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But I am not clear on how to quantify the effect of hero points.
Jumping off of this thought--not a rebuttal--I don't want to rely on Hero Points, the number of which I have depending upon who I sit (GM Glyphs) with and how the GM feels (hourly distribution), to define my character's level of skill. There are tasks a 5th level druid ought to be able to do fairly routinely. Hero Points should be for those saves you need to make to not be Paralyzed or the Big Bad who is near death but you just rolled a 2 on your Strike. In my opinion.
Sure, if 5 characters are all rolling terrible on some skill challenge, that may be a reasonable time to use one. But if all 5 are rolling in the 8-12 range on skills they invested in and that's not enough, then unless this is like the final ritual of some scenario, Hero Points should not be necessary to survive/continue on with the scenario. And those failures should not be making them feel like incompetent adventurers.
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The way to quantify the effect of hero points is the probability that using a hero point will improve my numeric result is (20-N)*5% where N = my first dice result. Since it's not roll and take the better, it's just roll, the probability that using a hero point will result in the same or worse result is N*5%.
And unfortunately, that doesn't calculate the probability that you turn a failure into a success, merely that you get a higher result.
If you were close, you're more likely to not improve the result than improve it and be disturbingly close in probability that you make it worse (critically fail) by using a hero point.
If you weren't anywhere close, you might do better but not necessarily succeed.
If you critically failed, you ought to do better but not necessarily succeed.
Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East
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One thing it means for me--and based on the OP's follow-up response--is that I feel like the tasks that I've intentionally specialized in are long shots.I agree with you that this is an issue but it's basically one that is inherent to the game. Part of the problem is that (by design) it is somewhere between difficult and impossible for an expert character to be much better at a skill than a dabbler. The dice ALWAYS matter a lot.
I also think this is a major problem in PFS2. In a home game I'd probably change the t/e/m/l from +2/4/6/8 to +2/5/9/14 to make the differences in proficiency more pronounced. (Starting point. Probably needs adjustment, but each gap growing by 1 sounds right). Though that still doesn't solve the problem at low levels.
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Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East
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Anytime someone brings up Aid Another at low levels I start off by warning them that at levels 1-2 and often into level 3, the DC to aid is harder than the DC to do it yourself. Because teamwork is not allowed and cooperation is just for high level people. (Or people with very specific builds)
And that they can very easily make things worse.
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Venture-Agent, Online—VTT
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...it doesn’t really need to be revamped, just needs an org play clarification. The CRB says the DC is usually 20, but the GM can alter it based on circumstantial, it could easily be set lower for lower tier scenarios.
One of the 'mitigators' to higher DCs in PF1 (and PFS1) was that players had the capability to 'aid' a roll to help boost the party chances at success.There's really not a mechanism for that in PF2 -- if anything, trying to *help* someone can sometimes (especially at L1) have a higher DC than the actual task being *helped* at.
I understand the math is supposed to be 'flat' and just allowing any ol' 'aid' is potentially unbalancing, but perhaps that is part of the issue with the DC numbers -- they work if a party can work *together* on a thing, but when it's just random roll + skill mod...
This is not an argument to completely revamp the system to make it more approachable for PFS2, but more... food for thought.
Unfortunately, after requests for that sort of clarification, there IS an org play specific rule, and it says to always use DC 20 unless a scenario says otherwise. If the normal CRB rule, where 20 is a guideline and not a hard number, was used, there would be more leeway for Aid to work well at low levels. The GM can apply a circumstance bonus to an Aid attempt that comes with a particularly appropriate plan.
Do table GMs have the ability to adjust the DC of a check to Aid, or is it set to the typical DC of 20, listed in the Core Rulebook?
Use DC 20 unless otherwise stated in the adventure. For particularly effective means of Aiding, the GM should consider giving the PCs a circumstance bonus on the check to Aid.
Can GMs apply circumstance bonuses and penalties based upon the PCs' actions (for example, to reward creative solutions, or
I'm not trying to tell you that you can't raise your concerns. Writing that an org play clarification would be needed led me to believe that you were missing some information about where we stand now, so I added that. (I had been telling people to use the GM discretionary power built into the Aid mechanic when appropriate, myself, before this ruling).
What I will note, though, is that I suspect the current ruling will remain in place, in order to reduce table variation. Personally, I would say that Aid is a mechanic where "reducing variation" and "Functioning properly" stand in direct opposition to each other, but I can't deny that having large differences in how well Aiding works would result in some pretty big differences in the difficulty of a given scenario as run by two different GMs, and I can't say that isn't a problem.
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Much of the discussion has focused on the effect of crits, but I haven't seen a lot of mention of hero points. It's not just the one you start with, but new ones handed out, as well as ones from other players' boons (often with a bonus for their GM glyphs).
Largely agreed. However (:-)) there tend to be less extra hero points handed out at low level tables (since these attract the new players). And GMs aren't always good at giving them out at the suggested rate. And players don't always spend them wisely (especially new players).
