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Skill checks are a massive part of the game. Most of out of combat challenges will be solved through skill checks.
But mechanically there is no single definition of skill check besides the obvious d20+skill bonus. There are actually a ton of very different skill check types with a strong impact on skill competence, ie. the contribution of characters when it comes to skills and as such the way to mechanically build a skill monkey.
And depending on GMs and environments, these skill check types are more or less used, sometimes without even realizing the strong impact they have on balance.
Let me cover the different types of skill checks, and the associate mechanical ways to achieve skill monkeyness.
And then we can have a discussion on how, as a GM, you use these different skill checks. Or on how, as a player, you like some skill checks over others (and what it says on the characters you like to play).
A few definitions:
Skill challenge: a bunch of skill checks rolled by all PCs and whose success is determined by the total number of successes (with critical failures and successes counting double in general).
Skill "types": some skills tend to cover the same areas and are often interchangeable. For example you have magic-related skills (Arcana, Occultism, Religion, Nature), physical skills (Athletics, Acrobatics), social skills (Diplomacy, Deception, Intimidation, Performance), nature skills (Nature, Survival), rogue skills (Stealth, Thievery).
Organized party: party where characters are built in common (through a session 0 for example)
Unorganized party: party where each player brings their character without any coordination (PFS typically)
One skill, one roll:
This is what I consider the most basic skill check from the reading of the book: One character has to roll one skill, the others can at best Aid. Disarming traps and casting rituals are typically following this structure. But on the other hand, I find these types of skill checks to be more and more rare.
In an organized party: Covering all skills is trivial in an organized party so you should always be able to roll. To optimize for these checks, each character should focus on a small subset of skills and skill monkeys increase theirs as high as possible.
In an unorganized party: You should first and foremost try to cover all skills as you can't count on your fellow party members to cover them. Skill monkeys have a lot of trained skills and abilities to improve any skill (like Ageless Patience or skill Mutagens).
Multiple skills, one roll:
Skill check similar to "one skill, one roll" but the GM lets you choose how to handle the situation and as such you have a bit of leeway on what skill to use. For example, you can be diplomatic, lie or coerce to convince the guards to let you go.
In an organized party: To optimize for these checks you no more need to cover absolutely every skill. Each character will focus on a small subset of skills and skill monkeys will try to have a few skills with an outstanding bonus.
In an unorganized party: You don't need to cover all skills but you should cover at least one skill of each "type" and skill monkeys will try to get a high bonus in these skills.
Most skills, one roll:
Some GMs are extremely nice when it comes to creative solutions and you can sell them nearly any skill. Some players are really good at selling skills, too.
In any party: You only need to raise a single skill as high as possible until you reach the ceiling and maybe a second one when you really can't sell your main skill. Skill monkeys manage to break the ceiling through bonuses (with for example Ageless Patience or skill Mutagens).
One skill, one roll per PC, one success:
This is the case when the whole party needs to roll the same skill just to get one success. For example Perception to search for secret doors, Society to remember something or Diplomacy to Gather Information. These checks tend to be trivial if everyone can roll as only one success is needed.
In any party: The main goal is to maximize the number of rolls so skill monkeyness is achieved by being Trained in a high number of skills (preferably all). Abilities like Untrained Improvision are golden. As a side note, an Eidolon gives you an extra attempt if the Summoner has the skill.
One skill, one roll per PC, many successes:
Rare type of skill challenges where the GM asks the whole party to roll one specific skill and determines the party success by the number of successes. Critical (failures and successes) are extremely impactful.
In any party: To optimize for these checks you need the whole party to roll with at least a nice bonus. So now Untrained Improvisation is not good enough. Skill monkeys are Trained in a lot of skills and have abilities to improve any skill. And Eidolons will really shift the odds.
Skill challenge, multiple skills, party success:
This type of skill challenge is rather common in PFS: The challenge is divided in multiple parts, each part asking PCs to roll for a skill among a few, and once the PCs have enough successes they move to the next part.
In any party: It's important for everyone to be able to roll so every PC should focus on being Trained in many skills (but no need to be Trained in all skills). Skill monkeys will have one skill of each "type" with a high bonus. Once again Eidolons will shift the odds (be careful in PFS as this use of an Eidolon is forbidden).
Skill challenge, multiple skills, PC success:
The difference between this skill challenge and the previous one is that each PC has to succeed to get to the next part of the challenge. Chases are the classical example.
In any party: It's extremely important to be Trained in all skills as if you ever end up in a part where you don't have any of the requested skills the challenge is over for you.
Note: It's rather common for this type of skill challenges to propose alternate checks like Perception, attack roll or save. So, strangely, skill monkeyness is achieved... through high Perception, saves and attack rolls as it's easier to increase these than a lot of skills.
Skill challenge, most skills, party success:
In most skill challenges the challenge parts are faced sequentially, one after the other. But sometimes they are faced in parallel and as such PCs can choose which part to handle, technically opening the use of any skill all the time. A classical example is the way PFS uses the influence subsystem to influence multiple NPCs at once.
In any party: Once again when all skills are available the goal is just to have one skill at the highest possible bonus. Skill monkeys manage to break the ceiling through bonuses (with for example Ageless Patience or skill Mutagens).
No retry: Sometimes, you can't use the same skill over and over or you do so with a penalty. For these challenges you need a few skills at the highest possible bonus, which is trivial as every character will raise 3 skills to Legendary.
Skill challenge, party success, high magic impact:
If the GM allows some parts of a skill challenge to be entirely skipped through the use of the proper spell or ability then it can give an enormous edge to the party, massively increasing the chances of success to the whole challenge.
In any party: It's a very good thing for spellcasters and you definitely should have a bunch of utility Scrolls to handle these skill challenges.
Proficiency gating:
Some skill checks will be restricted to characters with a certain proficiency. It's often the case for disarming traps and haunts. The skill bonus is still important but first and foremost you need to be able to roll.
In an organized party: The goal is to raise all skills, so the most important is to avoid raising the same skill twice between 2 PCs. As the proficiency is more important than the actual bonus it's not an issue if some characters raise skills on secondary attributes. Skill monkeyness is achieved through the sheer number of skill increases, so Investigators and Rogues are the obvious skill monkeys here.
In an unorganized party: Now it gets really random. Preferably, skill monkeys should focus on skills that are rarely raised instead of raising the classical Stealth/Athletics/Acrobatics/Medicine/Intimidation.
One Lore:
Sometimes, the GM asks you to roll a Lore check, with no alternative. In general this Lore is strongly implied by the adventure, like Sailing Lore if you play Skulls and Shackles. But sometimes, the GM asks for Accounting Lore and nothing else to understand the ledgers.
In any party: If the Lore is implied by the adventure then someone should be really good at it: You should have a high Intelligence captain if you play Skull and Shackles. If it's a completely random Lore then the chances that anyone has it are super low. It's better to use abilities giving you (temporary) Training in any skill to cover these cases.
One skill feat:
Sometimes, the GM asks you to have a specific skill feat to roll a specific check. You want to influence the crowd? Do you have Group Impression? You need to heal an Undead? Stitch Flesh!
In any party: Well, no real solution for this case. Besides Rogues and Investigators, PCs will have the same number of skill feats and you'll have to be lucky to have the good one.
So, what to do with that?
First, it's important to determine how you handle skill checks as a GM and how it impacts the PCs and through them the players. One classical example is the really permissive GM who allows any skill to be used for any check as long as the player comes with a believable explanation. But think about the effect if you were allowing PCs to also roll attack rolls using any skill, would your Fighter player be happy about it? So this isn't actually nice, it's just eliminating the whole interest of being a skill monkey and players of such characters have good reasons to feel bad about your ruling.
In my opinion, the best thing to do is to use all these types of skill checks, sometimes being really nice and sometimes asking for a specific Lore, skill feat or proficiency to roll. So every type of skill monkey can shine but also non-skill monkeys.
It's also interesting to sometimes give a bone to your players by asking for a check or challenge that will highlight one specific feat or ability. For example, asking for a check using any skill will highlight the impact of skill Mutagens (and as such your Alchemist) in a less forced way than asking for a Crafting check.
As a player, it's important to understand the different types of skill monkeyness. No, Rogues and Investigators (and Thaumaturge with Diverse Lore and/or Tome Implement) are not the only skill monkeys. Summoners and Alchemists are also excellent skill monkeys.
