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Make the roll first and then come up with the narrative.
The reason that I prefer to do the narrative first and then roll the dice is because I DO give bonuses (and very, very occasionally penalties) for good roleplaying, for the argument made, for data points they explicitly bring up, etc.
Also if the player rolls and then immediately starts giving narrative my attention as a GM is split. Part of me is deciding whether the roll is a success (and how much of a success if that matters), part of me is listening to the narrative.
But your method definitely also has merit. I think that this is firmly in the "Your mileage may vary, different strokes for different folks" category. I'm NOT saying that you're wrong and I'm right, just explaining why I prefer my method.
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if the player rolls and then immediately starts giving narrative my attention as a GM is split. Part of me is deciding whether the roll is a success (and how much of a success if that matters), part of me is listening to the narrative.
Make the roll first and then come up with the narrative.
And why does that not happen with physical skill rolls?
I'm not understanding this. Why does the player not need to get the results of their roll from you as the GM before they launch into their narrative?
The reason that I prefer to do the narrative first and then roll the dice is because I DO give bonuses (and very, very occasionally penalties) for good roleplaying, for the argument made, for data points they explicitly bring up, etc.
Just understand that this is a houserule. It is fine to houserule the game to work the way that you want - as long as everyone at the table agrees to it.
And be aware that it is a houserule that is going to be exclusionary to certain types of people. April is Autism Awareness Month, so try to be aware that Autistic people exist and would like to play too. Why shouldn't an Autistic person be able to play a Bard effectively just like a person in a wheelchair should be able to play a Monk effectively?
For my part I don't restrict the physical things either as a hard lock.
Rolling landing is an example of this.
It was the thing that made me change my mind about hard locking something a player wants to attempt just because they don't have the feet.
I did have a player want to roll after jumping down from a higher place and told them there is a feat for that, since you dont have it yet you cant do it.
That just wasnt the kind of game I wanted to keep running. So I decided something like that would not be hard locked away from players who want to attempt it, instead the feat gives the ability to do it without having to roll to see if they failed at it.
So the way I run things is to ask the player what they are attempting, then they roll, then I narrate the outcome.
There are a lot of times where using a VP system makes more sense for having a tense skill encounter where die rolls matter, but not in a “one roll wins” kind of way. Chase scenes, for example, have to ignore a ton of otherwise very specific physical activity rules, or else a character like a monk or a caster with speed boosting spells just completely wrecks the encounter. Factoring in the various skill feats to these situations requires as much GM arbitration as any social encounter.
It is generally a bad idea as a GM or adventure writer to create situations where one PC is going to just solve and encounter, especially with default/resourceless abilities, unless the encounter really never mattered in the first place. Individual PCs should be helping their allies through non-combat challenges (social, physical, etc.) in enough ways that standard combat encounter mode options just don’t quite work out as statically as they need to to keep combat encounters moving along smoothly.
PF2 doesn’t inherently give GMs good tools for anything like “my PCs want to negotiate with an enemy they are actively fighting.” The system is robust, and you can make up so thing like a morale VP system on the fly once you get used to it, but if it was a printed rule, many players would build to abuse it, because it would be very difficult to balance that system to be equally challenging as a combat encounter. It really is best for players to assume “talking down an entire army at the gates” is generally not a default activity of the game, and instead something players can ask the GM about, but will only happen if the GM feels prepared to go that far off the rails and feels like the opportunity to allow something normally not allowed will be worth the work they have to put into it.
Quick coercion has benefits when time matters.
Which is almost never. It is already out of combat and in encounter mode. It is the difference between fluffy time and a bit less fluffy time. Most people are never going to see the difference.
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Which is almost never. It is already out of combat and in encounter mode. It is the difference between fluffy time and a bit less fluffy time. Most people are never going to see the difference.Quick coercion has benefits when time matters.
Thats a matter of scenarios a GM sets up and how often time is a factor for those scenarios.
I'm not sure how APs are in this regard but for my home games I will set up scenes so that my players choices come into play.In a way my players are telling me the kinds of gameplay they are interested in by the skill feats they choose so to some degree I like to accommodate those choices with how I set up scenarios.
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For my part I don't restrict the physical things either as a hard lock.
This is definitely a tangent but I think that skill feats are the single biggest missed opportunity in Pathfinder 2.
