally requires full access to the document in question. It's used for codebreaking, not reading a letter. Being able to do it...

FWIW, 'this feat also does all these other things!' is a non-sequitur to the initial complaint. Basically all of the 'loose papers' part of the feat (as opposed to the 'sealed message' parts) would seem to pretty easily qualify as things-you-shouldn't-need-a-feat-for, to me.

the feats states if im not mistaken you do these things quickly without disturbing them. that i think is feat worthy

[PossibleCabbage]

Deadmanwalking wrote:

This process will probably take at least half an hour, probably more like an hour depending on terrain.

Realistically conducting a wildlife survey without the feat should take several hours and require specific times of day. If you have all day to do it (in downtime mode, say), I'd say you can manage without the feat. If you want to do it quickly that's what the feat is for.

[N N 959]

Deadmanwalking wrote:

Squiggit wrote:

That's sort of an interesting thought.

For people who say Survey Wildlife doesn't limit players. If a character at your table who didn't have the feat wanted to do the things the feat has in its text, what would you say?

I'd say you need the Feat to do it that quickly and with that few rolls.

If they want to scan a whole area for signs of tracks of animals or other wildlife, they certainly can with a Survival roll, they can then make a number of individual Nature checks, one for each type of tracks there are in the area, to identify the creatures (at a penalty, probably -2 because the creatures aren't there in person...maybe -5 if their tracks resemble the tracks of another creature).

This process will probably take at least half an hour, probably more like an hour depending on terrain.

And a Normal clause that said" Without this feats, this endeavor will take longer, as determined by the GM," solves the problem. It doesn't limit your adjudication in any way, and it substantially reduces, if not precludes the community from inventing restrictions.

[dirtypool]

N N 959 wrote:

Ongoing argument

You have a different interpretation of the rules than others, that is absolutely fine and you are entitled to have said opinion. Defining that said opinion is an objective failing of the rules that Paizo owes it to you to respond to by clarifying the rules so that they explicitly match your interpretation is a bit much.

You want explicitly defined norms for all possible skill actions - house rule them yourself.

[voideternal]

Natural Medicine wrote:

You can apply natural cures to heal your allies. You can use Nature instead of Medicine to Treat Wounds. If you’re in the wilderness, you might have easier access to fresh ingredients, allowing you to gain a +2 circumstance bonus to your check to Treat Wounds using Nature, subject to the GM’s determination.

Impressive Performance wrote:

Your performances inspire admiration and win you fans. You can Make an Impression using Performance instead of Diplomacy.

Acrobatic Performer wrote:

You're an incredible acrobat, evoking wonder and enrapturing audiences with your prowess. It's almost a performance! You can roll an Acrobatics check instead of a Performance check when using the Perform action.

Survey Wildlife wrote:

You can study details in the wilderness to determine the presence of nearby creatures. You can spend 10 minutes assessing the area around you to find out what creatures are nearby, based on nests, scat, and marks on vegetation. Attempt a Survival check against a DC determined by the GM based on how obvious the signs are. On a success, you can attempt a Recall Knowledge check with a –2 penalty to learn more about the creatures just from these signs. If you’re a master in Survival, you don’t take the penalty.

Recall Knowledge wrote:

The following skills can be used to Recall Knowledge, getting information about the listed topics. In some cases, you can get the GM’s permission to use a different but related skill, usually against a higher DC than normal. Some topics might appear on multiple lists, but the skills could give different information. For example, Arcana might tell you about the magical defenses of a golem, whereas Crafting could tell you about its sturdy resistance to physical attacks.

