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Keep in mind the GMG was probably well into development when PF2 actually launched, so little of it is likely to be based on the actual PF2 community: The 'Alternate Scores' is almost certainly based on their experiences with the PF1 community where 'Dexterity is too good' was a common argument once 'dex to dmg' abilities became fairly easy to get.
Personally, I recommend backing away slowly without making eye-contact if you ever encounter the Alternate Scores in the wild, as they are pretty horrible:
- Combining Str and Con just creates a new 'super stat' that makes heavy armor characters into 'one stat build' melee monsters.
- Splitting Dex into two scores just pushes 'Dex builds' back to the days when they needed Str as well, making having a decent mental stat very costly.
- Moving Will saves to Cha just makes Wis the 'new dump stat' since it is only useful for specific classes and skills.
- Leave Int untouched just seems to ignore it's current 'dump stat' status.
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These GMG alternate rules are correct.
Strength only matters if the character you're making is a melee character (or thrown weapons).
Charisma only matters for a couple of charisma based skills, and technically the number of items you can invest in (but the limit is already so high it doesn't matter) so you can get the extra investment feat.
Intelligence only gets you more trained skills (and doesn't increase the number of skills you can upgrade). This can actually be copied virtually by just getting the Human feat Clever Improviser, except it does it for all skills you don't have trained.
Inteligence, charisma, and strength are really bad ability scores unless you decide you want to invest in something that uses them. Even then they're bad ability scores, you've just decided you care about doing something that "requires" them. I say "requires" because most skills can be quite successful even without investing your ability score towards it. And since you can increase 4 ability scores, you can usually increase 1 ability score for skills to gain some bonuses.
Dex supports AC, ranged weapons, finesse melee, alternate initiative (through stealth), some skills, and reflex saves. It does a f+~& ton.
Constitution supports fortitude saves and HP. It's not flashy, but important.
Wisdom supports some skills (especially perception which is default init) and will saves.
What is boils down to is dex, con, and wis have things you can't afford to ignore. Str, int, and cha only matter if you choose to do those things on your character.
And this is fine (in my opinion) as long as you don't try to choose to support more than one of str/int/cha.
However, the problem arises when you want to do something like the Marshall archetype (which is pretty awesome) but would in theory like to have strength, dex, con, wis, and charisma. You're forced to sacrifice something from dex, con, and wis.
Ultimately though, the alternative rules don't do enough to mitigate the issue mentioned above, instead just switching around priorities.
If you want to improve things for players (and this is a straight power upgrade) I would suggest letting strength or con apply to fortitude saves, dex or wisdom apply to reflex saves, and intelligence wisdom or charisma apply to will saves. With a caveat of only one skill can be applied to one save, so you couldn't apply wisdom to reflex and will.
The de-emphasizes the importance of some ability scores, though dex is still too strong, but I don't have a simple solution for that.
At least if we're talking official APs.
Just curious, does Paizo release any unofficial APs? What exactly is an unofficial AP? If official AP's exist then assuredly unofficial AP's must be sold by Paizo. Since you're so keen on official AP's you should know where to point me to find these Paizo unofficial APs. I'm super curious as to what the differences between a Paizo official AP and a Paizo unofficial AP would be.
And please don't point me to a third party AP because that's an entirely different thing.
Thanks
At least if we're talking official APs.Just curious, does Paizo release any unofficial APs? What exactly is an unofficial AP? If official AP's exist then assuredly unofficial AP's must be sold by Paizo. Since you're so keen on official AP's you should know where to point me to find these Paizo unofficial APs. I'm super curious as to what the differences between a Paizo official AP and a Paizo unofficial AP would be.
And please don't point me to a third party AP because that's an entirely different thing.
Thanks
I think you know your question is ridiculous, and obviously Zapp is saying official AP as meaning 1st party (Paizo) written APs. Unofficial in this context clearly means 3rd party APs.
