The previous session, I ended up a bit frustrated with myself. I love what the system offers, but I struggle with remembering all of the rules or I forget some sub-rules that I thought I had in the bag a session or two ago. With some rules, I worry about my interpretation of them.
My biggest stumbling block is trying to figure out how to incorporate Exploration mode properly. Two players tend to stay in the Avoid Notice activity, which is fine. Still, it makes me wonder whether I can allow a Perception roll to players (or in secret as Search dictates) when they reach a room that's bereft of enemies without anyone using the Search activity?
How do you, or how does your GM switch between Exploration and Encounter modes?
A rule example I have, regarding interpretation, is the Grab an Edge action. For example, if the floor beneath the players collapes or gives way, they get a reaction to use the Grab an Edge action.
The critical success allows you to succeed without a free hand (you use your weapon to halt the fall), but it also says that you take fall damage and treat the fall as if it were 30 feet shorter. How do I interpret that correctly?
If the drop would be 50 feet (so 25 bludgeoning damage), the ground gives way and you succeed on your Grab an Edge reaction, you manage to grab a hold before you start to actually fall, do you not? Or do I still give them damage? So on a critical success, they'd take 10 damage?
Is part of the wording to deal with a free fall before there's an available edge or handhold?
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if no one is doing a Search activity i would just describe what's in plain sight.
if something needs a Perception check to be noticed it means it's hidden, so that would take a dedicated Search to be found.*
Keep in mind though that at any point the players can simply stop their march and switch around what they are doing, so if they end up in an interesting room and decide to search it, you're still in exploration mode.
In short, exploration mode is just a tool when the "order of acting" is irrelevant.
It's there so the one "stealthing" doesn't have to roll 10000 stelth checks in between when he starts stealthing and when something can potentially see him. The searcher doesn't have to roll Perception after every single move, and the one doing the investigation to not have to roll Recall knowledges on every piece of stone they come across.
As for switching in between the two modes, that's when initiative is rolled basically. If players move close enough to enemies that they could be potentially spotted, then it's initiative.
If in a social activity time and order suddenly become relevant, then you roll initiative for a social encounter.
If unlocking that door suddenly becomes time sensitive (example: guards are approaching/patroling) then it's initiative.
and etcThe "grab an edge" is more cut and dry, it even says that the -30ft calculation is for "distance dropped already"
that's more for very long drops that could potentially grant additional rolls or that there's no edge until after the drop has started.
If there's an edge right when the fall starts and the players critical succeed on the first try the...
Thanks for reaffirming some ideas I had. For some reason, I just started to doubt the way I interpreted the Grab an Edge reaction. You also helped in making the Exploration Mode a bit more clear for me. I think I just need to gain a bit more experience running the game and just refresh my knowledge every week until it gets a bit closer to second nature.
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This is also a great resource that Archives of Nethys put together.
Also keep in mind there is a precedent for a semi-hidden thing which gives everyone free perception checks when they enter into its vicinity, even if they are not searching--traps and other hazards which have (untrained) listed in their Stealth section may be noticed by anyone.
As an aside, note that the search activity actually does not generally cover noticing hidden enemies. Non hidden creatures as you might expect are automatically seen (unless they still have total cover or something) and ones that wish to be hidden use Avoid Notice and roll their own Stealth, which effectively already pits their Stealth vs the party's Perception regardless whether anyone was searching.
I really like Exploration Mode for this reason: Every table has one or two "take charge" people who have a plan and confidently say what they're doing, and then what they'll do next. Every table also has that one or two people who are more passive and who will get lost amidst what the Take Chargers are doing.
Exploration Mode codifies the GM's ability to ask "what one thing are you doing right now?" of each person playing the game. I love the creativity that has come out of some of the quieter players due to this codification. And it really doesn't prevent the Take Chargers from moving things along. it just creates a little space for the others at the table.