They had the potential to be a WONDERFUL mechanic and quite a few existing skill feats are very, very good. But far too many are far, far too niche or actively make the game worse by restricting what people without the feat can accomplish. Or are just SO bad as to be laughable (my personal contender for absolute worst feat is All of the Animal
For my part I don't restrict the physical things either as a hard lock.This is definitely a tangent but I think that skill feats are the single biggest missed opportunity in Pathfinder 2.
They had the potential to be a WONDERFUL mechanic and quite a few existing skill feats are very, very good. But far too many are far, far too niche or actively make the game worse by restricting what people without the feat can accomplish. Or are just SO bad as to be laughable (my personal contender for absolute worst feat is All of the Animal
I mean technically there could be some advantages in being able to hide a corpse that would otherwise take a month to consume...
Which is almost never. It is already out of combat and in encounter mode. It is the difference between fluffy time and a bit less fluffy time. Most people are never going to see the difference.Quick coercion has benefits when time matters.
Can you tell me why they gave it an action cost like encounter mode, but then you read Coercion and it has the exploration tag? The Skill feat doesn't change the type of action it is.
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Which is almost never. It is already out of combat and in encounter mode. It is the difference between fluffy time and a bit less fluffy time. Most people are never going to see the difference.Quick coercion has benefits when time matters.
No, it depends.
If you are in a very pressure situation like for example a rogue that is escaping from a mansion that it robbed can Quicky Coerce the gardener to open the back gate threatening its life or family lives. This time difference of make this Coerce a success in 6 seconds instead of 1 minute could be the difference to this rogue don't become surrounded by mansion's guards.
But again this is situational. Usually players are not in such high pressure situation frequently and if it wasn't an unarmed defeless NPC but an armed one like a guard you probably won't able to Coerce instead the GM probably will roll a initiative and start a fight. Due this is pretty rare you to have a real need for such feat.
Which is almost never. It is already out of combat and in encounter mode. It is the difference between fluffy time and a bit less fluffy time. Most people are never going to see the difference.Quick coercion has benefits when time matters.
Thats a matter of scenarios a GM sets up and how often time is a factor for those scenarios.
So an ability that is only useful when the GM specifically sets it up to be useful, and not otherwise. It is a terrible concept.
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So an ability that is only useful when the GM specifically sets it up to be useful, and not otherwise. It is a terrible concept.Which is almost never. It is already out of combat and in encounter mode. It is the difference between fluffy time and a bit less fluffy time. Most people are never going to see the difference.Quick coercion has benefits when time matters.
Thats a matter of scenarios a GM sets up and how often time is a factor for those scenarios.
I think that I'd argue that it's a fine concept, just a bad implementation.
If the base rule for coerce was a 1 minute activity OR a 2 action activity with a -bunch (5 or 10 probably) to the roll then 2 things would happen
1) GMs would not have to set things up specifically, they would just automatically happen some of the time
2) quick coercion would be a fine and useful feat
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Skill feats are a pretty new concept in the D20 RPG space. The fact they competed with combat feats in past versions of the game basically meant characters never had any/ only took ones that could be massively exploited for some kind of mechanical dominance. This meant, at the start of the edition, no adventure writers or GMs really had any experience with designing adventures with them in mind. It also meant that game developers had to weigh their balance more carefully, as characters would get enough of them that they weren’t only going to come up once in a blue moon. I think that created a natural tendency to stay low on the power scale, especially as they needed to stay less powerful than class feats. Rebalancing existing skill feats is something that is probably very difficult to do, especially as players tend to love just getting new skill feats in new books. It seems like only extreme outliers will get reviewed, and even then only ones that the game really needed to work, but don’t, AND are preventing a new feat from essentially just superseding it. Anything else is just trivially easy to ignore by saying, don’t pick that one. Between spells, gear and feats generally, there are just tons of game options that fall into this space and there always has been.
At the same time, I think the adventure writers/designers at Paizo are getting better and better at creating noncombat/exploration encounters that use the games existing rules instead of defaulting to old adventure design ideas that are not PF2 game specific. This definitely includes skill feats. With time , I think that this, plus player feed back about how those encounters go, are going to continue to result in better skill feats implementation and design in the future.
