You know that old trope where someone is freaking out and someone slaps them to make them calm down? How would this work in 2e? I'm thinking you would use diplomacy to Make An Impression. On a success their frightened level goes down by 1. On a critical success it goes down by 2. On a failure nothing happens, and on a critical failure their fear goes up by 1 level.
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I generally don’t think physical abuse is the proper response to someone having a panic attack, and I think mechanically rewarding it is kind of abhorrent.
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I generally don’t think physical abuse is the proper response to someone having a panic attack, and I think mechanically rewarding it is kind of abhorrent.
Well it already exists in game (and everywhere in media/fiction). Hitting your allies to knock some sense into them is already built into the Confused condition, giving you a 50% chance to snap out of it each time you're damaged by an attack or spell.
It probably shouldn't work on Frightened because it isn't really modelling that kind of panic. For Fleeing it would make more sense, Diplomacy or Intimidation to reduce it would be pretty flavourful. You'd want to make it a feat of some kind rather than building it into the base skill though because Fleeing is priced pretty highly when it comes to applying conditions (usually it's incapacitation.)
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I generally don’t think physical abuse is the proper response to someone having a panic attack, and I think mechanically rewarding it is kind of abhorrent.
Well, I assume you'd slap them as gently as possible (maybe doing 1 point of nonlethal damage at most.)
I generally don’t think physical abuse is the proper response to someone having a panic attack, and I think mechanically rewarding it is kind of abhorrent.Well it already exists in game (and everywhere in media/fiction). Hitting your allies to knock some sense into them is already built into the Confused condition, giving you a 50% chance to snap out of it each time you're damaged by an attack or spell.
It probably shouldn't work on Frightened because it isn't really modelling that kind of panic. For Fleeing it would make more sense, Diplomacy or Intimidation to reduce it would be pretty flavourful. You'd want to make it a feat of some kind rather than building it into the base skill though because Fleeing is priced pretty highly when it comes to applying conditions (usually it's incapacitation.)
I was thinking of using intimidate instead, but it seems pretty silly to use INTIMIDATE to make someone less scared.
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It seems a potential way to flavour No Cause For Alarm, though I do think keftiu's point of handling it in a sensitive and appropriate way to the tone of the adventure is important.
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I generally don’t think physical abuse is the proper response to someone having a panic attack, and I think mechanically rewarding it is kind of abhorrent.
It's definitely a part of pop-culture and a trope used in many stories.
Whether it is right or wrong...it doesn't really matter to be honest. This is only a game, one built on generations of tropes that came before it.
All that said, the feat Arcaian pointed out seems like a perfect way to represent this trope without requiring it be a "slap".
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I would borrow the rules from Persistent Damage (Assisted Recovery). Something like:
You can spend two actions to give the afflicted person another saving throw (smacking some sense into them, shaking them, yelling in their face, etc.). However, the result of this could be worse for the afflicted person if they fail or critically fail the save. Succeeding or critically succeeding would only improve the afflicted person's situation, it wouldn't do anything to the source of the affliction.
I would definitely ask the player exactly what it is they are doing to help, and determine if that would possibly work in this particular situation. This is very much non-RAW, but I like to reward my players for helping each other out.
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The medic archetype can do this. As a counteract check AFTER taking a level 6 class feat with 2 other class feats as pre-reqs. So I'd personally disallow ANY attempt to do this that was incredibly cheaper than that. In fairness, the medic feat itself AND the pre-reqs do quite a bit more than just handle fear. But, at a minimum, I'd require something like expert proficiency in medicine AND at least 1 class feat to get a check to remove fear.
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The Marshal and Pathfinder Agent archetypes can also do this.
Snap Out of It! (Marshal) Single ActionFeat 4
ArchetypeAuditoryEmotionMental
Source Advanced Player's Guide pg. 180
Archetype Marshal
Prerequisites Marshal Dedication
You give a quick shout, hoping to shake the fog clouding your ally's thoughts. Choose one target ally within your marshal's aura who is affected by a mental effect that allowed a Will save and has a duration of no longer than 1 minute. That ally can immediately attempt a Will save with a +1 circumstance bonus against the effect's DC, ending the effect on a success. This can't end the effect for any creatures other than your target ally. Regardless of the result of the save, your ally is temporarily immune to Snap Out of It! for 10 minutes.
