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Yeah. Assurance has uses, but it feels like it's supposed to a replacement for take 10—and it's just not. This is mainly a problem because the game has a lot of places where it feels like take 10 and take 20 should probably exist, still. Parties do sometimes just have no time pressure. Failure at some repeatable tasks (like picking locks when there's no one you're hiding from) just can't be made interesting. Assurance doesn't solve these, and it looks like it should.
Instead, the problem is just tossed to the GM to solve. I compress or outright skip checks if it's detrimental to game pacing out of combat at this point, sometimes just substituting things like "PCs with x proficiency rank automatically succeed."
I will say that—as others have mentioned—climbing is, by RAW, the single most egregious offender for this in the game. It really needs fixing.
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I have a house rule where assurance is the floor, where you can’t roll lower than your assurance score. Definitely more useful, almost everyone takes it now, at least for their most important skills.
Might be too useful too be honest.
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I do agree that Assurance, and a lot of the skill checks it orbits around, are relics of prior game editions and standards of design. We often discuss PF2e as a standalone system, which it is, but 2e was also developed in response to 1e and many aspects of its own design. Sometimes, the developments were there to address existing flaws, like the changes to spellcasting, and sometimes they're ways of adapting old mechanics to a new framework: Assurance is Take 10, adapted to a game where automatically succeeding at challenges of your level isn't really a thing. The feat is certainly useful, but it's not the all-encompassing guarantee that it was or promises to be, so to many it falls short.
Similarly, because 2e develops upon older design, some bits of that old design remain. Sometimes this is a conscious decision, like with Paizo keeping spell slots to not scare away early adopters who liked 1e/3.5e-style spellcasting, and sometimes it's not so conscious, as happens when skill checks don't automatically fail you forward, or a very specific few of those checks can single-handedly kill your character on a bad result, something the game otherwise tries very hard to avoid or at least couch behind an extra roll.
In 1e, Take 10 / 20 were good at papering over this issue, because you could just forgo rolling entirely and force your way through checks where there were no stakes or time pressure. 2e removed this rule on the assumption that all checks in the system are meaningful, but still doesn't guarantee the latter: there are guidelines on failing forward, but ultimately exploration and downtime remain fairly underdeveloped relative to encounter mode, and so situations still come up where the party might as well just port that rule over from 1e. Those aren't actually checks where Assurance is useful, because they don't have meaningful consequences for failure (and if they do, then brute-forcing them isn't so easy), but they still exist. Meanwhile, dying from massive fall damage is one of the few remaining instances in the system where a single bad roll can kill you outright, and in my experience it's pretty much the only time when massive damage rules even come up outside of extremely niche and unlucky situations at level 1 where a squishy character dies instantly to a nasty crit (which, in my opinion, shouldn't happen either).
This I think isn't necessarily difficult to solve with a bit of homebrew, though, assuming we treat falling like any kind of environmental damage: if falling had you take some amount of environmental damage instead of damage proportionate to the distance fallen, then taking a bad fall could certainly hurt you, but not necessarily kill you instantly. Although Assurance would remain useful for Athletics, it wouldn't need to paper over the possibility of nat 1s single-handedly killing you either. There'd perhaps be a bit of immersion-breaking in that it might feel wrong for a level 1 character to fall a great distance and still survive, but it would likely feel much better for gameplay (and would also make fall damage easier to calculate).
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I have a house rule where assurance is the floor, where you can’t roll lower than your assurance score. Definitely more useful, almost everyone takes it now, at least for their most important skills.
Might be too useful too be honest.
Yes, that is much, much stronger and for a key skill, a must pick. It prevents critical failures entirely.
And that's the whole problem in a nutshell with Assurance: it goes from "this feels too weak" to "this is must pick" very quickly if you start buffing it.
Yeah. Assurance has uses, but it feels like it's supposed to a replacement for take 10—and it's just not. This is mainly a problem because the game has a lot of places where it feels like take 10 and take 20 should probably exist, still. Parties do sometimes just have no time pressure. Failure at some repeatable tasks (like picking locks when there's no one you're hiding from) just can't be made interesting. Assurance doesn't solve these, and it looks like it should.
