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I don't understand why feats like this even exist. Why locking things that depend only on roleplay decisions with mechanical blocks?
This is some hypothetical roleplay situations that just doesn't work by raw rules because of this feats:
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.
But bad luck for me, I didn't take this feat. Sadly now, only one soldier is more loyal, others just missed all my words entirely.
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!".
Sounds like coercion check to me, but bad luck again, I don't have feat that allows me to coerce with less then minute of conversation(And this happend definitely on less time then minute) and even of I had, only one soldier would flee from this greate demonstration of power, because I can coerce only one creature, and even if I had Group Coercien and legendary proficiency in intimidation, I could coerce only pathetic 50 people at time, after annihilation of almost all enemy forces.
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?
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I don't understand why feats like this even exist. Why locking things that depend only on roleplay decisions with mechanical blocks?
This is some hypothetical roleplay situations that just doesn't work by raw rules because of this feats:
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.
But bad luck for me, I didn't take this feat. Sadly now, only one soldier is more loyal, others just missed all my words entirely.
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!".
Sounds like coercion check to me, but bad luck again, I don't have feat that allows me to coerce with less then minute of conversation(And this happend definitely on less time then minute) and even of I had, only one soldier would flee from this greate demonstration of power, because I can coerce only one creature, and even if I had Group Coercien and legendary proficiency in intimidation, I could coerce only pathetic 50 people at time, after annihilation of almost all enemy forces.
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...
OK, I'm going to address this in 2 parts. First, about the logical excuses and the fact that this isn't necessarily mandatory.
Being good at Coercing, making a good Impression and Lying doesn't necessarily mean that you're good at doing this in all situations.
Coercing a group requires that you know how to deal with several people at the same time, which is a considerable additional difficulty. It requires paying attention to several individuals using words and physical threats that scare everyone at the same time, even breaking their morale because they're in a group (being in a group increases people's moral resistance because one kind of covers for the other). The feat is justified at this point. You have the talent or have trained to be able to overcome the moral resistance of an entire group of people at the same time, something that even other good intimidators don't necessarily manage to do well, even if they're good at coercing a single individual.
Ex.: Threatening a single bandit that you are too much of a threat is much easier than threatening a group of bandits whose mere presence helps them convince themselves that by being together they are still more dangerous than you. It is one thing to threaten an individual that they may even defeat you, but you will at least take him with you, it is another to threaten everyone that you will emerge victorious despite the numerical disadvantage.
A similar situation occurs for Group Impression. Different people have different impressions, different opinions, different fears and courage. Being able to focus on a single person to gain their trust is one thing, being able to do this in an entire group at the same time is another. You need to analyze the points on which the entire group agrees, reduce any doubts among them and make each other help you spread your good impression (as some populist politicians do). This requires a whole other skill of Impressing with different foundations than Impressing a single individual. Just like Group Coerce, Group Impression represents the investment in this talent or the effort you spent training how to Impress crowds.
Ex.: Politicians are good to impress masses but not necessary so convincing to impress a single individual that can counter argument. So a politician who is merely trained in diplomacy and has the feat of doing it in a group may be better at impressing the masses than an expert diplomat who manages to make a good impression on a representative of another country that the politician fails to impress.
And finally, Charming Liar, which is precisely the fact that lying is one thing. Lying to gain trust is another. It is one thing to pass on false information so that the other person believes it, it is another to pass on false information so that the other person believes it while using this lie to make this person like you. The feat is justified there.
Ex.: Using your own example. Lying by telling false stories that make you look bigger may seem true enough for the other person to believe, but your lack of diplomacy may still make them consider you a braggart who is always bragging.
Unfortunately, this is not written in the books. But several designers have already reported in interviews and posts that not having a skill feat does not necessarily mean that it is impossible to do. They often recommend that GMs allow it, but with a much higher difficulty. This is 100% GM fiat, but it is reasonable for a GM to allow something that requires a skill feat with, for example, a -5 penalty because you do not have the talent or training necessary to do it with just your proficiency in your skill. The difficulty penalty is up to the GM to choose, depending on how difficult it will be to do that in that situation. Maybe lying to impress someone who is already willing to trust you only gives a -2 penalty, while lying to impress someone who distrusts you can increase the penalty to -10. The GM decides depending on the situation.
Ex.: If you are a level 20 wizard who has already killed a large portion of the enemies by casting Falling Stars I as a GM would probably allow you to Coerce the group even without Group Coerce, since you used a powerful spell to help you in this process. Just as if you already have Group Coerce I would consider it a circumstance bonus for having used a spell to help you appear even more intimidating along with your own gift for threatening a crowd.
...I don't understand why feats like this even exist. Why locking things that depend only on roleplay decisions with mechanical blocks?
This is some hypothetical roleplay situations that just doesn't work by raw rules because of this feats:
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.
But bad luck for me, I didn't take this feat. Sadly now, only one soldier is more loyal, others just missed all my words entirely.
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!".
Sounds like coercion check to me, but bad luck again, I don't have feat that allows me to coerce with less then minute of conversation(And this happend definitely on less time then minute) and even of I had, only one soldier would flee from this greate demonstration of power, because I can coerce only one creature, and even if I had Group Coercion and legendary proficiency in intimidation, I could coerce only pathetic 50 people at time, after annihilation of almost all enemy forces.
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,
Ok, I'm actually agree with your point. Actually this is exactly how I home ruled it in my games. Players with this feats get circumstance bonuses/lower difficulties and players without them don't. What confuses me, the initial purpose of this design. I think paizo tried to give social interaction precise and it was the pan sample. But I am still confuse for example what I should do with feats like quick coercion (Coercion done in a round and not in minute) because, well grapple someone and set a knife to his throat and mabe hit him with your fist is international method of intimidating someone. So this feat confuses me. Same with leverage connection feat, isn't having friends in town where you already was is pure narrative thing?
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If you're mid-battle, you typically don't have time for Coerce, nor do you need it. Such a demonstration of terrific violence will likely be enough to make the survivors flee of their own volition.
