Some thoughts on attributes in PF2


Pathfinder Second Edition General Discussion

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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

There is a lot of talk and thought going around right now on attributes in PF2 and especially the relationship between ancestry, class and attributes and what kind of attribute soereads are necessary for X character idea to be feasible.

For many of us, character building is a game in and of itself that provides its own endless hours of enjoyment. Many people have their own sets of “rules” for what makes a character concept viable or not, and all of those “rules” are incredibly subjective, and table and campaign dependent. There is a whole other discussion to be had about wether whether attribute flaws as a trade off for attribute boosts is a fair way to keep the game balanced mechanically and what are the narrative consequences of encouraging the idea of “dump stats” that I care about, but am seeing take place in other threads. What I would rather talk about here are some common situations about attributes I see playing out in actual play, that I don’t see often represented in online discussions about character builds.

“You need an 18 starting Key attribute”

There are builds where starting with a -1 to your key thing will really matter. The more times you roll the dice for a certain kind of check, or use a DC to make others roll against it, the more the +1 matters. This is nothing new. However, starting with a 16 instead of an 18 can mean having the exact same bonuses from your attribute as the character starting with the 18 for 10 levels of the game, while giving you 2 extra ability boosts to go to other attributes over the course of the game. Additionally, in APs, I find levels 1 through 4 move very very quickly, some times happening in game in the matter of a week or less. Levels 5 to 9 almost always include the first largest break of down time and tend to draw out into a very long period of time. Levels 10 through 14 usually include at least 1 big down time break as well, and be a long time in play, but so again dies 15 to 19. Level 20 on the other hand tends to be one big dungeon or encounter and then narrative wrap up.

Some players are building always ti the end game, and starting with an 18 is the only way to max out that primary number at level 20.that is not meaningless. But over the grand scheme of the campaign, if you hit patches of adventures where you might level up once or twice largely from social or exploration encounters with fewer combat encounters, you might really feel having all of your attributes and skills tied up in combat stats. One party “face” is often a problem in the way social encounters are designed to include everyone, and having 3 characters who are terrible at any social checks can set a party back more than even having a party fighter who has a 16 key stat.

Starting attribute spreads are only one part of the character building story because of the massive boosts that you get every 5 levels. However, if 2 or 3 of those boosts are going into raising attributes over 18, that can end up with 4 to 6 attribute boosts ending up as “dead boosts” for a significant period of time for your character in play. Be careful thinking about the end goal and not the process of getting there. Campaigns tend to change foci over the course of 20 levels. Having large parts of the game where your character is just trying to survive/get through as quickly as possible to be fully realized can be devastating if your character doesn’t make it. Retraining and down time are not super consistent, but talking to your GM about what you are doing with your character can help you figure out if that niche thing you want to do in X levels is worth investing the time in building that character to get there.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Charisma

In retrospect, "Diplomacy" is problematic as a skill. There probably needed to be a default social interaction scaling attribute that every character is default trained in. Calling it diplomacy would not be right, because I think diplomacy is for more complicated and nuanced social interactions and could be a stand alone skill for negotiations and complex social encounters, but a default "hello there!" skill should have been like perception and be automatically trained. This avoids the awkwardness of having characters who literally cannot socially interact with others at all, and make something intrinsically valuable attached to the charisma attribute that players know will be getting used regularly, like perception. Social interacting is just too intrinsic a part of the game to leave it to something that can be left untrained.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Similarly,

Intelligence

The issue with intelligence is that, for many players, the difference between an 8 and a 10, or a 10 and a 12 is 1 extra trained skill. Most players who start with an 8 or a 10 INT will actively avoid every training in a skill based off that attribute, and will avoid using their lore skill for anything important if they can. Intelligence based challenges in game are notoriously difficult to pull off effectively and are almost always something that one character who specializes in INT can pull all the weight for the whole party.

Recalling knowledge requires so many skill advancements at higher levels that you have to pretty much have class support for getting around needing to boosting 3 to 5 skills to get around it, and is a complicated enough topic of its own that I don't want to get into it all here, but recalling knowledge being the "default thing" for INT outside of classes that specifically build for it leaves the attribute in a nebulous place.

Also, intelligence is a particularly complicated concept for an attribute and our real world attempts to measure it meaningful have been fraught with terrible consequences. In the future, I think the idea of "Intelligence" as a character attribute is something that games are going to have to wrestle with more. Maybe it gets divided into different categories, with root "logic and problem solving" left out of the mix, especially because most games don't factor that into meaningful rolls very well.


