What am I missing? (Re: Assurance + Athletics for MAP-less maneuvers)


Advice


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I keep seeing advice for taking Assurance paired with Athletics for combat maneuvers with no MAP.

Assurance grants a skill check result of 10 + Proficiency w/o any other bonuses, penalties, or modifiers. So, no MAP. Check. But, no other bonuses or modifiers means no STR or Item bonuses either.

At level 10 and Master in Athletics, the Proficiency bonus is +16. With Assurance, that is an Athletics check for a combat maneuver result of 26. That means that the target's Fortitude or Reflex save is +16 or lower for a success.

Basically, the only time Assurance Athletics to perform a third action maneuver seems limited in utility to, basically, trivial encounters.

Or, am I missing something?


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

It works better at low levels, and if you don't have 18 strength.


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It doesn't work all of the time, but it works more often than you might think; plenty of very real encounters have multiple -1 or -2 enemies to bully with the tech, and when you have two different saves to target you've got decent odds that one of them will be terrible. Your level 10 character can trip an equal level Fire Giant every time, for example.


Have you seeen a 98lb weakling trip a Giant? It is possible.


It's pretty solid as transition from lvl 1 to lvl, 8/9.

Then you can move on different attacks or abilities that allow MAPless athletics, or keep assurance to use it against low level creatures ( plus some other characters with low reflexes, like spellcasters or big creatures).

Ps: you are required to increase athletics by lvl 3/7/15 if you want to benefit from assurance. Otherwise, assurance is worthless.


Thanks!!


Never used it with Athletics. As you stated, only good for trivial encounters or the rare monster with low saves which is fairly rare.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

So I filtered all creatures from lvl 9 to 11 (I actually think lvl 8 creatures should be in here too but I doubt those would qualify as serious enough threats for some players.) Of those 284, 56 have a Reflex low enough to auto succeed against and 33 a fort for a total of 89. Two have both so taking that overlap we get 87 out of 284 creatures in the average threat range for a level 10 character to be able to use their lvl 1/2 skill feat against, or just under 1/3.

That's really good and not useless at all. If I had any other feat that had an automatic success for an action against a 3rd of on level creatures I'd be chuffed.

Silver Crusade

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Malk_Content wrote:

So I filtered all creatures from lvl 9 to 11 (I actually think lvl 8 creatures should be in here too but I doubt those would qualify as serious enough threats for some players.) Of those 284, 56 have a Reflex low enough to auto succeed against and 33 a fort for a total of 89. Two have both so taking that overlap we get 87 out of 284 creatures in the average threat range for a level 10 character to be able to use their lvl 1/2 skill feat against, or just under 1/3.

That's really good and not useless at all. If I had any other feat that had an automatic success for an action against a 3rd of on level creatures I'd be chuffed.

The usefulness of this depends hugely on several factors

1) How much knowledge of the opponents you have. Sometimes you can make a reasonable guess who is the minion with the low reflex save, other times you can't.

2) Whether or not you have something better to do with your third action.

3) How useful tripping (or the like) actually will be. In a group where everybody is handing out flank bonuses it is less useful (NOT useless by any means, just less useful).

4) How much the opportunity cost of keeping athletics up and spending the skill feats represents to the character. Sometimes characters desperately need all their skill advances for other things.

Its a reasonable tactic for some characters. It is an awful tactic for other characters. It is NEVER a wonderful tactic for any character.


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Quote:
1) How much knowledge of the opponents you have. Sometimes you can make a reasonable guess who is the minion with the low reflex save, other times you can't.

I mean, if you've got nothing better to do you can just try one. If it works, great! Do it every turn. If it doesn't? Try another one.


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Part of the principle is that almost anything is better than a third attack at -10 MAP. Assurance in athletics is not in and of itself useless, since you're going to occasionally need to climb or swim. So it's a thing to do with your third action that is going to work sometimes.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Even in a party full of flankers tripping is still useful.

It generally limits the opponent to the following:
- crawl away; provokes, eats action, rarely improves situation
- stand up; provokes, eats action
- attack; penalty to attack, rarely improves situation
- cast a spell; usually provokes


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Guntermench wrote:
Quote:
1) How much knowledge of the opponents you have. Sometimes you can make a reasonable guess who is the minion with the low reflex save, other times you can't.
I mean, if you've got nothing better to do you can just try one. If it works, great! Do it every turn. If it doesn't? Try another one.

So you lost your action for that round.

Which means that apart from having a limited pool of choices ( not sure what % is each level out of 100% ), you also have to take into account that sometimes you'll be wasting your action.