Arcana: Arcane theories, magical traditions, creatures of arcane significance, and arcane planes.
Crafting: Alchemical reactions and creatures, item value, engineering, unusual materials, and constructs.
Lore: The subject of the Lore skill’s subcategory.
Medicine: Diseases, poisons, wounds, and forensics.
Nature: The environment, flora, geography, weather, creatures of natural origin, and natural planes.
Occultism: Ancient mysteries, obscure philosophy, creatures of occult significance, and esoteric planes.
Religion: Divine agents, divine planes, theology, obscure myths, and creatures of religious significance.
Society: Local history, key personalities, legal institutions, societal structure, and humanoid culture.
The GM might allow checks to Recall Knowledge using other skills. For example, you might assess the skill of an acrobat using Acrobatics. If you’re using a physical skill (like in this example), the GM will most likely have you use a mental ability score—typically Intelligence—instead of the skill’s normal physical ability score.

It seems clear to me that Survey Wildlife is a survival check to find evidence of nearby creatures + a separate recall knowledge check of the relevant skill (such as religion or nature). The penalty to the recall knowledge check can be reduced if you can find better evidence by being a master at survival.

[Rysky]

It doesn't use "instead of" because of the large number of skills that can use Recall Knowldges but also because the creatures in the area being Surveyed are normally identified by all different skills as well, it's not replacing a single specific skill.

There isn't a single "relevant" skill that covers everything in the area, you use Survival to identify everything in the area with the Feat.

[Deadmanwalking]

N N 959 wrote:

No they didn't. Paizo defined a feat which implicitly but directly limits what can be can be accomplished without the feat. There's no part of that which is left in the GM's hand.

For the Feat? Yes, that's true. It's true of most Feats, actually. But my point is that the GM gets a lot of authority over everything else outside of what specific Feats do. And that by writing 'Normal' entries into a lot of Feats, you would erode that authority in a pretty fundamental way.

N N 959 wrote:

No they didn't. In PF2, Paizo is actually explicit about what things are intended to be up to the GM. I'm sure you've seen it. It comes in the form of phrases like:

p.246 wrote:

The GM determines the DC of the check and the amount of time it takes...

Those phrases fail to appear in the vast majority of skill feats and certainly are not present with Survey Wildlife. These are not left to GM discretion. If the GM is not allowed to determine the extent of the feat, then this presents a brick wall for the GM in terms of what is achievable without the feat.

Right. That quote is exactly my point, though. My point is that Skill Feats are a player resource which they spend to short-circuit the GM's control over some specific aspect of a skill in specific circumstances.

My point is that at all other times the GM decides all of that, and that this dichotomy is very intentional, giving the GM huge powers over most of the game, but players the ability to have a specific schtick wherein they can be the one to say how those things work. And that schtick can be very limited with some Skill Feats, but it's an important facet of how Skill Feats work and how the balance of power between players and the GM works.

If you add 'Normal' entries to all Feats as you suggest, the GM's control over those things becomes sharply curtailed even outside of the Feats people actually take, which is not what Paizo are aiming for.

N N 959 wrote:

That's false on its face. Paizo has published a 600+ page book telling GMs and players what they can and can't do. Those rule s"sharply curtail" the GMs ability in an enumerable number of circumstances. So the idea that PF's rules don't curtail GMs power is contrary to reality.

All rules limit a GM's power, sure, but there are varying degrees. Paizo, in PF2, has leaned heavily on the side of the GM having more power and authority, as compared to games featuring meta-resources allowing actual plot alteration or ones that actually hold GMs to a very specific set of available actions. Or even as compared to PF1, with things like Rarity and how it works giving a PF2 GM a lot more power over the availability of things than the PF1 rules ever did.

N N 959 wrote:

If you want to denigrate other people, that's between you and the mods.

Calling a behavior 'lazy' is denigrating people now? That seems a bit much.

N N 959 wrote:

Regardless of how you want to insult said players, it's a fact that it happens and we have a designer acknowledging it. The onus is on Paizo to account for it, and all it takes is describing what happens without these particular feats. It doesn't have to be exhaustive, it simply has to counteract the restrictive implications of such feats.

No game is perfect. Paizo is not obligated to, or capable of, making a perfect game. Nobody is. They must just try to analyze what choices are best for the most players and decide what to do based on that, and even then they won't always be perfect.