Wrong.
Yes, your troops are more loyal. (Maybe). It just doesn't have any mechanical impact. Only fictional. Which is more than enough.
Same with wizard. GM just roleplays army as terrified. Or not. Yes, that's enough.
You can make an impression. You just must roll Diplomacy and can't roll Deception for that (but you can or should roll Deception for them to not discover you b*!!~%#&ting them). Yes, that's enough. No, it doesn't prevent any roleplaying, roleplaying is not about which skill you roll.The mentioned feats exist to extend your mechanical capabilities and make them guaranteed and mostly independent from GM's judgement.
My man mechanics should support narrative and vice versa. Lots of homebrew up to gm assumptions isn't very good
If you're mid-battle, you typically don't have time for Coerce, nor do you need it. Such a demonstration of terrific violence will likely be enough to make the survivors flee of their own volition.
Agree me to disagree, my friend. As I already said mechanics should support narrative. So maybe some of them are stupidly brave or delusional enough, that's even my demonstration is only almost enough for them and they need last reason to run. So I still need some mechanical way to decide how much of them would run or not. So this is where this wizard should roll his intimidation to show his degree of persuasiveness. And this is where mechanics by RAW doesn't very helpful with narrative.
But I am still confuse for example what I should do with feats like quick coercion (Coercion done in a round and not in minute) because, well grapple someone and set a knife to his throat and mabe hit him with your fist is international method of intimidating someone. So this feat confuses me.Isn't it obvious? Quick coercion doesn't demand real violence (to the point it can't be used in battle) at all, including making checks, and allows reliably get results of Coerce action very quickly.
Same with leverage connection feat, isn't having friends in town where you already was is pure narrative thing?And same here. Reliability. No, it's not pure narrative thing if you haven't actually explicitly made NPC friends in the game beforehand. You can't just say "I suddenly have friends in this random visited town and am coming to them for help just because I want to". It's extremely likely I, for example, will say "no, you have not". With this feat you just can (even though some prerequisites and demands from GM are still possible as described in the feat).
Okay, at first. Quick coercion doesn't tell anything about violence. That's true. But what if I try to intimidate someone with more straightforward methods? Hitting him in the face and the promising to do something horrible with him if he doesn't submit. Or just, as I mentioned already, set a knife to his throat? Technically I can't do this by raw, because it's clearly stated that I need to spend a minute conversation before attempting.
Second, okay, I'm agree that mechanical representation of "I have friends in every town even if I visit it for the first time" without prior narrative justification required feat, so it's the good feat.
If you think it's 'homebrew' you don't understand pf2. What I described are basically 1) normal GM's storytelling 2) improvised skillchecks if checks are even required (yes, they are allowed, described as possible in the rulebooks several times and are even recommended if needed). And I'm becoming confused. Do you want more rules or less? You are displeased with feats which give specific and a bit narrow abilities and when I give you very much RAW way of solving situations not having specific mechanics
Okay, I think you understand me wrong in some way, I want nor more rules, nor less. I'm just confused with existing one, because from my point of view they are sometimes conflict with narrative. I call this homebrewing only because what happens is "I have feat, that's allow player to afflict more people with his words. But I allow everyone to do this, so I need to change how this feat work within my table". If to be exact then nothing is homebrew, because first rule says, that I can change rules how me and my players want for the sake of having fun
If you're mid-battle, you typically don't have time for Coerce, nor do you need it. Such a demonstration of terrific violence will likely be enough to make the survivors flee of their own volition.Agree me to disagree, my friend. As I already said mechanics should support narrative. So maybe some of them are stupidly brave or delusional enough, that's even my demonstration is only almost enough for them and they need last reason to run. So I still need some mechanical way to decide how much of them would run or not. So this is where this wizard should roll his intimidation to show his degree of persuasiveness. And this is where mechanics by RAW doesn't very helpful with narrative.
You don't need Coerce to give them a reason. You are allowed to talk during combat. You can just say you'll cast it again if they don't leave. Whether they believe you is another story.
Whether they believe you is another story
If there only was a mechanical way to define how much of them believed wizard and this wasn't up gm...
This is precisely the problem that confuses me in the first place with some design decisions and there purpose. I don't say that it's impossible to come with solution. I'm saying that this is why I should come up with up-to-gm solutions. Of course I'll set DC and say my player to roll intimidation to see how much of them run or succumb, based on his result. But by raw this is coercion action, and technically by RAW it's impossible.
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...I would consider your first two examples to be better addressed through a mass combat system that contains leadership actions. Small party tactical & social system rules aren't designed for that.
For the third one, for any fixed attribute+ fixed skill ttrpg system it makes sense to put some useful skill substitutions behind character advancement walls. Because that's the sort of thing players are going to find really useful as their characters advance. If however your table thinks the venn diagram of 'what Diplomacy does' and 'what Deceive does' should overlap for making an impression, then yeah you can give that substitution for free. That's just not the default.
Actually, using leadership subsystem sounds as good solution for situations like that, thanks
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I don't understand why feats like this even exist. Why locking things that depend only on roleplay decisions with mechanical blocks?
I have stopped being astonished at how prevalent this attitude is. Not just for this role-playing game, but general in society.
Some people aren't fast or even good at social interactions such as roleplay.
So if participating in the game at your table requires good, fast roleplay, then you are excluding people who don't have that ability. These feats aren't a glass ceiling for typical players, they are a wheelchair for disabled ones.
By taking the feat, I (as the player) can invoke the feat and make the roll and then ask the rest of the people at the table for assistance with the narrative.
Rather than having to on-the-spot quickly come up with a narrative that will convince the GM to let my character do the thing.
This is some hypothetical roleplay situations that just doesn't work by raw rules because of this feats:
The existence of the feats doesn't mean that the abilities are permanently barred to those who don't have those feats. My rule of thumb for new abilities given by a feat is that any character without the feat can also do it, but at double the time cost and it always requires a skill roll.