4e skill challenges never quite worked out in implementation the way they were imagined to in that system, but they changed the D20 game space and how to integrate game mechanics into the most narrative aspects of the game previously. They introduced the idea of using the rounds/turn structure outside of combat to ensure more equal opportunities for player participation and were a huge move forward, even if they never really presented a well balanced injection of tension into noncombat encounters because they tended to be either much to easy to present a challenge, or ended up being doors that turned off momentum in story if the party didn’t have the right skills to complete them. I think the implementation of skill feats has already been better than that, even if it hasn’t been executed perfectly.
I think one of the biggest challenges moving forward with them is that noncombat encounters just can’t be as regulated mechanically with tight, crunchy rules without massively slowing the game down. Combat rules also run into this problem, but RPGs have decades of experience filing the trickier kind of combat encounters down/off so that the limits of turn based combat encounters don’t pop up that often to draw notice (big fights with lots of creatures of very different levels have always been very complicated and difficult to run, as an example of something that took time to come up with a solution like Troops, which while good, still require mechanical abstraction that can break immersion). Dialing in when and how to abstract things like movement speeds, npc morale/commitment to accomplish their goals, etc. is just a process that is going to take a lot of time, and something many tables will ignore, because they have been running a more abstracted/narrative system for doing these kinds of encounters for a long time, in a way that trying a new, less polished and refined system will not be able to easily or effectively replace. I know I had this reaction at first to things like chase scenes and infiltrations, which used to require massive maps and 8+ hour encounters run at combat pacing, but didn’t actually lose as much as I thought they might to pulling out into a VP system with multiple tiers for success and complication.
In my Strength of Thousands game session this Tuesday, the rogue Roshan Coerced the venom-caller Atathik into surrendering in just two rounds. Roshan had used one action to move first. And she rolled a critical success, natural 20, on her Intimidation check.
But really, Atathik is pretending to surrender. She is a spy and Deception is her preferred mode of conduct. One of her lower-level servants had been taken down by some powerful cantrips, and she had turned her other servant invisible and sent her outside to fetch the three powerful guards stationed at the front door (the PCs entered by a side door). Atathik just needed to stall until the guards showed up. Roshan's bold coercion make false surrender the obvious stalling tactic.
But really really, Atathik is going to truly surrender before she can discard her deception. The Coercion was not instantaneous, but it will have its effect. I will give the party a chance for Sense Motive to notice her surprise and disappointment when she learns that the party already took down and captured the three guards. And the party saw Atathik cast the invisibility spell and understood what the door opening and closing by itself meant. One keen-eared PC already ran to the door to follow. Alas, our game session has to end at 9pm promptly, so we had to stop there.
One cardinal rule of Pathfinder is that the GM does not get to control the PCs at all. They have their free will determined by their players. The rules have exceptions such as the Dominate Spell, Sleep spell, and critical failure on some fear effects that result in fleeing, but those are clearly situations where the PC's decisions no longer control their body. PC's attitude is not affected by Make an Impression. As for Deception, the rules encourage the GM to lie to the players. I don't make secret rolls myself. Earlier in the same game session, two PCs critically failed on Recall Knowledge rolls to identify a gbahali. I told them the players that they had critically failed and one had decided the gbahili, a Huge alligator-like creature, was the adult version of their dorm-mate Noxolo's pet Snabble, a 2-foot-long fuzzy alligator-like big-eared damibwas. The other player promptly agreed, so I did not have to invent a second false interpretation. My players love to ham up their PC's mistakes.
But I don't need Make an Impression to influence the PCs. Instead, an employer hires them for a quest at reasonable pay or the town mayor begs them to save the village as charity work without making a single skill check. The players respond to the plot hook based on the personalities of their characters.
Likewise, I play my NPCs and monsters with free will determined by me and they have their hooks. A successful Make an Impression works because the diplomatic PC and the NPC talked long enough to make a connection that helped them understand and respect each other. Since I am the only person at the table familiar with both characters, I say something such as, "Oh, you are students of Takulu Ot. I work with his wife selling the blown glass she creates." Then the player of JInx Fuun, whose backstory connects her to both Ots, can add, "I met both Takulu and Niana while they were birdwatching in the Kaava Lands last year. They invited me to Nantambu."
Skill actions like Make an Impression and Coerce provide me with hooks for roleplaying the NPCs. The feats Group Impression and Group Coercion mean that I have to imagine a wider narrative hook that would affect 10 people or 5 people respectively. If I am running 10 NPCs in the same encounter, most of them are not fully sketched out so I can fill in their missing details to fit some hook. Charming Liar means that the NPC believes the PC has a connection, though from the PC's side it is a lie.