Not saying it's not worth it, but that it's a little more complicated that "it doesn't work? Try another one".


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Also to note that in any reasonably optimized party, you are not actually looking at needing them to have 10 or less in Fort or Ref because you'll probably have someone in the party who is trying to land some sort of condition (probably frightened) on the enemies that will reduce their saves further.

And well I guess apparently lvl -1 is too high to be fairly considered using a disable action. I'll narrow it down to lvl and lvl +1 then BUT will be looking at 17 or less because giving the enemy -1 seems like something most parties should be trying to do.

So thats now 182 entries, with 67 assuranceable. Still about 1/3.

As for knowledge. Spending one action to maybe know what a save score is AND possible get a Trip, better than recall knowledge that is. Also in almost all games I've ever run, you aren't fighting totally unique enemies all the time. Once I've done the trick once, I can probably do it for another 2 or 3 fights, and if it doesn't work I'm not wasting any actions on it again.

But yes everything else is true, I don't think anyone is recommending that every group should have an Assurance Athletics character in there. I'd argue it'll probably naturally happen anyway just for Athletics other skill uses (always good to have a character you know can climb that cliff and drop a rope for the rest of the party.)


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Pixel Popper wrote:

At level 10 and Master in Athletics, the Proficiency bonus is +16. With Assurance, that is an Athletics check for a combat maneuver result of 26. That means that the target's Fortitude or Reflex save is +16 or lower for a success.

Basically, the only time Assurance Athletics to perform a third action maneuver seems limited in utility to, basically, trivial encounters.

A 26 will beat the low save DC for a level 9 creature, and a moderate save DC for a level 8. Two or three of those creatures will be a Low to Moderate encounter for a level 10 party. Four to six is Severe.


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knowing the save on a RK, unless a specific class feat that allows you to directly ask the dm for that one, feels a little odd.

It may happen that sometimes the DM will tell you a save, but not all the times. RK is trying to focus yourself in other to remember something about the creature. Not necessarily what you need.


HumbleGamer wrote:
Guntermench wrote:
Quote:
1) How much knowledge of the opponents you have. Sometimes you can make a reasonable guess who is the minion with the low reflex save, other times you can't.
I mean, if you've got nothing better to do you can just try one. If it works, great! Do it every turn. If it doesn't? Try another one.

So you lost your action for that round.

Which means that apart from having a limited pool of choices ( not sure what % is each level out of 100% ), you also have to take into account that sometimes you'll be wasting your action.

Not saying it's not worth it, but that it's a little more complicated that "it doesn't work? Try another one".

You don't just lose the action for the round for nothing unless you try to Trip when you or someone else tried to Trip earlier and rolled higher than you can get with Assurance. It's not a waste to learn if this if going to be something you can fairly reliably do to this type of enemy, now and probably in the future. Especially not when it works and now you don't need to roll.

Should you count on it working if there's just one enemy? No, probably not. But if there's multiple you've got decent odds.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Assurance is really, really good for climbing and swimming and occasionally useful for tripping or grappling. Occasionally useful in combat is the best you can hope for out of a skill feat, really.

HumbleGamer wrote:

knowing the save on a RK, unless a specific class feat that allows you to directly ask the dm for that one, feels a little odd.

It may happen that sometimes the DM will tell you a save, but not all the times. RK is trying to focus yourself in other to remember something about the creature. Not necessarily what you need.

That's not true. It says: You recall the knowledge accurately or gain a useful clue about your current situation.

So either you're remembering the specific thing you're looking for or you gain a useful clue. Saying "not necessarily what you need" is the worst possible way to handle RK, ignores the rule, and assures no one will bother with it.


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Captain Morgan wrote:


Assurance is really, really good for climbing and swimming and occasionally useful for tripping or grappling. Occasionally useful in combat is the best you can hope for out of a skill feat, really.

HumbleGamer wrote:

knowing the save on a RK, unless a specific class feat that allows you to directly ask the dm for that one, feels a little odd.

It may happen that sometimes the DM will tell you a save, but not all the times. RK is trying to focus yourself in other to remember something about the creature. Not necessarily what you need.

That's not true. It says: You recall the knowledge accurately or gain a useful clue about your current situation.

So either you're remembering the specific thing you're looking for or you gain a useful clue. Saying "not necessarily what you need" is the worst possible way to handle RK, ignores the rule, and assures no one will bother with it.

False.

It can be anything.

Given a troll, you can have "fire weakness", "low fortitude", the "low will", "a specific attack the troll has", etc.

Any is useful ( the DM won't tell you the troll lives XX years as it is not "useful" ) depends how you intend to play.