And if you play a class with no skill advantage or a weak one then maybe grabbing an ability or 2 to focus on a specific type of skill checks can put your character in a good light regularly.
I don't quite agree with the premise, as I think skill checks themselves are extremely consistent in how they function and how players roll, and the main difference comes from the stuff that uses them, i.e. bolting on a subsystem like Victory Points or Influence or the occasional bit of GM improvisation. I also do think that magic occasionally making certain checks really easy or bypassing them entirely is part and parcel of the benefits of certain traditions, especially arcane magic that lets you fly, teleport, and manipulate the environment in various ways.
With that said, however, I do agree with several of the observations:
I can't speak for how to handle things in PFS, but as a GM, here are a few things I've done that have helped with the above:
The basic principle here is to make sure the party doesn't put all their eggs in one basket, diversify challenges so that the party gets multiple ways of solving them, and let players try new things with appropriate tradeoffs. This can't all be applied to APs, but from my experience the latter generally do a good job of letting a party do well with a diverse enough skillset.
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Good overall writeup. As someone who plays and GMs a lot of PFS (4-6 games/month) I see a lot of characters who undervalue skills, to the detriment of the party, but also to the detriment of their enjoyment. No one wants to spend an hour and a half trying to make rolls where they only succeed on a 20.
Not training any non-combat skills is exactly like not buying runes for your weapons. Half the game is out of combat -- don't nerf yourself like that.
Here is my skill advice:
The difference between Trained and Untrained is enormous. Train at least one skill in every category mentioned above -- even if your CHA is -1, just being trained makes a Diplomacy success possible. Many skill challenge DCs are low enough you don't have to be *great* to contribute.
Feats and Class Features that modify skill training are massively underrated. I find Untrained Improvisation (gives all your untrained skills a scaling proficiency bonus) to be one of the best General Feats in the game -- every one of my non-INT, non-skill monkeys takes it by level 7. And it works for *all lore skills*.
Ancestral Longevity (elf ancestry feat) is a great way to grab an appropriate Lore skill when you do your daily preparations -- even if you don't know anything else about the adventure, taking "Lore: City I am In" is generally helpful.
If you don't get a lot of skills, keep an eye out for ways to leverage the ones you do have. Skill feats like Lie to Me, Acrobatic Performance, or Impressive Performance can expand the usage of skills you are already training to high levels. (Those examples would all be great for different kinds of swashbucklers, for instance.)
Know when to aid, or not roll at all. For a lot of victory point challenges, a crit fail will lose you a vp. If you are more likely to crit fail than to succeed, you are better off choosing not to roll.
I would add a few things:
1) Any Int-focused class can have a bunch of Trained skills, even if they can't increase the proficiency of them all.
2) Some classes (inventor, swashbuckler) and archetypes (acrobat, wrestler) provide scaling or "free" skill proficiency increases.
3) At higher levels, it may be more useful to have Master proficiency in more skills than to focus on getting only Legendary proficiency.
This is great SuperBidi!
I am going to read it more carefully when I can a moment.
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Not training any non-combat skills is exactly like not buying runes for your weapons. Half the game is out of combat -- don't nerf yourself like that.
I react to that because it's extremely environment dependent (and GM dependent, but the GM is part of the environment). I'm playing Age of Ashes and I really don't find that my skills are useful outside combat. But later APs put more focus on skills.
You mention PFS and actually I find the same trend: Earlier adventures were not focusing massively on skills. On the other hand, later adventures put such focus on skills that classes like Barbarian, Fighter and Champion are now weak in a PFS environment (unless the player took necessary steps to shine at skills besides Athletics).
This is great SuperBidi!
I am going to read it more carefully when I can a moment.
I'm glad if it helps, it took quite some time to write :D
I don't quite agree with the premise
I was expecting that from you ;)
We don't have the same way to look at things. And as a consequence we tend to talk past each other. So I won't answer your post right away, not that I haven't read it but because I feel it may end up as a long discussion that would hide the other posters contribution.I hope it's fine for you.
Not training any non-combat skills is exactly like not buying runes for your weapons. Half the game is out of combat -- don't nerf yourself like that.I react to that because it's extremely environment dependent (and GM dependent, but the GM is part of the environment). I'm playing Age of Ashes and I really don't find that my skills are useful outside combat. But later APs put more focus on skills.
You mention PFS and actually I find the same trend: Earlier adventures were not focusing massively on skills. On the other hand, later adventures put such focus on skills that classes like Barbarian, Fighter and Champion are now weak in a PFS environment (unless the player took necessary steps to shine at skills besides Athletics).
This is great SuperBidi!
I am going to read it more carefully when I can a moment.I'm glad if it helps, it took quite some time to write :D
I don't quite agree with the premiseI was expecting that from you ;)
We don't have the same way to look at things. And as a consequence we tend to talk past each other. So I won't answer your post right away, not that I haven't read it but because I feel it may end up as a long discussion that would hide the other posters contribution.
I hope it's fine for you.
Ahh im misquoted. That disagreement was Terridax lol.
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I react to that because it's extremely environment dependent (and GM dependent, but the GM is part of the environment). I'm playing Age of Ashes and I really don't find that my skills are useful outside combat. But later APs put more focus on skills.You mention PFS and actually I find the same trend: Earlier adventures were not focusing massively on skills. On the other hand, later adventures put such focus on skills that classes like Barbarian, Fighter and Champion are now weak in a PFS environment (unless the player took necessary steps to shine at skills besides Athletics).
This is something I find quite frustrating in an organized play environment like PFS where GM's aren't allowed to customize the adventure (and say allow for skill substitutions in appropriate situations, like maybe you don't have the Society skill to Know about certain things, but if you have profession solider/warfare lore you should be able to substitute it to learn certain kinds of information. And the game does allow for that, but reminding GMs that your other skill can apply can be difficult and in PFS may not be allowed if it not explicitly written.
Anyways, all of that is one reason I really like playing a human with the Clever Improviser and Incredible Improvisation feats.
Honestly, I kind of wish those were just feats available to every ancestry.
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This is something I find quite frustrating in an organized play environment like PFS where GM's aren't allowed to customize the adventure (and say allow for skill substitutions in appropriate situations, like maybe you don't have the Society skill to Know about certain things, but if you have profession solider/warfare lore you should be able to substitute it to learn certain kinds of information. And the game does allow for that, but reminding GMs that your other skill can apply can be difficult and in PFS may not be allowed if it not explicitly written.
Anyways, all of that is one reason I really like playing a human with the Clever Improviser and Incredible Improvisation feats.
Honestly, I kind of wish those were just feats available to every ancestry.
The PFS folks seem to agree that the perception is things are overly strict and are proposing some updates to the guidance on it: Thread here.
The new version of this allows for "creative solutions", which I would argue that includes skull substitutions when appropriate.
Clever Improviser is great, no question, though!
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which I would argue that includes skull substitutions when appropriate.
Ok, that's horrifying... ;)
Ahh im misquoted. That disagreement was Terridax lol.
Sorry about that. Multiquotes are not really available.
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This is something I find quite frustrating in an organized play environment like PFS where GM's aren't allowed to customize the adventure (and say allow for skill substitutions in appropriate situations, like maybe you don't have the Society skill to Know about certain things, but if you have profession solider/warfare lore you should be able to substitute it to learn certain kinds of information. And the game does allow for that, but reminding GMs that your other skill can apply can be difficult and in PFS may not be allowed if it not explicitly written.
I react to that because it's extremely environment dependent (and GM dependent, but the GM is part of the environment). I'm playing Age of Ashes and I really don't find that my skills are useful outside combat. But later APs put more focus on skills.You mention PFS and actually I find the same trend: Earlier adventures were not focusing massively on skills. On the other hand, later adventures put such focus on skills that classes like Barbarian, Fighter and Champion are now weak in a PFS environment (unless the player took necessary steps to shine at skills besides Athletics).
I hear this complaint a lot, so I know it definitely happens, but I have never seen it myself. Every PFS GM I've played with will allow appropriate Lore skills to substitute for listed skills...for some definition of "appropriate" of course. (Substituting non-Lore skills is a lot dicier, but still happens a decent amount.)
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Not training any non-combat skills is exactly like not buying runes for your weapons. Half the game is out of combat -- don't nerf yourself like that.I react to that because it's extremely environment dependent (and GM dependent, but the GM is part of the environment). I'm playing Age of Ashes and I really don't find that my skills are useful outside combat. But later APs put more focus on skills.