Let's say I'm a charismatic war leader, I'm planning the attack on enemies keep and decided to give my troops an inspirational speech, so they would be more willing to fight and die for me. Let's say my forces consist of 1000 soldier's. I want them to be more loyal during the battle. So I give a speech, and to be more loyal they should like me more, sounds like Make an Impression action to me.
The troops already follow the charismatic war leader, so they are already loyal. The inspirational speech is a plot hook, to provide the roleplaying reason why the troops are following to war leader to attack that particular keep. Is the keep's master a foul villain? Does the kingdom need control of the keep to control its borders? The speech will fill in the narrative so that the GM can properly roleplay the troops. A good Diplomacy roll means that the war leader's player and the GM can cooperate on a good hook that works with both the player's goals and the kingdom setting. Group impression is not involved at all. Group impression would be for recruiting new troops, ten at a time.
Second situation. I'm great wizard(20 lvl wizard). Ruler of the kingdom ask me for help, because enemy army is attacking the city right now. I'm teleporting right before the enemy army. And cast falling stars on them(and 4 40-foot bursts are humongous territory). Let's say army consisits of 6000 ordinary soldiers of different ranks(so different lvl). This spell would absolutely annihilate most of enemy army, if it placed right.So now my wizard says to them using amplifying voice cantrip(Don't remember it's name)"Drop your weapon and flee, or survivors would die to!".
The cantrip is Bullhorn.
As others have pointed out, most troops would shoot arrows at the wizard instead. During my PF2-converted Ironfang Invasion campaign in Assault on Longshadow 384 hobgoblin soldiers (the module said 1,000, but the party sabotaged their transportation so 616 failed to arrive) attacked the city of Longshadow. I was glad of that, because controlling 24 troop units representing 16 hobgoblins each was tough enough. And the party had trained 6 Longshadow Archer troop units that rained arrows down on those hobgoblin troops and the storm/animal druid Stormdancer was throwing down fiery death from the skies atop her roc animal companion well above shortbow range. The last surviving 64 hobgoblin soldiers needed no speeches to run away. Their natural motive when they could not longer win was to survive.
Charming liar is even more problematic. Why I can't make in impression on someone with Deceive in the first play, if I roleplay it with telling false stories about me, or pretending that I am more then I am?
Lie uses the character's Charisma to read their reaction to properly vague statements to shape the details into something the target will believe, "Gate guard, let me in because I bear an important package, I mean message, for the duke, I mean the duke's chamberlain who handles the mail ..." Make an Impression uses the character's Charisma to share distinctive details that could form a good impression. "Gate Guard, we have come from the village of Farwoods. Mayor Humblebriar of Farwoods has sent a messenger ahead of us announcing our arrival. We are willing to wait here while you confirm this. The messenger should have arrived two days before us, because we delayed to help the village of Wheatfield against a plague of rats ..." Combining the two techniques would require greater skill than each individual technique, and that greater skill is represented by a skill feat.
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Which is almost never. It is already out of combat and in encounter mode. It is the difference between fluffy time and a bit less fluffy time. Most people are never going to see the difference.Quick coercion has benefits when time matters.
Hey, I'll jump on this too.
One big difference is that you can coerce someone during a brief distraction. "You wanna live? Good. Act natural, but tell the guard you know us." All in the one round of someone else's Distracting Performance.
Quick Coercion allows you to make your own opportunities, and it's fast enough that nobody will suspect something happened. Sure, it's usually vague time vs. vague time, but the difference is a factor of ten.
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So an ability that is only useful when the GM specifically sets it up to be useful, and not otherwise. It is a terrible concept.
Yes, yes, and mental effects are only useful when your GM doesn't set you up against constant mindless encounters, and linguistic effects are only useful if you're facing off against intelligent enemies. Precision damage is useless if you're facing off against oozes all the time! We've heard it all before.
This game requires effort on both sides to make sure you're getting the most out of it. If your GM isn't running social encounters deep enough to get use out of the social skill feats, they should let their players know beforehand so they don't take feats that won't get any use.
if the player rolls and then immediately starts giving narrative my attention as a GM is split. Part of me is deciding whether the roll is a success (and how much of a success if that matters), part of me is listening to the narrative.