Instead, the problem is just tossed to the GM to solve. I compress or outright skip checks if it's detrimental to game pacing out of combat at this point, sometimes just substituting things like "PCs with x proficiency rank automatically succeed."
Yeah, picking locks is a good example. You need 4 successes. You're under no time pressure or threat. We can spend 5 minutes rolling over and over again, or some hand waiving can happen. I generally just compress it down to one success, so once they succeed the first time, the rest just takes time and we move on.
There's lots of cases where in PF1 a roll would be handwaved away by Take 10 where in PF2 it should still be handwaved away, except now it's by the GM going "you're competent people in a no-pressure situation, a 5% chance to catastrophically fail this basic task is absurd so we're not doing that."
The way PF2 handles it works great for high pressure, difficult tasks. For routine, easy stuff, it can get really frustrating and just going "I don't need a roll for this" saves everyone a lot of frustration.
I will say that—as others have mentioned—climbing is, by RAW, the single most egregious offender for this in the game. It really needs fixing.
It was swimming for us, but that's the same skill. Every time we had to cross water it was a clown fiesta in Kingmaker, to the point that my Oracle took Heightened Water Walking, Heightened Water Breathing, AND Moonlight Bridge just so we could not deal with it. :P
getting a nat 1 on a Climb can just kill you. Yeah, imagine loosing a PC to a g!@ d~&n Climb check.I've experienced this as GM. Had the player characters attempt to scale a steep slope. Enemies ahead of them had nailed boards into the slope to make something of a rather steep angled ladder.
Then there were the gargoyles at the top. Only the champion had Athletics. Only the champion made it to the top. Only the champion died making a stand alone as his companions repeatedly fell from high heights.
Two others were lost to gravity.
It was absolutely humiliating for all involved.
We actually ran into a situation like this in Kingmaker too, and our response was for the person to jump back down as soon as we realized enemies were up there and we ran away (the rest of the group didn't even attempt the climb because we knew it was going to go badly). We came back the next day with a Fireball to lob up into the cave since we knew there was an ambush there, and a couple of Fly spells.
Outside of very low level if you can't use Follow the Expert on this stuff, it's not even worth attempting. Which is definitely a problem sometimes, but I actually like that my Oracle is so bad at this stuff that I need to work around it. (I've had my Athletics as low as -4 lol.)
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If I were to house rule it--which I won't cause my table hates house rules--but if I WERE to house rule it, I would say it works as is, but you get to add your ability modifier to it. Or perhaps half the modifier if that proves to be too much.
When you look at the wording for automatic knowledge, it really looks like there was some kind of idea that there are supposed to be particularly easy things to know about topics and creatures that should have lower DCs, but the GM has to really be on top of that. There are guidelines for knowledge that should use simple DCs instead of level based ones, but I am not sure I’ve ever seen those used in an AP.
Also, if automatic knowledge is allowed to work with dubious knowledge it is pretty much fine as well. It is also surprisingly good on specific lores that auto scale.
Edit: Actually, even an unspecific lore skill is going to work for on level creatures most of the time (as long as the skill autoscales).
I feel Assurance could either have a bonus based on proficiency (+1 if you are for expert in the skill, becomes a +2 if you become legendary), or much like the Untrained Improvisation general feat, have an upgrade at some point to include half the modifier to the result.
I think that at the very least you should be able to succeed DCs of your level. Assurance is already 1-2 points away from that anyways.
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Take 10 was just not good for the game. There was a stark jump between "coin toss" and "100% guaranteed success", and tweaking Assurance up to the point of succeeding at an on-level DC just re-introduces the problem but under a feat. It may not be good in a lot of circumstances, but "no roll needed" shouldn't be the go-to answer. Similarly, on-level DCs shouldn't be the things that you can just handwave and ignore- otherwise, what's the point of it being the standard DC for that level? And that's exactly where Assurance sits- it handles things beneath your level, but not things at or above.