I think you know your question is ridiculous, and obviously Zapp is saying official AP as meaning 1st party (Paizo) written APs. Unofficial in this context clearly means 3rd party APs.At least if we're talking official APs.Just curious, does Paizo release any unofficial APs? What exactly is an unofficial AP? If official AP's exist then assuredly unofficial AP's must be sold by Paizo. Since you're so keen on official AP's you should know where to point me to find these Paizo unofficial APs. I'm super curious as to what the differences between a Paizo official AP and a Paizo unofficial AP would be.
And please don't point me to a third party AP because that's an entirely different thing.
Thanks
First off please don't say anything obviously for another person, it is beyond presumptuous. And I'm not entirely certain what you think is the case is the case with Zapp. If you read his posts, and by that I mean a bunch, his language usage implies more than the Paizo 1st party and 3rd Party AP difference. I was hoping to get his thoughts on the matter since he talks about official APs as being Paizo's rules enforcement division and their design is the default design and action of Pathfinder writ large. So thanks for that.
You're correct that I'm being presumptuous, because the common presumption on this topic is 1st party = Paizo and 3rd party = everyone else (with respect to PF1/2 and Starfinder).
I've not read a lot of Zapp's post specifically to know if they think that it would indicate something else, so I suppose that I could be wrong. But the general understanding of those terms is as above.
If you mean to ask Zapp if he views Paizo written APs as supporting the rules more than third party rules, I wouldn't be surprised for that to be the case since I would also generally agree. Though Paizo written APs have definitely gotten rules wrong in the past.
I know the general understanding.
Again I want Zapp's views.
And it's not a supporting rules more viewpoint. If you read his posts, again a bunch, he weaponizes the term "official AP". He has stated that official APs are the default assumptions and design on how the game is expected to be run by Paizo. So no what you assume I mean to ask Zapp is not the case.
Well... lets just look at the ability Scores to see how much they provide and how much characters want to invest in them:
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What does it do?: Melee attack bonus, Melee damage bonus, Carrying Capacity, Overcome Armor Check Penalty, Athletics skill
Who wants it?: Melee combatants. Carrying Capacity stops mattering once you get magical storage, and you don't need much to ignore ACP unless you're wearing Medium/Heavy armor - in which case you're likely a front-line melee combatant anyway. So non-melee combatants don't get much here.
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What does it do?: Finesse Melee attack bonus, Ranged attack bonus, AC, Reflex Saves, Acrobatics, Stealth, Thievery (+Thief Rouge damage bonus)
Who wants it?: Everyone. AC is essential to any character that doesn't want to die quickly, and Reflex saves are common to reduce/negate AoE damage. Also contributes to a number of areas that can overlap with some of Strength's benefits.
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What does it do?: Increases HP and Fortitude saves.
Who wants it?: Everyone. While CON doesn't contribute to a lot of things, those it does contribute to help characters not-die. Especially with poisons/diseases having potential for insta-death at high stages, I'd say Constitution got a slight buff in importance in PF2.
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What does it do?: Increases starting trained skills, Spell atk/DC for INT-casters, 5 skills
Who wants it?: Int-based Casters, Skill Monkeys. While essential for anyone who casts with the stat, doesn't do a whole lot outside of that. Skills based off Int tend to be the type that only one person in the party needs to succeed on, so not as important for everyone to have it.
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What does it do?: Perception, Will Saves, Spell atk/DC for WIS-casters, 4 skills.
Who wants it?: Everyone. Perception was separated from skills primarily because of how it was too good - and with initiative normally being perception it becomes even more important. Will saves work against many "save-or-suck" spells that can remove you from action. And on the skill side, Will has Medicine, which can turn out very important to help a downed ally (especially when the healer is the one whose down).
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What does it do?: Spell atk/DC for CHA-casters, 4 skills.