Make the roll first and then come up with the narrative.
And why does that not happen with physical skill rolls?
I'm not understanding this. Why does the player not need to get the results of their roll from you as the GM before they launch into their narrative?
The reason that I prefer to do the narrative first and then roll the dice is because I DO give bonuses (and very, very occasionally penalties) for good roleplaying, for the argument made, for data points they explicitly bring up, etc.Just understand that this is a houserule. It is fine to houserule the game to work the way that you want - as long as everyone at the table agrees to it.
And be aware that it is a houserule that is going to be exclusionary to certain types of people. April is Autism Awareness Month, so try to be aware that Autistic people exist and would like to play too. Why shouldn't an Autistic person be able to play a Bard effectively just like a person in a wheelchair should be able to play a Monk effectively?
Physical abilities could be represented purely by mechanical effects and social/mental abilities do not
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I think Unicore has the right of it. Nearly all the OP's examples would be best served as victory point or skill challenges.
This would also allow opportunities for other players to contribute in a meaningful way, rather than all being sidelined by "the one true hero."
Physical abilities could be represented purely by mechanical effects and social/mental abilities do not
I understand how it might feel this way, but measuring and representing physical abilities with a total of 3 attributes really isn’t any more realistic than trying to do the same with mental attributes. It is really no more difficult to represent “how persuasive can my character be?” With mechanics, than it is to represent “how well will my character’s physical health hold up under a constant barrage of life threatening circumstances?”
All of it requires imagination, suspension of disbelief, and a willingness to accept a lot of abstraction.
Physical abilities could be represented purely by mechanical effects and social/mental abilities do notI understand how it might feel this way, but measuring and representing physical abilities with a total of 3 attributes really isn’t any more realistic than trying to do the same with mental attributes. It is really no more difficult to represent “how persuasive can my character be?” With mechanics, than it is to represent “how well will my character’s physical health hold up under a constant barrage of life threatening circumstances?”
All of it requires imagination, suspension of disbelief, and a willingness to accept a lot of abstraction.
The question here is not realism, but the representation of what High or Low attribute score means. If you have High ST, you are strong, If you have high Con you are tough, If you have high Dex you are dexterous and so on. This things purely mechanical and could be represented only by system itsefl. Because you do not need to be olympic level athlete in real life, to be olympic level athlete in TTRPG. This is not the case for purely mental stats, having high wis, int and char definitely gives you mechanical benefits, but you can't get full use of this stats without being able to represent them in real life, of course you would need to do that with much lesser degree but still. This is the same thing with gming, GM must have appropriate level of creativity, intelligence and multitasking to be GM. If we expect GM to create consistent plot, remember all twists, play different characters(at the same time) and came up with new interesting encounters(sometimes on fly), we should expect from players some similarities with their character. You can't roleplay genius tactician without at least base understanding of tactic, of course high stats and modifiers will help you with this, you'll get much more information about enemy and the situation, but you should be able to use that information in real life by yourself. Same with genius inventor and other genius type of characters, of course you don't need to be engineer, investigator or scientist by yourself, but you still need to come up with creative ideas for your inventions, connect dots using information you have for investigator, or use scientific knowledge of you character(Of course you can say, that this is dice rolls existing for, but then all same things should be done not by you, but by the gm). Same idea applicable to social skills. You can't get right answer without having right question (recall knowledge saying hi!), as you can't get right result without trying to do right actions in the first place. So yes, even if representing all physique of character represented by three stats is not realistic, it could be represented purely by mechanics, so locking new abilities and actions under purely mechanical lock such as feats is viable, because it is first of all player-and-system interaction. Locking new abilities and actions for things that first of all depends on roleplay and direct interaction with GM is not viable, because it couldn't be represented by mechanics only, this is not computer game, where all choices, words and reaction are programmed in advance. This feats should give bonuses to this actions for purpose of connecting mechanics with narrative(You are better at something, so you doing something better when dice rolls are involved) not locking narrative under mechanic(You couldn't speak to several people at once because you don't have feat, you can't come up with false story, because you don't have feat). Social interactions are outside of the system, system only helps to digitalise them, physical interactions are within the system only.
So an ability that is only useful when the GM specifically sets it up to be useful, and not otherwise. It is a terrible concept.Yes, yes, and mental effects are only useful when your GM doesn't set you up against constant mindless encounters, and linguistic effects are only useful if you're facing off against intelligent enemies. Precision damage is useless if you're facing off against oozes all the time!