But neither are you. Neither am I, for that matter. Nobody is. And I see absolutely no evidence that your solution would actually make the game better for the majority of players.

N N 959 wrote:

It actually does solve everyone's problem in the context of these feats implicitly creating rules restrictions.

Only because it has them do so explicitly instead of implicitly. For many people, this is not an improvement.

N N 959 wrote:

That's exactly what the rules do. That's exactly why you have rules, to lay out what is and what is not possible. The introduction of the skill feat already starts this process and failing to account for the absence of this feat is what creates the problem. And it is undeniably a problem as you and Mark have both confirmed.

Rules do indeed do this. Skill Feats can do this, if the GM decides that they do. But each rule does it more, every single general rule that applies to everyone further narrows the scope for the GM to make their own decisions about how they want each individual thing to work.

Vastly increasing the number of such rules by including 'Normal' entries in Feats would, for me, make the game a lot worse. I am not alone in this.

Now, apparently, it would also make the game better for you, but Paizo is not catering to you, or indeed to me, they are attempting to balance the competing needs of lots of different people, creating a game that is perfect for very few of us, but quite good for the majority. And they have determined that this would be bad for more people than it would be good for.

Are they right? That's hard to say, but they sure as heck aren't objectively and provably wrong, and your solution is not actually a flatly better option that would make the game better for everyone.

N N 959 wrote:

No, it's not. We know for a fact that none of this can happen in 10 minutes and we know it can't allow a Recall Knowledge check with anything less than a -3 penalty if it allows one at all.

We know neither of those things. A specific GM could easily say either of those was untrue (though probably not both). I can, in fact, easily see a GM ruling that the penalty on Recall Knowledge is due to it only taking 10 minutes and saying that if you take enough longer can ignore that penalty.

That's not how I'd rule, but it's a reasonable ruling a GM can make.

N N 959 wrote:

This statement is nonsensical. The very existence of the skill feat already mandates the GMs have to read every feat to make sure they aren't breaking the rules. This is the exact problem Strill is fleshing out.

Except that's not true. Again, if you make things take reasonable real-world amounts of time to do and apply penalties to things that would be difficult, I don't think you ever run into a skill Feat that invalidates any of your rulings.

It's certainly not true that this is a problem in my games, and appears not to be true in those of many other people here. The problem you describe is specific to certain people and certain styles of GMing, not remotely universal.

For many, though not all, of those people who do not currently have this problem, your proposed solution would create a similar one. Which was my whole point.

N N 959 wrote:

Again, this is nonsensical. The problem exists as soon as these type of feats are created. Adding a Normal clause doesn't exacerbate the problem. It simplifies the game, and reduces the GM's overhead in having to adjudicate, one of the explicit goals for PF2. Mark's own post emphatically proves this point. In the absence of a clause explaining what the feat does not restrict you have the "community" imposing restrictions. It's right there in Paizo's face

It's really not. You just need to realize that not everyone has problems with the way the game currently works, or at least not the same ones as you. Some people certainly do impose such restrictions or have problems that your solution would alleviate, but they must be weighed against those who do not have such problems and would be hurt by your solution, a group you seem to refuse to acknowledge the very existence of.

N N 959 wrote:

Why not fix it? That's why I'm in this thread. I'm trying to communicate to Paizo the negative impact of not addressing this problem of which they are clearly aware..

Again, no game is perfect. Every game is a compromise between various factors. Paizo seems to believe that a cure such as you are suggesting would cause more problems than it would solve.

I am much inclined to agree with them.

[Deadmanwalking]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Deadmanwalking wrote:

This process will probably take at least half an hour, probably more like an hour depending on terrain.

Realistically conducting a wildlife survey without the feat should take several hours and require specific times of day. If you have all day to do it (in downtime mode, say), I'd say you can manage without the feat. If you want to do it quickly that's what the feat is for.