You mention PFS and actually I find the same trend: Earlier adventures were not focusing massively on skills. On the other hand, later adventures put such focus on skills that classes like Barbarian, Fighter and Champion are now weak in a PFS environment (unless the player took necessary steps to shine at skills besides Athletics).
Yeah, I definitely meant that in the context of PFS rather than APs, because I haven't played enough of the APs (though the ones that I *have* played have had very heavy skill sections).
I'd push back on "early seasons didn't require as many skill checks" though. They didn't have as many elaborate vp-based challenges, but even in season 1 most adventures had at least one (and often 2) "encounter" that was fully skill-based -- sometimes this would be a Hazard which reads as a combat encounter, but the only way to really deal with it would involve skill checks.
I know exactly what you mean about Barbs, Fighters and Champions, but you can usually do fine if you are willing to use either your Background or 1st Level Ancestry Feat to grab *something* related to out-of-combat skills. They usually provide one lane for Acrobatics/Athletics/Intimidation, too.
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I'd push back on "early seasons didn't require as many skill checks" though. They didn't have as many elaborate vp-based challenges, but even in season 1 most adventures had at least one (and often 2) "encounter" that was fully skill-based -- sometimes this would be a Hazard which reads as a combat encounter, but the only way to really deal with it would involve skill checks.
But they were much easier as the party was meant to succeed at them. Now, you have skill challenges with multiple levels of success that directly affect your monetary gains. So it's not just enough to be able to go through, it's now important to be good at them so you can get the total reward.
I know exactly what you mean about Barbs, Fighters and Champions, but you can usually do fine if you are willing to use either your Background or 1st Level Ancestry Feat to grab *something* related to out-of-combat skills.
If you just grab it as is you'll end up with a pretty sad bonus (and very often someone else will just be better at it due to sheer attribute bonus). Having the right to roll the die to mostly fail is hardly rewarding (nor useful).
They usually provide one lane for Acrobatics/Athletics/Intimidation, too.
But Acrobatics, Athletics and Intimidation are so ubiquitous that you'll have to fight for this lane, especially if there are 2 Fighters/Barbarians/Champions in the party.
I had a party with 2 Kineticist, a Barbarian and a Warpriest (I was GMing) and seeing them failing 2/3rd of the skill challenges was just heart breaking. They ended up the special with nearly no clue about what was happening (the only challenge they succeeded was the one not giving information). And as a GM it was this kind of situations where you either take them by the hand or accept the subpar experience, plague or cholera?
We don't have the same way to look at things. And as a consequence we tend to talk past each other.
Interesting that you chose to focus exclusively on the small paragraph of minor disagreement, rather than the much larger bulletpoint list where I expressed my agreement with your post at length. Talking past each other indeed. ;)
FWIW, I think your OP is thorough and well-written overall, and educated me a lot on the details of organized play and how they affect skill challenges differently from home games. I have no experience whatsoever with PFS and haven't considered at all how bringing premade characters together creates different considerations when it comes to skillsets and contributions from creating characters together and syncing them with one another. The discussions following your post are similarly enlightening, and it's interesting to see how PFS appears to have its own seasonal meta where certain types of classes become stronger than others based on the specific adventure, in a manner that isn't really talked about often in discussions of balance and design on these forums. It does go to show that classes typically seen as strong for their combat strength, like the Fighter, can easily flounder in adventures focused much more around social encounters, exploration, and just skill checks in general. Please don't feel urged to respond, especially if you feel it can't happen without devolving into an argument, but know that I like this thread and the conversation happening around it. :)
This is something different.
I view non-combat skill challenges as narrative. I don't consider skills as an issue of game balance, but more of a way to allow players to flesh out characters and invest in the narrative that is a combination of mechanics and storytelling.
I should have a good idea of the skill spread of my players when running an adventure. I review the adventure prior to running it. I want to ensure that I use skill challenges as a way to build interesting narrative opportunities.
That means if it is a physical skill challenge, I want to prepare how I will narrate that in advance like a rogue disarming a trap or working through some test. If a social opportunity, I want to write out dialogue for interactions. If a lore opportunity, I want to embellish the lore to make it interesting.
Skills challenges should be set at a level where they can be accomplished by the group with a DM ensuring the PCs know which skills to invest in as progressing or focusing skill challenges around skills the group already knows.
As a DM I don't intend to end a module due to a player not having a skill, so I always look for skills that will work well enough to ensure I deliver the experience I want to deliver to the player using skill challenges.
Skill challenges are there to make players shine just like every other aspect of the game including combat. You want players to feel engaged in skill challenges and you wan them to serve a purpose in the narrative. So it's important for a DM to have a good idea of how the skill challenge will work and what the narrative drive is behind it. They should also know if the player will enjoy it.
Forcing social skill challenges on players that don't enjoy social interactions is not something enjoyable for a DM or player. Same could be said for forcing puzzles or riddles on players who don't enjoy it. The main focus of skills is to ensure they are fun, deliver the experience or information to drive the story or encounter, and are not overly time consuming so that the game and table is held up by a skill challenge not everyone enjoys.
That is how I tend to see skills and skill challenges. Another tool in the DM toolbox to build narrative and drive player and character investment.
Ok I can see myself being more intentional about checks using this framework. Thanks SuperBidi. I'm going to copy this into notes for reference it can come in handy.
Deriven Firelion i agree about making the game into the game your players are interested in playing for a home game. I also pay attention to Lores they pick up because players do want to feel like their lores mattered from time to time.
But to Suberbidi's point there is an element of game balance to how you run the game and what categories you lean on most when engaging the parties skills. It can influence players choices too. So narrative although an important driver of skill challenges and needed to give them relevance balance is still important for player choices to mean something.
if as a GM your relying on Most skills, one roll all the time then the specific skills a player chooses really doesnt matter. Skill choices have to matter for players have those moments and that also means that sometime players just wont have invested in a skill that matters in a moment.
This doesn't mean the module ends, it means the players need to figure out a different approach than the one they tried. But im not talking to a group that doesn't already do this.
Ok I can see myself being more intentional about checks using this framework. Thanks SuperBidi. I'm going to copy this into notes for reference it can come in handy.
Deriven Firelion i agree about making the game into the game your players are interested in playing for a home game. I also pay attention to Lores they pick up because players do want to feel like their lores mattered from time to time.
But to Suberbidi's point there is an element of game balance to how you run the game and what categories you lean on most when engaging the parties skills. It can influence players choices too. So narrative although an important driver of skill challenges and needed to give them relevance balance is still important for player choices to mean something.
if as a GM your relying on Most skills, one roll all the time then the specific skills a player chooses really doesnt matter. Skill choices have to matter for players have those moments and that also means that sometime players just wont have invested in a skill that matters in a moment.
This doesn't mean the module ends, it means the players need to figure out a different approach than the one they tried. But im not talking to a group that doesn't already do this.
What it means to me as a DM is I should know my players skills and I should also give them a heads up of what skills would be important to take in a given adventure. As a DM you'll either be tailoring the skill checks to their skills know or they know they need to take certain skills that will be valuable in the adventure.
For example, when I ran my players through Agents of Edgewatch, I made sure to let them know that non-combat skills involving social skills, investigation, and the like would be valuable.
It's up to the DM to let the players know what's important in an adventure. It's not real fun for players to choose skills they like, then the DM goes, "Those skills are useless this adventure. Sorry you don't have telepathy to figure out what I needed you to take."
In Edgewatch, one player built an investigator, another built an interrogator, then a medic that was also a good forensic examiner.
I do not consider this a game balance issue so much as a party construction issue. As a DM I feel it is important to provide my players clear guidelines for what will be needed in the party, then let them decide who will do what.
Non-combat doesn't need to be balanced on a per character basis. Only combat need be balanced on a per character basis because everyone wants to be able to contribute relatively equally in combat.
For non-combat skill checks, you may have players who tune out this part of play and leave it to players that enjoy this part more. That is perfectly ok. As a DM I do not feel compelled to force a mode of play on a group that some of the players don't enjoy.
If Joe the Fighter wants to sell out on combat, cool. Then Joanne the rogue who enjoys skills more can stock up on skills and make more of the skill checks engaging that part of the game.
Skills are an important part of party construction, but not necessarily an important of individual character construction. The DM can rely heavily on players who enjoy that portion of the game.