I view Hero Points as nice to have but not really as a resource to be relied upon. Especially since they seem to roll low a statistically improbable amount of the time :-) (I KNOW that is observer bias at its finest. But it still seems that way :-()
(I do have to say, I wish people wouldn't state that Paizo is "not listening" to complaints, especially after Mike Kimmel stated he *was* listening right off the bat. People who have been around a long time should know better.)
Violent, strong agreement on this. Paizo DOES listen to us. Of course, there are multiple voices not saying the same thing. And any lesson learned today will take several months to show up in an actual PFS scenario (just guessing)
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If skills were made with a 3d6 roll or something the small bonuses a specialist vs. a generalist gets would matter but with something as swingy as a D20... it doesn't.
In a Mutants and Masterminds campaign (a D20 superhero game where every +1 matters a lot) I had the players roll 2d10 instead of 1d20. Made things much, much less swingy which I think greatly improved the game.
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In a Mutants and Masterminds campaign (a D20 superhero game where every +1 matters a lot) I had the players roll 2d10 instead of 1d20. Made things much, much less swingy which I think greatly improved the game.If skills were made with a 3d6 roll or something the small bonuses a specialist vs. a generalist gets would matter but with something as swingy as a D20... it doesn't.
When PFS2 effectively states "Explore, Don't Cooperate, Religiously Report"
It becomes hard to parse this to a table of new players without completely undermining and promoting passive-aggressive play where folks either A. Won't roll their amazing skill at all (because they don't want to fail/crit-fail) or B. Race to roll FIRST so they don't have to worry about aiding or 'whatever the hell they're going to do now that they can't help out'.
This is not a hypothetical.
I've been at a few tables where this has happened in the latter case as a player, and been in the untenable position of having a *much better* modifier in a skill but my dice are utter garbage and the crap-tastic modifier player's dice are On Fire.
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Soup, you and I will not agree, your features are my bugs and vice versa.
It's not exactly you and me disagreeing. It's you and Paizo disagreeing.
I'm accepting the system as they've (from what I can tell, intentionally) designed it. I actually agree it's a little on the tight side, but there are mathematical constraints - the d20 system being one of them. There's a spread of 19 between the lowest possible outcome and the highest possible outcome, and so when modifiers pass a threshold relative to the die size, it's useless to roll the dice. Also, people like round numbers, so while having crit successes be 8 above or 12 above the DC, 10 is a very nice number to remember.
Instead of the nat 5-to-nat 15 range that Paizo currently uses, might it be a little better with a nat 4-to-nat 16 range? Maybe. But it's definitely something that's more like "fine tuning" than "APB to all developers."
I believe altering the dice to, say, 2d10 instead of 1d20 would make the +1s much more valuable (because it's harder to roll high). The d100 systems out there have more room to play with because the bonuses aren't quantized as much. But that's changing a very fundamental aspect of the game system.
I just don’t understand why winning more often is viewed as so problematic.
The same reason beating my kids at chess isn't fun. Success is only meaningful when there's a risk of failure.
Might the ceiling do better at 80-85% than 70-75%? Maybe. But again, it's a tweak, not a revision.
I have spent feats, skill trainings, and stat boosts (limited resources in character creation and leveling) on my Cascade Bearer Halcyon Speaker to know all there is to know about the magical traditions. So I want this character to feel like he's smart and understands Arcana, Nature, Occultism, and Religion. Unfortunately, his entire adventuring career, he keeps running into checks with a 50-55% success rate (whether because the scenario set the DC too high or the CP adjustment pushed it up, there's been both)
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I feel like I'm trying to be more than the game wants me to be and that at 7th level I should just be an apprentice.
I don't buy that a 7th level character, even specialized, is supposed to know even close to everything that there is to know about literally every type of magic there is. So 90% success+ seems unreasonable.
50-55% seems low, I agree, but that doesn't seem typical of the system. My characters are typically needing nat 7s (70% success) on their optimized checks, and just as a quick sanity check, for the last two skill checks in my current Gameday games, the highest modifiers needed nat 7s and 8s to make.
Again, might it be better if it were 80% instead of 70%? Maybe. There should always be a little space for item and circumstance bonuses, but where the game now is in the ballpark of where it really should be.
I think Lores are actually the better mechanism by which characters can get automatic-level successes. The difference between Lore DC and skill DC could, and probably should, be higher (they're usually -2 from the skill, I almost always give out circumstance bonuses to relevant Lore checks to make that like -4 or -5). And/or Lore DCs could have different abilities as their key, so, Gladiator Lore could use STR or Theater Lore CHA. With a super low DC and/or using your class's key ability, those easily could go up into the 95% range, which is fine for a narrow band of subjects.
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I just don’t understand why winning more often is viewed as so problematic.The same reason beating my kids at chess isn't fun. Success is only meaningful when there's a risk of failure.
My personal bias I find the fun in figuring out how to solve the puzzle, the tactical strategy of combat, and the adrenaline rush of dice rolls.