You are missing the point. One is useful by default, the other is not useful by default. It is not an 80:20 situation it is a 20:80 situation.
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The question here is not realism, but the representation of what High or Low attribute score means. If you have High ST, you are strong, If you have high Con you are tough, If you have high Dex you are dexterous and so on. This things purely mechanical and could be represented only by system itsefl. Because you do not need to be olympic level athlete in real life, to be olympic level athlete in TTRPG. This is not the case for purely mental stats, having high wis, int and char definitely gives you mechanical benefits, but you can't get full use of this stats without being able to represent them in real life, of course you would need to do that with much lesser degree but still. This is the same thing with gming, GM must have appropriate level of creativity, intelligence and multitasking to be GM. If we expect GM to create consistent plot, remember all twists, play different characters(at the same time) and came up with new interesting encounters(sometimes on fly), we should expect from players some similarities with their character. You can't roleplay genius tactician without at least base understanding of tactic, of course high stats and modifiers will help you with this, you'll get much more information about enemy and the situation, but you should be able to use that information in real life by...
Physical abilities could be represented purely by mechanical effects and social/mental abilities do notI understand how it might feel this way, but measuring and representing physical abilities with a total of 3 attributes really isn’t any more realistic than trying to do the same with mental attributes. It is really no more difficult to represent “how persuasive can my character be?” With mechanics, than it is to represent “how well will my character’s physical health hold up under a constant barrage of life threatening circumstances?”
All of it requires imagination, suspension of disbelief, and a willingness to accept a lot of abstraction.
I will give you that Intelligence is a very difficult attribute to create mechanics around beyond very surface level "know more stuff" metrics. I too have been making that argument for a long time, see the numerous 100+ posts about why playing wizards can be very difficult for many players. Measuring, even defining, intelligence in the real world is even more complicated and fraught than most physical attribute metrics, and I agree that PF2 in particular does not do a good job of giving the players of high intelligence characters ways to say "my character makes the smartest choice possible here." There are some INT based mechanics related to tactics and strategy, but they are almost all class defined, not things smart characters can generally choose. At the same time, the INT skill feats actually are pretty decent for "your character can do this extra thing because they are smart" outside of being a brilliant tactician or strategist. Those things might be coming soon though, as the next rule book is going to be about that kind of stuff. SO "Does my character know this" is not hard to arbitrate mechanically, but "how should my character best process this raw information" is currently difficult with many aspects of the game beyond getting told numbers and abilities of creatures.
But charisma and wisdom do have a lot of options for basically just saying "my character does this thing because they are charismatic" (or wise). Perception as a skill really covers a lot of essential elements of what an observant, intuitive person is going to be able to figure out. Players don't really need to be able to describe a complicated search methodology in character to justify, "my character is searching," and for the GM to have very clear cut mechanical means for interpreting that into the game.
Charisma really does the same. Players really don't need to be able to sit there and act out a 15 to 20 minute scene of gathering information, making a request, or deceiving someone for the GM to generally be able to ask for a roll and the player and the GM both having a relatively good sense of what that means.
Charisma really does the same. Players really don't need to be able to sit there and act out a 15 to 20 minute scene of gathering information, making a request, or deceiving someone for the GM to generally be able to ask for a roll and the player and the GM both having a relatively good sense of what that means.
..."Does my character know this" is not hard to arbitrate mechanically, but "how should my character best process this raw information"
They still need to understand what and who they are asking for and where/what information they are gathering. Basic prerequisite of understanding is still there.
Also, no, "how my character best proceed raw information" is still hard arbitrate mechanically, because someone still need to proceed it after dice rolled. Someone is GM in this case. Again. If we expect our GMs to create consecutive logical stories, which includes processing lots of information on the fly, why shouldn't players use their brains to? TTRPGs are mind games for a reason
So an ability that is only useful when the GM specifically sets it up to be useful, and not otherwise. It is a terrible concept.Yes, yes, and mental effects are only useful when your GM doesn't set you up against constant mindless encounters, and linguistic effects are only useful if you're facing off against intelligent enemies. Precision damage is useless if you're facing off against oozes all the time!You are missing the point. One is useful by default, the other is not useful by default. It is not an 80:20 situation it is a 20:80 situation.