In my group, a couple of players like skills. I mostly built skill challenges for them so they can shine using skills. A few of the other players eyes glaze over during skill challenges and they want to get through them as fast as a possible so they can get to the next combat.
You have to make sure accommodate both types of players and everything in-between to make non-combat skill challenges as interesting and exciting as possible without forcing them even if they don't provide much fun for the group.
Non-combat doesn't need to be balanced on a per character basis. Only combat need be balanced on a per character basis because everyone wants to be able to contribute relatively equally in combat.
For my group most players want to feel like they equally contribute both in and out of combat.
I can see where you are coming from though. i have a reverse situation where one of my players doesnt at all like combat. But I have 7 players (and build encounters for 7) so her finding ways to stay out of a fight doesn't increase the challenge of fights as much as losing a pc when you only have 4. (its also not a point of contention for my group probably like your table understand the players that dont like non combat stuff)
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One situation I don't like as a GM or player is when a players give a great role-playing performance in a social encounter then rolls low on the skill check. If it closes it's easy to hand wave or disguise a hand wave as a + 2 RP bonus, but if the roll is really low it can feel bad to hand wave. If I'm ever in that situation as a GM again I think the best way to handle it might be to give the player a hero point for a reroll, maybe a +2 hero point to be safe.
I think the worst situation I've seen in a social skill check encounter trying to influence an NPC where each member of the party had to roll a social skill check 3 rounds in a row, and the party needed x success to influence the NPC. Half the table rolled multiple crit successes and the other half of the table got multiple crit fails. In the end, all the bad rolls cancel all the good rolls, it just felt bad for everyone. Some of the playing crit failing all the time tried to get out of doing the skill checks because they knew they were going to fail. This was a PFS game so the GM was trying to follow the scenario as written. We used a few hero points to try to help the players facing chacks but their chance of success was so low, that they just failed again made them feel worse, which isn't something you want for a new player. Not sure how I would have handled that one differently if I had been the GM
When it comes to play skill monkeys I'm like a moth to a flame. I just like having options more than power. If I have overlapping skills with other players, I'll try to aid them whenever possible to not step on the other PCs' toes. I don't play a lot of high-level characters so maybe I get way spreading my skills thin because of that.
My skill monkeys are usually support classes not optimized for combat. Several times I've been the person to save the party from a TPK because I had lots of options and found creative ways to use them at the right time, but some games like that have left me completely mentally exhausted by the end of the game even when we succeeded.
I think another reason I play skill monkey support classes a lot in PFS games is it's a good character to bring to a table when you have no idea what the other PCs will be, or what their player's experience level is. Sometimes I will switch characters if the party has no martial classes in it, and play a simple fighter. I do find it is very relaxing to play a class that is really good at just a few things, and knows what their role in the party is, and know the dice are on your side, but it is fun to pull a rabbit out of a skill monkey hat at the right time too.
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I had a party with 2 Kineticist, a Barbarian and a Warpriest (I was GMing) and seeing them failing 2/3rd of the skill challenges was just heart breaking. They ended up the special with nearly no clue about what was happening (the only challenge they succeeded was the one not giving information). And as a GM it was this kind of situations where you either take them by the hand or accept the subpar experience, plague or cholera?
I've had this happen in PFS. It was one of those scenarios where you're told you're doing one thing, but then "something happens" and now you're doing something else. And we did so badly at figuring things out that we had no idea what was going on, but we managed to bumble into finding the people we needed to find and they didn't want us interfering. So they attacked us, we defended ourselves, and as a result ended the plot that we didn't know basically anything about.
So we beat the scenario and it wasn't until after it was over that someone explained the plot we'd just stopped. We felt like a bunch of bumbling idiots.
I feel like its an issue with the scenario writing where all the knowledge you need to do it is gated behind skill checks: what happens if you fail them? A fail forward mechanic would feel a lot better here than "sorry you don't know whats going on, now go do something about it."
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I feel like its an issue with the scenario writing where all the knowledge you need to do it is gated behind skill checks: what happens if you fail them? A fail forward mechanic would feel a lot better here than "sorry you don't know whats going on, now go do something about it."
And if you fail the fights, a fail forward mechanic would feel a lot better than "Sorry, you're dead"?
I'm of the opposite opinion: If you can never fail then you can never succeed. If there is challenge there is the chance of failure. It's frustrating when it happens but no challenge is, at least for me, much more frustrating.
If something is important for players to know it is better to use exposition and leave skill checks to obtaining info that allows alternatives to the main thing at hand.
Non-combat doesn't need to be balanced on a per character basis. Only combat need be balanced on a per character basis because everyone wants to be able to contribute relatively equally in combat.For my group most players want to feel like they equally contribute both in and out of combat.
I can see where you are coming from though. i have a reverse situation where one of my players doesnt at all like combat. But I have 7 players (and build encounters for 7) so her finding ways to stay out of a fight doesn't increase the challenge of fights as much as losing a pc when you only have 4. (its also not a point of contention for my group probably like your table understand the players that dont like non combat stuff)
I had a player like this. Boy, they really pissed off the other players because playing a cowardly rogue who hid from combat when they have all these powerful combat abilities did not make them happy.
The player thought it was funny, but the other players did not. As a DM I could not force him not to play cowardly as he modeled his rogue off the rogue in Conan the Destroyer.
Then again this player made a lot of characters that went against the grain of the group. He really went out of his way to be "the annoying guy" in the group.
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One situation I don't like as a GM or player is when a players give a great role-playing performance in a social encounter then rolls low on the skill check. If it closes it's easy to hand wave or disguise a hand wave as a + 2 RP bonus, but if the roll is really low it can feel bad to hand wave. If I'm ever in that situation as a GM again I think the best way to handle it might be to give the player a hero point for a reroll, maybe a +2 hero point to be safe.
I think the worst situation I've seen in a social skill check encounter trying to influence an NPC where each member of the party had to roll a social skill check 3 rounds in a row, and the party needed x success to influence the NPC. Half the table rolled multiple crit successes and the other half of the table got multiple crit fails. In the end, all the bad rolls cancel all the good rolls, it just felt bad for everyone. Some of the playing crit failing all the time tried to get out of doing the skill checks because they knew they were going to fail. This was a PFS game so the GM was trying to follow the scenario as written. We used a few hero points to try to help the players facing chacks but their chance of success was so low, that they just failed again made them feel worse, which isn't something you want for a new player. Not sure how I would have handled that one differently if I had been the GM
When it comes to play skill monkeys I'm like a moth to a flame. I just like having options more than power. If I have overlapping skills with other players, I'll try to aid them whenever possible to not step on the other PCs' toes. I don't play a lot of high-level characters so maybe I get way spreading my skills thin because of that.
My skill monkeys are usually support classes not optimized for combat. Several times I've been the person to save the party from a TPK because I had lots of options and found creative ways to use them at the right time, but some games like that have left me completely mentally exhausted by the end of the...
I let them accomplish the goal. The performance is more important than the rolls to me. These are Role-playing games and if someone plays a great role, then I'm going to reward it.
That's one of the reason I don't focus overly much on balance in the skill game as I grew up playing when skills didn't exist and good role-playing and problem solving was a must for players. They didn't get to just roll play rather than role-play.
To me skill checks can feel quite a bit like roll play over role-playing where everything is decided by a roll rather than creative role-playing. I'm a big proponent of creative role-playing. I doubt I'd even play these games if I didn't like the creative role-playing part of the game.
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I do this.
A player is telling me what they want their character to do but how they say they want to do it goes into setting the DC.
But I am not sold on removing all chance of failure for a good performance.
If they wanted to give a rousing speech to raise the moral of villagers before a coming raid on their homes that might be pretty hard to do.
But lets say the player gets into the moment and actually gives that speech at the table. Lets also say it was pretty good, i might lower the dc for the roll but I wouldn't wave the roll.
I would award a hero point for making that moment at the table. They still need to roll to see if it worked on the villagers or fell flat. The thing is its not the player giving the speech its the character to the villagers and lets say were talking about a character with no training in diplomacy and 0 charisma. That player may have been great but the character delivering that same speech might not be so great.
I do this.
A player is telling me what they want their character to do but how they say they want to do it goes into setting the DC.
But I am not sold on removing all chance of failure for a good performance.
If they wanted to give a rousing speech to raise the moral of villagers before a coming raid on their homes that might be pretty hard to do.