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Quote:
In the future, I think the idea of "Intelligence" as a character attribute is something that games are going to have to wrestle with more. Maybe it gets divided into different categories, with root "logic and problem solving" left out of the mix, especially because most games don't factor that into meaningful rolls very well.

Shadowrun has many problems, but effectively redefining Intelligence and Wisdom as Logic and Intuition is not one of them. I kinda disagree with removing logic and problem solving and think moving in that direction would be pretty nice.

Puzzles don't work great, but they're something common enough that they're discussed fairly often, having a cop out is a nice option...


I always felt that intelligence was just the ability to recall and learn information. While wisdom was the ability to interpret and use information.

So intellengence was never about problem solving and logic as it is used IRL.


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I will say that I think the single best & most underappreciated thing that Bioware did with the fantasy genre in Dragon Age is that rather than tying a mage's abilities to something like intelligence or wisdom, they created a more esoteric "magic" stat that was divorced from other concepts of mental capacity, thus allowing you to play a mage who was both a powerful caster and a complete idiot.

But yeah, I've personally become convinced that the concept of "raw intelligence is a myth & the reality is more complicated & complex & multifaceted than any stat in a roleplaying game is ever going to be able to meaningfully convey.

Liberty's Edge

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In this game, Intelligence governs the ability to speak many languages and be especially good at skills you use to recall knowledge.

Maybe it should be called something else.

But then, what they call Strength is actually mostly the ability to hit and hurt in melee combat.


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Starfinder Superscriber

I would like to see something like Traveller's "life path" or something similar, for both Pathfinder 2e AND Starfinder, which is used as an alternative way of generating stats that could possibly inject entropy into the character-creation process.

So -- say we throw all predisposed genetic traits in Pathfinder out the window. 10's across the board. And you make choices akin to Traveller -- you enlist in the army. Roll dice. Well crap, you took an arrow to the knee, and that's going to stay with you for awhile. You have an 8 to DEX or a -5 to your movement speed. But hey, you learned a useful trade during your time in the army. +2 INT and +1 Crafting, etc.

Those would appeal to me, anything to keep us from migrating blatantly towards "Unless you choose feats and other stuff that says otherwise, all player characters regardless of whether dwarf/gnome/elf/orc/human/etc. start out with 30 movement speed, are medium sized, and have 10's across the board with +2 to your choice of two attributes"


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For what it's worth, the reason everyone is a little standardized on certain stats (by default, without feats, though it's weird to ignore feats when they comprise the vast bulk of character customization) is to allow the balance to be really tight. For instance, everyone moving by default within 25 feet per Stride helps design encounters and maps, spell and weapon ranges, and so on, because you know where all the PCs will generally be.


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Intelligence boosts should give Additional Lore instead of a trained skill. Far more useful in the long term, and means the smart character can cover creature identification entirely if they want rather than getting screwed by how many non-Int skills that needs and not being a Rogue.

Leon Aquilla wrote:

I would like to see something like Traveller's "life path" or something similar, for both Pathfinder 2e AND Starfinder, which is used as an alternative way of generating stats that could possibly inject entropy into the character-creation process.

So -- say we throw all predisposed genetic traits in Pathfinder out the window. 10's across the board. And you make choices akin to Traveller -- you enlist in the army. Roll dice. Well crap, you took an arrow to the knee, and that's going to stay with you for awhile. You have an 8 to DEX or a -5 to your movement speed. But hey, you learned a useful trade during your time in the army. +2 INT and +1 Crafting, etc.

Those would appeal to me, anything to keep us from migrating blatantly towards "Unless you choose feats and other stuff that says otherwise, all player characters regardless of whether dwarf/gnome/elf/orc/human/etc. start out with 30 movement speed, are medium sized, and have 10's across the board with +2 to your choice of two attributes"

You know you can just play Traveler if that's what you want, right


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I think if intelligence was renamed a lot of the problems with its connotations would go away. It really in game represents only a few minor things. I've always played that stats are what you ate not who you are anyway.

Especially in PF2 where as you level up your attribute bonus makes up an ever smaller portion of your roll. A 10 cha trained in Diplomacy is 33% better than the 8 cha character at lvl 1. At level 2 that's 25%, by lvl 9 it's 10%


The Raven Black wrote:

In this game, Intelligence governs the ability to speak many languages and be especially good at skills you use to recall knowledge.

Maybe it should be called something else.

But then, what they call Strength is actually mostly the ability to hit and hurt in melee combat.

Mechanically. The entry itself is the ability to learn, reason, analyze situations and understand patterns. It's pretty close to the dictionary definition.


Being able to have int give more expert+ skills would be very helpful for sure. I'm not sure how you do that cleanly, but.