However, the meaningful success is not in the individual dice roll during the plot leading up to the climax. The meaningful success is the one or two crisis moments in the plot. There should be a baseline sense of success punctuated by challenge and the risk of failure. I do understand that this is tougher to squeeze into a 4-hour scenario versus campaign design.
I don't buy that a 7th level character, even specialized, is supposed to know even close to everything that there is to know about literally every type of magic there is. So 90% success+ seems unreasonable.I have spent feats, skill trainings, and stat boosts (limited resources in character creation and leveling) on my Cascade Bearer Halcyon Speaker to know all there is to know about the magical traditions. So I want this character to feel like he's smart and understands Arcana, Nature, Occultism, and Religion. Unfortunately, his entire adventuring career, he keeps running into checks with a 50-55% success rate (whether because the scenario set the DC too high or the CP adjustment pushed it up, there's been both)
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I feel like I'm trying to be more than the game wants me to be and that at 7th level I should just be an apprentice.
Sure. I did write the words "know all there is to know about the magical traditions," but that wasn't my point. My point was that I shouldn't always feel like an apprentice who is out of his depth dealing with Arcana/Nature/Occultism/Religion rolls.
When during my character's PFS career do I feel like he actually knows something? When the coin flip falls in my favor 3 out of 4 times in one scenario instead of 1 out of 4? This makes me feel like my character is more the result of a coin flip with every challenge than the sum of my build choices.
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I enjoy when all the pieces of the puzzle fit together, and the recipe that is my character build snaps into place to do what I have as the character fantasy in my minds eye.
This touches on another point that I think is important: what scenarios I play should feel different.
My druid should feel like he's excelling and brining an advantage to the team in a wilderness scenario. Not like he's got a 50/50 chance of getting lost in the woods. However, I fully expect to be out of my depth in a social encounter or trying to sneak into a fortress. So I sign up for Trailblazer's Bounty with my druid and Revolution on the Riverside with my rogue, not the other way around, and I expect them to be able to shine in their respective niches, not just move the dial for the party from "impossible" to "50/50."
EDIT: It appears that medtec28 deleted the post I replied to, and I suspect that I know why, but I believe I have left off the part he probably reconsidered.
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When during my character's PFS career do I feel like he actually knows something?
From my non PFS experience, I think the game fundamentally changes and characters start to feel really competent at about the L8-10 point (varies by character). And one problem is that so far very few PFS characters have both made it there AND played enough there to feel that competence.
Some of that feeling is coming from the fact that characters are starting to get really cool and different combat abilities from their class (eg the Rogues Opportune Backstab, the bards Synethesia spell, the druids Soaring Shape, etc) AND their ancestries (eg, flight for a lot of characters). Some of it is that characters are now getting to be masters at their preferred skills and often getting an additional +1 stat boost so the difference between dabblers and specialists is becoming quite noticeable.
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I get the sense from this post that a lot of people feel a disconnect between their characters when they fail at skill checks. As a person who's experience in society play regarding this topic has nearly only been positive I have a question.
Does introducing a sense of scale help with that feeling of lame non-heroicness?
For example a druid in a 1-4 may have a 50/50 chance to navigate a mundane mountain range.
But in a 7-10 may have a 50/50 chance to navigate a hellish forest fire.
Both of these have the 50/50 chance but have a completely different context to possible success and failure. Playing my lvl 7 Barbarian I failed at an athletics check during an exploration scene to clear snow. I didn't feel bad because previously there were struggling to scale slightly mountainous terrain but now they are struggling to trudge through uncharted wilderness with mountains of snow bigger then they are.
Another question I have is if Assurance helps if being reliably successful in scenarios is something make or break to you?
I've had entire adventures where I've been able to take assurance and automatically succeed on checks acting like an "anchor" for the group. Is this an outlier experience or should people take assurance on their main skill more often?
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Venture-Agent, Online—VTT
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Assurance working out that well (Especially in a main skill) probably is an outlier. If you're a higher level character than the rest of the party, you may end up with it working out, but generally Assurance, by not including attribute bonuses, Item bonuses, and the like guarantees a result that matches up with DCs you would expect of tasks slightly below your level, so if you're a level 4 character in a scenario that decided a standard level 4 challenge DC was appropriate, it would only guarantee failure.
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Dunno. I just look at it using the rules the designers provided. When the DCs in the scenarios are consistently at or exceeding the "DCs By Level" targets with a Very Hard adjustment that is supposed to be Rare," then there is a fundamental flaw with adventure design. I don't feel the need to jump through math hoops to analyze the issue. The designers who happen to include a highly educated and incredibly intelligent mathematician created the framework for setting DCs. That framework should be followed. YMMV
Contributor
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Another scenario author here, reading everything with interest. At some point, I may take off my author hat, and come in wearing my GM hat and offer my own opinions on this. But for now, I am here, listening and learning so that I can be better next time.
Yours,
Hmm
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There should be a baseline sense of success punctuated by challenge and the risk of failure.
I more or less agree, I just think we're there, or pretty close to there already, even if the scenario authors are setting the DCs higher than the CRB states.