Now, I agree that Inventor shouldn't be rolling to not burn themselves like they do. But that's Inventor's problem, and the best place to fix the issue is on the Inventor side.
I'm of the opinion that a mostly irrelevant Assurance is better than one that covers a standard on-level DC. I could be convinced by a second feat at legendary proficiency that covers standard on-level DCs, since automatically succeeding at those does feel suitably "legendary".
I don't think it would be that overpowered if someone could take a feat and increases into a skill to keep it relevant to auto-succeed checks of its level on a single, specific skill. Even if you were to take it three times for your three legendary skills, that would be 3 feats and 9 skill increases to achieve that.
As I said, the version of Assurance we have is only 1-2 points away from achieving this already, and if that gap were to be closed, the only one that would truly see the difference from it would be the inventor, which I think we can agree probably shouldn't be rolling for overdrive in the first place.
Assurance suffers from there being no reliable DC modifiers.
Lore skills are the only ones with a reliable DC modifier, but they're so specific that they're not worth investing skill feats into during normal campaigns. You'd need a special campaign like Spore Wars where Additional Lore (Demons) + Assurance + Automatic Knowledge pays off.
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I don't think it would be that overpowered if someone could take a feat and increases into a skill to keep it relevant to auto-succeed checks of its level on a single, specific skill. Even if you were to take it three times for your three legendary skills, that would be 3 feats and 9 skill increases to achieve that.
As I said, the version of Assurance we have is only 1-2 points away from achieving this already, and if that gap were to be closed, the only one that would truly see the difference from it would be the inventor, which I think we can agree probably shouldn't be rolling for overdrive in the first place.
What about getting an additional skill feat, with Assurance as the prerequisite, and have it be like:
Every ten minutes, you can succeed on a skill check (but not critically succeed) automatically
Does that sound more balanced? Maybe even include that the skill MUST be at Master proficiency?
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What about getting an additional skill feat, with Assurance as the prerequisite, and have it be like:
Every ten minutes, you can succeed on a skill check (but not critically succeed) automatically
Does that sound more balanced? Maybe even include that the skill MUST be at Master proficiency?
In exploration/downtime mode, it's easy to go for extended periods of time only making one skill check. This will absolutely dominate those modes of play. Like, tracking something you only have to roll what, once an hour? Take this in Survival and you literally can't fail.
Even in encounter mode, "I trip the severe encounter single target and auto-succeed" is HUGELY powerful considering that's actually a difficult check even for someone heavily invested in the skill.
I think this discussion in general is really going sideways. Assurance was never meant to be "you succeed at things that are supposed to be a reasonable challenge without any failure risk". And people are proposing exactly that.
Hell, even Take 10 didn't work on hard things unless you outclassed what you were doing, and you couldn't use it in a stressful situation like combat (barring an ability that let you).
If the problem you're trying to fix is that you think there's too many rolls for things that shouldn't require so many rolls, the fix for that is not buffing Assurance until only very hard DCs actually require rolling. It's to address what the problematic rolls are directly.
Assurance suffers from there being no reliable DC modifiers.
Lore skills are the only ones with a reliable DC modifier, but they're so specific that they're not worth investing skill feats into during normal campaigns. You'd need a special campaign like Spore Wars where Additional Lore (Demons) + Assurance + Automatic Knowledge pays off.
That's the GM's job. If you're doing something easy or have set up the situation to be in your favor, they can apply the Easy modification to the DC. If it's a standard DC, Assurance is now probably going to succeed.
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What about getting an additional skill feat, with Assurance as the prerequisite, and have it be like:
Every ten minutes, you can succeed on a skill check (but not critically succeed) automatically
Does that sound more balanced? Maybe even include that the skill MUST be at Master proficiency?
In exploration/downtime mode, it's easy to go for extended periods of time only making one skill check. This will absolutely dominate those modes of play. Like, tracking something you only have to roll what, once an hour? Take this in Survival and you literally can't fail.