I haven't found any skill feats that require more cost than that. Which means that taking the feat is still a mechanics improvement.
This is only for feats that provide new actions or abilities, not those that improve things that can normally already be done. So Bon Mot would qualify, but Titan Wrestler would not.
I would let you use the Bon Mot ability without the feat by having it cost two actions instead of one.
I would not let you use the Titan Wrestler ability by doubling the action cost of grapple. Your character can already grapple.
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Whether they believe you is another storyIf there only was a mechanical way to define how much of them believed wizard and this wasn't up gm...
This is precisely the problem that confuses me in the first place with some design decisions and there purpose. I don't say that it's impossible to come with solution. I'm saying that this is why I should come up with up-to-gm solutions. Of course I'll set DC and say my player to roll intimidation to see how much of them run or succumb, based on his result. But by raw this is coercion action, and technically by RAW it's impossible.
By RAW, the GM controls the army and decides how its soldiers respond to the players' actions. There is a difference between roleplay and rollplay. You don't need to make an Intimidation roll for the enemy to figure out they're in over their heads after you've wiped out 75% of them. The GM might have some of them Sense Motive to figure out that, yes, you really are as dangerous as you claim. But it doesn't have to involve any roll of Intimidation. There are innumerable examples in published adventures of enemies surrendering or fleeing once the fight turns against them. Coerce is not the be-all-end-all of threatening NPCs.
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I dont run the skill feats talked about so far as hard locks on in game options. I tried it that way at first and didnt like it.
There are two things that happen when you do that.
First is doing so requires game knowledge of all the skill feats in the game to know whats locked. Kind of a ln absurd barrier for GMs learning the system.
Second it doesnt work out well in play to tell players theres a feat for that and since you dont have it you cant even try.
So I just consider the circumstances with what is being attempted and set an appropriate difficulty like with anything else. If they have the feat the thing comes easier or can be automatic.
No charming liar vs having it?
The feat adds a rider effect to crit success. It happens when your not even attempting to use deception to improve NPC opinions of you. (This would get a dc based on gullibility and how hard to believe the lie is for the npc, it may also be temporary because the lie could be exposed)
If your attempt is to improve their opinion of you then its not something else like convincing the npc the item you are selling them is an antique from old Taldor instead of a pot you found lying around the market. With charming lier a crit success on convincing the npc for selling the pot also increases their opinion of you. They dont just believe the pot is an antique they also think your a great guy for giving them first crack at a deal to buy it.
I don't understand why feats like this even exist. Why locking things that depend only on roleplay decisions with mechanical blocks?I have stopped being astonished at how prevalent this attitude is. Not just for this role-playing game, but general in society.
Some people aren't fast or even good at social interactions such as roleplay.
So if participating in the game at your table requires good, fast roleplay, then you are excluding people who don't have that ability. These feats aren't a glass ceiling for typical players, they are a wheelchair for disabled ones.
By taking the feat, I (as the player) can invoke the feat and make the roll and then ask the rest of the people at the table for assistance with the narrative.
Rather than having to on-the-spot quickly come up with a narrative that will convince the GM to let my character do the thing.
My brother in cringe, what chain of neural links lead you to this thoughts?
I sayed nothing about fast roleplay and other things you mention. If you bad with social interactions, just ask your fellow players and gm to help you with the speech. You don't need this feat to make a request to afflict number of people in the first place. So indeed it is a glass ceiling. Because nothing stops you from saying "I want to do X, but I don't know how to do it as character, please help me with my course of action". You don't need this feat to ask for help in real life. This feat has nothing to do with being bad or good with words in real life. It's only Influencing how much people you can talk to in game simultaneously. It has nothing to do with wheelchairs.
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I dont run the skill feats talked about so far as hard locks on in game options. I tried it that way at first and didnt like it.
There are two things that happen when you do that.
First is doing so requires game knowledge of all the skill feats in the game to know whats locked. Kind of a ln absurd barrier for GMs learning the system.
Second it doesnt work out well in play to tell players theres a feat for that and since you dont have it you cant even try.So I just consider the circumstances with what is being attempted and set an appropriate difficulty like with anything else. If they have the feat the thing comes easier or can be automatic.
No charming liar vs having it?
The feat adds a rider effect to crit success. It happens when your not even attempting to use deception to improve NPC opinions of you. (This would get a dc based on gullibility and how hard to believe the lie is for the npc, it may also be temporary because the lie could be exposed)
If your attempt is to improve their opinion of you then its not something else like convincing the npc the item you are selling them is an antique from old Taldor instead of a pot you found lying around the market. With charming lier a crit success on convincing the npc for selling the pot also increases their opinion of you. They dont just believe the pot is an antique they also think your a great guy for giving them first crack at a deal to buy it.
Finally, thank you
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My brother in cringe, what chain of neural links lead you to this thoughts?
Sad experience.
Also, posts like this one and its follow-up here.
I sayed nothing about fast roleplay and other things you mention.
You kinda did. You mention that these feats are redundant with good roleplay and therefore you feel that they shouldn't exist. It was literally the first sentence that you posted.
The assumption inherent in that attitude is that everyone who plays the game is good at roleplay.
My brother in cringe, what chain of neural links lead you to this thoughts?Sad experience.
Also, posts like this one and its follow-up here.
I sayed nothing about fast roleplay and other things you mention.You kinda did. You mention that these feats are redundant with good roleplay and therefore you feel that they shouldn't exist. It was literally the first sentence that you posted.
The assumption inherent in that attitude is that everyone who plays the game is good at roleplay.
Nah man, you are making assumptions on my behalf. I said only that this feats by raw are blocking things, that should be made by sole roleplay decisions. "GM, i want to intimidate this grope of thugs, players, please help me to come with good words or description" is roleplay decision to.
Let me turn it around on you: why do you want Bob the Plumber to have the same ability to get an entire army to jump into danger that, say, Winston Churchill would have?
