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Aid is a circumstance bonus. Only one other character can aid any particular action. The issue from PF1E shouldn’t exist, regardless of level. I mean, I guess the party could try to crit fish to get the max bonus, but the math isn’t in their favor at low levels.
The usual “max” bonus fir a 1st level character is +7 to a skill. Which means only a 35% chance of a Success, 5% chance of a Critical Success. While having a 15% chance of a Critical Failure. Even if a 1st level character can use their best skill to Aid, they’ve got a pretty good chance of making things worse. In the rare cases someone can get Expert at 1st level (Fighter/Gunslinger attacks, possibly Elven archetypes at 1st level, maybe others), they can lower that chance to 5%, but it’s still only a 50-50 chance they actually help.
True that is the limit in practice for most characters straight out at level 1. But note that Humans can get a +4 Circumstance bonus to Aid, there are a few ancestries who can take a +2 Circumstance bonus to Aid. It is also possible to get item bonuses to skill checks in level 1 items.
There are also some Expert Levels available at level 1, Fighter get it with weapons, many classes get it with perception, there may be more. But for most they have to wait a bit.
So a level 1 human fighter aiding with an unarmed attack and Bestial Mutagen (Lesser) can get +14 to the Aid roll of some sort of attack. The same character with 16 Wis and Drakeheart Mutagen (Lesser) can get +13 to a Perception Aid roll.
I accounted for being an Expert at something in my post, though I did leave off perception, which is probably the most likely thing someone will be an expert in at 1st level.
Cooperative Nature is notably out of scale with almost every other ability in the game. If the DC to aid wasn’t so high, the bonus to Cooperative Nature wouldn’t need to be so high. So if the issue is that the DC to Aid needs to be high, because one ancestry can take a feat that gives them a huge bonus, where does that leave every other character that is either not human or doesn’t want to take that feat?
As for the mutagen, consumables are consumables. They are limited use, and they should make you better at doing something for that limited amount of time.
The post I was responding to was about the tendency in PF1E for the whole group to jump in and say that they aid on practically every roll, and that maybe the high DC was to discourage that for 1st level characters. But the possibility that someone can build a character that is better at Aiding doesn’t mean that everyone will. The vast majority of 1st level characters are going to be better off not trying to Aid a second or third or fourth time on the same roll that someone else is already trying to aid, because if all they do is succeed, they won’t raise the bonus, and instead they have a better chance of one of them crit failing the more of them that attempt it than they do that one of them will crit succeed.
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The lack of circumstance bonuses stacking is enough on its own to stop the multiple rolls. DC 20 discourages 1st level characters trying to Aid at all (excepting characters that specifically build for it).
Follow the Expert is a better mechanic for encouraging cooperation in 2E, though also not one that is often possible at 1st level.
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The post I was responding to was
You don't have to justify yourself, or assume my post had a point other than what was said. It didn't.
But the posibility that someone can build a character that is better at Aiding doesn’t mean that everyone will.
Yeah sure. Aid is useful ocassionally if you are reasonably confident your reaction is not going to be otherwise useful it make sense, to set up an aid rather than a third attack. I'm not sure a specialist Aid character makes sense, or that it is worthwhile making a huge investment in it. But from mid level everyone is going to be reasonably good at it anyway. So its just going to come up. The +4 human bonus is big, but all in all its just a bonus to a roll to get a bonus. I don't think it is unfair or even that most of my human characters would take it. But having Aid as a second or third trick that your character can do well, yes I guess that is useful.
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whyIMO, it makes no sense that attempting to help someone with a task would be harder than the task itself. And then at higher levels, it makes no sense that it would be just as easy/hard to help someone build a shed as perform brain surgery.
As any "family techie" can tell you, helping someone with a task being harder than doing the task yourself makes perfect sense if the person you're helping doesn't know what they're doing.
Personally, I think what's going on is that the static difficulty represents how skilled the character is at helping others without coming across as a snitty know-it-all, just taking over entirely, or annoying them until they reject your help. It's less about the task itself, and more about your ability to cooperate with the person you're aiding, I would say.
Does seem a bit weird for that to be enforced mechanically, but it seems there's a logic to it. ;P
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DC 20 discourages 1st level characters trying to Aid at all (excepting characters that specifically build for it).
DC 20 arguably discourages ANYONE from trying to Aid until about level 6 because that’s the first time the expected DC isn’t 20 or less. If you can reliably make a DC 20 check, then before level 6 you can probably accomplish the underlying task. Even a house rule that the Aid DC always the underlying DC doesn’t fix that problem, though a GM being very liberal about what checks they allow for Aid might help with that a bit.
As any "family techie" can tell you, helping someone with a task being harder than doing the task yourself makes perfect sense if the person you're helping doesn't know what they're doing.
That makes perfect sense from a simulationist perspective, but this may be one of those areas where we’re better off encouraging cooperation than strictly simulating the reality.
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DC 20 arguably discourages ANYONE from trying to Aid until about level 6 because that’s the first time the expected DC isn’t 20 or less. If you can reliably make a DC 20 check, then before level 6 you can probably accomplish the underlying task. Even a house rule that the Aid DC always the underlying DC doesn’t fix that problem, though a GM being very liberal about what checks they allow for Aid might help with that a bit.
"before level 6 you can probably accomplish the underlying task."
only if you are using the aid action to do it, and even then... only if you are the best at the task / it isn't necessary for someone else to be doing the task.But even if they are using the same skill it isn't as dire as you make it out to be. Take a level 3 melee ranger and a level 3 barbarian. The ranger is only trained in athletics, the barbarian took expertise in athletics.
The ranger has a +9, the barbarian has a +11. The ranger only crit fails on a 1, fails on a 2-10 and succeeds on a 11-19 and crits on a 20. And that is before considering that hero points can be used, guidance and other bonuses may have been applied and magic items / consumable bonuses exist. Or... the tasks difficulty is adjusted.
For a third action, trying to make sure a grapple gets through will generally better than a third attack and outside of combat the odds of a crit fail are very low so it isn't like much is lost by attempting.