Let's be honest, ability scores aren't really needed at all. I'm not just talking the old modifiers vs scores thing. There a lot of ways you could recombine or trim them down, but they including them is mostly an aesthetic choice. You could build PCs like NPCs and just give them bonuses based on their level. At least for the KAS, if you need to put it to 18 (maaaybe 16) then why make it a choice? Just have the class choice automatically increase your KAS to 18 and let your ability scores fill in your secondary stats. Or just let people pick the things they want to be good at without having to factor in these other scores.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not frothing at the mouth to get rid of them, but they are mostly there because of legacy and the game would work fine without them. It would just look a little different.

Silver Crusade

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Malk_Content wrote:


Especially in PF2 where as you level up your attribute bonus makes up an ever smaller portion of your roll. A 10 cha trained in Diplomacy is 33% better than the 8 cha character at lvl 1. At level 2 that's 25%, by lvl 9 it's 10%

Uh, that really isn't true at all. A +1 is pretty much as important (when going for level appropriate DCs) at level 1 and level 20.

And the spread between a good stat and a poor stat generally gets higher and higher. A character that managed to squeeze out a +2 at level 1 is much, much more likely to raise that stat as they level up than 1 who started with a 10.


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pauljathome wrote:
Malk_Content wrote:


Especially in PF2 where as you level up your attribute bonus makes up an ever smaller portion of your roll. A 10 cha trained in Diplomacy is 33% better than the 8 cha character at lvl 1. At level 2 that's 25%, by lvl 9 it's 10%

Uh, that really isn't true at all. A +1 is pretty much as important (when going for level appropriate DCs) at level 1 and level 20.

And the spread between a good stat and a poor stat generally gets higher and higher. A character that managed to squeeze out a +2 at level 1 is much, much more likely to raise that stat as they level up than 1 who started with a 10.

Sure if you are building a character who intends to use that skill against level appropriate things often you will probably want to invest more into it. But to just drop a single training into a skill, you'll get to the point where most day to day uses you'll be fine (like an 8 str character who grabs Athletics trained is going to be fine climbing trees and the like after a few levels.)

How easy it is to catch up is a weird meta things based on how long your campaign is scheduled to go. If its gunna stop at ten, then for levels 5,6,7,8 and 9 you are just as good as the non flaw ancestry who invested everything at character creation into that stat.


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Unicore wrote:

Charisma

In retrospect, "Diplomacy" is problematic as a skill. There probably needed to be a default social interaction scaling attribute that every character is default trained in. Calling it diplomacy would not be right, because I think diplomacy is for more complicated and nuanced social interactions and could be a stand alone skill for negotiations and complex social encounters, but a default "hello there!" skill should have been like perception and be automatically trained. This avoids the awkwardness of having characters who literally cannot socially interact with others at all, and make something intrinsically valuable attached to the charisma attribute that players know will be getting used regularly, like perception. Social interacting is just too intrinsic a part of the game to leave it to something that can be left untrained.

I think if anything charisma could be broken up into affinities, traits everyone has. While some people just have an easier time getting others to like them, no one is universally beloved. The gregarious, life of the party person may be aggravating to a wallflower. And the crotchety old hermit may find themselves more endeared with the standoffish ranger than the fancy boy bard. If you share an affinity with someone, then you should get a bonus to your check. If affinities were assigned numeric values, you could add that NPC's affinity score to your own when making the roll.

All that might be more granularity than the combat focus of pathfinder wants on social interaction. But I think part of the problem is D&D and Pathfinder both sort of half ass the default social rules. They can discourage role-play for characters without the skills to back it up, and don't necessarily enable uncharismatic players to feel charismatic if the GM wants them to talk in character or outline what they are saying.

This is the problem that Influence Encounters solve, where you use different skills tailored to your target. But as an optional sub-system it takes work to apply it and it isn't suited to spontaneity. Maybe you should always be able to use an NPC's best skills as a default to Make an Impression. Might be an easy band-aid to apply.


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Captain Morgan wrote:
Unicore wrote:

Charisma

In retrospect, "Diplomacy" is problematic as a skill. There probably needed to be a default social interaction scaling attribute that every character is default trained in. Calling it diplomacy would not be right, because I think diplomacy is for more complicated and nuanced social interactions and could be a stand alone skill for negotiations and complex social encounters, but a default "hello there!" skill should have been like perception and be automatically trained. This avoids the awkwardness of having characters who literally cannot socially interact with others at all, and make something intrinsically valuable attached to the charisma attribute that players know will be getting used regularly, like perception. Social interacting is just too intrinsic a part of the game to leave it to something that can be left untrained.