You put me in front of an army, I'm Bob. I'm gonna stutter. Mumble. Make the wrong cues. Pitch my voice wrong. Nobody's going to listen. Getting them to listen takes training, and in PF2E "training" is represented by both Proficiencies and Feats.
I get the idea that for a game, you want the protagonists to be able to try a lot of remarkable things with a reasonable chance of success. Not necessarily because that's realistic, but because they are the main characters of the story. But still, part of me wants to lay 'look, if this is something a player in your game is going to want to try and do a lot, tell them to buy the feat and stop trying to argue they should get it for free.' Same thing for Diplomacy vs. Deceive; if they really want to get NPCs to like them, tell them to buy Diplomacy instead of asking for a free skill substitution.
Bob would have low charisma and no diplomacy proficiency. Churchill, would have high charisma and proficiency. Bonuses to their roll already difine if they could overcome dc 40 check, to convince ordinary people to go and fight demon lord, you don't need feat for that. So they should get this opportunity for free. Because feats, are techanical part of the game, not roleplay part. I could partialy, PARTIALY agree with skill substituion being locked under feat. But not with fact, that a player roleplayed and come up with fake stories to impress someone and GM saying "Nah, you can't roleplay like this, because you do not open mechanical oppotunity to roleplay". Do you undestand that it is absolute nonsense? So it absolutely couldn't be turned around
Group impression says you can make an impression on more npcs with no penalty.
I treat group coercion the same even though they didnt write it with that phrase.
For your wizard example, that's not how things work. You teleport, then have one action. Enemy army does its turn. You cast a two action spell then have one action. The enemy army then reacts to having a wizard wipe a large percentage of them out. Then you could cast two action bullhorn to try and talk to them, but it won't have any mechanical effect because you can't intimidate groups because you don't have that training, you could give them an ultimatum and they would have to deal with that.
Intimidation is just giving them a status penalty to everything, without Terrified Retreat and a crit you couldn't make even a single soldier flee no matter what you do. Coercion is taking a while to make sure someone does the activity you want for an extended period of time even if your gone, so doesn't fit this situation at all.
None of that has anything to do with being able to role play an overbearing force to break an army and send them packing. The rules are there to make sure that you have a way to do X and get Y result depending on the dice.
Also using make an impression, lie to me, etc is all about changing an NPCs relation with you, generally improving it by one category. If that is not the effect you want then you don't want to do that action.
For your wizard example, that's not how things work. You teleport, then have one action. Enemy army does its turn. You cast a two action spell then have one action. The enemy army then reacts to having a wizard wipe a large percentage of them out. Then you could cast two action bullhorn to try and talk to them, but it won't have any mechanical effect because you can't intimidate groups because you don't have that training, you could give them an ultimatum and they would have to deal with that.
Intimidation is just giving them a status penalty to everything, without Terrified Retreat and a crit you couldn't make even a single soldier flee no matter what you do. Coercion is taking a while to make sure someone does the activity you want for an extended period of time even if your gone, so doesn't fit this situation at all.
None of that has anything to do with being able to role play an overbearing force to break an army and send them packing. The rules are there to make sure that you have a way to do X and get Y result depending on the dice.
Also using make an impression, lie to me, etc is all about changing an NPCs relation with you, generally improving it by one category. If that is not the effect you want then you don't want to do that action.
So for some reason you are one more guy who:
1) Turned fully narrative situation in encounter2) Didn't understand the question correctly
Group impression says you can make an impression on more npcs with no penalty.
I treat group coercion the same even though they didnt write it with that phrase.
My second question to you was about quick coercion, not group coercion. But thanks
For some reason people in my thread don't understand that I'm asking this, because some of mechanics RAW creat big dissonance with narrative, and how It could be fixed. Not that i want to turn my hypotetical situations in 1 wizard vs 6000 soldiers encounter, because mechanically they wouldn't flee or that this feats is essential for people who just want to "I make an impression on x people, because feat allow me to do that, and then roll"
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NPCs don't need to wait for a PC's skill check to acknowledge their situation. PCs need to roll when they want to get a specific outcome. You'll find a lot of encounters where they note "tries to run away if reduced to X hp" etc. The GM is empowered to use logic here in how they would behave.
That is different than actually applying a debuff or status change.
NPCs don't need to wait for a PC's skill check to acknowledge their situation. PCs need to roll when they want to get a specific outcome. You'll find a lot of encounters where they note "tries to run away if reduced to X hp" etc. The GM is empowered to use logic here in how they would behave.
That is different than actually applying a debuff or status change.
Again, this is hypotetical situation which was created for the purpose of showing how rules RAW could create narrative dissonance. Of course I can think for every npc in particular. This is was not the question. Question is I want to decide using existing game mechanics if soldiers are brave enough to face walking nuclear launcher. Or is my hypotetical warlord is inspirational enough for his soldiers. If I can make every assumption using my oppinion, why even use the system and skills in the first place? Rolls are exist for being a judge in situation with different outcomes. I absolutely can say "all of soldiers just flee" or "All your forces are inspired by your speech so much, that they will fight for you no matter the cost". But there is a chance that this wouldn't happen at all, or happen for almost all of them, but not for each one. This is pretty important to decide. And there is chance that some of this outcomes would happen. If there only was a way built into a system to decide what outcome happened randomly based on circumstation and player's action -_-
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Group impression says you can make an impression on more npcs with no penalty.
I treat group coercion the same even though they didnt write it with that phrase.My second question to you was about quick coercion, not group coercion. But thanks
For some reason people in my thread don't understand that I'm asking this, because some of mechanics RAW creat big dissonance with narrative, and how It could be fixed. Not that i want to turn my hypotetical situations in 1 wizard vs 6000 soldiers encounter, because mechanically they wouldn't flee or that this feats is essential for people who just want to "I make an impression on x people, because feat allow me to do that, and then roll"
Quick coercion is a feat that gives a player a time shortcut for the standard coercion rule. the shortcut is automatic for those with the feat.
Standard coercion just like quick coercion is not applicable in a combat encounter.Here is what that means for me.