Many skills require special situations. Unless a character, such as a Swashbuckler, regularly relies on Tumble Through or wants the Cat Fall feat, then use of Acrobatics depends on needing to Balance or Squeeze or Grab an Edge. Crafting is used for repairing shields, making alchemical items, or magical items, all individual character choices. Performance is mostly a roleplaying choice. Religion is for identifying celestials, fiends, and undead, and the first two seldom show up at low levels. Survival could become unimportant in a city adventure.
And Make an Impression and Coercion could become useful in situations where the GM expects other methods. For example, imagine the GM sets up a bandit ambush on the road. The party is traveling by public coach but the road is blocked by a fallen tree. A bandit spokesman comes out of the forest with an ultimatum to give over all valuables or the bandits will take them by force. The GM planned a fight. On the other hand, the high-Charisma party spokesman tries Coercion--just on the bandit spokesman or with Group Coercion on all the bandits listening in hiding--to intimidate them into running away instead of fighting a very dangerous adventuring party.
For a real example, I have been adding missions from an old module GameMastery Module W2: River into Darkness to my Strength of Thousands campaign. In the third mission, River into Darkness, comment #5, they needed to harvest a fungus that grows on Shamblers. Fighting that 6th-level creature was a serious difficulty for the 4th-level 4-member party in River into Darkness, but easy for my 7-member party at 5th level, so I asked them to harvest fungus from four Shamblers. But the players made the mission even easier. They decided to Make an Impression on the Shamblers and offer fungus removal as a free medical service. The diplomacy worked on two, they switched to Coercion on a third, and had to fight a fourth.
Tumble Through is an option that might be useful everytime you are adjacent to an enemy, Cat Fall is useful if you are prone. These are common occurances. I know you understand probabilities so I'm finding your argument strange. It completely misses my point.
Yes Quick Coercion technically could be useful. It is just not often. I'm not talking about Coercion just the utility of some of the extra skill feats.
Ultimately I feel that Pathfinder 2 would be a better game if the writers had simply hit the delete key and several (not all) of the feats like Quick Coercion did not exist.
The question here is not realism, but the representation of what High or Low attribute score means. If you have High ST, you are strong, If you have high Con you are tough, If you have high Dex you are dexterous and so on. This things purely mechanical and could be represented only by system itsefl. Because you do not need to be olympic level athlete in real life, to be olympic level athlete in TTRPG. This is not the case for purely mental stats, having high wis, int and char definitely gives you mechanical benefits, but you can't get full use of this stats without being able to represent them in real life, of course you would need to do that with much lesser degree but still. This is the same thing with gming, GM must have appropriate level of creativity, intelligence and multitasking to be GM. If we expect GM to create consistent plot, remember all twists, play different characters(at the same time) and came up with new interesting encounters(sometimes on fly), we should expect from players some similarities with their character. You can't roleplay genius tactician without at least base understanding of tactic, of course high stats and modifiers will help you with this, you'll get much more information about enemy and the situation, but you should be able to use that information in real life by...
Physical abilities could be represented purely by mechanical effects and social/mental abilities do notI understand how it might feel this way, but measuring and representing physical abilities with a total of 3 attributes really isn’t any more realistic than trying to do the same with mental attributes. It is really no more difficult to represent “how persuasive can my character be?” With mechanics, than it is to represent “how well will my character’s physical health hold up under a constant barrage of life threatening circumstances?”
All of it requires imagination, suspension of disbelief, and a willingness to accept a lot of abstraction.
Not sure what you mean by this. In PF2 skill feats for str and dex exist that allow you to use those skills much, much better than a person with a standard high dex.
It has the same method for expanding what you can do as charisma with skill feats.
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Not in the original order ...
I know you understand probabilities so I'm finding your argument strange. It completely misses my point.
I think your original point was:
Quick coercion has benefits when time matters.Which is almost never. It is already out of combat and in encounter mode. It is the difference between fluffy time and a bit less fluffy time. Most people are never going to see the difference.
Yes, technically both regular Coerce and Quick Coercion are before Encounter Mode, when I am not keeping exact track of time. But the difference between 1-minute Coerce and 1-round (why does it mention 1 round for a mode without rounds?) Quick Coerce is the difference between rolling for initiative to begin Encounter Mode and a last-ditch intimidating sentence to prevent rolling for initiative, "Don't move unless you are feeling lucky, very lucky." I have seen those scenes in movies, such as Dirty Harry's "Go ahead. Make my day," and Crocodile Dundee's "That's not a knife. (Draws his knife.) That's a knife." Pathfinder should have options for mimicking cinema when opportunities arise.