(I actually contest that they are doing that in general, though - maybe sometime next week, I'll go through a few scenarios and tally them up, just so there's some data.)
When the coin flip falls in my favor 3 out of 4 times in one scenario instead of 1 out of 4? This makes me feel like my character is more the result of a coin flip with every challenge than the sum of my build choices.
I mean, there's a mathematical answer to that, but I'm not sure if math is the right approach.
For a typical CS = +2 / S = +1 / F = 0 / CF = -1 scoring system, a true coin flip (DC minus modifier = 11, or a nat 11 required to hit the DC) has an EV of +0.50 and a SD of 2.61, for a SD/EV ratio of 5.2. The number of rolls needed to differentiate "doing something" from "doing nothing" (rejecting the null hypothesis) is proportional to the square of that; for 1-sigma confidence, you'll need 27 of those rolls to say you're doing better than opting out. That's ... actually a lot (you don't make 27 skill checks in a scenario).
Worse yet, to say that the character choices you make (which often grant a +1 to +4 over a baseline "take the skill at first level and only passively increase it"), it's SD/ΔEV, so if a "baseline" character that's simply trained in something needs a nat 11 to succeed and you bumped it to expert and need a nat 9 to succeed, it's [2.6/(0.65-0.50)]^2, or 305 rolls, to say with 1-sigma certainty that your +2 character is better than the +0 baseline. That can be shockingly large to players.
I agree it's tough to feel like you consistently succeed, but it's mathematically tough, not "authors can just write differently" tough. The only way to adjust these numbers is to change the SD or to change the EV.
You can make success more obvious by confining rolls to a narrower space - rolling 2d10 vs 1d20, for instance, skews towards nat 11. DCs set just lower than nat-11-to-hit will more likely hit. You can also reduce the variance by widening the non-crit range, e.g., crit success = DC + 12, rather than crit success = DC + 10; or, variance goes down as the stakes get lowered, e.g., CS = +1.5, CF = -0.5.
But that's what I mean when we're really stuck with some mathematical constraints.
Aside from math, I think how people feel about their characters is a really tough question to answer because of the subjectivity. You could hit 3 out of 4 coin flips, and still feel really bad because the one you missed was a critical one.
I think scenario authors can alter the relative importance of checks, so that there's no "one person had a bad die roll so everyone fails the whole scenario" situations (I'm looking at you, rituals). I think the group success mechanics (lower DC but multiple PCs need to hit it) are better than individual success mechanics (higher DC but only one PC needs to hit it), but I think that might contribute to the feeling of "why bother".
But ultimately, I'm not as bothered by some with the feeling that my character is useless, so I can't weigh in a whole lot on the "heroic" side.
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This is not the first time the experience of "Not being able to do anything" has come up...
I would like to flag up this point here.
We've had a lot of discussion relating to the maths of the dice systems used. We've talked about TPKs and character deaths. We've talked about optimal builds. But I think the heart of the issue is none of these. Players, in general, can still have fun with those. Failing, especially failing forward, can be fun too. Even a character dying can be fun, because it's an event. It's an occurrence in the game.
The point where players don't have fun is when -nothing- happens.
d20 systems are binary, they're a pass-or-fail system. While you can incorporate gradients of success into them, they are still very much based on 'you either do the thing, or you don't'. As long as that failure has a result and causes things to occur, the player still has the potential to remain invested in the game.
However, very often a failure on the roll results in nothing; an absence of event. Rather than succeeding and things happening, or failing and things happening, nothing happens. You've essentially spent your turn doing nothing.
When that happens for an extended period, that's when players want to stop playing. That's when the thumb-twiddling sets in, and they start to ask themselves if there is something else they could be doing.
Let me throw this into the discussion - have you noticed that modern board games don't tend to have situations where a player would miss a turn? There was a time when 'miss a turn' was very common in board games. But nowadays it's kinda got out of fashion. The reason for that is simply due to game designers realizing that, as a mechanic, it's antithetical to board game design. People who buy their games want to play their game, and incorporating systems that limit the player's ability to play.
For regular out-of-combat skill checks, that is 100% something the writer can take onboard, by giving clear results for failing checks. We should avoid checks that serve no purpose (every dice roll should move the story forward), or checks that have the potential to bring the game to a grinding halt if they're not completed (I call this the "You need to climb a wall" check). I try to do my best to make sure they don't crop up in any adventure I write - if you find any in mine, throw a shoe at me!
But once you get into combat, well... I'm out of ideas. But I definitely think comments here are valid and thought is requited to proceed in the best direction.
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Multiple skill checks can be a way to take some of the binary out of he D20 system, but please be aware that unless you drop the DC considerably you send the parties chances of failure into the stratosphere if you require all of those checks to be successful. If you require someone to roll as low as a 5 3 times you're looking at a 74ish % failure rate.
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For regular out-of-combat skill checks, that is 100% something the writer can take onboard, by giving clear results for failing checks. We should avoid checks that serve no purpose (every dice roll should move the story forward), or checks that have the potential to bring the game to a grinding halt if they're not completed (I call this the "You need to climb a wall" check). I try to do my best to make sure they don't crop up in any adventure I write - if you find any in mine, throw a shoe at me!
