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I think this should be moved to Homebrew. Here on Advice you are more likely to get people like me telling you that this is a player and perception problem and that a better fix for this is learning how to fail-forward and otherwise enjoy playing out setbacks.
As far as other problems that this change would cause, I think you pretty much have the mechanics of it - but I don't think you have quite realized what that will mean to the gameplay. It means that even more than normal, the challenge's relative level is going to be the primary determining factor in whether the party succeeds or not. You, as the GM, simply get to decide if the player character's abilities work or not.
So which are you going to choose?
And if that has already been decided, why are you even rolling dice at all?
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The whole game is based on the 4 degrees of success. With your houserule, you nearly eliminate 2 of them. Among the results:
- First attacks will nearly always hit, second attacks will nearly always miss.
- Critical hits will become a rarity, essentially killing any build based on them (Fatal/Deadly weapons, critical specialization).
- Critical failures will also disappear. Some actions have nasty, but rare, critical failure effects (RK, maneuvers, etc...). Others are based on the enemy critically failing (Riposte), these will become useless.
- Spellcasters will lose these rare moments when an enemy rolls a critical failure. It's sad (in my opinion).
- Specialists will nearly always succeed, amateurs will nearly always fail. At high level, you'll only roll the 3 skills you raise to Legendary and ignore the rest.
Overall, I feel this rule kills a big portion of the game. Casters will just have 2 degrees of success to take into account, martials will make one attack per round and that's all. Some builds (Double Slice, Spellstrike) will be massively improved, others (Flurry Ranger, Monk) massively nerfed.
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It's a very bad idea for the reasons mentioned, but also because the premise "variance can often take the wind out of an otherwise fun game session" begs the question: Why are you using a probabilistic game system while the main reason probability is used appears to be a detriment to your group?
It's a lot like playing poker and deciding that getting a bad hand isn't fun, so you change the rules so everyone is very likely to get the same hand.
The examples you gave sound mostly like issues of low rolls causing failures, rather than high rolls making success happen faster/more easily. Would it be possible to simply turn the encounter difficulty down a bit? As others have said, this does mess with the math a lot more than a simple extra 5 or 10 percentage points added to the odds of success.
I was also suspecting maybe they need easier obstacles if PC setbacks are setting back the players so much. Whether that's because it's too hard now or the players prefer easy mode doesn't matter so much as they aren't feeling like the prevailing/progressing heroes they want to play.
PF2's baseline has a bit of grit to it (albeit still within heroic fantasy bounds). That toughness is why many tables play with an alternative rule or two to suit their tastes (while few choose to make it grittier).That said, learning to fail forward is an important storytelling tool. Many of my most memorable moments have been sparked by extraordinary rolls (good or bad), so I reject dulling the edge of that tool.
I do see one point in the original posting that I could see something being done about.
I've seen my players roll a natural 1 and hero point into another natural 1.
I have also experienced something like that myself. It always stings quite a bit to spend a very limited resource like that for pretty much no effect.
Some things I could see doing:
Refund the Hero Point if the second result is the same degree of success (not on a worse success result, because that would encourage crit fishing with them).
Using a dice variant that does have less variation for the Hero Point reroll - one that does end up chopping down the probabilities for critical results in either direction. Such as 1d10+4.
To steal from Torg/Torg Eternity in that when you spend a Possibility (sort of a Hero/Fortune point) there is a minimum for the die roll (10). Could have a spent hero point act like Assurance without taking unduly from that Feat, depending on the flow of Hero Points.
Assurance itself doesn't behave like that. It vaguely looks like Take-10 from PF1. It definitely is not.
But to improve on the suggestion, perhaps still roll the 1d20 but use the Assurance value as a minimum result. When you use a Hero Point, the reroll will get the better of what you actually rolled, or the result you would get from Assurance (which in anything other than a few select cases is going to be a result of Fail).
To steal from Torg/Torg Eternity in that when you spend a Possibility (sort of a Hero/Fortune point) there is a minimum for the die roll (10). Could have a spent hero point act like Assurance without taking unduly from that Feat, depending on the flow of Hero Points.Assurance itself doesn't behave like that. It vaguely looks like Take-10 from PF1. It definitely is not.
But to improve on the suggestion, perhaps still roll the 1d20 but use the Assurance value as a minimum result. When you use a Hero Point, the reroll will get the better of what you actually rolled, or the result you would get from Assurance (which in anything other than a few select cases is going to be a result of Fail).
Or 3d6 for the same average (10.5), yet with a bell curve which deters crit-fishing too. Kind dull IMO, but if one wants Hero Points to represent plot armor for our shining heroes, it works to maintain the status quo.
The whole game is based on the 4 degrees of success.
Fair. It is a major game change.
I don't like Gurps for many reasons. One of them is this. The 3d6 distribution is very tight and the modifiers around the 8-13 range are important and beyond that they aren't much. So you end up with the game being very all or nothing. It doesn't really seem to matter how you build your character the GM can always stuff you up by demaining a skill roll no one has and making it important. That often happens in preplanned modules. d20 is much better.
If I were doing it, I wouldn't move to 3d6. Perhaps 2d10 would be less problematic if you want to try. But you would have to make the snake eyes result the same as a natural one on a d20. Note that it is now 1% not 5%.
Maybe 3d8-2 is better? Consider a 2 and below as a 1 and 21+ as a 20.
It depends on how much you want the die roll to matter.
A d20 gives a 5% chance for each number result from 1 to 20.
