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In my opinion, feats can definitely step on the basic functioning of the skill system (see: Ultimate Intrigue). Just where the line is, however, is highly subjective. One end of the spectrum seems to be "less is more; your skill system should provide a framework for everything, and anything beyond that is just compromising the design." The other end seems like "the more than is codified, the better; otherwise too much is subject to GM fiat."
Those who don't prefer the former approach don't need to be corrected, nor does Pathfinder need defending. Likewise, "love it or leave it" isn't constructive, in this (or virtually any) context.
On the flip side, I think others -- myself included -- need to accept that Pathfinder isn't trying to be the game they may want it to be...and that's fine.
The point is that any talk of evidence is misguided, because there is no "right" or "wrong" here. People are expressing a preference...that's it.
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In my opinion, feats can definitely step on the basic functioning of the skill system (see: Ultimate Intrigue). Just where the line is, however, is highly subjective, and seems to be based on preference. One end of the spectrum seems to be "less is more; your skill system should provide a framework for everything, and anything beyond that is just compromising the design." The other end seems like "the more than is codified, the better; otherwise too much is subject to GM fiat."
Those who don't prefer the former approach don't need to be corrected, nor does Pathfinder need defending. Likewise, "love it or leave it" isn't constructive, in this (or virtually any) context.
On the flip side, I think others -- myself included -- need to accept that Pathfinder isn't trying to be the game they may want it to be, and that's fine.
The point is that any talk of evidence is misguided, because there is no "right" or "wrong" here. People are expressing a preference...that's it.
No one is arguing that there aren’t times when feats can encroach upon skills, the thread began talking about a handful of skills from the APG that the OP felt did that. Conversation about them quickly proved there to be no real concern with those feats so the conversation fell back on the single example of Survey Wildlife which brings from the CRB is further away from the original APG argument, though not as far as your PF1e Ultimate Intrigue example.
The person who I challenged to provide evidence claimed that the existence of fears like Survey Wildlife require GM’s to have had an advanced understanding of game design in order to adjudicate skill challenges. They then repeated that statement over and over to the multiple people engaging with them on the subject. The opinion isn’t being challenged; the objective repeated statement is.
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I'd agree that people can guess.
I think that people can go a step beyond guessing and make a definitive judgement on whether almost any given statement is a true fact, false fact, or opinion.
The OP is just saying “yes you do, you have to do this and this and this.” Without demonstrating why the game must be run that way.
Rather than get four more pages down the road I asked for evidence.
While I don't agree with the OP, I do feel that “yes you do, you have to do this and this and this” is a somewhat unfair simplification of the arguments they have made.
Also, while asking for evidence may be important, "Prove it to be objectively true for all GM’s running Pathfinder 2nd Edition" is not an evidentiary standard that can be reasonably met. Therefore, I don't think this request was asked in good faith.
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Also, while asking for evidence may be important, "Prove it to be objectively true for all GM’s running Pathfinder 2nd Edition" is not an evidentiary standard that can be reasonably met. Therefore, I don't think this request was asked in good faith.
It wasn’t made in good faith, it was made as an attempt to get the OP to recognize that he was posting an opinion as a fact for the 8th consecutive. The hope being they would go “I can’t possibly prove this, because it’s just my... oh it’s just my opinion and repeating it as the proof against their stated opinions isn’t getting us anywhere.”
Please do go back and point out which arguments made on the opposite side were likewise bad faith arguments so that we can all meet the standard for debate that you are now setting for us.
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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.
Sure, that's understood. I just think, based on my own experiences with PF2 and RPGs in general, that your solution is fundamentally bad for many players and groups, and thus likely for the game as a whole and should not be implemented, so I'm attempting to illustrate why I believe that to be the case.
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.
So give some examples. A 'Normal Clause' that says 'GMs may allow you to do this without a Feat' repeated for every Feat eats up an enormous amount of word count for very little benefit.
If what you want is just a sentence somewhere saying something like:
'At GM discretion, many of the actions provided by specific Feats may be duplicated without the Feat, but usually at penalties or taking additional time.'
Then I have little real argument with that. I think something like that would be fine...but that's a very different thing from 'normal' entries on large numbers of Feats.
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.
I am saying that assuming it is a blanket limitation against any remotely similar act without pausing and thinking about what the Feat actually does is intellectually lazy. Just going on assumptions rather than analyzing the situation is what intellectual laziness is.
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.
There's a lot of evidence that they considered having 'Normal Clauses' for Feats and rejected that idea, since those did in fact exist in PF1 and don't in PF2. I don't think they necessarily had Survey Wildlife in mind specifically, but making those not exist as a blanket policy? Yeah, I think there's evidence they thought that through.