Yes! That is one of the points I've been trying to fit into the way-to-long post I've been working on and the term "fail forward" escaped me. Those "nothing happens" (or "nothing plot contributory happens") checks contribute to check-overload, which creates a whole set of downstream psychological effects.
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I’m going to preface this post by underlining that this is an opinion piece. I am also going to warn that it will not be as organized as I would like it to be. In fact, I think it borders on rambling and covers multiple issues that could all stand to be a discussion on their own.
My preference for adventure pacing is to have a baseline of manageable tension with beats of increasing challenge. The adventurers face challenges that they can handle fairly easily--they might need to spend some time or resources patching up after a challenge--but they’re more concerned with advancing the plot or solving the mystery and then you ramp up the difficulty and then lower it back down to baseline. The speed at which you increase the challenge and the speed at which you lower the challenge and the frequency at which these increases occur depends upon the tone you’re setting and the story you’re telling.
This intentional cadence of campaign design is difficult to put into a 4-hour scenario designed for random characters and players of varying proficiency level. I recognize that, and that knowledge makes me appreciate it even more when I encounter it in a scenario. That’s one issue.
Another issue is, grasping for a description, check overload. There are too many checks in PFS scenarios, usually. How can that be? This is a game about throwing icosahedral dice! The problem lies in the stakes of the check. Due to multiple factors, one being heterogeneity of authors, another that may or may not still persist on the development side is the desire to “make” knowledge checks meaningful, there are so many checks with stakes ranging from inconsequential to primary success defining. There’s very little indication which is which, so that makes all checks feel crucial.
If you take those two issues--a condensed pacing where the challenge spikes frequently and too many checks of which any could be crucial but you don’t know which ones--you get a session that feels high tension.
The DCs, all of them, generally scale with level, and they’re generally sitting “at level” or higher. At level means a 65% success rate for 18-stat Trained skill checks, 50% 12-stat Trained skill checks, and 35% 12-stat Untrained skill checks for levels 1 and 2. Then those drop to 60%/45%/30% at level 3 (and then 55%/40%/25% at 6th, and so on at 6, 9, 12, …), unless you’re 1) a Rogue, 2) an Investigator, or 3) take one of the archetype dedications that makes something Expert. However, that’s Expert in one skill, but all of the scenario DCs made the jump. With the heterogeneous tables of PFS where you have characters of the level before the jump playing with characters after the jump, the effect is exacerbated. That effect is to make everything feel difficult no matter the mathematical reality or actual results at the table.
“Whew! It took me 3 tries to unlock that fence gate and I nearly broke my picks at 1st level! Now I’m level 5, I’ve bumped Thievery up to Expert, added a Dexterity boost, and bought infiltrator’s picks! Lock picking should be easier now! Wow. It took me 2 tries and I still nearly broke my expensive infiltrator picks trying to unlock a fence gate. Didn’t I learn anything in the past 4 levels?”
Substitute whichever skill activity you like in the above example, the chance of success essentially stays the same at all times in PFS. The better scenarios that I’ve encountered actually do have Easy and Very Easy checks in them. It makes you feel like you’re accomplishing something. Paradoxically, they’re in lower tier scenarios.
OK. What do I suggest to the authors and developers?
One, as an author, think about the pacing of your story and try to write out the desired cadence as best you can within the constraints of a PFS scenario. If there’s a tough fight in the middle, give the party something it can trounce and feel good about themselves, brining down the tension, between that and the final encounter where you spike it back up. Or maybe it’s a leisurely pace and every encounter is completely manageable but requires spending some spells and consumables during and after the encounters.
Two, something I see as far more implementable, is to adjust how skills are used in scenarios.
A. Set success thresholds where you just compare level of training to the criteria and give the result to the player.
All briefing information that is simply story background could be handled this way. Example: the Mosquito Witch. If a character is Trained in Occultism, give them the information at the Success level; if they’re Expert in Occultism, give them the information at the Critical Success level. Alternatively, have anyone roll and provide the minimum of either the result of their check or Success for Trained and Critical Success for Expert. As scenarios increase in level and information becomes more esoteric, you could move the thresholds to Trained/Master and Expert/Master for really esoteric details. It gives the players a feeling that their build matters when the GM asks, “Does anyone have Occultism at Expert?” And Player Joe raises his hand and says, “Yes! My Wizard, Fizban, does!”
To me, that’s much more satisfying than the GM saying, “OK. Anyone want to try Occultims?” Player Joe, “My wizard is Expert in Occultism with an 18 intelligence. I will. I got a 10 for 21!” GM, “Most of the witnesses to the Mosquito Witch have been teenagers.” Joe, “Um. Oh kay…”
It would be the same information either way, and Joe probably wouldn’t have failed his check, but to me the former brings the player and their character into the story while the later teases a vital clue and then lets you down. But the next check might be really important! Um. But the next one for sure!