I think if anything charisma could be broken up into affinities, traits everyone has. While some people just have an easier time getting others to like them, no one is universally beloved. The gregarious, life of the party person may be aggravating to a wallflower. And the crotchety old hermit may find themselves more endeared with the standoffish ranger than the fancy boy bard. If you share an affinity with someone, then you should get a bonus to your check. If affinities were assigned numeric values, you could add that NPC's affinity score to your own when making the roll.

All that might be more granularity than the combat focus of pathfinder wants on social interaction. But I think part of the problem is D&D and Pathfinder both sort of half ass the default social rules. They can discourage role-play for characters without the skills to back it up, and don't necessarily enable uncharismatic players to feel charismatic if the GM wants them to talk in character or outline what they are saying.

This is the problem that Influence Encounters solve, where you use different skills tailored to your target. But as an optional sub-system it...

That granularity is already in the game, so long as the GM is willing to put in the work. The GMG has rules for using alternate skills in place of diplomacy when appropriate. You always can use diplomacy (which is good, makes it the skill for getting people who normally wouldn't like you to do so.) Like in order to improve relations with Amiri I could use Athletics, Intimidation or Survival as alternatives to Diplomacy.


Isn't that just Influence Encounters though? Did I miss a general rule? I feel like I mentioned both that the rules exist and they take work .


Captain Morgan wrote:
Isn't that just Influence Encounters though? Did I miss a general rule? I feel like I mentioned both that the rules exist and they take work .

In the same way you can use combat actions outside of combat I don't know why you would be limited to only using that system in scripted influence encounters. It's the game giving you the framework for using other skills in place of diplomacy.


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Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber

I'll be honest the automatic perception thing is one of my least favorite things about 2e, i'm not sure how I would feel about an automatic progression to a social skill like that would be. It does sound better then the perception since the more nuanced stuff still seems to be it's own category in your suggestion. But it would be something i'd be really wary of.


Malk_Content wrote:
Captain Morgan wrote:
Isn't that just Influence Encounters though? Did I miss a general rule? I feel like I mentioned both that the rules exist and they take work .
In the same way you can use combat actions outside of combat I don't know why you would be limited to only using that system in scripted influence encounters. It's the game giving you the framework for using other skills in place of diplomacy.

OK, but then I guess I'm not sure where the contradiction is. I said you can do a thing but it takes extra work, you said if you are willing to put in extra work you can do a thing.

My point wasn't that the tools don't exist, it is that using them takes more work than should be necessary.


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How about...

Not forcing people to have skills they don't want.


Captain Morgan wrote:
Malk_Content wrote:
Captain Morgan wrote:
Isn't that just Influence Encounters though? Did I miss a general rule? I feel like I mentioned both that the rules exist and they take work .
In the same way you can use combat actions outside of combat I don't know why you would be limited to only using that system in scripted influence encounters. It's the game giving you the framework for using other skills in place of diplomacy.

OK, but then I guess I'm not sure where the contradiction is. I said you can do a thing but it takes extra work, you said if you are willing to put in extra work you can do a thing.

My point wasn't that the tools don't exist, it is that using them takes more work than should be necessary.

You are absolutely right, something went wonky with the page load (my house is very long and thin so I sometimes inly get partial loads moving between WiFi boosters.) My bad.


Malk_Content wrote:
Captain Morgan wrote:
Malk_Content wrote:
Captain Morgan wrote:
Isn't that just Influence Encounters though? Did I miss a general rule? I feel like I mentioned both that the rules exist and they take work .
In the same way you can use combat actions outside of combat I don't know why you would be limited to only using that system in scripted influence encounters. It's the game giving you the framework for using other skills in place of diplomacy.

OK, but then I guess I'm not sure where the contradiction is. I said you can do a thing but it takes extra work, you said if you are willing to put in extra work you can do a thing.

My point wasn't that the tools don't exist, it is that using them takes more work than should be necessary.

You are absolutely right, something went wonky with the page load (my house is very long and thin so I sometimes inly get partial loads moving between WiFi boosters.) My bad.

Cool cool cool. I just got confused.

Radiant Oath

Unicore wrote:

Charisma

In retrospect, "Diplomacy" is problematic as a skill. There probably needed to be a default social interaction scaling attribute that every character is default trained in. Calling it diplomacy would not be right, because I think diplomacy is for more complicated and nuanced social interactions and could be a stand alone skill for negotiations and complex social encounters, but a default "hello there!" skill should have been like perception and be automatically trained. This avoids the awkwardness of having characters who literally cannot socially interact with others at all, and make something intrinsically valuable attached to the charisma attribute that players know will be getting used regularly, like perception. Social interacting is just too intrinsic a part of the game to leave it to something that can be left untrained.