That one quick coerce in my party's encounter with a shambler was not Quick Coercion. Roshan lacked a common language for true Coerce. Instead, she used Intimidating Glare and I decided to treat pre-combat frightened condition as more like pausing due to fear, so that Stargazer had time for a regular Coerce attempt in Shambler language. But if the party didn't have the language problem, a failed negotiation that might slip into combat at any moment is when the one moment for Quick Coercion is better than the one minute for regular Coerce.
And remember, the players, not me, set up the situation with the Shamblers. The players wanted to exploit the skill feats, Glad-Hand and Intimidating Glare, that they had chosen.
Tumble Through is an option that might be useful everytime you are adjacent to an enemy,
Tumble Through is a skill action rather than a skill feat. I threw that in for flavor to emphasize the limited uses of Acrobatics skill checks.
Cat Fall is useful if you are prone. These are common occurances.
I think Gortle might have confused Cat Fall, acrobatics feat 1, with Kip Up, acrobatics feat 7. Cat Fall is about taking less falling damage and not landing prone. It is popular among my players, who often want to reach ground level safely and quickly from up a tree or atop a building. But the feat is popular only because my players like their characters scouting from high places.
Yes Quick Coercion technically could be useful. It is just not often. I'm not talking about Coercion just the utility of some of the extra skill feats.
Ultimately I feel that Pathfinder 2 would be a better game if the writers had simply hit the delete key and several (not all) of the feats like Quick Coercion did not exist.
I choose the setting, but the players choose which skills and feats they use in that setting. To start my next point about choice, let me start with the physical versus mechanical discussion between AlexTheQueen and Unicore.
Physical abilities could be represented purely by mechanical effects and social/mental abilities do notI understand how it might feel this way, but measuring and representing physical abilities with a total of 3 attributes really isn’t any more realistic than trying to do the same with mental attributes. It is really no more difficult to represent “how persuasive can my character be?” With mechanics, than it is to represent “how well will my character’s physical health hold up under a constant barrage of life threatening circumstances?”
All of it requires imagination, suspension of disbelief, and a willingness to accept a lot of abstraction.
Suppose a party wants to swim across a deep bridgeless river, DC 15 Athletics check, but one PC, Doctor Noodle, is untrained in Athletics and has STR +0. So the party declares that athletic Bobbus will first swim across the river trailing a rope, they will tie the rope to Noodle, Bobbus will pull Noodle across the river by the rope, and Lady Bluegill will hold the rope alongside Noodle to keep his head above water. My party invents plans like that often, but none of this is in the rulebook. Noodle won't be swimming, but I would ask the two characters to make DC 12 Athletics checks with failure meaning inhaling water for 2 damage but Lady Bluegill would get a DC 12 Reflex check to prevent that for herself or Noodle. Bobbus will be able to pull the rope at 30 feet per round without checks.
Social interactions are complicated like crossing a river. A standard scenario is the party wants to enter a walled town, but the gate guard is Indifferent and trying to determine whether they are troublemakers to be turned away. It could be a simple Make an Impression check with the statement, "We are adventurers seeking a safe inn for the night." Or maybe every party member would make a Society check to see if they know any town resident and have a better Make an Impression with, "My old swordfighting teacher, Athos, retired to this town. He can vouch for us." I would play the Leverage Connections feat as Athos can immediately get them into town without further diplomacy, and I would play Underground Network as giving a circumstance bonus to the Society check for knowing someone in town.
The players use specialize skill feats because they want to use those specialized skill feats.
The problem with AlexTheQueen's original scenarios is that a leader using Make an Impression on an army of 1,000 loyal soldiers ready to lay down their lives cannot make them more than Helpful. But if the leader were assigned 20 lieutenants by the king and the lieutenants are more loyal to the king so they are Friendly rather than Helpful, then Group Impression would be useful. The GM can work with the players to make details matter. Without Group Impression, he could talk to each lieutenant one by one and make 20 individual Diplomacy checks, but that would be lengthy to roleplay, so I would limit the player to only 5 lieutenants for Make an Impression.