Just try opening a locked door without some sort of tool.So this would apply to a chest lid, or raising a portcullis. But not knocking down a door.
I just don't see myself looking at my players and saying "You would've busted down that door, had you had a crowbar." And it doesn't follow the text.
Inigo: He's getting away from me.
Fezzik: It's only a -2 penalty.
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If you're in "why not just say that?" mode, you're inherently expecting a greater level of specificity (i.e. zero synonyms or 'clear enough' phrasings will do) than the book is actually written with.
Honestly what's with the bit? It's a little much. Specific and casual aren't antonyms. The sentence references something specific, so it's not particularly unreasonable for some people to assume that that's what it's intended to apply to and not... something else entirely.
If you want to argue that it's the design intent that it's harder to break down a brick wall with a sledgehammer than a crowbar, that's fine. But again that's a much stronger example of applying weirdly strict RAW than it is of words functioning casually and intuitively.
that has invalidated both the text bothering to mention a penalty in the first place and the item which has no function other than to alleviate the penalty.
Not at all, though. The crowbar is useful when you're prying things. It's just not useful if you aren't prying things.
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At a casual read I'd assume crowbars are needed for when your force open describes something you want to pry open rather than something you want to smash through, and would think there are several situations where the difference may be valuable. For instance, opening a chest with fragile potions inside by breaking it might break the potion vials, knocking a door off its hinges might be louder than prying it open along those hinges and make it harder to later use that door, smashing a window in might be more noticable than prying it open then closing it afterwards, etc.
Now, rules wise I don't think any of these are detailed so perhaps it falls under homebrew (or at least would only matter if encounters were designed to clarify that they matter), but that's my read of it. I don't think it's "too good to be true" for crowbars to not help with kool-aid man bursting through walls.
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Yes, if the GM and players collectively decide to not use the crowbar mechanics in their game and effectively houserule it away then crowbars aren't useful.
That applies to literally any other rule in the book too though.
Rot Grub, you have a point in any game that's not deliberately written in 'casual language'.
The strange thing with PF2 is that at some points you're expected to read it casually and at others you are expected to be hyper-specific and technical: for instance, in no casual reading would you come to the conclusion that rolling for an attack action wasn't an attack roll but the game expects you to parse that and separate them. As such, you can't really say 'you're meant to read PF2 casually' as even if that was the intent, it's clearly not a universal truth of the game.
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Yes, if the GM and players collectively decide to not use the crowbar mechanics in their game and effectively houserule it away then crowbars aren't useful.
That applies to literally any other rule in the book too though.
And your interpretation is the one that is house-ruling crowbar mechanics out of the game.
You're trying to act like "crowbars apply whenever you are prying, but not to all Force Open actions" and there literally never being any case in which you must be prying while using the Force Open action isn't functionally identical to the situation you are treating as a mockery.
Alternately, maybe part of the matter at hand is to consider situations where it is advantageous to pry when forcing open as opposed to other descriptions of the action. If you pry open a window, you might break the lock on the window but keep the pane intact making your breaking and entering harder to detect than breaking through the glass and helping in an infiltration. If you pry the lid off of a crate full of fragile potion vials you are less likely to damage them than if you try to break the lid. It doesn't seem super hard from an encounter design perspective to occasionally encourage forcing open via crowbar as opposed to other methods.
As a GM, I much prefer to use force open as a general mechanic for things related to breaking or forcefully moving objects instead of using strikes. Beyond that being my reading of the rules, I much prefer dealing with DCs alone, rather than arbitrary AC values that interact very poorly with critical hits, AND have to track HP on top of it.
It probably would have been a lot cleaner to make all tools give a circumstance bonus against increased DCs for specific kinds of skill checks rather than have the GM apply a penalty, but since that isn't the case, I tend to be pretty strict abut applying the -2 penalty as a constant reminder that there are tools that adventurers might want to invest in.
So as a GM, I enforce the need for crowbars or such to force open.
I also allow players to get makeshift tools on the spot to help with that. If they're trying to break in a door and snag a fallen tree nearby to finangle a makeshift battering ram, good for them, you negate that -2 players.
Now as a 6'10'' man who's been the dedicated door and window buster for most of my life when those situations come up, I have some feedback.
Kicking doors down is not a terribly efficient way of opening a locked door. It all relies on the principle of exerting enough force to have the metal lock burst the wooden door one way or another. Kicking the door down, IMO is the same as making an unarmed attack against the door (a grave houserule I'll admit, but one I think most DM's would allow).
You want to open up a door with strenght, you get ways to optimize that such as a crowbar. The improvised tool rule here would be if one uses an axe, sword or dagger instead of a crowbar to do that.
Same thing for windows, smashing open a window with your fist or a weapon is an attack that deals damage. If you're forcing open a window, it means you're wedging something in the windowsill and exerting leverage to lift or pry open the window despite its lock.
If my players attack a window with their bare fist, I'm making them bleed.
F+@~ers are tougher than they look...