It could be used for story beats in the scenario where the results of a check don’t actually affect the results. You need to navigate a forest to get from town to the place where the action will take place. You could ask everyone for checks, but they were going to get to the other side no matter what anyone rolled. Or you could say, “Is anyone trained in Survival?” Player Fred, “Me!” GM, “Great. It takes you 2 hours to lead the others to the bandit hideout so you arrive at sunset.”
Maybe this provides an advantageous starting position on the combat map (ideally something like this) or maybe there’s no difference at all between arriving at sunset and arriving after dark, but it feels better and is more engaging to the player to say this character trained in Survival changed the story (not the outcome, just the story) than asking for Survival rolls and maybe someone succeeds and maybe nobody does. This means the player’s choice to bring his Ranger with his +4 Trained Survival had an effect on the scenario that his 18 Wis Cleric of Nethys would not have had, even though they would have technically had the same chance of success on a DC 15 check. Or if the Fighter spent a skill training on Survival to make it Trained, he now feels like his build accomplished something (instead of relying on a 45% chance to hit that DC 15).
The CRB gives various examples of tasks that should be easy for a given level of training.
Success thresholds don’t need to be limited to skill training. You could add in ancestry, home region/land/town, or class thresholds when approrpiate. Example: Being iruxi ancestry, Mwangi home region, or Chelish nationality grants you the information from the Society success on briefing information for Star-Crossed Voyages.
And it’s not an all or nothing idea. You could and, I believe, should mix and match these kinds of success thresholds with skill checks. When to use which depends on the stakes and the situation. Those stakes don’t always need to be “at level” high for every check.
Example: Flowing water in combat maps (not as a stand alone hazard). You have a DC 15 “flowing river” at level 1-2 is a tough challenge if you fall into it. Just because you’re level 5-6 doesn’t mean you need a “swiftly flowing river” to increase the DC to 20. Falling in on its own and having to spend actions to get out is penalty enough to leave the DC at 15 for a “flowing river.”
Yes. That is technically “very easy,” but I assure you that 1) it is not very easy for anyone not trained in Athletics (-1 to +1) and 2) it’s still effort for someone even Expert in Athletics (+13) because they need to spend 1 action to swim to shore and 1 action to stand up plus however many actions to get back to the place on the map they should be.
But let’s go back to flowing water as a hazard challenge. You could mix success thresholds with checks with a hazard of crossing several branches of a river in the mountain, the last of which is rather swift. First, is anyone Trained? Yes! George and Emily are Trained. “George and Emily help the rest of you to ford several deep streams, making great gains in passage through the valley…” Then, “...until you reach a swiftly flowing branch twenty feet wide. The DC to swim here is 20.” Or, is anyone Trained? No. One, this prepares the GM that the swiftly flowing river is going to be a challenge and he might need to talk up the environment so they can think of creative solutions. Two, he describes the experience differently, “It becomes slow going as you are forced to make your way across several deep streams. By the time you reach the near bank of the main branch of the river where the water flows swiftly under the boughs of several young pines, you are wet, cold, and tired. The river is twenty feet wide and the DC to simply try to swim across is 20. How do you want to proceed?” Both teams have to face the same challenge: cross a 20-foot wide swiftly flowing river that bears a DC 20 swim check, but the team with people Trained in Athletics experiences a different story than the team without.
Or you could just make everyone make two DC 20 swim checks with a -1 for critical fail, +1 for success, and +2 for critical success, need a score = number of characters, and the team with two Trained in Athletics might contribute 33-50% of the points needed and the rest know they’ve got a really good chance of critically failing. This versus the previous examples are two very different experiences for the players.
Yet another point is when to use checks depends upon the stakes. There should be some point to the check: altering the story and furthering the plot, overcoming a hazard, or combat. The number one source of pointless checks is the briefing: expositional information that is nice to know but serves no other purpose. Just give us that kind of information--be it through success thresholds or box text through the story.
Going back to the Survival example of navigating through the woods from town to a bandit camp: success thresholds or checks, the result should affect the player’s experience. Whatever the success criteria, a success navigating the woods gets the PCs there during the day with an advantageous placement of NPC combatants, a failure gets the PCs there at dusk and the NPCs have the advantageous placement.
If I need to navigate a hellish forest fire and the result of failure is to take damage, but there’s nothing to stop me from healing that damage upon getting where I’m going, then the check serves no real purpose. If there is something to stop me from healing, e.g., being ambushed part way through, then make sure that failure either isn’t so easy to achieve or the damage isn’t so severe that the combat becomes overwhelming.
I’ve encountered random checks in many scenarios where, as a player, you wonder why we were asked to make them. One Tier 1-4 scenario has a random Occultism check with a DC 17 upon meeting an NPC. The information obtained is completely superfluous to the story and plot. The GM calls for anyone to make an Occultism check. Player Rick says he’s got a +6. He rolls a 10 and fails. Wow! This must be important if it’s a hard check! Everyone starts rolling desperately with their Untrained Occultism. They either never find out or they find out how pointless the information was to the plot and the anticipation doesn’t match the payout.