I suppose it depends on we define an area. I was thinking of a relatively small one, like everywhere within line of sight in a forest. Obviously, the larger the area the longer it takes.

N N 959 wrote:

And a Normal clause that said" Without this feats, this endeavor will take longer, as determined by the GM," solves the problem. It doesn't limit your adjudication in any way, and it substantially reduces, if not precludes the community from inventing restrictions.

This is a lot less damaging than having it be specific is, it's true. It does, however, still remove the ability of a GM to simply say you can't do that...which is, I suppose, the point, but it's not an unalloyed good. Right now, it's up to the GM whether people can even make a check like this...changing it so the GM is obligated to say they can is probably fine in isolation for this one Feat, but as a general policy applied to multiple Feats it still erodes GM authority.

Which is fine if you want to do that, but the GM having a lot of authority seems to be PF2's intended playstyle, so I doubt it's something Paizo would do.

[Captain Morgan]

Deadmanwalking wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Deadmanwalking wrote:

This process will probably take at least half an hour, probably more like an hour depending on terrain.

Realistically conducting a wildlife survey without the feat should take several hours and require specific times of day. If you have all day to do it (in downtime mode, say), I'd say you can manage without the feat. If you want to do it quickly that's what the feat is for.

I suppose it depends on we define an area. I was thinking of a relatively small one, like everywhere within line of sight in a forest. Obviously, the larger the area the longer it takes.id

The lack of definition for area is maybe my only problem with the feat, actually. A savvy surveyor with no particular time pressures would probably be stopping to check every time they entered a new "area." Which would obviously slow things down, as would going through all the harmless species of birds and squirrels and what have you.

So my own interpretation of how this feat should work in practice is you have them roll about as often as you have encounters where the rolls would matter. Which can provide some really substantial benefits if they succeed.

That's a fair bit of mental gymnastics on my part, but it has a lot more to do with that one word being than restricting what players can do without the feat or whatever.

[PossibleCabbage]

I think the way to handle this sort of thing as the GM is that if a person could realistically do the sort of thing in question in the time allotted then there's no need for a feat, you just roll the skill and go.

When we're talking about something that stretches plausibility, likelihood, realism, etc. then you're going to need the appropriate feat.

I mean, we call them "feats" for a reason.

[N N 959]

So to be clear, my goal here in discussing this s to give Paizo feedback on how these feats affect my perception of the game and my experience and provide a solution. While this discussion focuses on SW, it applies to other feats that operate in the same wheel house. With that in mind, I will continue the discussion.

Deadmanwalking wrote:

For the Feat? Yes, that's true. It's true of most Feats, actually. But my point is that the GM gets a lot of authority over everything else outside of what specific Feats do. And that by writing 'Normal' entries into a lot of Feats, you would erode that authority in a pretty fundamental way.

Bunch of problems with this assertion:

1. You're probably assuming a Normal clause that is specific. I'm not. The point of the Normal clause is to counteract any notions of restricting abilities by the community that both you and Mark have confirmed occur.

2. The vast majority of skill feats are already based on the GM automatically knowing the Normal condition. For example,

Fleet wrote:

You move more quickly on foot. Your Speed increases by 5 feet.

Quick Jump wrote:

You can use High Jump and Long Jump as a single action instead of 2 actions. If you do, you don’t perform the initial Stride (nor do you fail if you don’t Stride 10 feet).

Ride wrote:

When you Command an Animal you’re mounted on to take a move action (such as Stride), you automatically succeed instead of needing to attempt a check. Any animal you’re mounted on acts on your turn, like a minion. If you Mount an animal in the middle of an encounter, it skips its next turn and then acts on your next turn.

Chosen for brevity, but I could go on all day. I can bet that 99.9% of the GMs reading these feats know what happens if you don't have the feat. While these examples may seem absurd, it underscores the paradigm which these skill feats operate: It is obvious what happens when you don't have the feat.