Who wants it?: Cha-based Casters, Diplomats. Once again, outside casters who use it, Charisma only helps out a selection of social skills that only really need one party member to utilize, making it less important for everyone to have it. Not to mention that unlike other ability scores, many GMs seem to allow real-life Charisma to override a character's lower stat to get the same value as some of these skills without requiring a check (or that stat).
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Overall: There's 3 skills that everyone wants at least some investment in and tend to cover a lot of areas (DEX, CON, WIS), and 3 skills that are more situational even though you probably want at least 1 party member with them (STR, INT, CHA).
So even if Strength got an indirect boost by making Dex-to-damage less common (which PF2 hopefully doesn't backtrack on), it still only matters to a portion of classes compared to stats that everyone wants.
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What does it do?: Finesse Melee attack bonus, Ranged attack bonus, AC, Reflex Saves, Acrobatics, Stealth, Thievery (+Thief Rouge damage bonus)
Who wants it?: Everyone. AC is essential to any character that doesn't want to die quickly, and Reflex saves are common to reduce/negate AoE damage. Also contributes to a number of areas that can overlap with some of Strength's benefits.
You are overstating Dexterity a bit in this edition as anyone in heavy armor do fine with Full Plate and 10 Dex:
Better AC than a non-heavy armor user (Heavy Armor is 1 AC better than any other armor option).Better Melee damage output with non-finesse weapon options
Decent Reflex Saves due to the Bulwark trait.
Ranged Combat might be an issue, though there are a couple of ways to get cantrips on any character that can potentially fill that void.
I don't think I've rolled a non 'I choose to make an acrobatics check' acrobatics check on my thief yet, so that skill probably isn't huge.
Stealth is highly situational: Lots of characters have better options for exploration than sneaking around.
Thievery is a very specific skill: You don't really need everyone to be good at it
Even as a Medium armor user, your AC will probably cap at a 12 Dex.
Generally speaking, Dexterity just isn't the super-stat it used to be: It's definitely good, but not necessarily for 'everyone'.
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I find that melee is king in this game. At least if I judge by what I've seen so far.
Wow, that's very different from what I'm seeing with my players.
For my group, strategy is king, and melee is only part of strategy. Buffs and debuffs seem equally critical, and Recall Knowledge is playing a huge role as well.
I don't think your experience holds true for everyone.
PS. You can tell the other poster I'm not here to play his games. Thanks for handling him.
Challenge Zapp and he doesn't respond or he tells you how to respond to his threads or other peoples threads.
Guess I've been Zapped.
Generally speaking, Dexterity just isn't the super-stat it used to be: It's definitely good, but not necessarily for 'everyone'.
Would it be better to say "nearly everyone" then?
Since any class without heavy armor proficiency (most classes) isn't going to have full plate and thus not benefit from Bulwark help with some* Reflex saves and is going to need at least some Dex to keep their AC up. The same isn't really true of Strength since it primarily applies to just melee combat, which isn't something every class needs to do to contribute.
[*admittedly what seems to be the most common form of reflex save, but still not all the benefits of Reflex]
Plus, when your full plate user gets 4 boosts at level up, after grabbing STR, CON, & WIS, they have 3 abilities left over for the last boost... And more Reflex save alone is generally more valuable compared to just skill boosts from INT/CHA.
I'd also say you undervalue Stealth a bit, since Follow the Expert helps less skilled party members make Stealth checks and trying to get the drop on someone / not be noticed until you're ready are fairly common situations in many campaigns I've seen.
Charisma only matters... But what if you want to roleplay your character? What if you like it when NPCs actually listen to you and do as you ask? Look, I know Charisma doesn't matter if all you say are things like "let's go left in the T-junction" or "that +1 Axe is mine", but claiming the GMG is "correct" is stretching it pretty badly.
1) Main story NPCs will likely do this without a check, since adventures are rarely written to completely fail due to a single failed skill check.