But lets say the player gets into the moment and actually gives that speech at the table. Lets also say it was pretty good, i might lower the dc for the roll but I wouldn't wave the roll.
I would award a hero point for making that moment at the table. They still need to roll to see if it worked on the villagers or fell flat. The thing is its not the player giving the speech its the character to the villagers and lets say were talking about a character with no training in diplomacy and 0 charisma. That player may have been great but the character delivering that same speech might not be so great.
The player is the character and the character is the player. Great role-play performances are more important than rolls.
I know not everyone plays these games to go deep, but I do and I will never discourage a player from going deeply into the roleplay.
I love nothing more than making a player feel a deep friendship with an NPC, a deep connection to a kingdom or village, or fall in love with a romantic interest. I've done it all DMing over the years.
I work very hard to make the player feel like their character. That it isn't just a set of mechanics, but a living, breathing character with a personality. I will never let a bad roll ruin that feeling in non-combat situations.
I got into these games after reading fantasy stories and finding this strange game that let you live in a story. One of the things I do not like about skills is the idea of a roll trumping someone coming up with a great idea or a great piece of role-play.
I don't mind using rolls for someone who doesn't want to role-play too deeply or isn't good at it. Just let them roll and then you the DM embellish the fantasy as that is how players who maybe aren't as good socially can at least imagine themselves playing someone socially adept.
But that's the trick of DMing. Knowing when a skill roll and your embellishment will work better than the player role-playing and when to let a good role-player succeed because they did such a great job role-playing. Some players even like to let the roll decide how they will role-play and that works too.
I'm very flexible in that area using whatever method works best at the given time with the given player. It may change from situation to situation. DMs should be very flexible and focused on making skill challenges entertaining and using them as opportunities to develop narrative and let players develop their RP. You don't want a skill system to hurt that area of the game, but enhance it.
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The thing is its not the player giving the speech its the character to the villagers and lets say were talking about a character with no training in diplomacy and 0 charisma. That player may have been great but the character delivering that same speech might not be so great.
The player delivering the great speech with a character with 0 Charisma and no Diplomacy will take a penalty from me.
Good roleplay is not about making great speeches, it's about playing your character. If you're acting out of character then it's no good roleplay.
On the other hand, I've seen players making great speeches but by adding voluntary flaws to represent their character lack of Charisma/Diplomacy and that, that's great roleplay (and yeah, in that case I'm open to bonuses).
The thing is its not the player giving the speech its the character to the villagers and lets say were talking about a character with no training in diplomacy and 0 charisma. That player may have been great but the character delivering that same speech might not be so great.The player delivering the great speech with a character with 0 Charisma and no Diplomacy will take a penalty from me.
Good roleplay is not about making great speeches, it's about playing your character. If you're acting out of character then it's no good roleplay.
On the other hand, I've seen players making great speeches but by adding voluntary flaws to represent their character lack of Charisma/Diplomacy and that, that's great roleplay (and yeah, in that case I'm open to bonuses).
I don't let stats dictate roleplay. Numbers are numbers, roleplay is more important.
This is one my pet peeves about the modern game and it's over-reliance on roll play due to everything being codified which 3E brought into the game. When skills did not exist, role-playing and creative problem solving was how we DMs decided whether something worked or not. The players were often expected to congress amongst themselves to determine the best course of action to solve a problem or influence a social situation which encouraged interaction and thought during play.
Rolling dice for everything doesn't lead to much roleplay or character development or much thought. A player saying, "I roll my diplomacy check" without having to put any thought or effort into developing a good-roleplay scenario doesn't make for much character development.
I often won't let a player roll a dice until they come up with what they're doing in non-combat skill roll situations, especially social situations. The only time I overlook something like this is if the player truly has trouble speaking in groups.
So we'll have to disagree as I consider character development and problem solving an important part of these games that is more important than the stat sheet or the roll-play.
The thing is its not the player giving the speech its the character to the villagers and lets say were talking about a character with no training in diplomacy and 0 charisma. That player may have been great but the character delivering that same speech might not be so great.The player delivering the great speech with a character with 0 Charisma and no Diplomacy will take a penalty from me.
Good roleplay is not about making great speeches, it's about playing your character. If you're acting out of character then it's no good roleplay.
On the other hand, I've seen players making great speeches but by adding voluntary flaws to represent their character lack of Charisma/Diplomacy and that, that's great roleplay (and yeah, in that case I'm open to bonuses).
I don't let stats dictate roleplay. Numbers are numbers, roleplay is more important.
This is one my pet peeves about the modern game and it's over-reliance on roll play due to everything being codified which 3E brought into the game. When skills did not exist, role-playing and creative problem solving was how we DMs decided whether something worked or not. The players were often expected to congress amongst themselves to determine the best course of action to solve a problem or influence a social situation which encouraged interaction and thought during play.
Rolling dice for everything doesn't lead to much roleplay or character development or much thought. A player saying, "I roll my diplomacy check" without having to put any thought or effort into developing a good-roleplay scenario doesn't make for much character development.
I often won't let a player roll a dice until they come up with what they're doing in non-combat skill roll situations, especially social situations. The only time I overlook something like this is if the player truly has trouble speaking in groups.
So we'll have to disagree as I consider character development and problem solving an important part of...
Ok let me just say that I would make characters with high charisma pre 3E. Back when it was not an actual benefit mechanically because that was the character I wanted to roleplay. So yeah my best stat on my fighter was not str it was cha. If I rolled a 14 and a 16 as my highest stats the 16 went into cha. AND it made my character what I wanted them to be. It was more important that my cha based attempts succeeded than it was for me to hit with my sword. I still played fighters because I wanted to have a decent chance to hit with a sword but that high charisma meant the character I roleplayed made sense.
If I was dumping cha and still trying to play a charismatic character through roleplay it wouldnt have made any sense to succeed just because I said things good as a player.
This is one my pet peeves about the modern game and it's over-reliance on roll play due to everything being codified which 3E brought into the game. When skills did not exist, role-playing and creative problem solving was how we DMs decided whether something worked or not. The players were often expected to congress amongst themselves to determine the best course of action to solve a problem or influence a social situation which encouraged interaction and thought during play.
This is one of the problems I have with skill systems in general too. I like to have them because they provide a framework of actions for both players and GMs to interact with the world, but since their goal is to codify every action in existance pretty much they are bound to fail short in some aspects. D&D 3.5 and PF1e had the problem of having a bizillion skills which made characters either completely dumb with the exception of 2 or 3 things, or barely capable of doing stuff but they supposedly could at least try to do most things. In practice I never understood why someone would want to not max their skills in those systems when a ton of skills were opposed checks as well. Then D&D 5e actually made a good move by reducing the skill list considerably but removed all semblance of rules they used to have so at that point they are pretty much worthless. I feel 5e is much better if you remove skills alltogether and just roll with ability modifiers. There's even a variant rule to become proficient in your attribute instead, which IMO fits much better than skills for 5e. D&D 4e and PF2e are probably the systems that come the closest to have an actual functional skill system, specially PF2e, but both are held down by the fact that skill powers / skill feats exist which kind of limit some actions to those that only take the feat (yeah, I know whay Mark Seifter said about this already. To me it doesn't help much to "allow players to do weaker versions of those feats if they don't have them" when some skill feats are already pretty much the bare minimum you'll expect of someone doing that action). At least in 4e skill powers weren't as bad as a problem as skill feats in PF2e, though 4e skills were also weaker base PF2e skills (or at least that's how I remember it, its been a while since I played 4e).
You don't roll a Diplomacy check if you are planning to RP it. Either roll first and RP based on the result or RP first and if you aren't convincing enough I'll make you roll at a lower DC or something. This is a roleplaying game first and foremost, so if you as a GM want to screw a player that made a heartfelt speech only for them to roll a Nat 1 I think you are a bad GM (or at least a boring GM) and I wouldn't want to play in your table to be honest.
Even though I like my crunch much like the next guy I would certainly love if skill systems in the future became more rules light-y to fully allow people to be creative and not think they lack X feat or whatever requirement. That or make skill feats not actually suck. It would certainly help.