Snap Out of It! (Pathfinder Agent) Two ActionsFeat 8
ArchetypeSkill
Source Pathfinder Society Guide pg. 41
Archetype Pathfinder Agent
Prerequisites Pathfinder Agent Dedication; master in Medicine
Pathfinders are trained to help each other be safe and successful, and you know how to jolt your allies back to their senses. Attempt a Medicine check on an adjacent ally who is fascinated, frightened, stunned, or stupefied and choose one of those conditions. The DC is the DC for the effect that caused the condition.Critical Success Reduce the value of the chosen condition by 2. If you chose fascinated, that condition ends.
Success Reduce the value of the chosen condition by 1. If you chose fascinated, that condition ends.
Failure The target is unaffected.
Critical Failure You increase the value of the chosen condition by 1. If you chose fascinated, increase the duration by 1 round instead.
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Yeah, there are too many feats that reduce fear to make me comfortable giving it out as a basic action. Especially when frightened isn't a very long lasting penalty anyway.
Yeah, I don't think there's a need to create new ways to do this as there are already several methods of access that accomplish the same mechanical goal.
If you were to introduce something new it would have to take at least as much effort as any of the existing methods to unlock.
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I’d treat it as using the Aid Another action to give an ally a circumstance bonus to their next Will Save, myself.
I’d treat it as using the Aid Another action to give an ally a circumstance bonus to their next Will Save, myself.
That seems reasonable.
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As a general houserule in my games, if you're trying to do something thematical that is covered by a feat you don't have, I allow you to use that application if you spend a hero point.
And I try (but sometimes fail) to hand out a lot of hero points.
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You generally don't get additional saves against frightened do you?
Nope, but there are some effects that have multiple saves. The aid example makes sense to me outside of the frightened condition.
That's a Level 5 Shoony feat:
Loyal Empath
You have incredible empathy for your friends and family, and you have an innate timing for helping others in distress. You can use the Aid reaction to grant a bonus to another creature’s Will saving throw. As usual for Aid, you need to prepare by using an action on your turn to encourage the creature to bravely withstand the effect.
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That's a Level 5 Shoony feat:
Loyal Empath
You have incredible empathy for your friends and family, and you have an innate timing for helping others in distress. You can use the Aid reaction to grant a bonus to another creature’s Will saving throw. As usual for Aid, you need to prepare by using an action on your turn to encourage the creature to bravely withstand the effect.
Whoops. Well, that's a much narrower feat so I'd be less reluctant to step on the shoes there. But yeah, I forgot that aid doesn't let you help saves. And it probably shouldn't since things like Treat Poison are two actions.
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I generally don’t think physical abuse is the proper response to someone having a panic attack, and I think mechanically rewarding it is kind of abhorrent.In a game where we routinely murder intelligent beings without a second thought, this is where you draw the line?
Not all games are going to include the murder of sapient creatures, and I'd imagine a game run by someone who is concerned about abuse of people having a mental health crisis is likely to try and avoid this. It's also a strange argument you've made there, as there's been an increasing push in Golarion across the last decade to get rid of violent reactions against any sapient creatures simply for its existence, and I think the game's better for that. You can play the game however you wish, but I think it's pretty clear that the designers intent isn't that you murder sapient creatures without thought; if a goblin is present, you only fight them if there's a reason for violent conflict, not because they're a wandering source of XP that's automatically killed on sight. Those reasons for violent conflict can occasionally be lacking - the game is still designed around combat, so there's going to have to be a lot of it to get a character from level 1 to 20 in a standard adventure, and some of it will miss the mark. But there's movement in the right direction, and you seem to be actively ignoring that.
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I think what rnphillips is getting at is players regularly participate in the murder or sapient beings with little thought beyond "That's the bad guy right?". It's not as though the PCs are enforcers of the law bringing beings to justice through arrest and trials.
It's often very flat one dimensional "Yeah, that one's committing a crime better go kill 'em." It doesn't have to be, but often is.
Remember, murder (in the modern context) is causing the death of someone that you did not have the legal right to do so. Usually self defense is found as a valid reason not to be considered a murderer, but can be complicated by you going into someone's home (or cave) and them attacking you (for tresspassing/ perceived theft) and then your killing them.
But modern legal understanding most PC groups probably qualify as murderers at many points in their adventuring career.
Anyways, I understand someone not wanting to personally include slapping an individual as a means of removing a "mental health crisis" but there are plenty of options in the game that could be flavored that way (or not) and so a GM who didn't want that would merely need ask a player not to flavor it that way.