If you’re going to have a low risk, low payout check, the DC should be lower and failure rare for Trained characters.
OK. I’ve rambled far too much and too long and am probably making my points less clear. This is really a topic worthy of several weeks of drafts and rewrites.
TL;DR: The areas that I think can be improved are the rhythm of the scenario, removing unnecessary rolls and/or converting some things into success thresholds, and ensuring that the risk of failure or reward of success is commensurate with the effect on the story/plot/action.
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Another issue is, grasping for a description, check overload. There are too many checks in PFS scenarios, usually. How can that be? This is a game about throwing icosahedral dice! The problem lies in the stakes of the check. Due to multiple factors, one being heterogeneity of authors, another that may or may not still persist on the development side is the desire to “make” knowledge checks meaningful, there are so many checks with stakes ranging from inconsequential to primary success defining. There’s very little indication which is which, so that makes all checks feel crucial.
I think you've pretty much hit the nail on the head here.
In terms of game design philosophy, every time you roll the dice should matter. The inverse of this is also true; if the result of your dice roll wouldn't impact the game, the writer shouldn't necessitate you to make the dice roll in the first place.
This seems counterintuitive at times, but think about it like this:
Example A - Your group need to convince NPC A to do something for you. The writer determines which skill checks are needed, and lists what happens if you succeed. The writer also lists what happens if you fail; you may need to look elsewhere for help.
Example B - Your group need to convince NPC A to do something for you, but this time the adventure requires you to succeed at this roll. You can't get the help anywhere else. Essentially, convincing NPC A to help you is part of the unchangeable linear path of the adventure. If you fail this roll, another NPC (NPC B) comes in and helps the party, to ensure that your group succeed.
In example A, your dice roll matters. In example B, it doesn't.
My way of writing an adventure would be to portray this interaction by means of roleplay; let the players convince NPC A to do what is needed. I may also include a few objects earlier in the story that the players could use to convince NPC A to help them ("Here's a jade statue we found, I heard you like jade statues.") To clarify, I don't mean 'act your heart out or you'll fail at this', that would be pretty dreadful. Not all people at your table will be there to play as an actor, but the general to-and-fro of the scene can still allow for an interaction like this to succeed more often than not.
But what I wouldn't do is set this as a skill check, because it'd be unnecessary. It would be asking the PCs to roll the dice without any stakes or any reason; and worse, could result in a wall.
So I mentioned a 'wall'. What do I mean by that?
Basically, in one of my first ever adventures I made back when I was 14 or so, the party had to climb a wall. I think it was to sneak into a garden or something, I can't really remember. The point is, several of the characters couldn't make the skill check. They were unable to climb the wall. Now I was still a total rookie GM at that time, and hadn't made up any repercussions if the PCs were unable to climb that wall. The party just had to try again. We sat there trying to roll dice to get the PCs over that wall for almost half an hour, before my little half-formed lizard brain said "Okay, you all eventually just climb over it."
I bet everyone who's reading this can think of a wall in an adventure for any game they've played. They're fairly common. Walls are the bane of every adventure.
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As a long-time GM in all of Paizo's systems but a rather new adventure author, I also wanted to chime in that I'm paying attention to this thread. I appreciate its intent and everyone's contributions to-date!
Hold on - you’re authoring an adventure?
Congrats, Mike - that’s awesome!!!!
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What if instead of the standard PF2 skill challenge, the one where everyone roll twice and get successes = to the number of players, we went to the everyone who wants to roll (be it survival, diploamacy etc), we used the same levels of graduated success we have for recall knowledge during the info dump session at the beginning. Then gave a bump for anyone who is expert/mater, etc.
I am not entirely sure if I understand what you are going for here. Skill Challenges in PF scenarios typically *do* have graduated levels of success. Anything from and enumerated range to "If the pcs a total number of successes less than half the number of PCs / If the PCs get as many successes as there are PCs / If the PCs get more successes than there are PCs."
Giving a success result bump is a power level equivalent to a class feat, and would also be a fortune effect, meaning that Harsk in your example would move the result up a step, but no one can use rerolls. That said, Harsk being an expert / master means that everyone can use the "Follow the expert" and can roll at their level, even if untrained, and everyone else also gets a +2 to their checks.
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Another issue is, grasping for a description, check overload. There are too many checks in PFS scenarios, usually. How can that be? This is a game about throwing icosahedral dice! The problem lies in the stakes of the check. Due to multiple factors, one being heterogeneity of authors, another that may or may not still persist on the development side is the desire to “make” knowledge checks meaningful, there are so many checks with stakes ranging from inconsequential to primary success defining. There’s very little indication which is which, so that makes all checks feel crucial.I think you've pretty much hit the nail on the head here.
In terms of game design philosophy, every time you roll the dice should matter. The inverse of this is also true; if the result of your dice roll wouldn't impact the game, the writer shouldn't necessitate you to make the dice roll in the first place.