3. In none of these cases is there any GM adjudication or allowance of the character performing these actions without the feat. Contrast that with SW in which you, yourself, concede a character might accomplish what SW allows, just not in the same time frame or degree of success.

There is a fundamental difference between how a feat like SW operates and Quick Jump, Fleet, etc operate in the context of GM's ruling on the use of skills. You're trying to assert a Normal clause some how restricts this GM freedom, but no GM freedom exists. There is no freedom for the GM to allow a character to accomplish Ride, Quick Jump, Fleet without those Skill feats.

Quote:

My point is that Skill Feats are a player resource which they spend to short-circuit the GM's control over some specific aspect of a skill in specific circumstances.

But it's not. The GM does not have the authority to grant the benefits of Ride, Quick Jump, Fleet, and the vast majority fo these skill feats. Those feats all allow things that are not contemplated by the skills or even amenable to to them as a matter of circumstance.

Why is that important? Because it means the introduction of the feat has no chance of curtailing the GM's permissiveness. In normative play, no GM would allow those things, That cannot be said for SW and other feats like it

Quote:

If you add 'Normal' entries to all Feats as you suggest, the GM's control over those things becomes sharply curtailed even outside of the Feats people actually take, which is not what Paizo are aiming for.

I did not suggest adding Normal to "all feats." I am Paizo to add it to feats that have a high risk of curtailing the GM's freedom, which is exactly what SW does. Not all skill feats do that. In fact, the vast majority don't.

DMW wrote:

All rules limit a GM's power, sure, but there are varying degrees

This is not about the degree of limitation, it's about the category of limitation. When I read through the Skill feats in PF2, they aren't limiting the use of skills, they are expanding them in ways that are outside the boundaries of what GMs are allowed to adjudicate. SW is categorically different.

Quote:

Paizo, in PF2, has leaned heavily on the side of the GM having more power and authority, as compared to games featuring meta-resources allowing actual plot alteration or ones that actually hold GMs to a very specific set of available actions. Or even as compared to PF1, with things like Rarity and how it works giving a PF2 GM a lot more power over the availability of things than the PF1 rules ever did.

I disagree. I don't perceive PF2 allowing or granting more power and authority than PF1 or any other game. What Paizo did, and I give them full credit and kudos, is that the formalized the need for GM discretion in areas that obviously require GM discretion. This has, imo, a positive net effect of setting expectation on both sides of the screen. This is in contrast to PF1 which clearly required said GM discretion in the same instances, but left it unsaid and thus did not prepare the player or GM.

The point here, is that I disagree with your line of reasoning which is trying to suggests there is some vast swath of rules adjudication granted to GMs in this context. I don't' see the vast majority skill feats requiring GM adjudication in the way that basic Skills do. So providing GMs with a explicit Normal, for Skill feats of this nature, that precludes a GM from limiting the underlyig skill has no negative effect on GM power. In fact, it preserves it. I think this addresses the exact the issue that Strill is trying to convey.

Quote:

Calling a behavior 'lazy' is denigrating people now? That seems a bit much.

You seem to be assuming that any and all GMs who see feats like SW and interpret it as a limitation on Survival are doing so because they are lazy. Yes, I would call that a denigration.

Quote:

No game is perfect.

That's exactly right. No game is perfect. PF2 isn't perfect. It wasn't perfect when they released it, and it isn't perfect now. I'm spending time on these forums trying to help Paizo fix what I believe to be a very fixable problem. So is Strill. It's up to Paizo as to whether they want to listen.

Quote:

Only because it has them do so explicitly instead of implicitly. For many people, this is not an improvement.

If Paizo explicitly stated that feast like SW should not have an impact on the use of the underlying Skills, his would absolutely be an improvement for everyone. Why? Because none of the Skill feats are meant to restrict the the use of the underlying feat. It is beyond me how you can argue to the contrary. How can Paizo explicitly stating something that is their intention, be bad for anyone?

