Liturgist and Tumble Through

[Squiggit]

Claxon wrote:

I think the ability was reworded to make it clear that you needed a successful tumble through check not because tumble through doesn't need a target, but because by rewording it as they did it left zero room for ambiguity.

They could have also changed Tumble Through itself to remove any ambiguity, but they chose to leave it the way it is, and even leverage that functionality in future design.

Quote:

In my opinion, they unfortunately forgot this lesson when writing the Animist ability.

How do you square that 'opinion' with direct developer commentary and design decisions to the contrary?

It feels weird to accuse Paizo of incompetence because an ability was designed in a way you don't like.

[Finoan]

Squiggit wrote:

It feels weird to accuse Paizo of incompetence because an ability was designed in a way you don't like.

I can't speak for Claxon, but I do think that it is a problem that the rules for this aren't written in a clear and straightforward manner that shows the intent better. It isn't incompetence, but it is a problem.

Yes, the developers are the final and ultimate authority on what their intent was. But even the developers acknowledge (with the printing of the Ambiguous Rules rule) that sometimes their intent doesn't show through very clearly in what is actually printed.

This reminds me a lot of the Clay Golem 'bug'. That was indirectly confirmed to be an intended override and not an accidental misprint of reminder text due to a developer not remembering the distinction between creature level and counteract level. But the result is so astonishingly different in game balance that the rule really should be written in a more explicit manner or else the players are going to be confused thinking that this must be wrong somehow.

The Liturgist ability needs official clarification or people are going to still think that it is strange and wrong and a rules exploit instead of a valid and intended interaction.

It still feels like a rules exploit that Cursed Wounds on a level 10 creature has a Rank 10 counteract rank (which is nearly insurmountable for a level 10 party), but if you read the rules just right you can notice that healing potions bypass the curse entirely. If that is the intent, then it should be written in the rules more clearly. Not left as a puzzle for players to struggle with, where those with better system mastery get a significant game mechanics advantage over their friends.

[NorrKnekten]

That is indeed one of the problems with Pathfinder 2e. Correct assertion of what the developers intended requires quite a bit of system mastery.

Both in regards to how things are written and how rules interact with other rules, Which arent neccesarily readily apparent with how they often are in different layers in the book... or multiple different books.

Developer intentions much to often are left as old stale posts on the forums and in VoDs that much to often become forgotten. Or in this case the quotes were from the Pathfinder2E Discord and in part from the archived playtests.

Erratas typically only happen once something is "Big enough" of a problem to be adressed. Like.. why have we not recieved an errata or clarifications for shieldblock yet despite multiple of the core staff telling us how its supposed to work and in what order the steps are taken in.

[Bluemagetim]

This seems like is is the developers being clever instead of being clear.

[Unicore]

What confuses me about people getting worked up about this is that there is no real exploit here to get worked up about. With leaping and feats to boost that, the distance moved by a tumble through that is essentially a stride isn’t really that big of a deal, and it still provokes the same as a stride. The ability to trigger 2 sustains off of one action is a product of the step action, not the tumble through.

[NorrKnekten]

Bluemagetim wrote:

This seems like is is the developers being clever instead of being clear.

You mean clever usage of rules and interactions between them to minimize wordcount? Kinda. Somewhat reminiscent of the Runelord's "Function as a staff" issue

Unicore wrote:

What confuses me about people getting worked up about this is that there is no real exploit here to get worked up about. With leaping and feats to boost that, the distance moved by a tumble through that is essentially a stride isn’t really that big of a deal, and it still provokes the same as a stride. The ability to trigger 2 sustains off of one action is a product of the step action, not the tumble through.

That's litterary the reason Sayre gave when adding Tumble Through to the list of actions. The amount of investment was deemed so little and having such low impact that they just added Tumble as a means to stride without it triggering off litterary every stride. Even then the ability was nerfed to only be able to sustain Vessel and Apparition spells, One of which already carry a limit on sustains.

[Claxon]

Unicore wrote:

What confuses me about people getting worked up about this is that there is no real exploit here to get worked up about. With leaping and feats to boost that, the distance moved by a tumble through that is essentially a stride isn’t really that big of a deal, and it still provokes the same as a stride. The ability to trigger 2 sustains off of one action is a product of the step action, not the tumble through.