2) Past early levels, simply being trained in a CHA skill will contribute more than the attribute, which is part of why skills alone are rarely a determining factor for general ability usefulness. Considering CHA only boosts skills if you're not a CHA-caster, that really hurts the score.3) More than a few GMs seem to allow a player making a convincing point to just work, which reduces the value of boosting these skills. Similarly, many NPCs will respond favorably based on actions the PCs have done without needing the CHA-skills.
4) Asking the one guy in your party with high CHA to handle situations which require a roll (and flavoring your talking as an aid check towards them if you have to roll) will generally give benefits to the whole party without requiring you to boost CHA.
I find that melee is king in this game. At least if I judge by what I've seen so far.Wow, that's very different from what I'm seeing with my players.
For my group, strategy is king, and melee is only part of strategy. Buffs and debuffs seem equally critical, and Recall Knowledge is playing a huge role as well.
I don't think your experience holds true for everyone.
I'd agree with this. 1-2 melee damage dealers tends to be more than enough for my group and the group typically steamrolls things without much issue. In the last fight I ran, the ranged Druid was probably MVP due to ranged cantrips, animal companion, and debuffs (persistent bleed and dazzled) screwing with the enemy's ability to act.
PF2 did a great job in making pure melee parties actually viable, but I wouldn't go as far as to call them king in my experience thus far.
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Overall, I'd say you could probably make a rough ability priority list for any character like this:
1) Class Ability
2) Dexterity* / Wisdom
3) Constitution
4) Strength** / Intelligence / Charisma
*Dexterity drops a rank for STR classes using Full Plate.
**Strength can boost up 2-3 ranks for PCs aiming to consistently perform melee combat that don't already have it as their Class Ability.
Overall, while Strength can be essential to melee combatants, it just doesn't offer enough for anyone filling a different role (similar to INT and CHA). While those 3 are less useful as a whole, it's still probably good to have at least 1 person in the party capable of using them.
I don't see why Charisma is consistently referred to as a social-only score in threads like these, when Demoralizing is frequently referenced as a useful combat ability in other places. It can be built up further with feats, it fits a lot of characters, more people having access to it is a boon, and it appreciates a decent score. Feinting existed too. And then Bon Mot came along! Charisma is a useful secondary or tertiary score for pretty much anyone at this point.
Obviously Wisdom is very helpful, between god-skill Perception, Medicine, and Will saves. Constitution is of broad passive use. And some Dexterity is usually needed for AC and Reflex, or maybe certain attack rolls. So it's largely Strength and Intelligence that are outliers.
Strength has the fairly obvious benefit of being pivotal to most melee combat, and Athletics holds up pretty well alongside Dexterity's skills depending on the campaign/situation. Intelligence, meanwhile, powers the most skills and grants languages, which are both somewhat nice, but the importance of language is lost between magic and skill feats (just as the importance of carrying capacity is eventually neutralized by items to an extent). Intelligence skills are mostly of use for Recalling Knowledge, which is undoubtedly helpful, but also generally only needed by one or two people (handily, Wisdom handles the other RK skills), and fairly low-stakes on the whole. There are instances where the difference between a developed score and a neglected one can matter for Intelligence -- spell-related uses for Arcana and Occultism, in particular -- but these instances are fewer than other ability scores' skills. For the most part, low Intelligence only risks a flubbed action spent on acquiring info or losing time/money on a bad crafting job.
I find Intelligence to be the most generally dumpable stat for this reason. It's certainly not useless, but it could use something enticing for classes that don't directly depend on it. In the past I favored the general idea of extra skill increases in some way, since those are in limited supply and fit thematically, but looking over it all, I wonder if throwing Medicine its way would be enough. Maybe, maybe not.
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It's not that ability scores don't have useful things they can do, Demoralize is a great example of what a Charisma build can focus on to make the stat more useful, but the breakdown I've discussed is about being relevant to just your class/build vs being relevant to everyone.