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This is one my pet peeves about the modern game and it's over-reliance on roll play due to everything being codified which 3E brought into the game. When skills did not exist, role-playing and creative problem solving was how we DMs decided whether something worked or not. The players were often expected to congress amongst themselves to determine the best course of action to solve a problem or influence a social situation which encouraged interaction and thought during play.This is one of the problems I have with skill systems in general too. I like to have them because they provide a framework of actions for both players and GMs to interact with the world, but since their goal is to codify every action in existance pretty much they are bound to fail short in some aspects. D&D 3.5 and PF1e had the problem of having a bizillion skills which made characters either completely dumb with the exception of 2 or 3 things, or barely capable of doing stuff but they supposedly could at least try to do most things. In practice I never understood why someone would want to not max their skills in those systems when a ton of skills were opposed checks as well. Then D&D 5e actually made a good move by reducing the skill list considerably but removed all semblance of rules they used to have so at that point they are pretty much worthless. I feel 5e is much better if you remove skills alltogether and just roll with ability modifiers. There's even a variant rule to become proficient in your attribute instead, which IMO fits much better than skills for 5e. D&D 4e and PF2e are probably the systems that come the closest to have an actual functional skill system, specially PF2e, but both are held down by the fact that skill powers / skill feats exist which kind of limit some actions to those that only take the feat (yeah, I know whay Mark Seifter said about this already. To me it doesn't help much to "allow players to do weaker versions of those feats if they don't have them" when some...
I dont want the same things out of the game then.
I want my character stats to mean something. Basically the affect of RP being a sub for stats is that I can always dump social stats cause I as a player am very good at them and any character I make is also good at them by proxy. I want the system to enforce how I choose to allocate resources into my character build and that also includes how effective my character is at social interaction.
which I would argue that includes skull substitutions when appropriate.Ok, that's horrifying... ;)
Well a lot of that went the way of the dodo once scientists people realised things like skull checks were inhumane…
Lol actually the roleplaying thoughts here made me think if John Malkovich was playing, every character he makes will act like John Malkovich.
But its the rules of skill checks that define how well each character he makes does at things not John Malkovich's acting.
I want my character stats to mean something. Basically the affect of RP being a sub for stats is that I can always dump social stats cause I as a player am very good at them and any character I make is also good at them by proxy. I want the system to enforce how I choose to allocate resources into my character build and that also includes how effective my character is at social interaction.
I think you didn't understand what I tried to say. I don't want to remove skills from the game, I just don't want to have characters with arbritrary restrictions when using them. A character that specializes into RK shouldn't be as good as being a face as someone that specializes into that, but I absolutely hate that I need to take feat for something so dumb like counting fast (Eyes for Numbers), knowing propper ettiquete (Courtly Graces), knowing a sign language (Sign Language), or knowing people (Connections) when all these feats are things that arguably should exist independently of skills or could easily be baked into the skill itself.
Its not a matter of "but that allows you to fully express your character's vision". No, that's not how that works. If you want to say your character knows sign language because you took the feat it really doesn't matter when sign language isn't going to be a thing in 99,9% of campaigns, and in the 0,01% of campaigns in which it could be a thing is likely because one of the PCs wants to RP a dissability (or the player themselves have the dissability) at which point it becomes a mandatory skill feat for anyone that wants to interact with their fellow PC if the GM wants to do it RAW. I don't need a feat to prove my character is capable of doing something so obscure that likely isn't going to ever come up because I could already RP as I could by adding it to my backstory or because its something I should already reasonable be able to do taking into account the expertise I already have in my skills. IMO the problem here comes from skill feats, not skills themselves.
I want my character stats to mean something. Basically the affect of RP being a sub for stats is that I can always dump social stats cause I as a player am very good at them and any character I make is also good at them by proxy. I want the system to enforce how I choose to allocate resources into my character build and that also includes how effective my character is at social interaction.I think you didn't understand what I tried to say. I don't want to remove skills from the game, I just don't want to have characters with arbritrary restrictions when using them. A character that specializes into RK shouldn't be as good as being a face as someone that specializes into that, but I absolutely hate that I need to take feat for something so dumb like counting fast (Eyes for Numbers), knowing propper ettiquete (Courtly Graces), knowing a sign language (Sign Language), or knowing people (Connections) when all these feats are things that arguably should exist independently of skills or could easily be baked into the skill itself.
Its not a matter of "but that allows you to fully express your character's vision". No, that's not how that works. If you want to say your character knows sign language because you took the feat it really doesn't matter when sign language isn't going to be a thing in 99,9% of campaigns, and in the 0,01% of campaigns in which it could be a thing is likely because one of the PCs wants to RP a dissability (or the player themselves have the dissability) at which point it becomes a mandatory skill feat for anyone that wants to interact with their fellow PC if the GM wants to do it RAW. I don't need a feat to prove my character is capable of doing something so obscure that likely isn't going to ever come up because I could already RP as I could by adding it to my backstory or because its something I should already reasonable be able to do taking into account the expertise I already have in my skills. IMO the problem here comes from skill feats, not skills...
Ah ok i see.
Yeah i misunderstood a bit.I actually dont hard gate all things behind the skill feats (maybe some things). Skill feats make things easier to do. Any character can for example attempt to make a roll after jumping down from a 15ft wall. the feat makes it automatic. Attempting it without the feat could be treated as impossible but I tried that in game and found it unsatisfying. instead i am now going to just do what I would have done in older editions. I'll say sure you can attempt it and I will need an appropriate roll. The feat then comes in as a way of being able to do it without chance.
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...This is one my pet peeves about the modern game and it's over-reliance on roll play due to everything being codified which 3E brought into the game. When skills did not exist, role-playing and creative problem solving was how we DMs decided whether something worked or not. The players were often expected to congress amongst themselves to determine the best course of action to solve a problem or influence a social situation which encouraged interaction and thought during play.This is one of the problems I have with skill systems in general too. I like to have them because they provide a framework of actions for both players and GMs to interact with the world, but since their goal is to codify every action in existance pretty much they are bound to fail short in some aspects. D&D 3.5 and PF1e had the problem of having a bizillion skills which made characters either completely dumb with the exception of 2 or 3 things, or barely capable of doing stuff but they supposedly could at least try to do most things. In practice I never understood why someone would want to not max their skills in those systems when a ton of skills were opposed checks as well. Then D&D 5e actually made a good move by reducing the skill list considerably but removed all semblance of rules they used to have so at that point they are pretty much worthless. I feel 5e is much better if you remove skills alltogether and just roll with ability modifiers. There's even a variant rule to become proficient in your attribute instead, which IMO fits much better than skills for 5e. D&D 4e and PF2e are probably the systems that come the closest to have an actual functional skill system, specially PF2e, but both are held down by the fact that skill powers / skill feats exist which kind of limit some actions to those that only take the feat (yeah, I know whay Mark Seifter said about this already. To me it doesn't help much to "allow players to do weaker versions of those feats if
No, we don't. I freely admit when it comes to RP and skill checks I'm old school. I don't like everything codified.
RPG games should encourage social interaction, problem solving, and thought. This is one of the big draws of these games. The most interesting role-playing comes when you push players into interaction with the game world. I don't like that skill checks and all these codified checks change the game from a role-playing game into a roll playing game where the player can just roll the dice to succeed without engaging in the game world much.
I also let players do things that they made feats for like jump into the air and hit someone with the Athletics skill even if they don't have the feat that you must take for this unusual situation. I absolutely hate when game designers put a feat in the game a player must take for this niche situation which should just be something they can all do when that rare situation comes up.
I have no intention of letting the feat and skill system ruin my players enjoyment of the game by saying, "You didn't take cut from the air. But you have cloud jump, but you still can't time a leap and cut without that cut from the air feat. Sorry." No way. Forcing a player to take a combat feat to use actions to leap into the air to land a blow with Legendary Athletics and Cloud Jump is asking too much and making things too codified to the point of annoyance.
It's the same thing for having too many abilities wrapped up in Skill feats for things players should be able to do innately.
On top of that, the limited stat bonuses should not limit roleplay. The game limits stat bonuses on purpose forcing players to focus on combat abilities due to the high DCs. So now they gotta suffer in social situations because everyone can't focus on charisma? I don't think so. I use individual RP to allow them to interact. Not going to let the game balance attempts that limit how many stats you can build up stop people from engaging in good RP.
That would be like going, "Mr. Player A, your charisma is only 10. You can't possibly come up with a great speech and deliver it well. Sorry you can had to spend your stats to make sure your Str, Dex, Con, and Wis were high enough so you didn't end up getting wasted by every monster with a save ability. You can't participate in the RP because of your 10 charisma."