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It's often very flat one dimensional "Yeah, that one's committing a crime better go kill 'em." It doesn't have to be, but often is.
I agree there are many abilities you could flavour in this way, don't think it's inherently a bad thing to do provided the tone of the game is appropriate and everyone is cool with it, and even provided what seems to be the most popular option in the thread - I'm just disagreeing with rnphillips' argument that it's inconsistent or hypocritical of keftiu to point out the not-great way the original request could be interpreted because rnphillips assumes that everyone is killing with these one-dimensional reasonings. I'm currently up to Book 5 of an AP in which the only sapient creatures that have been killed are unapologetically evil creatures who were currently in the process of doing terrible things and wouldn't stand down without violence, or those same creatures attempting to hunt down the PCs. Everyone else has been handled in a variety of different ways, varying from non-violence to non-lethal violence. I don't think it'd be fair to assume this is how everyone's tables work, but assuming no-one's table works this way, and therefore anything to do with treating other creatures well is inconsistent, seems blatantly incorrect as well.
I'd also say that 'committing a crime' is a bit of an off-handed way to summarize what the villains of these stories tend to be doing. Committing a crime could be jaywalking, or perhaps graffitiing; the BBEGS in the stories that Paizo publishes tend to be actively attempting to exert violence on others and unwilling to listen to reason (with a few notable exceptions!). While that's still committing a crime, it's a very different scale to other possible crimes - and if your PCs are murdering people for minor theft or similar crimes, I think they're not acting in the way Paizo presumes the cast of most APs are acting.
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“You engaged in violence over a justified reason, therefore you’re okay with other [insert horrible action here]!” is a crap argument.
My point is, in many cases it's rarely justified. It's merely accepted as a trope of the genre. As would be "slapping the sense" into someone.
It's often very flat one dimensional "Yeah, that one's committing a crime better go kill 'em." It doesn't have to be, but often is.I agree there are many abilities you could flavour in this way, don't think it's inherently a bad thing to do provided the tone of the game is appropriate and everyone is cool with it, and even provided what seems to be the most popular option in the thread - I'm just disagreeing with rnphillips' argument that it's inconsistent or hypocritical of keftiu to point out the not-great way the original request could be interpreted because rnphillips assumes that everyone is killing with these one-dimensional reasonings. I'm currently up to Book 5 of an AP in which the only sapient creatures that have been killed are unapologetically evil creatures who were currently in the process of doing terrible things and wouldn't stand down without violence, or those same creatures attempting to hunt down the PCs. Everyone else has been handled in a variety of different ways, varying from non-violence to non-lethal violence. I don't think it'd be fair to assume this is how everyone's tables work, but assuming no-one's table works this way, and therefore anything to do with treating other creatures well is inconsistent, seems blatantly incorrect as well.
I'd also say that 'committing a crime' is a bit of an off-handed way to summarize what the villains of these stories tend to be doing. Committing a crime could be jaywalking, or perhaps graffitiing; the BBEGS in the stories that Paizo publishes tend to be actively attempting to exert violence on others and unwilling to listen to reason (with a few notable exceptions!). While that's still committing a crime, it's a very different scale to other possible crimes - and if your PCs are murdering people for minor theft or similar crimes, I think they're not acting in the way Paizo presumes the cast of most APs are acting.
I agree, I guess my general point is that it's really hard to know exactly how PCs will behave at any given table and will depend on how much access PCs have to certain things and how GMs will work with them.
I recall playing a campaign in which we played as state sponsored investigators and we repeatedly (and frustratingly) had suspects we arrested killed in our jail (though it was specifically part of the plot). But I mention this to say that we as characters had the legal authority and capability to arrest people and the means (in theory) to lock them up to keep the public safe. If PCs aren't afforded such means you can't blame them for defaulting to "I'll kill the bad guy because how else can I guarantee society's safety."
Still at the same time, some groups play really one dimensional and it doesn't matter what greater things might be at play, the NPC is set up to be an adversary and is expected to die with little extra effort given to make them anything else. It just depends on the group.
I think most groups fall into the middle with some NPC enemies being in a position where they could be taken with non-lethal force and others being murdered because it's convenient.
So within that context I do agree that it's strange in a game where it's likely you will have a least some unjustified murders that we're concerned about slapping someone.
But ultimately I guess it's all about how it's presented, which again is a very table specific thing.