Strength is really only relevant if you want to build a melee character (or thrown weapon character). Sure you can carry more weight and you can do athletics, but honestly if you're not going to use strength to attack/damage you're not getting a lot of it.
Same sort of thing applies to int and charisma. If you're not using int for class abilities than you're getting some extra trained skills and increasing some skill bonuses. You're not getting much bang for you buck.
It doesn't mean you can't build your character to focus on these skills or abilities that are less optimal, but the point to be recognized here is that it's less optimal.
Love this variant!
It makes strength more valuable and dexterity less valuable, both of which have needed to happen for years.
Would it help to have (the new) dexterity apply to all attack rolls and not strength? That would make it like manual dexterity or hand-eye coordination, and make melee warriors need more than just strength.
Also, what’s the deal with charisma adding to will saves? It sort of makes sense, and doesn’t make wisdom (which still adds to perception and some skills) obsolete.
Could this variant work for pf1 (and really, any dnd edition of 3rd or later)?
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Some year on, coming back to this idea and I actually think the alternative scores are worse balanced than the original.
Strength becomes essential as it absorbs constitution, giving it fort saves and hp.
Dexterity mainly about ranged attacks and fineese attacks (although it does allow fineese user to ignore strength for damage, but they still need strength for HP and fort saves, in the way they used to need con)
Agility controls AC and reflex saves, so is needed by everyone.
Charisma gets will saves, whereas before it wasn't essential now it is.
Wisdom keeps perception checks...it sucks to have low perception checks, but splitting off will saves now means I actually have 2 semi essential abilities instead of one.
Intelligence continues to get shafted, it has always been the worst ability score (IMO) in PF2, and really would be nice if it added more skills (including scaling beyond trained). The fact that it adds skills, but trained only makes it disappointing.
Overall strength, agility, charisma, and wisdom all become essential, where before it was only dexterity, constitution, and wisdom were essential.
Making it much harder for any class that didn't rely on those essential abilities.
A melee focused character would invest in strength, agility, charisma and wisdom. They honestly come out ahead I think under this system, except when they need to switch to ranged combat.
I think classes that require Int or Wisdom are worse off.
Charisma based classes are slightly better off.
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Some year on, coming back to this idea and I actually think the alternative scores are worse balanced than the original.
It was five years ago. And your analysis may explain why it was not reprinted.
For giving something more to int what if a number of "tactical skill feats" were introduced that represented using Int with a skill to take advantage of terrain or surroundings or leverage something to gain a circumstance bonus to something and you could only pick 1 per int bonus?
introduce a level 1 feat and an advanced feat for each skill?
any character with an int bonus would have a choice of these and advanced ones might have a prereq of a certain level and the first one in the line for that skill.
For giving something more to int what if a number of "tactical skill feats" were introduced that represented using Int with a skill to take advantage of terrain or surroundings or leverage something to gain a circumstance bonus to something and you could only pick 1 per int bonus?
introduce a level 1 feat and an advanced feat for each skill?
any character with an int bonus would have a choice of these and advanced ones might have a prereq of a certain level and the first one in the line for that skill.
I'm not a fan, only because you're having to spend other limited resources to get the benefit out of intelligence.
I'd really prefer int give you something on its own.
An idea that's floated around before is letting someone choose between int, wisdom, and charisma for will saves.
Ignoring class specific abilities or desires/preference for specific skills, the mental abilities only increase perception and will saves both of which by are assigned to Wisdom in the default system.
Allowing someone to choose out of the mental scores which to use for will saves could help. It might mean you have a character with relatively poorer perception, but I think that might be acceptable to many people.
Ultimately I think a better but very different type of system might be to only have 3 or maybe 4 "ability" score.
Physical offense, physical defense, and mental for 3 ability version. Or the same but splitting mental into offense and defense for 4 ability.
With physical offense doing all ranged and melee attack rolls and damage rolls. Phy Defense doing all AC and HP, fort saves, and reflex saves. I think you can see where I'm going with this, but it's a complete overhaul of the base system and not something you could just bolt on.