That's why I'm glad they made stats like Charisma have good combat skills. That's where I care about rolls and stats.
Outside of combat I care more about good RP and problem solving. I don't consider the stats much. Give me good RP. Give me good problem solving. That makes for more interesting story.
...This is one my pet peeves about the modern game and it's over-reliance on roll play due to everything being codified which 3E brought into the game. When skills did not exist, role-playing and creative problem solving was how we DMs decided whether something worked or not. The players were often expected to congress amongst themselves to determine the best course of action to solve a problem or influence a social situation which encouraged interaction and thought during play.This is one of the problems I have with skill systems in general too. I like to have them because they provide a framework of actions for both players and GMs to interact with the world, but since their goal is to codify every action in existance pretty much they are bound to fail short in some aspects. D&D 3.5 and PF1e had the problem of having a bizillion skills which made characters either completely dumb with the exception of 2 or 3 things, or barely capable of doing stuff but they supposedly could at least try to do most things. In practice I never understood why someone would want to not max their skills in those systems when a ton of skills were opposed checks as well. Then D&D 5e actually made a good move by reducing the skill list considerably but removed all semblance of rules they used to have so at that point they are pretty much worthless. I feel 5e is much better if you remove skills alltogether and just roll with ability modifiers. There's even a variant rule to become proficient in your attribute instead, which IMO fits much better than skills for 5e. D&D 4e and PF2e are probably the systems that come the closest to have an actual functional skill system, specially PF2e, but both are held down by the fact that skill powers / skill feats exist which kind of limit some actions to those that only take the feat (yeah, I know whay Mark Seifter said about this already. To me it doesn't help much to "allow players to do
yeah skill feats treated as gates just felt like the fun of players thinking creatively was just sucked out of the game. So yeah I no longer say well you dont have the feat for that and instead set a DC and ask for a roll. To your point about RP intersecting actually I still reward my players for the great speech by making that approach lower the DC but its still going to be funneled through the charisma and skills of the character which might mean that great approach coming from a non charismatic no diplomacy character is just going to still be challenging to succeed at. The way I feel about it is if the player wanted to be good at those things they would have made the decision to increase them. Also that is the balancing point for characters and a the reason why you dont always pick combat improving stats over everything else. If you want a character thats great at charisma things but you also want great will saves high reflex and fort and str for hit and damage well guess what? Make a choice, is dex for reflex more important than cha for great speeches?
When I GM game that choice matters. You cannot RP your way out of that balance point. You can be creative in your approach and I will take that into account when setting the DC but the player still rolls and the character bonuses still determine the outcome.|
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I know exactly what you mean about Barbs, Fighters and Champions, but you can usually do fine if you are willing to use either your Background or 1st Level Ancestry Feat to grab *something* related to out-of-combat skills.If you just grab it as is you'll end up with a pretty sad bonus (and very often someone else will just be better at it due to sheer attribute bonus). Having the right to roll the die to mostly fail is hardly rewarding (nor useful).
I strongly disagree with this. Trained with a low attribute is absolutely good enough to be useful in a lot of skill challenges. There are a good number where the DC is not particularly high, but the number of successes is important. Just training a skill can easily make the difference between party success or party failure.
In other circumstances the important thing is that you got your skill bonus up to "high enough to aid". Hitting a DC 15 without risking a 5 or lower is an important milestone.
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I mean, I say this because its something I don't like about the base system but its not something that has an effect in my table because I ditched skill feats a long time ago. Do you meet the prerequisites of the skill feat? Its yours. There's a very short list of skill feats I don't give for free (Additional Lore, Assurance, Automatic Knowledge, Dubious Knowledge, Experienced Professional, Kreighton's Cognitive Crossover, Master of Apprentice, Skill Training, and Unmistakable Lore) which are now general feats. So far its been a change for the better and even when I don't GM those I play with took this as a house rule too.
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Rolling dice for everything doesn't lead to much roleplay or character development or much thought. A player saying, "I roll my diplomacy check" without having to put any thought or effort into developing a good-roleplay scenario doesn't make for much character development.
I'm obviously not advocating for that. I'm advocating for "good roleplay". And that's where our definitions differ. The 10 Charisma no Diplomacy Fighter making a great speech is bad roleplay to me. It's using the player skills instead of the character skills, for me it's akin to metagaming. After all, if I can forgo the roll if I roleplay well, I should be able to forgo the roll if I know the Bestiary by heart? I'm sure you don't agree with that so why do you allow it for Charisma-based checks?
That would be like going, "Mr. Player A, your charisma is only 10. You can't possibly come up with a great speech and deliver it well. Sorry you can had to spend your stats to make sure your Str, Dex, Con, and Wis were high enough so you didn't end up getting wasted by every monster with a save ability. You can't participate in the RP because of your 10 charisma."
And that's exactly what I've said to a player. If you want to be the one making great speeches, then increase Charisma. At the very least, grab Diplomacy. And don't tell me it's a problem to be Trained in one skill in this system.
Now, it doesn't prevent you from roleplaying.
Roleplaying is not just about convincing people, there are tons of roleplaying opportunities that are not gated behind a roll. You roll when you want to, mostly, convince people in a timely manner. But if you are just having fun with someone you don't roll, you don't roll to get new friends, you don't roll to find a romantic partner, etc...
There are also some interesting skill substitutions, like using Lores for social interactions with specific social groups, or even I could allow an Arcana check if the Wizard wants to interact with other Wizards.
And finally, Aiding is a DC 15. So just grabbing the Trained proficiency in Diplomacy will allow you to participate to the great speeches.
There are points where we agree. I dislike rolling instead of roleplaying, I like to do both. And I also dislike when I get to roll for things everyone can do: low Charisma people have friends and lovers, as such it shouldn't be gated behind a roll. And I dislike skill feats, it's unnecessary complexity. But convincing the village through an inspiring speech, that is for high Charisma characters.
Having the right to roll the die to mostly fail is hardly rewarding (nor useful).I strongly disagree with this. Trained with a low attribute is absolutely good enough to be useful in a lot of skill challenges. There are a good number where the DC is not particularly high, but the number of successes is important. Just training a skill can easily make the difference between party success or party failure.
A level 1 average DC is 15, if you're Trained with no attribute bonus you have +3, so you have 45% chances to succeed and 10 % chance to critically fail. At level 3 it becomes 40%/15%, 35%/20% at level 6, 30%/25% at level 9, and so on every 3 levels. So it becomes quite quickly a bad idea to even roll and even at level 1 you are rolling to "mostly fail" (I consider 60% chances of success the moment where you feel you are rolling to succeed).
So I strongly disagree with you, having "the right to roll" is not enough if your chances of success are so low. Now, it's clearly player dependent, I'd stop rolling at level 6 but maybe some players will be fine rolling as many critical failures as successes.
In other circumstances the important thing is that you got your skill bonus up to "high enough to aid". Hitting a DC 15 without risking a 5 or lower is an important milestone.
If you're the only one able to help. But from my experience, there's enough skill coverage that finding someone able to help is not that much of an issue. But that depends on the average number of players around your PFS tables as obviously the less the players the less the chances of skill overlap.
Rolling dice for everything doesn't lead to much roleplay or character development or much thought. A player saying, "I roll my diplomacy check" without having to put any thought or effort into developing a good-roleplay scenario doesn't make for much character development.I'm obviously not advocating for that. I'm advocating for "good roleplay". And that's where our definitions differ. The 10 Charisma no Diplomacy Fighter making a great speech is bad roleplay to me. It's using the player skills instead of the character skills, for me it's akin to metagaming. After all, if I can forgo the roll if I roleplay well, I should be able to forgo the roll if I know the Bestiary by heart? I'm sure you don't agree with that so why do you allow it for Charisma-based checks?
That would be like going, "Mr. Player A, your charisma is only 10. You can't possibly come up with a great speech and deliver it well. Sorry you can had to spend your stats to make sure your Str, Dex, Con, and Wis were high enough so you didn't end up getting wasted by every monster with a save ability. You can't participate in the RP because of your 10 charisma."And that's exactly what I've said to a player. If you want to be the one making great speeches, then increase Charisma. At the very least, grab Diplomacy. And don't tell me it's a problem to be Trained in one skill in this system.
Now, it doesn't prevent you from roleplaying.
Roleplaying is not just about convincing people, there are tons of roleplaying opportunities that are not gated behind a roll. You roll when you want to, mostly, convince people in a timely manner. But if you are just having fun with someone you don't roll, you don't roll to get new friends, you don't roll to find a romantic partner, etc...