I mean, making leaping work that way requires a non-trivial investment of skill feats and skill proficiency upgrades.

[John R.]

Claxon wrote:

I mean, making leaping work that way requires a non-trivial investment of skill feats and skill proficiency upgrades.

They may have just wanted to not have people feel pressured into investing in athletics and a feat (or 2(?)) so they just made people feel pressured into taking 1 of 4 subclasses instead. Lol.

[graystone]

Claxon wrote:

Unicore wrote:

What confuses me about people getting worked up about this is that there is no real exploit here to get worked up about. With leaping and feats to boost that, the distance moved by a tumble through that is essentially a stride isn’t really that big of a deal, and it still provokes the same as a stride. The ability to trigger 2 sustains off of one action is a product of the step action, not the tumble through.

I mean, making leaping work that way requires a non-trivial investment of skill feats and skill proficiency upgrades.

It requires more investment but offers better rewards, like avoiding difficult terrain, traps or obstacles. So the cost it's not really a mitigating factor IMO, as even using Tumble through as a stride it's well worth also having leaping. You can also sidestep the need for feats/skills with a reliable way of getting a Jump spell [3rd].

[NorrKnekten]

Absolutely, I wouldn't call it non-trivial either because it is often just measured in a single feat and maybe a single item. You don't even need the proficiency upgrade beyond trained, QuickJump is enough and a level 9 liturgist is absolutely capable of getting 20ft reliably. It also does offer additional rewards ontop of simply being able to stride. It doesn't take much else past level 9 to remove the possibility of a critical failure.

Michael Sayre on the Liturgist wrote:

Animist had tons of playtest feedback pointing out how quick and easy it was to get Leaps to the same functionality as Strides so the 9th-level liturgist ability is intentionally "a move action with style while you Sustain". (And as others have noted, it's not literally all Strides, because it won't work with e.g. quicken effects that let you Stride.)"

In another post he also mentioned,

Michael Sayre on the Liturgist wrote:

My other post seems to have disappeared, but yeah. It's also the only 9th level practice ability that you just can't use 2/3s of if you need to Fly to navigate the room or catch the enemy. It's generically useful because movement and Sustains are generically useful, but it might also be obsolesced significantly or entirely by basic strategies that other builds might want to use or encounter circumstances.

Michael Sayre on the Liturgist wrote:

And once you're in "spellcaster needing one or more skill checks to use a core feature without getting smacked" territory, you're not exactly shattering the game.

(There's a hyper focus on the action compression of liturgist's 9th level, which is fair because that's always good, but Leap and Step are really solid for just avoiding reactions entirely. TT starts pitting your skills against enemy stats and is nice but is also going to have different applications and failure points.)

[NorrKnekten]

As to WHY Tumble Through is like this, Well..

When asked

Quote:

I have seen a lot of people suggest that changing Tumble Through (and Balance, for that matter) to being a Free Action you take when your Stride approaches a triggering area would be a cleaner solution than what we have, and until you said this I agreed with that take and just assumed it was a weird rules hiccup, and that Quick Spring and (certain interpretations of) Winter Sleet were unintended consequences of the Actions.

But if the design of these two is intentional, then now I’m super curious: what was the reasoning behind the current design of making them independent Actions like this?

Michael Sayre on Tumble Through and Balance wrote:

Tumble Through and Balance are foundational actions and the only person still working on Pathfinder core design who was here when those were decided is our lead designer Logan, but my POV:

Those are both foundational actions that you should generally see coming up right out of the gate in the game, as early as 1st level. PF2 knows that it is a new game and one of the purposes it's been very successful at is actually tapping into the broader TTRPG market in a way PF1 never was able to.

Part of that is accessibility. PF2 balances a line between trying to achieve the accessibility of 5E while retaining the depth of PF1, without inheriting too much of PF1's excessive complexity or too much of 5E's "improv over stable rules".

As a result, things that are foundational to the system try to be as simple as possible, reserving complexity for specific choices you can learn as you go. The fact that Balance and Tumble Through are things you'll want to do right away and exist as bespoke actions means that new players who have been told "you get 3 actions, 1 reaction, and 4 degrees of success" will experience that and have the system foundation reinforced and easily grokked.