The problem is not really with opinion but the way it is being argued is flawed. One that there are feats that you have to be a knowledge game design to rule what they can do and so we should just ban those feats. I don't agree with the premise of that statement and believe there are many actions a GM can take depending on the need of the game. Strill argument holds holes in it from the beginning of the hypothetic scenario. Why would a player want to play an experienced tracker not take the hunter background? It fit the character concept in the player concept and would have given that player Survey Wildlife. The only scenario I could see not picking it is another element of the character backstory (which is not present in the scenario given), wanted Experienced Tracker first and take Survey Wild later, or the player and GM were lazy and didn't bother just pick a background and not caring if it didn't fit the character.
I go over this because the simple answer for a GM is to know the character concepts of your players. That will help inform you of what feat they would probably likely take and how that will affect your ruling or if you don't like the feat that you will do in its place. If you do that you likely hood of getting into a scenario that Strill described is minimal at best.
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I can see reading a sealed letter as something featworthy. But not being able to read a letter because you saw it upside down? That'd be a very pedantic GM.
You need to play with more GMs :)
On a more serious note: I'd likely run it that without the feat, you need Expert or Master to quickly read upside-down text. With this feat, you need Trained.
For me, the intention for a lot of skill feats is more "you can do it easier/with lower proficiency threshold" rather than "you can only do it with the feat".
Captain Yesterday fun fact: I can read just as fast upside down as right side up.
However, I write everything upside down (in that the paper is upside down and I'm writing the letters and numbers upside down but when you read it it's all right side up).
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One end of the spectrum seems to be "less is more; your skill system should provide a framework for everything, and anything beyond that is just compromising the design." The other end seems like "the more than is codified, the better; otherwise too much is subject to GM fiat."
I would, to an extent, object to this dichotomy, though I'm probably overthinking it. I think GM fiat (with guidance ideally) is an extremely good thing and does not conflict at all with wanting a feat that says "you can do this unreasonably well because you're a gosh darn hero and the skill guidelines can shove it" because that tells the GM that it's balanced appropriately for the level and such even when it seems like a weirdly powerful use of a mundane skill. It's meant to abstract away the level of training that lets people like Derren Brown or Havelock Vetinari dish out debuffs with social skills while most really good diplomats in real life and fiction can merely expect to be really good at diplomacy.
To rephrase, I wouldn't describe myself as agreeing with or even being in-between those two extremes. I just disagree with the basic premise that codifying extra Feats of exemplary skill usage is at all in conflict with the idea that the framework should cover all reasonable actions a character might take. Feats allow you to perform actions above and beyond the reasonable, and that's my favourite thing about them. I reckon that many GMs could pretty easily improvise everything within the framework itself and ignore Skill Feats altogether, but those Feats allow characters to do some very cool things at low levels without busting up the balance, and that's very useful.
I don't think I'm alone in this, but your point might well hold true for others so I might not be being very useful. I will confess that I had hoped that the skill framework would allow more of the basic actions to reach folkloric levels only based on level of expertise, like being Legendary in Performance would, y'know, make you a Legendary Performer by default. That way, Feats would always be doing something cool and different (like Glean Contents or Bon Mot) instead of just mechanically superior (like Cloud Jump). That said, I get that it probably would have been difficult to balance and add new options in that vein, at least compared to Feats which are very conveniently packaged already.
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Paizo could rewrite the skill feat. They could leave it as is. They could remove it entirely. It doesn’t matter because after it’s all said and done, the GM is still the final arbiter of what goes into their game. People keep saying that rewriting the feat will strip the GM of power. How? You cannot strip the GM of agency unless the GM isn’t really the GM (as in the case of organized play). A rule can only limit the GM AFTER the GM allows it to. Everything else is nothing more than personal preference.
Clearly some people are just not capable of achieving a level of GM competency higher than mediocre. Honestly I just cannot imagine how some people are capable of attracting players to their games, but to each their own.
The thing I find weird with this whole air-breathing mermaid issue is that the GMG argues how to handle this stuff far better with it's "Yes, but" section. It's unfortunate that the longer PF2e goes on, the less capable your characters will become.
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Now this is a non sequitur!
:D
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I have a player who likes Surveying Wildlife feat very much :3 - It opens a lot of cool character moments based on the ability to do that repeatedly.
I think most of these "unlocking basic results" skills, give players certainty that they CAN in fact do that reliably, without taking into account how the gm feels that evening. So I think they can have a nice niche in the game.
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I have a player who likes Surveying Wildlife feat very much :3 - It opens a lot of cool character moments based on the ability to do that repeatedly.
I think most of these "unlocking basic results" skills, give players certainty that they CAN in fact do that reliably, without taking into account how the gm feels that evening. So I think they can have a nice niche in the game.
That's nice to hear, I have a player in my group who's the same. He's a face character, and was happy that there was a feat that let him use his pimped out Diplomacy to make money. Now his character is a merchant and thriving, both financially and aesthetically.
On the upside, this isn't like 1e. Everyone gets plenty of skill feats. Before we had to pick between stuff like Power Attack and being better at swimming.