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I think the dynamics of slapping and NPC are probably different than slapping a fellow PC. Players don't necessarily take kindly to other players abusing them, and PvP dynamics usually suck.
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I think the dynamics of slapping and NPC are probably different than slapping a fellow PC. Players don't necessarily take kindly to other players abusing them, and PvP dynamics usually suck.
I agree that the difference of interactions between NPC and PC are different than PC to PC.
That said, if that slap is "well intentioned" to help (let's not analyze whether or not such an action is helpful in real life) then at least in the other players view I would generally see it as a positive
I look at slapping another PC to calm them down as more of a comedy skit style event like 3 Stooges, Emperor's New Groove, or some anime like early-era Naruto and Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan (I haven't seen the latter in it's entirety, but I have been told a lot about it and watched clips on YT). It's entirely played for laughs and no real bodily harm comes from it aside from maybe a 5 minute red hand mark. Thus, I have no qualms with slapping your friends to make them chill out from a Dragon's fear aura or something like that if you paint it as overtly comedic. You could also have an evil champion pulling a 40k Commissar of "If they don't kill you, I will!" type threat, but that's very character archetype dependent on whether that'd work in a given group or not.
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Not all games are going to include the murder of sapient creatures, and I'd imagine a game run by someone who is concerned about abuse of people having a mental health crisis is likely to try and avoid this. It's also a strange argument you've made there, as there's been an increasing push in Golarion across the last decade to get rid of violent reactions against any sapient creatures simply for its existence, and I think the game's better for that. You can play the game however you wish, but I think it's pretty clear that the designers intent isn't that you murder sapient creatures without thought; if a goblin is present, you only fight them if there's a reason for violent conflict, not because they're a wandering source of XP that's automatically killed on sight. Those reasons for violent conflict can occasionally be lacking - the game is still designed around combat, so there's going to have to be a lot of it to get a character from level 1 to 20 in a standard adventure, and some of it will miss the mark. But there's movement in the right direction, and you seem to be actively ignoring that.I generally don’t think physical abuse is the proper response to someone having a panic attack, and I think mechanically rewarding it is kind of abhorrent.In a game where we routinely murder intelligent beings without a second thought, this is where you draw the line?
The argument is not so strange as all that. I mean, let's look at two statements. "We're putting in an effort to not be constantly murdering sapients for their pocket change and the sweet murder-based power gains, and we've made some real strides there" and "I generally don’t think physical abuse is the proper response to someone having a panic attack, and I think mechanically rewarding it is kind of abhorrent." There's some dissonance there. Sure, there are games out there run by GMs who are concerned about abuse of people having mental health crises. I'll take on faith that those aren't by and large murderhobo games. The argument being made, though, was that *not* being one of those tables was abhorrent - that there was something wrong, bad, and offensive about rewarding such behavior mechanically. Still, there are plenty of tables out there where butchering sapients for the exp with little justification, where that behavior *is* mechanically rewarded. Given that, it really *is* a funny place to draw that line... unless that's not where you draw the line, and you're going to come out and say that you abhor the behavior of a significant fraction of the GMs currently running games.
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Just because something has been done or is a common trope doesn't mean it is good or healthy to be persisted. Literature is full of horrifying tropes that should be left to history. Hitting people in mental health crises became "funny" during a period of slapstick cinema when mental health understanding was still being distilled. We are allowed to leave childish things behind.
None of that is to say that there can't be violence in games. It is kind of the nature of a game built for combat. It just probably shouldn't be motivated by loot/xp/personal power. Even in an Evil campaign, hurting people for loot is basically the least engaging of motivations unless your goal is to offer a critique of capitalist systems of violence.
Expectations of what is and isn't acceptable at the table are agreed amongst all the players and the dm at session zero. That should include triggers and any pvp aspects.
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Given that, it really *is* a funny place to draw that line... unless that's not where you draw the line, and you're going to come out and say that you abhor the behavior of a significant fraction of the GMs currently running games.
It's pretty clear that keftiu did say that in the post that was being responded to:
I generally don’t think physical abuse is the proper response to someone having a panic attack, and I think mechanically rewarding it is kind of abhorrent.
Given that statement, I don't see why you'd assume that despite their concerns in this issue, they draw the line at the 'we're all murderers for profit and that is fun and cool' being fine as well. It's a strange assumption to make, and points towards either assuming that literally everyone's game works that way, or that the person you're quoting is being misleading or performative in their objection to this issue.