Quote:

Vastly increasing the number of such rules by including 'Normal' entries in Feats would, for me, make the game a lot worse. I am not alone in this.

The Normal isn't restricting real estate, it's reclaiming it for the GM. At this point in the discussion, you seem to be in-visioning something completely different than what I am suggesting.

Quote:

Some people certainly do impose such restrictions or have problems that your solution would alleviate, but they must be weighed against those who do not have such problems and would be hurt by your solution, a group you seem to refuse to acknowledge the very existence of.

It's easy to make that claim, but nothing I'm proposing has any negative consequences if Paizo is NOT intending for Skill feats to be a backdoor nerf on Skills. Saying, "Nothing in this Skill feat is intended to restrict the use of the underlying skill" has zero negative impact.

Quote:

Again, no game is perfect. Every game is a compromise between various factors. Paizo seems to believe that a cure such as you are suggesting would cause more problems than it would solve.

There's zero evidence of that. It's more likely Paizo simply failed to account for the effect of SW has, because, as you have made it clear, there is no perfect game. I haven't read through ever feat, but the vast majority don't introduce the problems that SW and feats like it do.

[Corvo Spiritwind]

Just fyi, if a GM makes a ruling on the go, then later learns it was wrong and finds either a better solution or a feat that does what he allowed, he is allowed to say "I made a mistake, this is how we'll go on from now on." and keep enjoying the game.

Some people make it sound like GM'ing comes with a knife at your back if you mess up and that there's no way to correct issues. And kinda sounds like jobhunting where a new software has been out for a year, but you need years of experience in it before you can even try it.

I don't believe it takes years for the average GM to learn how to improvise and learn from his mistakes. People were fine before we had such easy access to everything TTRPG related and they will be fine now that we can use chat, forums, AoN, etc.

As for Survey, it's kinda neat that it's not actually just Survival checks, this would allow people like Oozemorpher to use their Ooze lore in tracking oozes in a dungeon or region, or Religion if you visit one of the layers of hell for example.

[Mellored]

Ravingdork wrote:

Mellored wrote:

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.

Decipher Writing is a rule, which yea, I should have said that.

But still, take any non-coded situation, where the GM needs to decide a DC, success, ect... and you can have a feat that makes you better at it (one degree, half the time, +2 to the party, etc...).

That works for any GM, any DC, any duration, etc...
It's flexible.

[AnimatedPaper]

N N 959 wrote:

1. You're probably assuming a Normal clause that is specific. I'm not. The point of the Normal clause is to counteract any notions of restricting abilities by the community that both you and Mark have confirmed occur.

Could you define your terms? Instead of saying you are envisioning something different, could you simply say what you mean in this specific case? How would you envision the normal clause for this particular feat being written? Succinctly, if you can.

It might short circuit a bunch of back and forth.

[Snes]

One thing that I found disappointing was the fact that the heritage feat for all the versatile ancestries was low-light vision across the board. I was hoping for some more unique benefits for the different ancestries.

[ExOichoThrow]

Snes wrote:

One thing that I found disappointing was the fact that the heritage feat for all the versatile ancestries was low-light vision across the board. I was hoping for some more unique benefits for the different ancestries.

well it gives you access to specific feats... that's a pretty massive and unique thing. I.E my aasimar/human oracle has a halo.

[Gortle]

Snes wrote:

One thing that I found disappointing was the fact that the heritage feat for all the versatile ancestries was low-light vision across the board. I was hoping for some more unique benefits for the different ancestries.

It is taking us down the path of most PCs are going to have darkvision again.

Sometimes I prefer games when darkess and light are important again.