This is deep, and I'm going to spend some time thinking about it. I don't know if I want any numbers attached to social interactions. I do want a chance of failure, and I want players who aren't sliver-tongued to be able to play characters who are good at social interactions. Those two factors push me back to mechanics.

How about a flat check? With feats to improve success? Everyone would have a chance, but if you want to play a honey-worded character, you could take those feats.


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Unicore wrote:

Charisma

In retrospect, "Diplomacy" is problematic as a skill. There probably needed to be a default social interaction scaling attribute that every character is default trained in. Calling it diplomacy would not be right, because I think diplomacy is for more complicated and nuanced social interactions and could be a stand alone skill for negotiations and complex social encounters, but a default "hello there!" skill should have been like perception and be automatically trained. This avoids the awkwardness of having characters who literally cannot socially interact with others at all, and make something intrinsically valuable attached to the charisma attribute that players know will be getting used regularly, like perception. Social interacting is just too intrinsic a part of the game to leave it to something that can be left untrained.

Uhhhhhh... no. Like super no.

I'm pretty sure this is an assumption based on the kind of game you like, but diplomacy being a "universal" skill is far from true. If your game is both heavily RP focused as well as, somewhat contrarily, very focused on rolling Diplomacy for any kind of conversation the PC's have, then yeah it's a universal skill.

But for the way PF2 seems to be designed, Diplomacy-focused conversations are likely meant to be no more prevalent than combat, exploration, or normal RP. That last one is important because I don't think you should be using Diplomacy in every social encounter. Sometimes PC's just wanna talk to an NPC. If they aren't actively trying to convince that NPC of something, then Diplomacy rolls aren't necessary, and there are a ton of things that either shouldn't require a roll or would have a relatively low DC.

Diplomacy is a skill because sometimes, someone needs to convince an NPC of something very important, or you need a representative to speak for the party (like in a royal court or similar). In cases like that you're talking about a very specialized skillset that isn't easy or necessary for many people to acquire. Further, you're talking about a role that not everyone wants or needs to be active in.

Saying Diplomacy needs to be universal is a bit like saying Arcana should be universal since pretty much every party is going to encounter magic items/traps/spells. But that doesn't make sense because that's a role that would be held by a specialized person and not everyone needs to worry about their own chances. All of the theoretical negatives of Diplomacy as a skill are really things that should be handled by the GM (social nuances and such) or seem to be coming from a misunderstanding of when Diplomacy should actually be rolled.


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I think a "social" stat of sorts that autoscales like Perception could be ok, but I think RP and social challenges need to be redesigned completely from the ground and separated from skills alltogether for them to feel actually good to roll dice on. Something like being its own subsystem of rules, with some stat/skill elements improving your chances, but mostly being independent from them.

I'm quite bad at this kind of stuff, but something like a set of flat DCs depending on how aligned the NPC is to what you are saying, what you are requesting or how you are carrying yourself modified slighly by some other stats (Like CHA or WIS) that add a small mod to the check. During an interaction with an NPC, you could need to beat a few of these to get what you want (something like getting a certain amount of them right).

As for what to do now, my group and I just talk things out with NPCs and only roll diplomacy or deception in social encounters when we are trying to convince someone on something with decently high stakes or clearly lie to them. Whe have been doing that for ages now and it feels much better tbh.


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Back in the ancient days, we decided things by roleplaying without rolls for social interactions. If the player came up with something that seemed good, we went with it.

I can see the need for a skill for lying, but general social interactions should be roleplaying. Players and DM should talk. See where it goes. Let what happens occur organically.


I see diplomacy useful for a few things:

1) For players who are not good at conversation to still be able to play a face.
2) To handle adversarial situations where you are trying to convince someone of something they normally wouldn't do.
3) To handle bargaining beyond "I will trade X for Y" without taking the whole session.
4) To simplify gather information so that the story can progress, instead of spending 4 actual hours trying to talk to people and getting nothing.
5) A fail safe in case the player says/does something dumb and is trying to prevent it from ruining things. The equivalent of trying to catch falling plates.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Saying tha social encounters are not something every character should be participating in seems pretty counter to current game design theory that incorporates social encounters into more and more published content.

There is a reason you can’t really be untrained in any core combat proficiencies: every character needs to be able to participate in a combat encounter in some fashion and not have a defense that can be so far behind that the character just becomes a critical failure engine. But having no defense or proficiency tied to your character’s ability to socially get along with others means there are characters who never want to participate in any conversation ever. I think that is a mistake for a social and cooperative game.