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You know that old trope where someone is freaking out and someone slaps them to make them calm down? How would this work in 2e? I'm thinking you would use diplomacy to Make An Impression. On a success their frightened level goes down by 1. On a critical success it goes down by 2. On a failure nothing happens, and on a critical failure their fear goes up by 1 level.
Sounds more like Coerce to me. You're probably not going to calm someones fear by hitting them, but you could convince them to follow your orders for some time until they naturally calm down by the condition.
I think reducing someones frightened condition in another way should require a special feat like No Cause for Alarm mentioned earlier.
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Given that, it really *is* a funny place to draw that line... unless that's not where you draw the line, and you're going to come out and say that you abhor the behavior of a significant fraction of the GMs currently running games.It's pretty clear that keftiu did say that in the post that was being responded to:
I generally don’t think physical abuse is the proper response to someone having a panic attack, and I think mechanically rewarding it is kind of abhorrent.Given that statement, I don't see why you'd assume that despite their concerns in this issue, they draw the line at the 'we're all murderers for profit and that is fun and cool' being fine as well. It's a strange assumption to make, and points towards either assuming that literally everyone's game works that way, or that the person you're quoting is being misleading or performative in their objection to this issue.
I don't agree with your assertion that keftiu did say that, if only because I don't believe that a significant fraction of the GMs currently running games are using "slap some sense into them" rules currently.
I also don't think they were being misleading or performative. I believe that the emotional reaction that they expressed was real to them. I also think it was an overreaction, given the context. If they had said something like "I think that reinforcing this false idea is harmful and we shouldn't be encouraging ourselves to consider that a reasonable or useful response to the situation" they would have had my full agreement.
Actually, I'll assert my own position on that right now. The whole concept of "slapping sense into someone" is a dominance play, and it's the sort that can leave long-term marks. It is acceptable only to the degree that cowing someone into submission by threat and use of physical force is acceptable, as that's essentially what you are doing. I think that reinforcing the idea that this is reasonable behavior towards friends and allies is potentially harmful and we shouldn't be encouraging ourselves to consider that a useful response to the situation. I think that it's a bad plan and you shouldn't do it, unless you really are playing the sort of character who thinks that intimidate is a useful and valuable skill for interacting with your fellow party members and you want to find new and more interesting ways to do that. I think that if you want to try to play a character like that, that *seriously* needs to be part of session zero, because there's a lot of folks (myself included) who aren't goign to want to play alongside that.
That's not the sort of thing they said, though. There's a growing pattern of rhetoric where people describe anything that they disagree with or that hits their particular hot buttons as not just incorrect, but morally repugnant. I dislike the fact that people are so eager to crank the rhetorical intensity all the way up, especially on issues that are better handled with a degree of understanding and reasonableness. I think that the comparison to the far more prevalent and also obviously worse in-game behavior of slaughtering sapients for loot and exp is useful as a way of pointing out that this level of reaction is kind of excessive... unless they really are willing to say that they think that the play at many if not most tables is abhorrent (something I do not believe they have yet done). If they *are* willing to say that... well, I suppose I wouldn't be surprised, but it also doesn't necessarily leave a lot of space for discussion. "If you don't internalize my personal morality, I'm going to consider you to be a bad person" is kind of exclusionary like that.
It's the difference between "that seems like a poor choice because (reasons), and you might want to reconsider" on the one side and "if you do it that way that makes you kind of horrible" on the other. There's a difference.
I don't agree with your assertion that keftiu did say that, if only because I don't believe that a significant fraction of the GMs currently running games are using "slap some sense into them" rules currently.
I mean, they definitely are. If you're Confused anyone can almost literally slap some sense into you as part of the base rules, and I doubt many people are house ruling that away.
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If slapping someone fits with your character and your table hasn't got any problems with that, just use it as a description of how you make an opportune check to obtain the desired mechanical effect.
A slap, generally, isn't something that should be mechanically important itself.
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This thread is going nowhere useful at lightning speeds, we should have one of those "days since X" signs, but for bringing up colonialism so we can set it back to 0 every week and a half.
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This thread is going nowhere useful at lightning speeds, we should have one of those "days since X" signs, but for bringing up colonialism so we can set it back to 0 every week and a half.
I think 3 or 4 days is closer to the mark, given what happened recently with a certain frozen man-eater and the admins getting fussy at us (again).
SEPERATE NOTE: I like how there's a bunch of different feats that do the thing OP wants, and you can just use the power of reflavor to make them work!