[Nitro~Nina]

Surely, if you can describe something your character can do, the basic assumption of Pathfinder 2 and all such roleplaying games is that you can attempt it? GM does some improv, sets a skill and DC using the handy dandy PF2 guidelines, we all keep playing. If that ruling makes the task easier than an applicable feat would, the GM probably didn't consider the difficulty and process involved in the task in-narrative. Of course, that's still fine because some campaigns don't care about the nitty-gritty and would rather just abstract it all away until they get to the relevant stuff, but that doesn't make Paizo wrong for making Survey Wildlife available to players who want to play Jedi Aragorn in campaigns where that is significant and special.

These feats, as-designed, do not in any way limit the ability to allow the skill-attempt in question; they just provide ways to circumvent it with a single defined check or similar. Rather than running a gauntlet of difficult Perception and Society checks to decipher obtuse legal documents that are currently on fire and upside down and viewable only through a circus mirror, you can simply look at your feats and say "Actually, my character has trained for this very moment! I can perform this nigh-superhuman Feat of Content-Gleaning because I am a Lawyer from Cheliax and this was the bar exam!"
(okay maybe all of that at once is a little much but having the feat would certainly help y'know)

Same goes for Survey Wildlife, which would obviously otherwise be extremely difficult to pull off the way the feat describes, if not impossible. I'm no experienced GM but I am both a bio student and a scout (not to mention an avid consumer of outdoorsy fiction) so I know a little about Nature and Survival and hahaha Not A Chance. With a run of Survival, Perception and Nature checks over the course of a day, you could certainly get an idea of some of the animals in the vicinity, but being able to do all of that and more with a quick check over ten minutes without leaving your seat? That sounds like a pretty impressive and unique Feat to me, not something that I'd expect of just any fighter with a knack for jock geography.

The skills in this edition are ultimately just vague descriptions attached to a couple of specific actions to give players and GMs an idea of how to use them in certain situations. The GM is expected to improvise similar actions on-the-fly and it is okay if that improv isn't perfect so long as everyone has a good time. If the book had to cover every single possible use case, it'd be ludicrously bloated, but it does still go out of its way to give the GM a ton of guidance on how best to improvise in a spot (unlike some other systems I could mention).

If that improv seems a little too much like game design for you... that's sort of the gig? Learn, make mistakes, have fun! Tabletop gaming is a hobby like any other, and there are skills attached to that hobby that are developed over time, whether player or GM.
To paraphrase one Arin "Grump" Hanson:
"You think I came out the [womb] drawing [fricking] Mozart!?"
This applies to most hobbies. You won't be hitting bullseyes on your first rodeo, and it's okay to drop the ball so long as you catch it on the way back up. Or something. Metaphors can be tricky, but they can be fun too, and I think that's sort of the point.

[Fumarole]

I think my method of GMing must be quite strange to some. In my games all rulings I make are provisional and subject to change in the future if I misread a rule or didn't know about it. If I make a mistake and later find out about it, I own up to it and explain to the players what I did wrong and what will happen in the future. I'm only human, and definitely imperfect, and my players know I run the game in good faith and they play the game in the same manner. I expect them to correct me (in-game if possible) when I make a mistake, and I do the same for them. It doesn't matter if the mistake is in the party's favor or their opponent's, we all do our best to get the game right. This was all laid out for my players in session zero and is found in my house rules document that they all have access to. This is a living document that can change as we play, so if a ruling was made contrary to the rules and is determined to be the best path going forward it is added to the document.

[Unicore]

“Yes you can try to deliver a secret message to your allies, but it would take months of dedicated practice to be able to do so reliably without giving yourselves away fairly easy. You can give me a deception check and the other player can give me a perception check, just like everyone else in the room. There is a feat for this if you want to make communicating secretly a party tactic. Also there is the message spell, but it has a verbal component so everyone sees that a spell is being cast, unless you have conceal spell, and you each move your lips so observant onlookers might realize what is going on, even if they can’t understand what is being said.”

Skill feats don’t stop players from doing creative things. They help the GM get a sense for what a focused, trained character can do and then how to set appropriate DCs and potential consequences for players who attempt to do things beyond their training and focus.