A player cannot end an encounter with a coercion roll just because they want to roll for it, even if they roll a 20, its not standard, what is standard is using demoralize to apply a stat penalty. This does not mean a GM cannot decide a coercion attempt makes sense in the circumstance and does in fact end combat while the enemies flee.
But it isnt standard use of coercion because combat in this game is meant to normally be a balanced battle experience. As GM though that might not be what you want in every combat, and may want narrative situations to take precedence.
I would say clever use of terrain could end a fight, saying something learned in game that triggers an NPC that you meant to just be a social encounter could change it to a combat encounter. Some fluidity is needed to make an engaging game IMO.
Quick coercion is a feat that gives a player a time shortcut for the standard coercion rule. the shortcut is automatic for those with the feat.
Standard coercion just like quick coercion is not applicable in a combat encounter.
Here is what that means for me.
A player cannot end an encounter with a coercion roll just because they want to roll for it, even if they roll a 20, its not standard, what is standard is using demoralize to apply a stat penalty. This does not mean a GM cannot decide a coercion attempt makes sense in the circumstance and does in fact end combat while the enemies flee.
But it isnt standard use of coercion because combat in this game is meant to normally be a balanced battle experience. As GM though that might not be what you want in every combat, and may want narrative situations to take precedence.
I would say clever use of terrain could end a fight, saying something learned in game that triggers an NPC that you meant to just be a social encounter could change it to a combat encounter. Some fluidity is needed to make an engaging game IMO.
Yeah, this is what I am talking about. And now I need ideas, how to change quick coercion so it would connect with roleplay better. Because, again. Player who's narratively setting knife to someone throat is already pretty quick way to coerce someone in social "encounter"
I don't understand why feats like this even exist. Why locking things that depend only on roleplay decisions with mechanical blocks?I have stopped being astonished at how prevalent this attitude is. Not just for this role-playing game, but general in society.
Some people aren't fast or even good at social interactions such as roleplay.
So if participating in the game at your table requires good, fast roleplay, then you are excluding people who don't have that ability. These feats aren't a glass ceiling for typical players, they are a wheelchair for disabled ones.
By taking the feat, I (as the player) can invoke the feat and make the roll and then ask the rest of the people at the table for assistance with the narrative.
Rather than having to on-the-spot quickly come up with a narrative that will convince the GM to let my character do the thing.
This is some hypothetical roleplay situations that just doesn't work by raw rules because of this feats:
The first time I read about skill feats, I also found them strange because they seemed like they were strange limits to what the character could do. It was only after a while that I understood that they are specializations that make you more skilled in some actions/activities that the skills can do.
A good example that I like to use is jumping.
Any character can Leap. However, to make longer and higher jumps, the character needs some training in athletics and may fail. However, just like an Olympic diver, your character needs to gain momentum by running some distance to be able to make these longer/higher jumps, otherwise the maximum distance he can jump will be that of the Leap. However, in any case, he will never be unable to jump, he just needs proficiency and distance to jump better.
However, a character can train how to jump without running and more quickly, which is represented by the Quick Jump feat.
Later, you can jump even further with the Cloud Jump.
In other words, skill feats improve your ability to perform your skill by specializing in some aspects of them, but even without the feats you will still be able to use the skill to do that thing (in this example it was jumping, but it can be anything else and any other skill), you just won't do it as well as someone who specialized via skill feat or, depending on what it is, you can but it won't be as easy as it is for someone who specialized.
Adjusting this for Coercing.
To Coerce someone you must spend at least 1 minute threatening your target so that they submit to doing what you want. If you are under time pressure you can ask your GM to press harder and try to coerce faster and the GM in turn can adjust this by modifying the DC or can deny it saying that the circumstances and/or your proficiency (he may require a minimum proficiency) do not allow you to Coerce this target in less time. But if you specialize in Coercing your targets with a few, but firm and threatening words and expressions by taking the Quick Coercion feat, your GM doesn't need to impose a higher DC and/or a minimum proficiency for you to Coerce faster, your experience or training in threatening people is such that Coercing in around 6s is more than enough for you to make a target do what you want.
Maybe the OP isn't convinced by this, but this is the concept. Just as your physical attributes and skills represent your physical abilities that you can't reproduce through direct interpretation attacking your GM, the same goes for mental and social skills, because not every player is exactly good at interpreting everything, especially a character whose intelligence and charisma values surpass the player's what is humanly possible for a heroic game.
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You're asking for things that have nothing to do with the way the game is played and is purely DM optional rules.
Skill feats are generally for encounter mode which is why they have encounter mode action costs. Skill feats for downtime or exploration mode will list those tags.
Skill feats in no way change how role-playing works. The game doesn't provide rules for what you're stating above as there are no benefits at all for Make an Impression to make anyone get some kind of bonus for loyalty or give a bonus to a 1000 soldiers.
Make an impression is there for RP social encounters against hostiles or indifferent people who you have to do some interaction with for a game goal, not there for you to give a speech to already loyal soldiers in your service.
Run Quick Coercion sensibly and stop getting too much into the weeds on exact rules. People who want perfectly precise, explained rules is not what designers can build for.
Coercion doesn't even work in Encounter mode unless you're using encounter mode for a social situation. So you'll have to decide how that works on an encounter by encounter basis depending on how far along you perceive the encounter to have gone towards combat.
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Yeah, this is what I am talking about. And now I need ideas, how to change quick coercion so it would connect with roleplay better. Because, again. Player who's narratively setting knife to someone throat is already pretty quick way to coerce someone in social "encounter"Quick coercion is a feat that gives a player a time shortcut for the standard coercion rule. the shortcut is automatic for those with the feat.
Standard coercion just like quick coercion is not applicable in a combat encounter.
Here is what that means for me.
A player cannot end an encounter with a coercion roll just because they want to roll for it, even if they roll a 20, its not standard, what is standard is using demoralize to apply a stat penalty. This does not mean a GM cannot decide a coercion attempt makes sense in the circumstance and does in fact end combat while the enemies flee.