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Unicore wrote:

Saying tha social encounters are not something every character should be participating in seems pretty counter to current game design theory that incorporates social encounters into more and more published content.

There is a reason you can’t really be untrained in any core combat proficiencies: every character needs to be able to participate in a combat encounter in some fashion and not have a defense that can be so far behind that the character just becomes a critical failure engine. But having no defense or proficiency tied to your character’s ability to socially get along with others means there are characters who never want to participate in any conversation ever. I think that is a mistake for a social and cooperative game.

Sure but as has been pointed out, the game already has ways to involve everyone in social encounters. You can talk shop with the blacksmith using craft, or maybe try your hands at mercantile lore etc.


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Everyone can Follow the Expert to participate in conversation, at least to make an impression or coerce.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Guntermench wrote:
Everyone can Follow the Expert to participate in conversation, at least to make an impression or coerce.

That is an interesting idea, but follow the expert is an exploration activity for situations that might call for repeated rolls. I could see value in GMs playing social encounters out this way, but I haven’t seen that worked functionally into published material much.

I also get the using other skills in social encounters, but it often seems like many GMs eventually boil any interaction with NPCs that culminates in some kind of request down to a social skill roll, and I see a lot of players participating in the role playing of these events, only to pull out of the conversation at the last second when it is time for rolls to be made, sometimes speaking over the player of the character that is seen as the party face.


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Unicore wrote:

Saying tha social encounters are not something every character should be participating in seems pretty counter to current game design theory that incorporates social encounters into more and more published content.

There is a reason you can’t really be untrained in any core combat proficiencies: every character needs to be able to participate in a combat encounter in some fashion and not have a defense that can be so far behind that the character just becomes a critical failure engine. But having no defense or proficiency tied to your character’s ability to socially get along with others means there are characters who never want to participate in any conversation ever. I think that is a mistake for a social and cooperative game.

Can you clarify a point for me? Is your argument that all characters should have at least a basic tool to participate i structured influence non-combat encounters, or that any NPC interaction requires a diplomacy roll (of some sort,not necessarily involving that exact skill), so all characters should have a basic ability to, you know, order another beer or ask where th bathroom is?

Because I see the merits in the first but disagree on the second. A simple Cha flat check would suffice, if a roll was necessary at all (and well within established rules).


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I could be slightly confused because flat check to me means no bonuses, so a charisma flat check is a confusing concept to me, especially as PF2 largely avoids letting attribute bonus alone matter that much in any check. Proficiency and attribute-based checks are not super compatible as they mean having to have a second set of DCs to keep track of that don't take any proficiency into consideration.

But yes, I largely meant that given that PF2 adventure design would really come to integrate more and more influence based social encounters, basic social interactions should be attached to an automatically increasing core proficiency that is valued as a core proficiency in the same way that perception has become and your basic saves are.

With CHA often taking on the role of a character's ability to exert their will over others (the world, magic, npcs) I think a charisma based saving throw or core proficiency would actually have made a lot of sense. But I don't think that was super clear to everyone at the start of the PF2 cycle. That has largely grown onto the game with expansion material.


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I don't think it needs automatic progression. If anything it just needs more interaction with lower level NPCs. The vast majority of random schmucks you're going to run into walking around some town in the ass end of nowhere are levels -1 to 2, which would have awkward but not impossible DCs for someone with no investment.

Meanwhile the people that build around that can continue to shine in their moments.

Another alternative could be Simple DCs for baseline competency. The Untrained DC is 10. Rolling Diplomacy against a DC 10 to not make an ass of yourself in basic interactions is perfectly reasonable. For higher etiquette situations let them follow the lead of someone more experienced.

If you want to be able to influence people, invest in it.


Part of the problem is that people trigger social checks without realizing it. A player who let's themselves slip into character and get immersed in the fiction might make a suggestion, point something out, or make a lie of omission, without realizing they are making a Request, Coerce, or Lie check by the rules of the game, and their character sucks at those.

There are ways to control for that by retconning what was said or who said it, or elbowing the bard player and suggesting they say the cool thing you just thought of. You can ignore the show don't tell principles of story telling and just talk to the GM about what you are hoping to see from the scene. But they all feel bad. They take you out of the fiction, out of the moment. They discourage spontaneity and stunt organic character growth.


Captain Morgan wrote:
Part of the problem is that people trigger social checks without realizing it. A player who let's themselves slip into character and get immersed in the fiction might make a suggestion, point something out, or make a lie of omission, without realizing they are making a Request, Coerce, or Lie check by the rules of the game, and their character sucks at those.