[Bluemagetim]

But tumble through is not so easily grokked, at least as they intended it.
On the one hand some here see it as an action that requires something to tumble through, and I at face value would have assumed it was an action to use for tumbling through anything not just enemy spaces.

Neither of which are intended.

[NorrKnekten]

Not going to lie, I have used Tumble Through to adjudicate PCs wanting to make their way across a field of wildly swinging practice dolls, Hazards... not creatures.

And I think its fair to say that these interactions arent as intuitive as they could be. But its certainly the case that both Balance and Tumble are great at making themselves look simple in a vaccuum. 1 action, Stride, Check determines the outcome.

And with both essentially being circumstantial strides why would one use them outside of those circumstances? well.. for balance its simple to just state that it has a requirement entry stating it can only be used when you are standing in squares with features you would need to balance on. Tumble isnt like that but still follows the same relatively easy to understand base. 1 action, stride, success or failure determines if you move trough someone or not. The must and need to move through someone aint there but its easy to think its there.

Outside of certain characteroptions a new player wouldn't need and arguably shouldnt need to deal with the case that Tumble can be used always and anywhere just like they would a stride. A similar pattern can be seen in classes, The classes from the CRB are mostly very uniform and have very mundane class features... outside the alchemist. But every class release since has seen classes that dive deeper and deeper into the machanics. The 'less' of a new game PF2e becomes, the less the designers need to worry about new content being easily accessible.

Ofcourse if we want a REAL answer as to why Tumble is like this then we would need to go trough the old playtest and initial release discussions, Preferably those with Logan, Mark or Jason as atleast one of those three would be present for when the decision was made.

[Squiggit]

Finoan wrote:

Squiggit wrote:

It feels weird to accuse Paizo of incompetence because an ability was designed in a way you don't like.

I can't speak for Claxon, but I do think that it is a problem that the rules for this aren't written in a clear and straightforward manner that shows the intent better. It isn't incompetence, but it is a problem.

I agree with you completely. But when the line being repeated over and over is that the devs "forgot" how the game worked, even when they come out and say the opposite, that strikes me as an attack on competency not a request for clarity.

[Bluemagetim]

Well the end result is the liturgist is going to be a singularly played class in that they are going to tell GMs not just they want to use an action to move from here to there but they will be prescribing the action tumble through to do it.
That is not gonna be the case for any other class is it?

[NorrKnekten]

Its probably going to be similar to other classes who benefits of similar interactions where an action fully replaces stride or strike;

*Tumble Trough with Panache Paragon for Swashbucklers letting them use their Quicken for Tumble, Which we know now can be used as a stride.
*Wall Run for Monks.
*Swift Sneak for Rogues.
*Running Reload for Gunslingers.
or Fighters with Lunge.

They say 1 action to move from A->B, Then explaining which effect they are adding to it. Either going trough places they otherwise wouldnt be able to with a basic stride, gaining extra actions, or adding effects to their actions outside the normal.

Personally I dont care what exact actions are used as long as the player can explain any benefit out of the normal.

[Teridax]

Yeah, I can agree that the action's full design intent may not be clear to the reader, because Tumble Through essentially achieves two things in one:

It's the action you take when you want to move through someone.

It's one of those precursors to Starfinder's traversal trait where you can Stride, but also use some other move action instead if you have the appropriate Speed.

The first bit is clear, but the second isn't, even if it's a natural consequence of the action's rules text. I can therefore understand why the action would seem too good to be true relative to Striding, even if I still don't believe it justifies some strange, lonely crusade against Paizo over competence and intent that sits in clear contradiction with actual developer statements.

I will say, though, trying to solve this via changes may be quite complicated. If we state that you must move through an enemy with Tumble Through, that changes the functionality of quite a few existing mechanics, and deprives the game of a catch-all move action, so we'd probably need to invent one or start making use of the traversal trait. When mechanics are meant to let you move as you please, including through enemies, they'd then need to mention Striding with the traversal trait as well as Tumbling Through, so that'd be a bit more text each time. Additionally, hooking up more direct interaction with Striding means hooking up more interaction with haste and other similar quickening effects, so that would also be a knock-on effect to bear in mind. It might still be very much worth doing, as it'd make Tumble Through much sharper at what it's meant to do and start integrating the traversal trait into Pathfinder, but it would be a bit more involved than a quick houserule to one action.