I used to over-employ Exploration mode though. After over a year of GMing this edition, I'm much softer on Exploration mode. Sometimes interesting things are happening at a "once a day" sort of pace, or the party is in a town with low/zero danger, etc. I used to be a bit pedantic about making people define exploration activities in such situations. Now I'm far looser about that.
However, I find that Exploration Mode is excellent during a dungeon crawl. The last body drops, and Exploration activities are called for. The Wizard begins repairing the Fighter's shield, the Rogue starts searching, the Cleric treats wounds, and the Fighter is Scouting (keeping an eye on the doors). 10 minutes pass, the Rogue finds a key, the Fighter gets a repaired shield and some more HP, and it's on to the next Exploration round. The Fighter is Defending, the Rogue is Avoiding Notice, the Wizard is Scouting, and the Cleric is Searching, and the party is choosing which door to go through.
This is also a great resource that Archives of Nethys put together.
I did not know about that. It'll be a great help.
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So I think the key thing to know about exploration is that it's intended to be convenient.
Instead of running a 20 mile trip from the village to the front door of the dungeon in 6-second rounds with everyone getting three actions a turn, we... zoom out a bit, and do some montage.
Inside the dungeon, instead of moving 10ft, then stopping to Seek for traps, moving 10ft, stopping to Seek for traps.. we just say that we're Searching while on the move.
There are a lot of activities with the Exploration tag which mainly means they don't take all day, but take too long to do while in the throes of split-second action like combat. The explorations activities on page 479-480 of the CRB specifically, are "things you could be doing while walking around". All of them except for Scouting reduce your speed because you're doing something else while moving.
This is also a clue to how they should be used: you aren't actually supposed to tell everyone to use an exploration tactic just because they're in exploration mode. If the PCs are just heading across town to get some groceries, they don't have to move at half speed and constantly Seek for hidden doors and traps.
Rather, if someone says "well, I think this dungeon looks sketchy, I'm gonna be looking for traps and other funny business while we're walking through", then as a GM you can point at the Searching activity. The exploration tactic gives you a convenient rules framework for accelerating a lot of routine mechanical stuff.
So you don't always have to be doing these things. If someone is playing a heavy armor dwarf with a speed of 15 and someone else is playing a happy elf skipping along at 30ft, the party is effectively moving at 15 feet. It might be practical for them if the dwarf just moves along, while the elf can afford to halve their speed to go Searching.
It also means that it's not a big deal that some of the tactics are more niche than others. You'll probably use Searching a lot because traps are painful. Investigate hasn't gotten a lot of screentime in adventures and it's very rare that you're doing it while on the march. Arguably, it gets done when the party pauses to examine a room with something interesting in it, and then the group just resumes their previous activity. For example, a wizard might be constantly casting Detect Magic to make sure the party doesn't walk into mad juju. Then they find an interesting room and the wizard goes to Investigate the frescoes on the walls for a bit. The fighter who'd previously been keeking his shield up with Defend now also does some investigating (he has lots of Crafting to keep his shield whole, which also comes in handy for examining the art on the walls). After they've finished looking it over, they resume their previous tactics and the group marches to the next room.
Or even more narrowly: the party is all Searching until they come to a door. They don't find any traps on it, and then the Rogue goes to skulk in the corner to Avoid Notice and the fighter goes Defend to get his shield up. And then they open the door.
Just to illustrate that switching tactics should be easy and fluid. They're just a convenient rules framework to be able to quickly describe how people are moving around.
So I think the key thing to know about exploration is that it's intended to be convenient.
Instead of running a 20 mile trip from the village to the front door of the dungeon in 6-second rounds with everyone getting three actions a turn, we... zoom out a bit, and do some montage.
Inside the dungeon, instead of moving 10ft, then stopping to Seek for traps, moving 10ft, stopping to Seek for traps.. we just say that we're Searching while on the move.