Even in encounter mode, "I trip the severe encounter single target and auto-succeed" is HUGELY powerful considering that's actually a difficult check even for someone heavily invested in the skill.
I think this discussion in general is really going sideways. Assurance was never meant to be "you succeed at things that are supposed to be a reasonable challenge without any failure risk". And people are proposing exactly that.
Hell, even Take 10 didn't work on hard things unless you outclassed what you were doing, and you couldn't use it in a stressful situation like combat (barring an ability that let you).
If the problem you're trying to fix is that you think there's too many rolls for things that shouldn't require so many rolls, the fix for that is not buffing Assurance until only very hard DCs actually require rolling. It's to address what the problematic rolls are directly.
Yeah, you're right, Tridus. I wasn't even thinking of that when I made that suggestion.
And yeah, now that I think about it, isn't the Take 10 (which people are comparing Assurance with) supposed to be for NON-DIFFICULT actions? After all, I thought the whole idea of "Take 10" was that it represented your character taking their time to do the skill.
Meanwhile, Assurance can be used on any skill roll. Thematically, the idea is that it shows your confident/learned enough in a skill to perform adequately under pressure.
Sure, as Ravingdork has understandably pointed out, it won't let you succeed automatically unless the DC is under your level, but the point remains.
As for the Inventor and Overdrive?
Well, looking closer at, it is a very gamble-focused class. Not just with Overdrive, but with Unstable too.
...Which honestly makes sense, considering the tech they're using is experimental.
I think this discussion in general is really going sideways. Assurance was never meant to be "you succeed at things that are supposed to be a reasonable challenge without any failure risk". And people are proposing exactly that.
I have the feeling you think the difference between rolling and using Assurance is higher than it really is. Let's say you are a Strength martial that takes Assurance on Athletics at 6th level. Your Athletics modifier is +14, while your Assurance result is 20. A 5th level DC is 20, which means you need a result of 6 or higher on the die to succeed. You can reduce this a bit if you have an item bonus on Athletics or if someone aids you on the check. Yes, Assurance would be an auto-success, but unless you were to roll a 2 or 3 on the die you would also succeed with ease, plus the have the chance to crit succeed as well.
A character that maxes out a skill is pretty much assured (heh) to succeed on CL-1 or even CL+0 DCs with ease, while having a decent chance to crit succeed as well. Assurance removes the chances of failure (for CL-1 DCs) but also removes the chances of crit succeding. I agree with you that Assurance is tricky to buff because its really easy to make it too good of an option, and while I don't think the Assurance we have is bad but rather situational, I feel it could be a bit stronger and it would be perfectly okay. If you can already auto-succed on CL-1 DCs with Assurance, the next logical step would be CL+0 DCs. I think that beyond that it would be too much.
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I think this discussion in general is really going sideways. Assurance was never meant to be "you succeed at things that are supposed to be a reasonable challenge without any failure risk". And people are proposing exactly that.I have the feeling you think the difference between rolling and using Assurance is higher than it really is. Let's say you are a Strength martial that takes Assurance on Athletics at 6th level. Your Athletics modifier is +14, while your Assurance result is 20. A 5th level DC is 20, which means you need a result of 6 or higher on the die to succeed. You can reduce this a bit if you have an item bonus on Athletics or if someone aids you on the check. Yes, Assurance would be an auto-success, but unless you were to roll a 2 or 3 on the die you would also succeed with ease, plus the have the chance to crit succeed as well.
A character that maxes out a skill is pretty much assured (heh) to succeed on CL-1 or even CL+0 DCs with ease, while having a decent chance to crit succeed as well. Assurance removes the chances of failure (for CL-1 DCs) but also removes the chances of crit succeding. I agree with you that Assurance is tricky to buff because its really easy to make it too good of an option, and while I don't think the Assurance we have is bad but rather situational, I feel it could be a bit stronger and it would be perfectly okay. If you can already auto-succed on CL-1 DCs with Assurance, the next logical step would be CL+0 DCs. I think that beyond that it would be too much.
