One thing I've been sad to see in SF2 is the Piloting skill. For multiple reasons.
First, most adults know how to drive a car in our world. Sure, they can't make stunts but they at least have a chance to try without a crippling +0 to their check. Considering that space combat was a basic assumption of SF1 I think we can consider that Piloting is part of the job description and as such should be a given.
Second, I have no idea why it is under Dexterity. The main elimination criteria if you want to become a pilot is bad sight, it's kind of common knowledge. Piloting and Perception are massively linked. On the other hand, I absolutely don't see the connection between Dexterity and piloting. It's a bit as if your ability to move your body with agility will somehow translate to an ability to move your ship with agility... That's nonsense.
Third, and this is the main reason, I've been in an SFS party where no one had Piloting and the first scene was a space combat. After 2 rounds, it was clear we couldn't scratch the enemy ship as its shield was fully compensating our turret damage. We decided to just cancel the adventure, not just finish it, cancel as in "it never existed". It's the first time I've ever been in that situation and it's absolutely no fun.
Fourth, none of the SF2 classes is even remotely a skill monkey. So adding 2 skills is not the best thing to do, especially when one is nearly a no-brainer.
I could even add a fifth: I don't think we need more incentive to invest in Dexterity in SF2, it is already looking like a god stat as some other thread shows.
So putting Piloting under Perception (or combining them) would be, in my opinion, the sensible thing to do. What do you think?
What do airforce pilots think is more expressive of their skill set, wisdom or dexterity?
(If you've been in the passenger seat of a crazy driver, you know what I mean.)
And madness is represented by... low Wisdom.
Knowing when to nudge a wheel a smidge, knowing when to do a sharp turn, handling multiple contact points at once, from a steering point, to adjusting gears. How to accelerate in just the right way to get a smooth start, or a smooth stop.
That's purely mental: Calculating trajectories, having a good mental image of your vehicle to know where it will pass or not, having a good knowledge of its inertia, how fast it can accelerate, decelarate and turn. It has nothing to do with your flexibility, motor abilities or physical reflexes, all that Dexterity represent.
What do airforce pilots think is more expressive of their skill set, wisdom or dexterity?
How to become an airforce pilot
"Once commissioned, applicants must take the Air Force Officer Qualifying Test, which includes 12 subtests. The subjects include:
- General science
- Reasoning
- Arithmetic
- Instrument comprehension
- Verbal analogies
- Math"
"Candidates must also meet the following qualifications:
- 18-30 years of age (waiver up to 35 years old possible)
- At least 5 feet 4 inches to 6 feet 5 inches tall
- Seated height between 34 and 40 inches tall
- At least 20/40 vision in both eyes for near vision and 20/200 for distant vision; must be corrected to 20/20
- May not be colorblind, have had laser eye surgery or have poor depth perception
- Must have perfect hearing
- Must withstand several G's of pressure without passing out or getting sick
- No history of hay fever, asthma or allergies after age 12
- Healthy weight"
"Piloting advance military aircraft requires a number of technical and soft skills. Here are some of the most important:
- Operation and control of complex equipment
- Monitoring the operation of complex equipment
- Active listening
- Critical thinking
- Complex problem-solving
- Reading comprehension
- Judgment and decision-making
- Time management
- Coordination
- System analysis and evaluation
- Math and reasoning
- Quality control analysis"
Wisdom and Intelligence, a bit of Constitution, just a single element speaks about Dexterity (coordination). Piloting is a purely mental activity, Dexterity is not really involved.
You cannot pilot a vehicle without using proprioception to control your body to interface with the vehicle.
If I follow your reasoning then Computers should be under Dexterity because I have to click on my keyboard. For me, typing is easy and I do it fast, still I don't consider it the key skill in my Computers abilities.
Piloting asks for normal dexterity but above average intelligence and extreme Perception.
Hi there, i'm new to posting on the Paizo forms. If i'm being honest, it sounds like you've made up your mind and that you want to defend your point more than try to understand why a choice was made. What can other people contribute to this?
Welcome to the forum.
Well, people can provide their own feedback and point of view. I haven't opened this discussion because I wanted to be convinced, this is not all about me (even if, considering the lack of people posting these days, it looks like I speak more than I should).Also, I prefer to warn you, if you dislike long heated discussions and disagreements, you may find this forum unpleasant as this is a local custom.