For giving something more to int what if a number of "tactical skill feats" were introduced that represented using Int with a skill to take advantage of terrain or surroundings or leverage something to gain a circumstance bonus to something and you could only pick 1 per int bonus?
introduce a level 1 feat and an advanced feat for each skill?
any character with an int bonus would have a choice of these and advanced ones might have a prereq of a certain level and the first one in the line for that skill.I'm not a fan, only because you're having to spend other limited resources to get the benefit out of intelligence.
I'd really prefer int give you something on its own.
An idea that's floated around before is letting someone choose between int, wisdom, and charisma for will saves.
Ignoring class specific abilities or desires/preference for specific skills, the mental abilities only increase perception and will saves both of which by are assigned to Wisdom in the default system.
Allowing someone to choose out of the mental scores which to use for will saves could help. It might mean you have a character with relatively poorer perception, but I think that might be acceptable to many people.
Ultimately I think a better but very different type of system might be to only have 3 or maybe 4 "ability" score.
Physical offense, physical defense, and mental for 3 ability version. Or the same but splitting mental into offense and defense for 4 ability.
With physical offense doing all ranged and melee attack rolls and damage rolls. Phy Defense doing all AC and HP, fort saves, and reflex saves. I think you can see where I'm going with this, but it's a complete overhaul of the base system and not something you could just bolt on.
Ah oh I meant the 1 per int was an additional tactical skill feat, it wouldnt take your normal skill feats to select one.
Probably though the deciding factor of whether or not this is even a good idea is in how the tactical feats are actually designed.
I wrote up a table top system years ago that used stat pairs of physical and mental stats. Things like turn order or to hit stamina ect..in the game was generally a combination of one of the mental and one of the physical stats.
I never attempted to run the system though.
The idea was to represent all actions as a combination of mental and physical abilities in some way.
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Ah oh I meant the 1 per int was an additional tactical skill feat, it wouldnt take your normal skill feats to select one.
Probably though the deciding factor of whether or not this is even a good idea is in how the tactical feats are actually designed.
Yeah, it would be completely dependent on the feats available and what they did. But the idea that you could get a free feat that "levels up" with you (meaning the effect grows as your character levels) and that the number of them you can have is dependent on Int isn't a bad idea. But a lot of variability depending on how you craft the feats.
If the effect of the feat you received was only ever good for an effect on par with a level 1 to 4 feat, I would say that would still never get me to invest in int.
Alternative idea, maybe (and this might be too good) it can give you additional skill (that scale up) and additional skill feats. Actually even just additional skills that scale up would at least make me consider increasing my int. But only getting an additional trained skill just isn't worth it (to me).
Some year on, coming back to this idea and I actually think the alternative scores are worse balanced than the original.I kind of agree. By which I mean I agree with the conclusion that the rule wasn't worth using because it doesn't reduce overall number of problems with ability score appeal to different characters, it just changes what they are - even though I disagree with some of the exact problems you state.
I think the only thing that would actually improve ability scores without introducing a new problem is to revise the set and not be beholden to their being 6 of them.
Like, just to give a knowingly poor example, leaving Dexterity a singular score as it is in the default rules but then altering the other scores as stated in this variant to produce 5 scores that each have enough important to most characters to at least consider not leaving one at a 10 (or 8) rather than having each character have a score or two that are foregone conclusions "safe to ignore".
I agree with your conclusion, and I don't think you really disagree with mine very much.
The big problem with the rules as they exist are that unless your class requires intelligence or charisma, you can pretty safely ignore them (you'll also be bad at those associated skills).
Which to me just means that you should really have 4 ability scores, and my initial thought was oh, just roll all the mental ability scores into 1. But that feels awkward to have 3 physical and one mental, and then I said, well combine physical. And was debating on what it should look like, but have phyiscal and mental offense and defense seems like it might be the best way.