This seems counterintuitive at times, but think about it like this:
Example A - Your group need to convince NPC A to do something for you. The writer determines which skill checks are needed, and lists what happens if you succeed. The writer also lists what happens if you fail; you may need to look elsewhere for help.
Example B - Your group need to convince NPC A to do something for you, but this time the adventure requires you to succeed at this roll. You can't get the help anywhere else. Essentially, convincing NPC A to help you is part of the unchangeable linear path of the adventure. If you fail this roll, another NPC (NPC B) comes in and helps the party, to ensure that your group succeed.
B almost never shows up in PFS scenarios. When it does, it generally results in a loss of reputation or treasure bundles or both. So what you are rolling for is "Can you convince her on your own? Or will you have to expend resources on this and take a loss."
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The rulebook has deemed that a standard DC for a level 2 check should be a 16, a “hard” check an 18 and a “very hard” check a 21. It was apparently decided that a tier 1-2 scenario needed to have multiple “very hard” challenges per encounter.
Group Attempts
Source Core Rulebook pg. 504 2.0
The DCs in this chapter give an individual character a strong and increasing chance of success if they have some proficiency. On occasion, though, you’ll have a task that only one person in the group needs to succeed at, but that everyone can attempt. The number of dice being rolled means that there’s a very high chance at least one of them will succeed. Most of the time, that’s perfectly fine, but sometimes you’ll want the task to be a challenge, with some uncertainty as to whether the party can succeed. In these cases, make the check very hard, or incredibly hard if you want it to be particularly difficult or at high levels. At these DCs, most of the party will probably fail, but someone will probably still succeed, likely a character who has heavily invested in the given skill, as is expected for specialized characters.
Venture-Lieutenant, Virginia—Richmond
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The rulebook has deemed that a standard DC for a level 2 check should be a 16, a “hard” check an 18 and a “very hard” check a 21. It was apparently decided that a tier 1-2 scenario needed to have multiple “very hard” challenges per encounter.
Group Attempts
Source Core Rulebook pg. 504 2.0
The DCs in this chapter give an individual character a strong and increasing chance of success if they have some proficiency. On occasion, though, you’ll have a task that only one person in the group needs to succeed at, but that everyone can attempt. The number of dice being rolled means that there’s a very high chance at least one of them will succeed. Most of the time, that’s perfectly fine, but sometimes you’ll want the task to be a challenge, with some uncertainty as to whether the party can succeed. In these cases, make the check very hard, or incredibly hard if you want it to be particularly difficult or at high levels. At these DCs, most of the party will probably fail, but someone will probably still succeed, likely a character who has heavily invested in the given skill, as is expected for specialized characters.
This doesn't apply to any challenge using the popular Victory Point system, so those should level-DC (maximum). Also, while a player of an AP or Standalone Adventure might select their skills so there are no gaps or overlaps, that isn't optimal in an organized play setting. So having a consequential skill challenge focused on a single skill isn't fair.
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This doesn't apply to any challenge using the popular Victory Point system, so those should level-DC (maximum). Also, while a player of an AP or Standalone Adventure might select their skills so there are no gaps or overlaps, that isn't optimal in an organized play setting. So having a consequential skill challenge focused on a single skill isn't fair.The rulebook has deemed that a standard DC for a level 2 check should be a 16, a “hard” check an 18 and a “very hard” check a 21. It was apparently decided that a tier 1-2 scenario needed to have multiple “very hard” challenges per encounter.
Group Attempts
Source Core Rulebook pg. 504 2.0
The DCs in this chapter give an individual character a strong and increasing chance of success if they have some proficiency. On occasion, though, you’ll have a task that only one person in the group needs to succeed at, but that everyone can attempt. The number of dice being rolled means that there’s a very high chance at least one of them will succeed. Most of the time, that’s perfectly fine, but sometimes you’ll want the task to be a challenge, with some uncertainty as to whether the party can succeed. In these cases, make the check very hard, or incredibly hard if you want it to be particularly difficult or at high levels. At these DCs, most of the party will probably fail, but someone will probably still succeed, likely a character who has heavily invested in the given skill, as is expected for specialized characters.
What you said didn't indicate that the DC 21's were for victory point challenges. That is too high for a victory point challenge, but I have not seen any lvl 1-2 where victory point challenges had DC 21 for the primary or even secondary skills.
(Would you mind sending me the name of the scenario via DM or post here in spoilers?)
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BTW, we had a similar thread about Starfinder Society DCs being too high a couple of years ago.
There's a lot of discussion on the overall math of Starfinder, but there were two Society-specific takeaways that were noted and taken into account for future scenarios.
1) Scenarios were overusing difficulties of "more difficult" and "prohibitively high" (roughly equivalent to Very Hard and Incredibly Hard in PF2).
2) If none of the pregens can make the check without rolling an 18+, take another look at the DC. (In PF2 terms: if the best pregen for the task has a 40% chance of critically failing, that's probably not a fun check to have in your scenario.)
Things have gotten better in SFS since that thread. I haven't seen any scenarios since then where the majority of the checks were ridiculously difficult. So I have optimism that PFS will take a similar turn for the better.