The reason why Piloting is Dex-based is because...the old Ride skill from PF1e was Dex-based, which is a skill that is a carbon copy of D&D 3.5's Ride skill which also was Dex-based, so that's the reason; tradition. I still think Dex is fine for Piloting because driving doesn't rely 100% on you knowing how to drive a vehicle but also some muscle memory and reflexes. Muscle memory in mechanics-terms would be Wisdom, while reflexes obviously would be Dexterity. In the end I think its more of a problem with the 6 attributes being distributed in the way they are than the skill itself, because arguably any physical skill could use a physical attribute and any mental skill could use any mental attribute if we split hairs enough.
On why its not an automatic skill like Perception, I think that the stuff we do while riding a vehicle doesn't require a Piloting check, much like how you don't require to make a Nature check with a mount unless you try to do some weird stunt. Piloting checks will likely be relegated to Starship combat and maybe wanting to travel faster, but by the looks of it it seems Piloting will pretty much be an optional skill in SF2e since we aren't even going to get rules of starships in the core.
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I also think that piloting should be dex, and be its own skill, but not sure why the huge change for the playtest. In SF1e all piloting actions are untrained, in the playtest all piloting actions are now trained other than recall knowledge.
Because piloting is being used for all types of vehicles perhaps the place to put if you can use it trained or untrained is in the vehicle or starship stat block.
Having perfect vision means next to nothing for vehicle operation if you don't have the reaction times and fine motor control to actually act on it. When I got my lasik operation, it did not meaningfully affect how good a driver I am.
Piloting should remain a separate skill and remain dex based, maybe with a few paths to swap the core to intelligence or wisdom for certain classes. Using the trained/untrained distinction is a good way to separate 'mundane' vehicles from things like starships.
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I would prefer it falling under Perception so that you didn't have 95% of PCs unable to use any vehicle in existence.
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I hate the argument that "PCs should be insta-trained in piloting" because it misunderstands what skill proficiency is, what the piloting skill does, and how necessary it is.
For one, being untrained does not mean "entirely incapable of using." If I'm untrained in nature that doesn't mean I don't know what a bird is, if I'm untrained in acrobatics that doesn't mean I stumble flat on my face the moment there's a single pebble on the road, and if I'm untrained in piloting that doesn't mean I look at a steering wheel and the car explodes. Any of those things would probably mean that I wouldn't know left from right in the cockpit of an armored vehicle on swampy terrain fighting a giant plant monster, and neither should any adventurer who isn't explicitly knowledgable in those areas. Even an untrained character with a bad ability modifier can clear a DC10 reasonably often, and if your GM puts driving to the grocery store above that then I think it's reasonable to ask what on Triune's name they're on about. The idea that your character has some basic level of literacy in any skill, not just ones they're actively trained in, seems lost on a lot of people.
Second, I firmly believe that comparing the "drive" activity to, you know, driving, is asinine. It's an easy mistake at its face but those aren't the same thing. Again, that's the one you do when the seaweed elemental is tailing your tank, not when you need to make a turn at an intersection. Even if you believe you could put any adventurer worth their salt in the driver's seat and have them not crash into a wall within minutes, I hope you agree that they definitely shouldn't be automatically trained in navigating an asteroid field. Do you believe that your solarian has the necessary skillset to make a sick drift with their glider to outmaneuver the battleship sent to shoot them down? Then I've got great news for you, you can take the piloting skill just like any other skill! I don't hear anyone complaining when you're expected to be trained to out-climb or out-tightrope a similar pursuer. You don't roll a computers check every time you log into a comms unit you know the password for, and you probably don't need to make a piloting check at every stop-light either.
Finally, I highly doubt every person living today can even drive a car. Source: Nobody in my family that I know has a driver's licence and we get around the city just fine. It's not that universal, even in urban places. A lot of people simply don't need to drive for themselves. From what I hear it's probably more common in the USA where I'm told that's just kind of what reality is, but to me that seems like a pretty flawed model of how the Pact Worlds would pan out. Wouldn't this number be lower in a more enlightened society where public transport and pedestrian accomodations are more consistent across star-systems? This would be truer than ever in an adventruing party where in all likehood there's gonna be someone you spend effectively all of your time with who can drive. So even if piloting were the "driving to exist" skill that you need at least trained proficiency in to not instantly f*@+ up, then what?
Whether a different ability score would be more fitting or whether you should be allowed to attempt the currently trained-only actions without knowing what you're doing is a different discussion. I can already picture the miracle roll when the mystic desparately grabs the control stick from the unconscious pilot and pulls up the craft moments before impact. But we don't need auto-training for that, do we now. At most we need some sort of "avert disaster" untrained action, and even that's assuming your GM won't fudge the rules just the tiniest bit to let you try the awesome thing that is clearly awesome.