[NorrKnekten]

Totally agree with that, But if the staff working on core mechanics and the systems foundation by indirect admission has been writing these actions to be simple and basic in order to be more easily approachable for new players, Then we are probably not going to see such traits added.

Because as said, Tumble Through absolutely succeeds in being approachable with its basic functionality, its when character options adds in complexity and raises the distinction between Tumble being both a Stride and its own thing that this basic intuitive understanding breaks down.

[Deriven Firelion]

For me the Tumble Through comes down to internal consistency. Don't rule something that was clear is something else. I have never prior to this animist ruling seen anyone use Tumble Through for anything other than moving through an enemy space with a clear target. I have never seen someone go, "I tumble through, but I'm not sure I need to." Not even sure why that would even be in a player's mind save to try to prove this animist thing isn't ridiculous. Every instance of Tumble Through over the years has had a clear target and a clear purpose to get to a certain place or in the case of the swashbuckler acquire panache.

In our particular game, we house ruled haste works with any non-attack move action as we prefer it to work with hover, step, swimming, and the like. We found haste needlessly restrictive for movement. So the Liturgist could use their haste action to sustain a spell with one of the other two types of movement.

We have not found sustain spells to be that powerful with phantom orchestra being one of the best combat sustain spells.

In the case of the animist, it can't sustain its divine spells. For some reason Paizo has really gone out of their way to prevent divine casters from easy sustains other than the 6 hit point divine casters like a witch or sorcerer.

Cleric, animist, and oracle all lack free sustain options with the animist gaining a convoluted free sustain by moving in and out stance at the start of their turn at level 18. That still won't work to sustain their divine spells for divine aura, but at least they can sustain wrathful storm and their vessel spells.

Can they even get multiple vessel spells active at once? The only way I can sort of see it is Cycle of Spirits switching while a vessel spell is active for a convoluted way to get a few active.

Most sustain spells do less damage over the course of a fight than a single big AOE or blast. So you have to measure whether a sustain spell is even worth the slot. I can see earth's bile doing well due to the 1 action cast when combined with more powerful AOE for close up work.

[Teridax]

NorrKnekten wrote:

Totally agree with that, But if the staff working on core mechanics and the systems foundation by indirect admission has been writing these actions to be simple and basic in order to be more easily approachable for new players, Then we are probably not going to see such traits added.

Because as said, Tumble Through absolutely succeeds in being approachable with its basic functionality, its when character options adds in complexity and raises the distinction between Tumble being both a Stride and its own thing that this basic intuitive understanding breaks down.

I agree with this for the most part too, though I will say that I did get tripped up by the move through being optional, and at least one designer did too when they wrote the original Quick Spring feat. Although the ability is simply-written and clear when read in full, it’s still not intuitive to many that it can be used just to make a regular Stride, especially when actions superseding others wholesale like this are not normally how 2e works. Introducing the traversal trait early to new players by contrast could be a good way of teaching that traits in 2e often contain important rules that ought to be read to get the full picture, especially if the trait was presented in a sidebar there.

[NorrKnekten]

No I agree that something akin to the traversal trait would be a good way to show it, I'm just saying that if Sayre's PoV is true then it might've been a decision that Bonner and the others decided against in favor of having as few elements as possible in these actions.

Then again I was aware of Tumble being like this so the suprise isn't really there, Its hard to 'unlearn' something and see it from a new players perspective. But its always been like this ever since playtests. The very same interaction is seen in Panache Paragon and I believe we did get developer clarification in one of the VoDs back then aswell.

Panache Paragon only allows tumble or bravado traited actions. But you can just use tumble stride with that one too.

[Aristophanes]

pauljathome wrote:

I can't help but wonder how people's reaction would have been different if Tumble Through had instead been called Biddlegrowf. Nothing changed except the name.

Nice try.

I happen to know that "Biddlegrowf" is the Varissian Gnomish word for...Tumble Through. But, since Varissian Gmomish has only 27 native speakers, you probably thought you could use it without anybody realizing that. While I may not be fluent in Varissian Gnomish, I do know that word!