Forcing ( or expecting ) a specific save is not what the RK is meant to do. There are specific feats that do exactly what you mentioned.

You can homebrew that way if you want, or be more permissive with your group.


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In my experience, there's lot of actions spent on movement where you don't get many three action rounds. If you're fighting a group of trivial enemies CR equal to CR-2, at low level you're moving into battle, focusing on particularly dangerous targets, letting your casters pepper them with ranged spells. You're battle is constantly moving. These trivial or lower level fights usually kill quite a few targets very quickly.

Most of your stand and deliver 3 action rounds are against bosses. Bosses don't usually have low saves or AC, which is why they take longer to kill because the usual tactics for taking out weaker targets don't work.

I haven't found the third action Assurance Athletics comes up that often in trivial battles and won't work in the hard battles. I did try it when I read about it on here, then after a time of seeing it not particularly useful got rid of it and never used bothered again.

I usually use Assurance for Crafting to make the calculations quick and easy. A wizard with Assurance can craft a lot of low level items fast and without messing around with rolls with Assurance.

That's my experience with Assurance.


Deriven Firelion wrote:

In my experience, there's lot of actions spent on movement where you don't get many three action rounds. If you're fighting a group of trivial enemies CR equal to CR-2, at low level you're moving into battle, focusing on particularly dangerous targets, letting your casters pepper them with ranged spells. You're battle is constantly moving. These trivial or lower level fights usually kill quite a few targets very quickly.

Most of your stand and deliver 3 action rounds are against bosses. Bosses don't usually have low saves or AC, which is why they take longer to kill because the usual tactics for taking out weaker targets don't work.

I haven't found the third action Assurance Athletics comes up that often in trivial battles and won't work in the hard battles. I did try it when I read about it on here, then after a time of seeing it not particularly useful got rid of it and never used bothered again.

I usually use Assurance for Crafting to make the calculations quick and easy. A wizard with Assurance can craft a lot of low level items fast and without messing around with rolls with Assurance.

That's my experience with Assurance.

I like intimidate ( even trained, with items and a good charisma ) can easily carry up to lvl 10.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
HumbleGamer wrote:
Captain Morgan wrote:


Assurance is really, really good for climbing and swimming and occasionally useful for tripping or grappling. Occasionally useful in combat is the best you can hope for out of a skill feat, really.

HumbleGamer wrote:

knowing the save on a RK, unless a specific class feat that allows you to directly ask the dm for that one, feels a little odd.

It may happen that sometimes the DM will tell you a save, but not all the times. RK is trying to focus yourself in other to remember something about the creature. Not necessarily what you need.

That's not true. It says: You recall the knowledge accurately or gain a useful clue about your current situation.

So either you're remembering the specific thing you're looking for or you gain a useful clue. Saying "not necessarily what you need" is the worst possible way to handle RK, ignores the rule, and assures no one will bother with it.

False.

It can be anything.

Given a troll, you can have "fire weakness", "low fortitude", the "low will", "a specific attack the troll has", etc.

Any is useful ( the DM won't tell you the troll lives XX years as it is not "useful" ) depends how you intend to play.

Forcing ( or expecting ) a specific save is not what the RK is meant to do. There are specific feats that do exactly what you mentioned.

You can homebrew that way if you want, or be more permissive with your group.

If your GM is giving you information that is useful, I would argue that is "what you need." The GM has discretion on whether that include saving throws or not, but that's not what you said initially.


Actually, it was.

My post was in reponse to this previous one

Malk_Content wrote:


As for knowledge. Spending one action to maybe know what a save score is AND possible get a Trip, better than recall knowledge that is.

with "need".

This means that even expending 1 action to perform a generic RK is not granted to reward you with what you want to exactly know.

Leaving apart that even being rewarded with "low reflexes" might end up with the target being immune to your attempt because of a higher fortitude than you assurance check.

Grand Lodge

It ignores MAP, which is good.
It's a mediocre result which is bad.
You know exactly what you'll get every time, which is great!

It'll never work against on-level enemies' good saves, but against a weaker save or a weaker minion it can work. The real benefit is if it works, you've just found a guaranteed success and you can keep doing it! And if it doesn't, you just stop. You only lost one action.

HumbleGamer wrote:
Guntermench wrote:
Quote:
1) How much knowledge of the opponents you have. Sometimes you can make a reasonable guess who is the minion with the low reflex save, other times you can't.
I mean, if you've got nothing better to do you can just try one. If it works, great! Do it every turn. If it doesn't? Try another one.

So you lost your action for that round.

Which means that apart from having a limited pool of choices ( not sure what % is each level out of 100% ), you also have to take into account that sometimes you'll be wasting your action.