I've made a whole topic "Untrained (social) checks" about this some time ago. People gave several interesting suggestions, but I wouldn't say that the problem is completely solved. At least it really demands a work from the GM.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Captain Morgan wrote:
They discourage spontaneity and stunt organic character growth.

I'd argue if the way you're handling an encounter discourages spontaneity and stunts character growth, then the GM is running the encounter poorly.

Sovereign Court

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I'm still searching for the sweet spot in between "you should use a social skill for social challenges, otherwise what's the point of social skills" and "you should be able to use topical skills based on the topic of the social challenge, so that people who didn't go Face have a shot too".

My vague idea is that the value of the social skills should be that they're a decent option in any social challenge. Meanwhile, there is always a topic and you could use skills relating to that topic. But not every PC has skills relating to every topic. The barbarian might just not have anything to contribute to an arcane discussion while the wizard uses Arcana and the champion uses Diplomacy to be a gracious chairperson and asks everyone's views, and the rogue uses Deception to appear more knowledgeable than they really are.

Related to this, I also want these challenges to care about the identity of the speaker. The upper crust champion might have high Diplomacy but not get along great with the scruff dock workers (-2 penalty), but still vastly outclass the figher with a laborer background who doesn't have any relevant trained skill, and at level 10 the level difference would just be crushing. Although arguably, if you have such a relevant background, maybe the GM should allow you to leverage your Labor Lore that you're trained in. I dunno. I'm still searching on this one.

I also think these kinds of things get better when it's either:

- it's a short and fast scene and it's fine that not everyone is a prime participant this time, because it's over fast

- it's a bigger scene, but there are different people to talk to with different interests and the real issue becomes figuring out who among the PCs should talk to which NPC. In this case, the Face PCs could be a kind of wildcard because they can do a good job of talking to anyone. But everyone still has some social work to do.


Asc: I'd say try treating any NPC as having an Influence Statblock, at least for Make an Impression. You can adjust their will DC for relevant skills, using the NPC's own skills as a guide. And for an extremely appropriate Lore, slap a Very Easy or even Incredibly Easy adjustmen on there.

Squiggit wrote:
Captain Morgan wrote:
They discourage spontaneity and stunt organic character growth.
I'd argue if the way you're handling an encounter discourages spontaneity and stunts character growth, then the GM is running the encounter poorly.

Well, yeah, I'm not saying these are examples of sterling GM behavior. But to an extent they are just following the rules.


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To be honest, one of my favorite attribute systems was the one used in old White Wolf games where you had a "Force Stat", a "Flexibility Stat", and a "Resilience Stat" for Physical, Mental, and Social.

The physical trio is just Strength (how hard you can hit), Dexterity (how well you can get out of the way), and Constitution (how hard you can get hit) but you could also do the same thing for intellectual and social force/flexibility/resilience.


Unicore wrote:
I could be slightly confused because flat check to me means no bonuses, so a charisma flat check is a confusing concept to me, especially as PF2 largely avoids letting attribute bonus alone matter that much in any check. Proficiency and attribute-based checks are not super compatible as they mean having to have a second set of DCs to keep track of that don't take any proficiency into consideration.

No, that’s not quite correct.

You are correct that flat checks do not usually have any bonuses, but if as DM you feel they are appropriate, you can apply them. The actual text is something along the lines of “only abilities that affect flat checks can apply a bonus or penalty, and usually only for certain flat checks” I am rather liberal with where and what I apply to such rolls, since I like using attribute rolls, but I did forget that I am unusual in doing that.

Probably a more accurate description of what I’m doing is using Simple DCs, ones that are achievable with just an attribute. As literally every creature can use the same set DC for such challenges (though you can modify them as you like, I prefer to modify the bonus applied instead to keep the DCs uniform), it is a lot less to keep track of than you are probably imagining, and also something I worked out and kept handy several years ago with no need to update since.


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PossibleCabbage wrote:

To be honest, one of my favorite attribute systems was the one used in old White Wolf games where you had a "Force Stat", a "Flexibility Stat", and a "Resilience Stat" for Physical, Mental, and Social.

The physical trio is just Strength (how hard you can hit), Dexterity (how well you can get out of the way), and Constitution (how hard you can get hit) but you could also do the same thing for intellectual and social force/flexibility/resilience.

I've been thinking of that stat system through this whole thread and am glad someone mentioned it. If Int/Wis/Cha were renamed, or at least recontextualized, to be the mental mirrors to Str/Dex/Con that'd fix any lingering issues I'd have with them. Making stats tools for describing the desired type of result--a forceful one, a flexible one, etc--does a lot to put a lot of stat concerns to bed in my mind.