2d10 weights the results so that the average/median will occur more than a high or low roll. Basically a 2 to 4 (roughly equivalent to a natural 1 on a d20) or an 18 to 20 (roughly equivalent to a natural 20 on a d20) each have a 6% chance of occurring, while the chance of rolling between 10 and 12 would be 28%.
3d6 (or 2d8+1d6-2) weights the results even more toward the average/median. A 3 or an 18 on a 3d6 each only has less than a 0.05% chance (1 in 216) of occurring on a given roll (a 3d6 equivalent of a natural 1 would be 3 to 5 and the equivalent of a natural 20 would be 16 to 18 [both 10 in 216 or about 4.6%]), while the chance of rolling between 9 and 12 is slightly over 48% (104 in 216).
With the way PF2 works (four stages of success, the smaller number/size of applicable bonuses and penalties), more heavily weighting the rolls to the average/median would make boss fights even more dangerous to the PCs. Reducing variance gives the stronger side a bigger advantage because they are more likely to succeed and the weaker side is more likely to fail on average/median rolls.
Thank you all for your insight. I appreciate it and will discuss further with my players. I think one player gripe that I am sensitive to is that 5% is actually quite a big chance to (usually) critically fail.
The argument being: level 12 Barbarians should not royally screw up 1 out of every 20 sword swings.
A character with legendary skill should not critically fail 1 out of every 20 times.
I think that if I critically failed at my IRL job 1 out of 20 times I would be fired, and I would not consider myself anywhere near "legendary" profession. (I know this is a game. This is a joke)
The idea of lowering variance comes, in part, from exploring other systems, which I will get to in a sec...
Not to sound like an ass, but if variance gets in the way of the fun why play an RPG? Just get with your group and tell stories about the characters and their deeds.There are many systems that reduce variance, or allow players to influence the level variance has on the outcome of the game.
Sentinels Comics RPG, for example, has an interesting choice-based system.
Conversely, Warhammer Fantasy RPG has a high variance system that favors the person who hits first by compounding turn after turn successes.
Gloomhaven and Frosthaven (not RPGs, I know) have all the variance in a combat deck that can be manipulated.
There are tons of interesting systems out there, but I already have all the Pathfinder 2.0 books, I and my group like "tactical combat" RPGs, and my group already understands the d20 system.
I'm not looking for "no variance" I'm actually not 100% certain what I'm looking for, but I am EXPLORING the idea of LESS variance with valuable input from the RPG community. So... thanks for your contribution.
A critical failure with a sword swing doesn't usually matter though. A handful of creatures proc riposte type reactions from it, but otherwise it only matters if you're using variant fumble rules. (Which presumably you aren't if hate variance.)
Skills are largely covered by feats like Assurance. For rote activities (like your day job) Assurance will cover you. But for something to be a challenge worthy of your skills and have stakes, you need a chance of screwing it up. There are also various feats which turn critical failures into regular failures, which accomplish a similar purpose. If your players are really worried about that 5% chance, they can take those feats.
A critical failure with a sword swing doesn't usually matter though. A handful of creatures proc riposte type reactions from it, but otherwise it only matters if you're using variant fumble rules. (Which presumably you aren't...Thank you all for your insight. I appreciate it and will discuss further with my players. I think one player gripe that I am sensitive to is that 5% is actually quite a big chance to (usually) critically fail.
The argument being: level 12 Barbarians should not royally screw up 1 out of every 20 sword swings.
A character with legendary skill should not critically fail 1 out of every 20 times.
I think that if I critically failed at my IRL job 1 out of 20 times I would be fired, and I would not consider myself anywhere near "legendary" profession. (I know this is a game. This is a joke)
The idea of lowering variance comes, in part, from exploring other systems, which I will get to in a sec...
Not to sound like an ass, but if variance gets in the way of the fun why play an RPG? Just get with your group and tell stories about the characters and their deeds.There are many systems that reduce variance, or allow players to influence the level variance has on the outcome of the game.
Sentinels Comics RPG, for example, has an interesting choice-based system.
Conversely, Warhammer Fantasy RPG has a high variance system that favors the person who hits first by compounding turn after turn successes.
Gloomhaven and Frosthaven (not RPGs, I know) have all the variance in a combat deck that can be manipulated.
There are tons of interesting systems out there, but I already have all the Pathfinder 2.0 books, I and my group like "tactical combat" RPGs, and my group already understands the d20 system.
I'm not looking for "no variance" I'm actually not 100% certain what I'm looking for, but I am EXPLORING the idea of LESS variance with valuable input from the RPG community. So... thanks for your contribution.
Yeah, the 5% is when the task's kind of challenging, not routine. A Legendary person doing Olympics level activities would have their crit success reduced to a mere success, even though they had their worst brain hiccup ever/rolled a 1.
And that Level 12 Barbarian isn't crit failing swinging at a practice dummy or sparring. They're trying to angle their sword to slice under the scales of a flying, writhing, CR 12-ish (village-eating) dragon perhaps while leaping, injured, threatened, etc. And still that crit failure has no repercussions w/o further rules (which are rare in PF2 unless a table choice).I don't see 5% as large for purposes of the game either, not with Hero Points as a backstop. And two nat 1's is 1 in 400, which simply means failure was meant to be. I had a player with a PC in the middle of her most dramatic string of crits and kills ever then with one enemy left roll a series of four nat 1's that brought her from full health to "cleric has to mangle self jumping off cliff to resuscitate her in time". Wouldn't exchange that for low variance.