But it isnt standard use of coercion because combat in this game is meant to normally be a balanced battle experience. As GM though that might not be what you want in every combat, and may want narrative situations to take precedence.
I would say clever use of terrain could end a fight, saying something learned in game that triggers an NPC that you meant to just be a social encounter could change it to a combat encounter. Some fluidity is needed to make an engaging game IMO.
Coercion connects to roleplay just fine. Its what a player uses to convince npcs to act against their own inclinations (through threat of consequence), GM sets the DC and applys any circumstance modifiers and the player rolls for it using the time it takes to do it.
In this game pulling out a knife against a knowing npc would normally trigger initiative.If the GM determines the npc has the will to fight, do combat as normal. PLayers dont always get what they want. They may say they put the knife to the NPCs throat but thats only what they are attempting. What actually happens depends on other factors. The NPC doesnt have to let the pc do that to them. If the PC is trying to get the knife there before the npc could react thats its own set of rolls that probably come from stealth and may well be impossible if the npc is paying attention to the pc.
But really this scenario is not very heroic and game themes and tone need to be considered as a table.
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There really is no perfect (or even universally good) solution to this general problem.
If you let roleplay dominate everything then the PLAYER who is good at making speeches will have a massive advantage over the PLAYER who is very quiet, shy, etc. Many of us have been in games where the diplomacy score on the character sheet is all but irrelevant because the GM will just let roleplay win.
If you come up with some set of rules then
1) It is all but guaranteed that those rules will NOT cover all cases. Your examples are cases which the rules just don't cover
2) It is all but guaranteed that those rules will lead to silly results in some edge cases
3) you run the serious risk of turning free form diplomacy/social interactions into "I roll a 31 diplomacy. Did I convince him?"
My personal solution is (in general) to have the player talk in character or at the least (especially for shy players) tell me the basic argument they're making (ie, I make them roleplay but only to the level the player is comfortable with). What they say may give them bonuses but only in the most egregious cases will it give them penalties. I take feats etc into account but will often allow things without feats (usually at a penalty) or stretch feats far beyond the way they're written. So, for example, Group Coercion WOULD work on an entire army in the right circumstances.
And then I just totally and utterly ignore the rules when the situation calls for it. You Meteor Swarm (sorry, I'm an old fart :-)) an army and kill most of them, in a great many circumstances (but NOT all) the army will break and run away. But sometimes it won't. And I decide that by GM fiat, by the circumstances and sometimes I let a dice roll decide when I can't decide for myself.
That works for me and the groups I GM for. I imagine some others would hate part or all of the above. It DOES require a reasonable level of trust between the GM and players.
But the key is to find a solution that works for your group. That may be to wing nearly everything, to use hard coded rules for nearly everything, or some solution like mine that is somewhere in the middle.
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Yeah, this is what I am talking about. And now I need ideas, how to change quick coercion so it would connect with roleplay better. Because, again. Player who's narratively setting knife to someone throat is already pretty quick way to coerce someone in social "encounter"Quick coercion is a feat that gives a player a time shortcut for the standard coercion rule. the shortcut is automatic for those with the feat.
Standard coercion just like quick coercion is not applicable in a combat encounter.
Here is what that means for me.
A player cannot end an encounter with a coercion roll just because they want to roll for it, even if they roll a 20, its not standard, what is standard is using demoralize to apply a stat penalty. This does not mean a GM cannot decide a coercion attempt makes sense in the circumstance and does in fact end combat while the enemies flee.
But it isnt standard use of coercion because combat in this game is meant to normally be a balanced battle experience. As GM though that might not be what you want in every combat, and may want narrative situations to take precedence.
I would say clever use of terrain could end a fight, saying something learned in game that triggers an NPC that you meant to just be a social encounter could change it to a combat encounter. Some fluidity is needed to make an engaging game IMO.
Not necessarily.
Note that putting a knife to someone's throat is not a long enough threat to force someone to do something that lasts longer than the time your knife is at their throat. If your threat is not long enough, they can run at the first opportunity or try to fight if they are able at the first opportunity they feel safe to do so.
The general idea of Coercion is that you have threatened the target beyond the time your knife will be at their throat. The idea of Coercion being 1 minute is not that you will hold the knife to the target's throat and say "give me the money" while waiting for the target to hand you the money they have with them, possibly without any grace (an interesting detail is that the GM can add the secret trait to any check and require that it be rolled by them in secret so you don't know whether or not your coercion was enough for the target to actually cooperate). But rather that you threatened the target to cooperate for a reasonable period of time in exploration mode due to fear of losing his life or hurting him or someone dear to him, or some other similar threat.
For most characters without fighting ability, you don't even need checks (unless you are forcing it to act making something very harmful to the target), the threat is so strong and immediate that it is very likely that the GM will declare your success as automatic. After all, a barkeep who has never fought in his life will have a very hard time reacting or failing to cooperate with a well-equipped threat.
The issue is that this falls very much into an area controlled by the GM, who will judge how good you need to be with your coercion.
But usually when you need to Coerce more than point your weapon, it's because the target also has a threat margin (not exactly him, but his allies too) that gives him enough security to try to resist a simple direct threat.
You're asking for things that have nothing to do with the way the game is played and is purely DM optional rules.
Skill feats are generally for encounter mode which is why they have encounter mode action costs. Skill feats for downtime or exploration mode will list those tags.
Skill feats in no way change how role-playing works. The game doesn't provide rules for what you're stating above as there are no benefits at all for Make an Impression to make anyone get some kind of bonus for loyalty or give a bonus to a 1000 soldiers.
Make an impression is there for RP social encounters against hostiles or indifferent people who you have to do some interaction with for a game goal, not there for you to give a speech to already loyal soldiers in your service.
Run Quick Coercion sensibly and stop getting too much into the weeds on exact rules. People who want perfectly precise, explained rules is not what designers can build for.
Coercion doesn't even work in Encounter mode unless you're using encounter mode for a social situation. So you'll have to decide how that works on an encounter by encounter basis depending on how far along you perceive the encounter to have gone towards combat.