Fate Accelerated has a similar system, and I'm a big fan of that approach, too. There are six outcomes which loosely correspond to the six ability scores, and a character has different ratings in those outcomes.


Ascalaphus wrote:
I'm still searching for the sweet spot in between "you should use a social skill for social challenges, otherwise what's the point of social skills" and "you should be able to use topical skills based on the topic of the social challenge, so that people who didn't go Face have a shot too".

In my opinion, the big issue is that GMs (and adventures) ask for social skill checks for no valid reasons but to roll dice.

Like, you're looking for a ship, you go and ask at the harbor's master office => Diplomacy check! But is it really sensitive information?
You ask information about an investigation to the guard => Diplomacy check! But is the case secret? Or is it accessible information?
You ask the librarian where to find the book you're looking for => Diplomacy check! As if it wasn't his job to give you the book you're looking for.

So you end up in a situation where every social interaction has to be handled by the face because there's a potential for a skill check. That's not normal. There should be a small number of interactions that have to be handled by the face and that should be obvious: Speaking to the king, lying your way through the guards, etc... And for the other interactions, roleplay and not rollplay.


You could look at what you do with stats and start from there for a rebuild.

I tend to think in terms of these general uses for stats:

-Force, the ability to influence a challenge in a straightforward way.

-Resist, the ability to resist a challenge in a straightforward way.

-Manipulate, the ability to influence a challenge with finesse.

-Avoid, the ability to resist incoming challenges with finesse.

Then you figure that you can do those things physically, mentally, socially, and with magic and you have four stats with four uses. Characters might be straightforward physically but cunning mentally or could lean into defensive uses of their talents while being weaker on offense.

Tie these stats into skills, figure out which dice to roll, and you have the bones of something with a lot more freedom and a lot less baggage than the traditional array of six stats.

Sovereign Court

Captain Morgan wrote:
Asc: I'd say try treating any NPC as having an Influence Statblock, at least for Make an Impression. You can adjust their will DC for relevant skills, using the NPC's own skills as a guide. And for an extremely appropriate Lore, slap a Very Easy or even Incredibly Easy adjustmen on there.

Yes and no. I think treating each NPC as having an influence statblock makes sense. Or possibly taking the topic under discussion has having an influence statblock.

Like, if you're arguing before a jury, your expertise as a guard on shift might be more relevant (= topic at hand; use City Lore) than that a member of the jury is a wizard (= NPC, using Arcana), since you aren't really able to talk about arcane aspects.

Unless that particular case has arcane aspects of course.

---

But what I don't really agree with is making the alternative-to-social skill easier. I've played quite a few PFS scenarios where that was done, and I found it rather irritating that as the social focused character, in most interactions, I was WORSE than someone else at a social scene, because the alternative skill was so much easier.

It makes you wonder why you even bothered to take social skills to begin with because you've been tricked; using social skills is never the best solution. The best solution is to shove forward whoever matches the conversation partner.

If someone is say, a wizard who's really good at Arcana and talking to an NPC wizard, they don't really need a DC benefit compared to the Diplomat; they have a strong skill of their own to begin with.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Using other skills for social interactions feels like set up to an eventual social skill check to me. And I think the whole reason why it became necessary as a full replacement is because there is no social proficiency that scales with level built into the character.

More importantly though, I think the 20/20 hindsight mistake about it is that making every character have to advance there weapon proficiency every level as a conceit of the game but not any kind of basic ability to resolve conflict without violence ends up “showing their hand” that in the playtest social encounters really were a secondary thought to combat encounters. I totally get why, and I do think having advanced social skills be skills is the right call, but the basic ability to connect with other people or to calm down a situation, should auto advance with level.

Sovereign Court

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I sort of agree. It's always annoying when your level 15 barbarian comes into a village and can't really NOT critically hit and pulp anyone they Strike. But since he's not trained in Intimidate he's weirdly un-frightening.

Unless you decide that being scary is also based on something other than Intimidate, but then you're back to your idea of some social stuff being basic built-in proficiency instead of optional.

I'd like social skills to be more about going beyond what's already reasonable.

If you ask a shopkeeper to sell you something for the normal price, that doesn't take Diplomacy. If you ask them to put in a lot of effort to order something specially for you and he's not sure you'll be back alive from the dungeon to come and pay him, that's worth Diplomacy.

If you're a terribly deadly barbarian, you don't need to Intimidate to scare people. If you're completely ordinary looking and you want to make that barbarian think that there's more to you than can be seen and that he should back off, that's Intimidate.

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