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For one, being untrained does not mean "entirely incapable of using."
So while in principle I agree with a lot of what you're saying, it's worth noting that in the current document, "Drive" and "Stop" (among other things) are trained only actions and the former requires a check every time you perform it. Unlike with the computers skill, there's no explicit carveout for casual use being separate.
So I completely agree that driving to the grocery store shouldn't be something you worry about for checks and it's not what the skill was meant for... it's also true to say that per the current rules you literally cannot attempt to Drive a vehicle or even press the brakes if you're untrained and it's not that weird that some people might be applying that broadly.
Ideally the skill description should have an explanation describing casual, non-skill use and maybe move some of the trained actions to untrained too.
Perhaps, as with Thievery, the difficulty of operation should be tied to the vehicle itself. It's somewhat plausible that it might be impossible to operate an experimental spacecraft without expertise, but feels increasingly less so as the vehicles in question become more common.
... also I think the rate of checks might need some work. In a driving-focused encounter (which seems like a thing that could happen fairly easily in SF) your pilot might be making 2-3 checks per round, which creates some very high potential for failure.
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I would prefer it falling under Perception so that you didn't have 95% of PCs unable to use any vehicle in existence.Does that sound like a perception check?
In Starfinder 1e piloting was an untrained skill anyone could use. I'm not sure why it was changed for the playtest. It doesn't help this conversation that we don't have vehicles or Starships in the playtest. I do wonder if making it a trained skill has to do with the PF1e compatibility. It seems reasonable not to let PF2e characters fly a starship untrained, but not fair for Starfinder characters to not at least be able to do basic vehicle actions untrained.
Not all vehicles are equal in complexity, so one idea is to have the vehicle stat block determine the level of training needed to use it. Some could be untrained, other trained and really complex vehicles could even require a minimum piloting skill to use.
Another idea for using the piloting skill recall knowledge is to use it to figure out how to fly a ship you have never flown before each ship could have learn to fly DC. This would be great for finding and trying to use an alien ship that has unusual controls labeled in an unknown language.
I think its likely an oversight. It wouldn't make sense that Piloting is now restricted because of "compatibility" because if a PF2e character is ever going to have the chance to pilot a spaceship is going to be in a SF2e enviroment, thus in a setting in which they would be able to do it.
Does that sound like a perception check?
You really think driving a car has to do with how you use the controls?
Because I've seen countless descriptions on how to pitch, throw, catch or kick a ball, and how the greatest athletes were doing it in a way no one else can. But I've strangely never seen a description of how Schumacher was turning the steering wheel. Because driving is not about using the controls, much like Computers is not about how you type or click, it's about what you do with them. And I'm pretty sure Schumacher was good for anticipating and calculating trajectories at crazy speed, not for his ability to use the car's controls.
Also, I indicated earlier the prerequisites to become an airforce pilot. I think they know better than us what's important in piloting (and I assume an airforce pilot is the closest thing in our world to a spacecraft pilot).
I hate the argument that "PCs should be insta-trained in piloting" because it misunderstands what skill proficiency is, what the piloting skill does, and how necessary it is.
So you hate the insta-training in Perception?
Because it has nothing to do with driving to the grocery store, it has to do with adventuring and how, at least in SF1, spaceship combat was forced on you. If Piloting is part of the job description then all characters should have it, and if Piloting is so important then it should be a class ability and not something that you can choose or not to increase.
Anyway, it looks like it's an unpopular proposition. I got it!
Doesn't matter how smart you are if you can't physically manipulate the controls fast enough and precise enough to do what your brain has figured out.
So just maybe, it requires both.
For the game though, the player does the brain stuff and the character does the physical stuff, thus uses Dex.
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Does that sound like a perception check?You really think driving a car has to do with how you use the controls?
Yes. You can do a juci lift 180 blindfolded, you can't do that without good timing and practice.
you would use perception to spot the hazard. You would use piloting to get around a hazard.
If you are rolling piloting to do a barrel roll to outmaneuver an enemy starfighter it's assumed you are aware of it otherwise why would you even be trying to out maneuver a ship you can't see?
Personally, I feel that playing an Ace Pilot in Starfinder without the piloting skill just feels wrong. Also playing a space goblin Ace Pilot with no ranks in piloting isn't funny if there isn't a piloting skill to not take.
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From what it looks like, checking the GM Core, Driving a vehicle did not require training. So I am in agreement, training requirements probably should be removed from 2E Piloting. A Vehicle already has a Piloting DC, that should be enough to limit usability.