Man, again, question was about reason of existing things that in some degree conflict with role-playing so cresting narrative dissonance. I don't need to know how they work, I know that already. I'm asking how to fix this narrative dissonance and what benefit I should then give to the player, who spent his limited amount of feats on group coercion, if technically everyone can coerce multiple people at time, because it's more roleplay thing, then mechanics
I don't understand why feats like this even exist. Why locking things that depend only on roleplay decisions with mechanical blocks?I have stopped being astonished at how prevalent this attitude is. Not just for this role-playing game, but general in society.
Some people aren't fast or even good at social interactions such as roleplay.
So if participating in the game at your table requires good, fast roleplay, then you are excluding people who don't have that ability. These feats aren't a glass ceiling for typical players, they are a wheelchair for disabled ones.
By taking the feat, I (as the player) can invoke the feat and make the roll and then ask the rest of the people at the table for assistance with the narrative.
Rather than having to on-the-spot quickly come up with a narrative that will convince the GM to let my character do the thing.
This is some hypothetical roleplay situations that just doesn't work by raw rules because of this feats:The first time I read about skill feats, I also found them strange because they seemed like they were strange limits to what the character could do. It was only after a while that I understood that they are specializations that make you more skilled in some actions/activities that the skills can do.
A good example that I like to use is jumping.
Any character can Leap. However, to make longer and higher jumps, the character needs some training in athletics and may fail. However, just like an Olympic diver, your character needs to gain momentum by running some distance to be able to make these longer/higher jumps, otherwise the maximum distance he can jump will be that of the Leap. However, in any case, he will never be unable to jump, he just needs proficiency and distance to jump better.
However, a character can train how to jump without running and more quickly, which is represented by the Quick Jump feat.
Later, you can jump even further with the...
You are making good points. But the difference with the Jump feats, which are purely mechanical benefits, so they aren't raise any questions and feats like groupe something, that the latter from my point of view trying to lock possibilities that are purely narrative with mechanics. This is why I don't like them.
About quick coercion. After reading your opinion. This where I'm agree with you now
There really is no perfect (or even universally good) solution to this general problem.
If you let roleplay dominate everything then the PLAYER who is good at making speeches will have a massive advantage over the PLAYER who is very quiet, shy, etc. Many of us have been in games where the diplomacy score on the character sheet is all but irrelevant because the GM will just let roleplay win.
If you come up with some set of rules then
1) It is all but guaranteed that those rules will NOT cover all cases. Your examples are cases which the rules just don't cover
2) It is all but guaranteed that those rules will lead to silly results in some edge cases
3) you run the serious risk of turning free form diplomacy/social interactions into "I roll a 31 diplomacy. Did I convince him?"My personal solution is (in general) to have the player talk in character or at the least (especially for shy players) tell me the basic argument they're making (ie, I make them roleplay but only to the level the player is comfortable with). What they say may give them bonuses but only in the most egregious cases will it give them penalties. I take feats etc into account but will often allow things without feats (usually at a penalty) or stretch feats far beyond the way they're written. So, for example, Group Coercion WOULD work on an entire army in the right circumstances.
And then I just totally and utterly ignore the rules when the situation calls for it. You Meteor Swarm (sorry, I'm an old fart :-)) an army and kill most of them, in a great many circumstances (but NOT all) the army will break and run away. But sometimes it won't. And I decide that by GM fiat, by the circumstances and sometimes I let a dice roll decide when I can't decide for myself.
That works for me and the groups I GM for. I imagine some others would hate part or all of the above. It DOES require a reasonable level of trust between the GM and players.
But the key is to find a solution that works for your group. That may be to wing nearly...
This bunch of good advices, thank you
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You are making good points. But the difference with the Jump feats, which are purely mechanical benefits, so they aren't raise any questions and feats like groupe something, that the latter from my point of view trying to lock possibilities that are purely narrative with mechanics. This is why I don't like them.
Dude, the fact that I think you are not accepting well is that there is a difference in interpretation between what the player is capable of doing narratively and what the character is capable of doing with his skills in the game. It is something that extends beyond the pathfinder, ultimately on top of the questioning of why a character would need to invest in a social skill in a TTRPG, because from the point of view that you are passing on to me, the player's interpretation is more important.
The difference between the player himself interpreting his own character well and convincing the master, ultimately since he is the one representing the role of those being represented, and the character using the values on the sheet in a roll is precisely the fact that those who are convincing and being convinced are the players and not the characters.
You accept well the fact that a physical skill cannot be represented by the real player due to practical impossibility and needs to be emulated with points and dice, but you have difficulty accepting that the same can be done with mental/social abilities. But ultimately they shouldn't be different, they should be complementary.
Just as a player can analyze the scenario and see that there is an object he can climb and ask the GM if he can use this object and receive a circumstance bonus to jump further, adding the player's creative ability to the character's numerical capabilities, but ultimately it is the roll that decides, the same should be done with mental and social issues as well. If the player has a good interpretation to convince the GM, he can receive a bonus for it, but if this replaces the social ability it wouldn't be fair with the investment he made in the character, this includes feats like group, which as I explained before, are the representation that the character has specialized in dealing with groups of people when it comes to coercing or impressing.
In the end, Group Coerce and Group Impression ultimately represent the character's additional ability to deal well with "crowds", that's all.
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Quick coercion has benefits when time matters.
Like if you have 3-4 rounds before guards arrive and your cover is blown to get information out of an NPC.
There isn't enough time to coerce them normally.
Without the feat I would make this more difficult than normal. A pc with the feat gets to use one round to coerce without the DC being harder than normal.
probably could have also used gladhand to make an impression then make a request to get the information with diplomacy.
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Traditionally, a round is about 6 seconds. Think about how good at being scary you have to be to get them to change their behavior after six seconds.