There are a lot of activities with the Exploration tag which mainly means they don't take all day, but take too long to do while in the throes of split-second action like combat. The explorations activities on page 479-480 of the CRB specifically, are "things you could be doing while walking around". All of them except for Scouting reduce your speed because you're doing something else while moving.
This is also a clue to how they should be used: you aren't actually supposed to tell everyone to use an exploration tactic just because they're in exploration mode. If the PCs are just heading across town to get some groceries, they don't have to move at half speed and constantly Seek for hidden doors and traps.
Rather, if someone says "well, I think this dungeon looks sketchy, I'm gonna be looking for traps and other funny business while we're walking through", then as a GM you can point at the Searching activity. The exploration tactic gives you a convenient rules framework for accelerating a lot of routine mechanical stuff.
So you don't always have to be doing these things. If someone is playing a heavy armor dwarf with a speed of 15 and someone else is playing a happy elf skipping along at 30ft, the party is effectively moving at 15 feet. It might be practical for them if the dwarf just moves along, while the elf can afford to halve their speed to go Searching.
It also means that it's not a big deal that some of the tactics are more niche than others. You'll probably use Searching a lot because traps are painful. Investigate hasn't...
What Ascalaphus said :)
The only thing you get your head around is the transition from exploration to encounter mode, especially if one party is undetected. Being confused by old PF1 knowledge it took us three quarters of a year to figure this one out.
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The only thing you get your head around is the transition from exploration to encounter mode, especially if one party is undetected. Being confused by old PF1 knowledge it took us three quarters of a year to figure this one out.
This trips up a lot of people and I think it's because the book is honestly a bit all over the place here. Both the CRB and the GMG give various pieces of advice on when to roll initiative.
Best I can make of it is: you go into encounter mode when precise timing of who moves where and when becomes important. The most common example of this is combat of course.
But another one would be using stealth to tiptoe around opponents at relatively close distances, where you need to Sneak from cover to cover, perhaps even while opponents are moving around on patrols. Since your stealth automatically fails if you're not covered, if the opponent is walking around the precise timing becomes important so we're definitely in encounter mode.
A third one would be chase scenes, for example when the party is trying to escape from a collapsing dungeon and has to navigate part a series of obstacles before the ceiling comes down on them.
On the other hand, not everything that you might loosely track in rounds has to be encounter mode. For example a dinner party where the PCs all get to spend some time buttering up people would still be exploration mode, but run in phases of maybe 10-20 minutes (one course of dinner) where each PC gets to focus on an NPC.
It's meant to be a convenient tool, not a straightjacket.
Thanks everyone for the advice. I guess it's mostly a matter of becoming more accustomed to the system and how to incorporate its ideas while unlearning the stuff I've learned from 5e.
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... unlearning the stuff I've learned from 5e.
I think switching from one game system to another is always going to be harder than picking one up for the first time because there's so many things you've subconsciously internalized as 'the way things work.' Those of us switching from P1e to P2e have a different list of things that trip us up (and going from D&D2e to 3.x to P1e each had its own issues).
Hang in there!
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Having played with many game systems now (ADD, 3.5, 5th, Dungeon World, Genesys, Sentinels table-top, etc..), my brain has had experience compartimentalizing the different rules systems. I very much encourage folks to try different systems. This can serve two purposes. 1, you find a system that fits how you like to play. 2, you are further reincforced on your preferred game system having tried others.
Having played with many game systems now (ADD, 3.5, 5th, Dungeon World, Genesys, Sentinels table-top, etc..), my brain has had experience compartimentalizing the different rules systems. I very much encourage folks to try different systems. This can serve two purposes. 1, you find a system that fits how you like to play. 2, you are further reincforced on your preferred game system having tried others.
Yeah, I'd like to properly try as many systems as I can, whether by GMing or playing. As a group, we're a bit tied to 5e. A side-effect is that I appreciate many of the individual systems within rulesets. I'm quite fond of the BRP advancement with improving skills, for example.