I didn't realize PG2e had DC for each vehicle that's great, Stafinder 1e didn't have that. That has some really interesting possibilities for SFS. Some scenarios let the PCs pick which ship to use, having a choice of ships with different DC rewords having a good pointing score, and makes for more interesting choices when picking a ship.
Really, piloting should be a combination of perception, reflex, and fortitude. The problem is that this makes it so there's no way to have "character who is good at piloting" by making character building choices.
It definitely feels like skill ranks are tighter when you feel obligated to have "someone who knows about computers" and "someone who can drive" on top of all the other things that are important (RK checks, healing, stealth, etc.)
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From what it looks like, checking the GM Core, Driving a vehicle did not require training. So I am in agreement, training requirements probably should be removed from 2E Piloting. A Vehicle already has a Piloting DC, that should be enough to limit usability.I didn't realize PG2e had DC for each vehicle that's great, Stafinder 1e didn't have that. That has some really interesting possibilities for SFS. Some scenarios let the PCs pick which ship to use, having a choice of ships with different DC rewords having a good pointing score, and makes for more interesting choices when picking a ship.Yes, as a quick example for anyone who might not know about it. The DCs look like this.
Airship:
Arcana (DC 32), Crafting (DC 32), Nature (DC 32), or Piloting Lore (DC 30)Or a Cart:
Driving Lore (DC 14) or Nature (DC 16 to DC 24, depending on pulling creature)
With multiple skills usable that helps with Piloting being mostly trained only, and this way piloting would likely have the best DC.
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I'm not sure where I'd wanna go with Piloting. It makes sense as a skill I guess, because I can definitely remember not knowing how to ride a bicycle or car. It's a skill you learn.
Also, consider the DC of the check. What is the DC anyway? Either the DC would static (like Athletics checks to Swim in a particular kind of water) or based on the vehicle's level.
I'm guessing they're going with the vehicle's level, so it's a level based DC and that means there's always a decent chance of failing, even if you're trained. After level 5 or so, given the difference between trained and untrained skill bonus, it becomes kinda meaningless whether the action has "trained only" on it, because without training you're just going to fail hard anyway.
Looking at the results of the "Drive" action, the Failure result of the one-action Drive is interesting. You move in a straight line and it doesn't say that has to be in your current heading, but it does say it's the vehicle's speed, not "up to it's speed". So even if you're rolling a lot of Failures, you can still get sorta where you want to go, as long as the road is clear. It's not so good if you have to weave through traffic or catch a precise off-ramp. But it kinda simulates a poor driver on a roomy highway where everyone is giving each other enough space.
All in all I think it's a strong sign that drive DCs will be based on vehicle level, because these failure conditions mean that it's tolerable to fail from time to time. Which will happen if you are using some form of level based DC.
It also creates the interesting situation that it might be profitable to use a vehicle one or two levels lower than yourself, for a nice DC reduction. Also, given the scale of prices, an item a few levels lower is much less of a burden on your budget.
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With multiple skills usable that helps with Piloting being mostly trained only, and this way piloting would likely have the best DC.This is assuming that Starfinder 2E does this, though. Making Piloting it's own proper skill might make the devs cut off that extra functionality Starfinder-side. I'm hoping not. But it feels like a likely path of things.
My guess is the alt skills would be something like this,
Starship:
computers (DC 32), engineering lore(DC 32), physical science lore(DC 32), or Piloting(DC 30)
Yes. You can do a juci lift 180 blindfolded, you can't do that without good timing and practice.
Yeah, in a flat place with no obstacles. Obviously.
Now, let's say you have to run a rally with the pilot blindfolded and the copilot next to them to direct them, and every team has decent time to pratice the exercize so this is not about team coordination. If you have a professional pilot and a normal driver, where would you put the professional pilot and where would you put the normal driver?
I'd definitely put the professional pilot as copilot and the normal driver as pilot as driving is perception-based and not dexterity-based.
If a caveman warrior is teleported through time in Pathfinder and finds a Heavy Crossbow, will they be able to use it easily as it's a simple weapon?
These kinds of convoluted scenarios rarely satisfy anyone.
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I don't think simple weapons are necessarily weapons that everybody knows how to use but rather weapons that need minimal training to learn how to use them. I never used or seen a crossbow in real life but its very likely I could learn to use them in a few days if someone teaches me how to use it. I wouldn't be that accurate with it if I never used it, but I feel that IRL accuracy and knowing how a weapon works are different skills, in a way.