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An important thing that I think may be getting missed here (I'm afraid I can't read each post in detail to be sure it hasn't been mentioned) is that you absolutely can simply attempt to coerce a group without the feat Group Coercion (et al). Mark Seifter may not be a Paizo developer anymore, but he has an excellent video about how skill feats do not lock characters out from attempting what they do, but rather grant the owner of the feat reliable ways to do those things. The existence of Group Coercion doesn't mean that nobody without that feat can try to scare more than one person (or Quick Coercion for more quickly), just that people who have those feats can do so with no more effort than using Coerce on one person over a minute.
Unfortunately, the mechanics of the game don't go into the minutia of what exact DC it is to Coerce 50 people instead of 1. Of course, 3.5 rather infamously attempted to model such minutia and is remembered rather poorly for it, so I regard this omission as necessary and maybe beneficial for the individual GM to decide what DC it takes.
On the other hand, it may be also valuable to remember that not every possible use of a skill has been codified as an action or activity. Rallying an army does not seem very much like the Make an Impression activity to me--an inspiring speech is not the same thing as attempting to improve someone's attitude toward you. Likewise, destroying part of an enemy army and demoralizing the remainder is not necessarily a baseline function of Coerce.
(it is something of a shame that Pathfinder as yet has no such thing as morale mechanics for determining when the survivors of an encounter decide to flee, but even if we don't see such a thing appear in Battlecry!, I don't think it's any great stretch for a GM to make a narrative ruling rather than a mechanical one, when necessary)
Exactly, many of the skill actions don't cover much, but that's far from preventing their use. In the end, it's up to the GM and the player to decide if something is possible and adjust the tools they have at their disposal. The actions that already exist, whether basic skill actions or provided by feats, help you better understand how to use it and work as a guide for you to see if something needs some adjustment in the DC or a check bonus/penalty or not.
I think there's another potential outcome to the army scenario we haven't considered. If enough of them have force barrage or other means of automatic damage, it's actually possible for the survivors to defeat the PC through sheer numbers. How many survivors would this take, I wonder?
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Convincing an army to run away is a plot point too big to fit within the coerce action. No adventure path is going to set that up as a thing that could happen. If talking an army down is an intended option in an adventure, the GM should run it as a victory point skill challenge. Skill feats have some trouble interacting with these inherently, but there is guidance about this in the Game Master Core. Relevant skill feats should give bonuses or even automatic success where it really makes sense.
Players with out the feats can still participate in the group activity.
These rules were never intended to work well with single character protagonist narrative making. They are designed to make challenges fun for a group of people working together. Skill feats primarily exist to tell players and GMs what kind of things each PC is more focused on with their skills than simple proficiency boosts which are not very granular.
The activities like coerce and make an impression can be useful for navigating very loose, improvised exploration scenes, but for the really tense encounter mode-like non-combat encounters, the activities can be way too flat to make any sense to use beyond a general guideline of how things generally work in the world.
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The assumption inherent in that attitude is that everyone who plays the game is good at roleplay.Nah man, you are making assumptions on my behalf. I said only that this feats by raw are blocking things, that should be made by sole roleplay decisions. "GM, i want to intimidate this grope of thugs, players, please help me to come with good words or description" is roleplay decision to.
And yet you are still making that same argument based on that same assumption: That roleplay should give mechanical benefits that aren't granted by a feat.
Man, again, question was about reason of existing things that in some degree conflict with role-playing so cresting narrative dissonance.
You are making good points. But the difference with the Jump feats, which are purely mechanical benefits, so they aren't raise any questions and feats like groupe something, that the latter from my point of view trying to lock possibilities that are purely narrative with mechanics.
For example, Group Coersion is a time compression feat.
Without the feat you can use Coerce on each person individually at 1 minute each. Since this is an exploration action, those are usually measured in 10 minute increments. So for one 10 minute exploration interval you could Coerce 10 people.
Or with the Group Coersion feat, you could Coerce those 10 people in 2 minutes, or 1 minute at Expert proficiency. That is time compression.
Group Coersion (Coerce 5 times as many people in the same amount of time).
So... Why aren't Quick Squeeze (Squeeze twice as far in the same amount of time), Nimble Crawl (Crawl 3-4 times as far in the same amount of time), Swift Sneak (Sneak twice as far in the same amount of time), and Quick Unlock (Pick a Lock twice as fast) on your list of feats that you don't understand?
Right. Because you can't use your own personal skill at storytelling to justify your character being able to do those things.
No matter how convincing your storytelling is, your character doesn't crawl faster or pick locks faster or squeeze faster or long jump without running first or any number of other physical things.
But for some reason you think that if you personally tell a good story to the GM, then your character gets to have a faster time at Coercing, or Impressing, or Lying to NPCs.
3) you run the serious risk of turning free form diplomacy/social interactions into "I roll a 31 diplomacy. Did I convince him?"
Yet no one bats an eye when a player says, "I roll a 31 on Athletics. Did I Grapple him?"
Probably because that announcement is expected to be the rolling done before the narration.
For Diplomacy the problem isn't that people are declaring actions and making rolls, the problem is that doing so is all that they are doing. They want to skip the narration part afterwards.
My personal solution is (in general) to have the player talk in character or at the least (especially for shy players) tell me the basic argument they're making (ie, I make them roleplay but only to the level the player is comfortable with). What they say may give them bonuses but only in the most egregious cases will it give them penalties.
I think it works even better to run social skills the same way that all the physical skills are run:
Make the roll first and then come up with the narrative.
You don't describe your character jumping over a pit successfully and then roll your Athletics check for Long Jump. That is silly. What happens if you fail the check? Do you get a bonus on the roll for a better narration of jumping? Do you get a penalty if you just say, "I Long Jump over this pit" before you roll the dice?
So don't describe your character telling a lie (Deception) or giving a call to action speech (Diplomacy) or making threats (Intimidation) before they roll the check.
Roll the check first. Then you as the GM can guide the player into a lie that is successful, or a lie that has a serious flaw in it that the NPCs won't believe (some information that the NPCs already have that refutes the lie, for example).