Not saying it's not worth it, but that it's a little more complicated that "it doesn't work? Try another one".

You're not wasting it any more than if you'd tried something else and failed the check. Less so, because you learned something useful!


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I've seen people use it as a poor man's low save detector. A strike you were going to do anyways followed by two actions to disarm or trip and grapple or shove can help you quickly pinpoint which of the two is the low save for your friend's follow up spells and the like.


Super Zero wrote:

It ignores MAP, which is good.

It's a mediocre result which is bad.
You know exactly what you'll get every time, which is great!

It'll never work against on-level enemies' good saves, but against a weaker save or a weaker minion it can work. The real benefit is if it works, you've just found a guaranteed success and you can keep doing it! And if it doesn't, you just stop. You only lost one action.

HumbleGamer wrote:
Guntermench wrote:
Quote:
1) How much knowledge of the opponents you have. Sometimes you can make a reasonable guess who is the minion with the low reflex save, other times you can't.
I mean, if you've got nothing better to do you can just try one. If it works, great! Do it every turn. If it doesn't? Try another one.

So you lost your action for that round.

Which means that apart from having a limited pool of choices ( not sure what % is each level out of 100% ), you also have to take into account that sometimes you'll be wasting your action.

Not saying it's not worth it, but that it's a little more complicated that "it doesn't work? Try another one".

You're not wasting it any more than if you'd tried something else and failed the check. Less so, because you learned something useful!

That's opinable, especially because the other check would involve using your stats + item bonus in addition to proficiency ( on a non MAP check, obviously ).

I am not saying it's not the right thing to do ( after all, if a character invested in athletics and assurance, that's the way for them to go, unless combat alternatives ), but rather that a player should consider failures when comparing that combo to other alternatives ( for example, is checking on an enemy better than raising a shield or demoralize them? ).

For example, I'd expect a character going for assurance athletics against an armored soldier or a large/huge creature that looks clumsy ( for example a zombie hulk, but I don't necessarily expect them to go trying assurance over and over, while they can have some alternatives like intimidate, aid, RK, and similar.

There will be situations where the character would go for it even when not entirely sure about the odds ( for example, being in melee with an enemy, with no alternatives but athletics ), but I think there may be better possibilities for the character.

If the player built them with nothing but athletics, well... then the way is to go for assurance athletics all day long. I can definitely agree on this.


HumbleGamer wrote:
Super Zero wrote:

It ignores MAP, which is good.

It's a mediocre result which is bad.
You know exactly what you'll get every time, which is great!

It'll never work against on-level enemies' good saves, but against a weaker save or a weaker minion it can work. The real benefit is if it works, you've just found a guaranteed success and you can keep doing it! And if it doesn't, you just stop. You only lost one action.

HumbleGamer wrote:
Guntermench wrote:
Quote:
1) How much knowledge of the opponents you have. Sometimes you can make a reasonable guess who is the minion with the low reflex save, other times you can't.
I mean, if you've got nothing better to do you can just try one. If it works, great! Do it every turn. If it doesn't? Try another one.

So you lost your action for that round.

Which means that apart from having a limited pool of choices ( not sure what % is each level out of 100% ), you also have to take into account that sometimes you'll be wasting your action.

Not saying it's not worth it, but that it's a little more complicated that "it doesn't work? Try another one".

You're not wasting it any more than if you'd tried something else and failed the check. Less so, because you learned something useful!

That's opinable, especially because the other check would involve using your stats + item bonus in addition to proficiency ( on a non MAP check, obviously ).

I am not saying it's not the right thing to do ( after all, if a character invested in athletics and assurance, that's the way for them to go, unless combat alternatives ), but rather that a player should consider failures when comparing that combo to other alternatives ( for example, is checking on an enemy better than raising a shield or demoralize them? ).

For example, I'd expect a character going for assurance athletics against an armored soldier or a large/huge creature that looks clumsy ( for example a zombie hulk, but I don't necessarily expect them to go trying...

Definitely depends on the opportunity cost of a third action for certain. You have a lot of stuff you can do with different classes.

For my druid, my primary attack routine is weapon attack and save cantrip, focus spell, or spell.

For my champion, it's raise a shield, attack, and either second attack or make sure to position for champion's reaction to be most effective.

For a rogue, position to flank often requiring a move though gang up can help this.

I always encourage my players and I'll say the same on this forum, a player should think about what your attack routine is going to look like, test it in game, and if you can fit something in that seems like a good strategy go for it, if it doesn't fit into your actions per round, then don't waste resources on it.

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