Rule Question: How does Aid another work?

[Kamiizumi Nobutsuna]

Here is Aid another Rule

CRB wrote:

You can help someone achieve success on a skill check by making the same kind of skill check in a cooperative effort. If you roll a 10 or higher on your check, the character you’re helping gets a +2 bonus on his or her check. (You can’t take 10 on a skill check to aid another.) In many cases, a character’s help won’t be beneficial, or only a limited number of characters can help at once.

In cases where the skill restricts who can achieve certain results, such as trying to open a lock using Disable Device, you can’t aid another to grant a bonus to a task that your character couldn’t achieve alone. The GM might impose further restrictions to aiding another on a case-by-case basis as well.

My confusion is "you can’t aid another to grant a bonus to a task that your character couldn’t achieve alone."

As I talk to other player, we got some argumentation.

(The skill is Disable Device)

Player A said :In Aid another, it's mean you need to trained in Disable Device, because this skill must trained so that you can use it, and so that you can Aid Another.

Player B said :No, it's just mean you can't Aid Another on a task that already requires multiple people to work together.

My point of view are : Ummm...I think it's more restricted, any situation that "couldn’t achieve alone" are included.
If you roll N20 and add your bonus but you still can't achieve the task DC by yourself, it's "couldn’t achieve alone", so you can't Aid Another on this task。
If you want to Aid Another a rouge Disable Device a magic trap, because you don't have a [trapfinding class feature], you couldn’t achieve alone, so you can't Aid Another on this task。
And, of course, it's includes Player A & B's situation.

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Is there something wrong with our interpretation?
Or can someone give us more specific examples about this rule?
Have any FAQ or offical resource can refer?

Thanks!

[Mysterious Stranger]

In cases where the skill restricts who can achieve certain results, such as trying to open a lock using Disable Device, you can't aid another to grant a bonus to a task that your character couldn't achieve alone. The GM might impose further restrictions to aiding another on a case-by-case basis as well.

The bolded part specifies that the restriction only applies where the skill restricts who can succeed. It does not state you have to be able to succeed; it says where the sill restricts who can achieve certain results. So unless the description of the skill (including the trained only descriptor) states you cannot achieve the specific result you can use aid other.

For example, a character who is untrained in knowledge skill can still attempt to make a check if the DC is 10 or less. So, anyone can use aid other on a KS that has a DC of 10 or less. If the DC is higher than 10 only someone who is trained in that KS can use aid other.

[Diego Rossi]

I go with the more restrictive reading: if you can't succeed with a roll of 20, you can't aid another.

So, your:
- Str 8 character help doesn't give any bonus when your group tries to lift an object that requires a 20 strength check to be moved (unless he has something that gives him a bonus);
- your character with a Perception of 1 can't help finding the secret door that requires a 30+ Perception check to be discovered;
- and so on.

[Mysterious Stranger]

If aid another cannot be used unless you can do it yourself it means that all it does is save time. Why bother aiding another when you can simply take 20? So the other than skill that you cannot take 20 on all it does is save time.

To me the idea of using aid another it to give you a chance to succeed and something that is beyond the ability of an individual. In the real world I have worked on several project that no one team member could complete, but the team as a whole was able to able to do so.

[pad300]

Diego Rossi wrote:

I go with the more restrictive reading: if you can't succeed with a roll of 20, you can't aid another.

So, your:
- Str 8 character help doesn't give any bonus when your group tries to lift an object that requires a 20 strength check to be moved (unless he has something that gives him a bonus);
- your character with a Perception of 1 can't help finding the secret door that requires a 30+ Perception check to be discovered;
- and so on.

I don't think this works. No human being has enough strength to tip over a typical car by themselves, but a group of 6 men working together can tip over a car easily...

[eyelessgame]

"In cases where the skill restricts who can achieve certain results, such as trying to open a lock using Disable Device, you can’t aid another to grant a bonus to a task that your character couldn’t achieve alone."

This is mostly cut-and-pasted from 3.5e, which says

"In cases where the skill restricts who can achieve certain results (such as with Disable Device, Search, and Survival), you can’t aid another to grant a bonus to a task that your character couldn’t achieve alone. For instance, a character who doesn’t have the trapfinding class feature can’t use Search to help a rogue find a magic trap, since the helper couldn’t attempt to find the magic trap on his own." (emphasis mine)

The earlier edition seems clearer: the example is clearly meant to differentiate between "could you succeed on a 20 without further bonuses" and "could you attempt the task at all" - that it wasn't meant to be a matter of how skilled you are and whether the aider could succeed themselves on a sufficiently good roll, it's whether the skill description prevents you from attempting the task at all (note the use of the word "attempt" in the 3.5e original).

All of Survival, Search, and Disable Device (in 3.5e) have class-based or feat-based restrictions - Trapfinding or Tracking - and that's clearly what's meant by the restriction in the earlier edition.

So is the changed text deliberate and intentional in changing the restriction to be more restrictive?

Paizo was certainly free to change the nature of the Aid Another attempt, but this looks more like they just eliminated the skills that no longer exist from the earlier text, and then also eliminated the example, since class-based restrictions mostly no longer apply to skills - the only "restriction" on anyone attempting a skill any more is when a skill is "trained-only" - you no longer have to be a rogue to find a magic trap or a ranger to follow a trail - and I see no evidence that the Paizo team had any other intent than to streamline and simplify the existing 3.5e rule, but they made the text more ambiguous since it refers to far fewer restrictions now.

I wish they had replaced it with an explicit example, where you could not use Disable Device to assist opening a lock if you were not yourself trained in the skill, since it is trained-only. Alas, they didn't give an example to disambiguate.

Nevertheless, my read is that you can Aid Another with an 8 STR on a DC 20 attempt.

[eyelessgame]

Now, tbh I would have liked to houserule this - and should have, in my latest campaign - that the DC for Aid Another shouldn't be 10, it should be the DC of the actual task minus 10 - otherwise by midlevel it's just an automatic +2 to every skill all the time when not alone or in combat. And Pathfinder skills are already too high.

But that's just me and this is, after all, a forum for rules-as-written. :)

[Diego Rossi]

pad300 wrote:

Diego Rossi wrote:

I go with the more restrictive reading: if you can't succeed with a roll of 20, you can't aid another.

So, your:
- Str 8 character help doesn't give any bonus when your group tries to lift an object that requires a 20 strength check to be moved (unless he has something that gives him a bonus);
- your character with a Perception of 1 can't help finding the secret door that requires a 30+ Perception check to be discovered;
- and so on.

I don't think this works. No human being has enough strength to tip over a typical car by themselves, but a group of 6 men working together can tip over a car easily...

I can assure you that my help in tipping over a car would amount to 0. Probably a better system to represent RL would be to average the strength of the people involved and then add aid another to that number.

But the rules go for simplicity, not representing RL.

[Azothath]

RAW is a big fail when it comes to physics.

so - Read the skill. Is it "trained only"? The GM can make a reasonable decision based on the skill and the assistant's skill set or magics.
see also multiple Aid Another actions thread 2013