There are also some interesting skill substitutions, like using Lores for social interactions with specific social groups, or even I could allow an Arcana check if the Wizard wants to interact with...
I don't think stats should affect roleplay unless the player has built that way. If you build someone with a specific flaw from the beginning and it is built into the RP, then fine. If you're not able to build up your stats because the game doesn't offer enough stat bonuses to get around to charisma because of the class you play, then I won't consider it if you roleplay well. Stats should not drive roleplay. That's my personal opinion so long as you are not dumping a stat on purpose. Then I might have a problem with it.
It's so easy to train a skill, I do agree that I would greatly prefer to see a skill at least trained if they are going to RP it. Fortunately, my players who like skills are also my best RPers as people who like to RP seem to gravitate towards elements of the game that allow them greater RP opportunities like skills. That's my sort of unscientific viewpoint is RPers in general like skills more that pure combat oriented players who want the combat skills.
I'm not sure how people handle the bestiary on this board. I handle monster issues the following way which doesn't always require a roll:
1. Have they fought the monster before? If so, I'm not going to make them roll again for something they know.
2. Do they scout it first? If they scout and find out about a monster first, then they make the knowledge check for a monster outside of encounter mode.
3. Is it a monster so common that most people in a given area would know how to fight it? Knowing what kills a basic forest troll in a region inhabited by forest trolls would not require a roll from me. Some things are community or common knowledge.
4. I generally do have the players roll in encounter mode if they fight some new creature they've never faced before or some unique monster. Then someone is going to have to take the time to delve deeply into their knowledge base to figure it out.
I have to say it depends on if the character or the player knowledge of the bestiary is involved and to what point I think the knowledge would be common.
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A level 1 average DC is 15, if you're Trained with no attribute bonus you have +3, so you have 45% chances to succeed and 10 % chance to critically fail. At level 3 it becomes 40%/15%, 35%/20% at level 6, 30%/25% at level 9, and so on every 3 levels. So it becomes quite quickly a bad idea to even roll and even at level 1 you are rolling to "mostly fail" (I consider 60% chances of success the moment where you feel you are rolling to succeed).
So I strongly disagree with you, having "the right to roll" is not enough if your chances of success are so low. Now, it's clearly player dependent, I'd stop rolling at level 6 but maybe some players will be fine rolling as many critical failures as successes.
That's not how they set the DCs for PFS though. Low tier will use the Lvl 1 DC for levels 1-2, and high tier will increase it by 2 for levels 3-4. And then just because you are playing low tier doesn't mean every character will level 1-2, you might well be a level 3 character trying to hit a level 1 DC. (And sometimes they set the DCs even lower -- it is not that unusual for the Lvl 1 DC to be 13.)
That's not even counting generous opportunities to get circumstance bonuses on important checks.
In practice, it makes a measurable difference to group success for characters to be trained even in off-attribute skills. The difference between trained and untrained is massive.
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I don't think stats should affect roleplay unless the player has built that way.
I really have the opposite opinion. I've played games where characters are not "sufficiently fleshed out" in my opinion, with very few usable information to roleplay your character. And the end result was... that I was just playing myself.
For me, stats and other numbered values are constraints forcing me to play out of me, they force me to be an actor. With a lack of such stats, then the charisma of all my characters becomes my charisma.
But I can fully understand it's not the case for everyone. I need directions, not every player do. I also think a lot of players just don't care and don't try to roleplay someone different than them, which is sad in my opinion but to each their own.
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That's not how they set the DCs for PFS though. Low tier will use the Lvl 1 DC for levels 1-2, and high tier will increase it by 2 for levels 3-4. And then just because you are playing low tier doesn't mean every character will level 1-2, you might well be a level 3 character trying to hit a level 1 DC. (And sometimes they set the DCs even lower -- it is not that unusual for the Lvl 1 DC to be 13.)
Sorry, but having a character so close to bringing a negative contribution to skill challenges that I have to assess, depending on its level and adventure tier, if I should even roll is not something I consider funny. And it doesn't remove the fact that the higher the level and the more often I'll have to forgo rolling.
To each their own, but that's not an advice I'd give to anyone.
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Skill challenge, multiple skills, party success:
This type of skill challenge is rather common in PFS: The challenge is divided in multiple parts, each part asking PCs to roll for a skill among a few, and once the PCs have enough successes they move to the next part.
In any party: It's important for everyone to be able to roll so every PC should focus on being Trained in many skills (but no need to be Trained in all skills). Skill monkeys will have one skill of each "type" with a high bonus. Once again Eidolons will shift the odds (be careful in PFS as this use of an Eidolon is forbidden).
This needs a bit of nuancing. PFS put this in the character options page about Eidolons in skill challenges:
Eidolons: Eidolons are not PCs, so they do not count as PCs for effects that scale based on the number of PCs or players.
Eidolons and summoners share a pool of actions. As a result, for Victory Point/success counting systems that allow each PC a limited number of chances to roll, either the summoner or the eidolon can attempt each check. The summoner's player chooses for each attempt which of the two rolls. Any direct consequences of failure apply to whichever creature rolled the check.
This rule does not mean that in general only one of the summoner or eidolon need to roll to deal with adverse situations. If everyone in a room needs to attempt a saving throw against a hazard, both the eidolon and the summoner need to attempt that saving throw. If every PC needs to overcome a particular obstacle in order to continue (such as crossing a chasm), the eidolon and summoner both need to get past the obstacle.
So what you describe as "forbidden" is actually an advantage to having an Eidolon. The amount of successes in these challenges you need to get for a "good" result of some kind is based on the number of players. The eidolon is not counted as part of that total, so doesn't increase the amount of successes you need. But if your eidolon is better at the check than you, you can put in your eidolon to make the check instead of doing it yourself.
(And for some of those obstacles where having the eidolon would be an extra liability: then you could just de-manifest your eidolon.)
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I had a party with 2 Kineticist, a Barbarian and a Warpriest (I was GMing) and seeing them failing 2/3rd of the skill challenges was just heart breaking. They ended up the special with nearly no clue about what was happening (the only challenge they succeeded was the one not giving information). And as a GM it was this kind of situations where you either take them by the hand or accept the subpar experience, plague or cholera?
But is that because there's a problem with skill challenges in general, or with this party?
You could also get a randomly mustered party that happened to have no healers. They'd also struggle during the special, and probably waste a lot more time trying to heal up so not get to play as many encounters as other tables.
Everyone trying to be everyone isn't really efficient, if possible, it's much more effective if the players do a bit of coordinating who's playing what. Can be hard at conventions of course.
Finally, I think it's also a thing when building a character - you can usually afford a 14 in one mental stat. For the 5% less than ultimate combat power that might make you, it can make you at least viable in the 50% of the adventure that is not combat.
But is that because there's a problem with skill challenges in general, or with this party?
You could also get a randomly mustered party that happened to have no healers. They'd also struggle during the special, and probably waste a lot more time trying to heal up so not get to play as many encounters as other tables.
Everyone trying to be everyone isn't really efficient, if possible, it's much more effective if the players do a bit of coordinating who's playing what. Can be hard at conventions of course.
Finally, I think it's also a thing when building a character - you can usually afford a 14 in one mental stat. For the 5% less than ultimate combat power that might make you, it can make you at least viable in the 50% of the adventure that is not combat.
That is exactly my point :)
As I said, classes like Kineticist, Fighter, Barbarian and Champion, which are considered rather efficient overall, are actually not that good in PFS due to the importance of skill challenges. And then, I gave this example as an illustration.I don't think it's an issue with skill challenges. It's just that some classes are mostly focused on combat and if you don't take the necessary steps to broaden their horizons then you may end up as a liability.
So, we agree!
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So what you describe as "forbidden" is actually an advantage to having an Eidolon.
Not at all. Eidolons are normally allowed to roll alongside the Summoner, bringing 2 checks but not increasing the CPs nor the numbers of PCs/players. Going from 2 to 1 roll is definitely a drawback to me.
The shared pool of action is a bad excuse to me. Eidolons and Summoners are able to act alongside as Act Together suggests. The shared pool of action is a mechanical way of balancing the class and avoid having a character whose turns are twice longer but it doesn't mean that Eidolons and Summoners constantly phase out and can't complete 2 things simultaneously.