...Um, Exequiel, where are you getting 20 from?
The result of Assurance is 10 + your proficiency bonus without any other modifiers.At expert proficiency, it would be +4, which makes it 14...
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As for the Inventor and Overdrive?
Well, looking closer at, it is a very gamble-focused class. Not just with Overdrive, but with Unstable too....Which honestly makes sense, considering the tech they're using is experimental.
Ignoring the fact that I believe the inventor's flavor to be all over the place (you are supposed to be this incredible innovator that can make stuff that's years in the future, even though there's literally Sci-Fi tech on Golarion, but you don't seem to know how to use any of them because they can't stop exploding. Like, even a 20th level inventor that's legendary in Crafting and could probably create their own artifact if they really wanted hasn't learned how to avoid its innovation from exploding. It really feels like the inventor is someone that stole someone else's innovation and claims to have made it themselves), I didn't say that the inventor shouldn't be rolling for overdrive because of flavor reasons, but rather because what you get from it isn't really worth the risk. A 4th level inventor gets a +3 to damage from overdrive, while a thaumaturge from implement's empowerment alone gets a +4. Then, even if the thaumaturge fails to exploit the enemy's vulnerability, they would still get another +4 to damage from personal anthithesis. Even if the inventor happened to crit succed it would still be less damage than a thaumaturge.
I won't go into detail for the other lacking aspects of the inventor (TLDR; its IMO the worst martial in the game) but its clear that they could have implemented the "its experimental tech so it should have some randomness to it" factor in a way that didn't feel this bad in its execution.
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Plus level, which is 6.I think this discussion in general is really going sideways. Assurance was never meant to be "you succeed at things that are supposed to be a reasonable challenge without any failure risk". And people are proposing exactly that.I have the feeling you think the difference between rolling and using Assurance is higher than it really is. Let's say you are a Strength martial that takes Assurance on Athletics at 6th level. Your Athletics modifier is +14, while your Assurance result is 20. A 5th level DC is 20, which means you need a result of 6 or higher on the die to succeed. You can reduce this a bit if you have an item bonus on Athletics or if someone aids you on the check. Yes, Assurance would be an auto-success, but unless you were to roll a 2 or 3 on the die you would also succeed with ease, plus the have the chance to crit succeed as well.
A character that maxes out a skill is pretty much assured (heh) to succeed on CL-1 or even CL+0 DCs with ease, while having a decent chance to crit succeed as well. Assurance removes the chances of failure (for CL-1 DCs) but also removes the chances of crit succeding. I agree with you that Assurance is tricky to buff because its really easy to make it too good of an option, and while I don't think the Assurance we have is bad but rather situational, I feel it could be a bit stronger and it would be perfectly okay. If you can already auto-succed on CL-1 DCs with Assurance, the next logical step would be CL+0 DCs. I think that beyond that it would be too much.
...Um, Exequiel, where are you getting 20 from?
The result of Assurance is 10 + your proficiency bonus without any other modifiers.
At expert proficiency, it would be +4, which makes it 14...
You don't add your level to it... right?
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I think this discussion in general is really going sideways. Assurance was never meant to be "you succeed at things that are supposed to be a reasonable challenge without any failure risk". And people are proposing exactly that.I have the feeling you think the difference between rolling and using Assurance is higher than it really is. Let's say you are a Strength martial that takes Assurance on Athletics at 6th level. Your Athletics modifier is +14, while your Assurance result is 20. A 5th level DC is 20, which means you need a result of 6 or higher on the die to succeed. You can reduce this a bit if you have an item bonus on Athletics or if someone aids you on the check. Yes, Assurance would be an auto-success, but unless you were to roll a 2 or 3 on the die you would also succeed with ease, plus the have the chance to crit succeed as well.
A character that maxes out a skill is pretty much assured (heh) to succeed on CL-1 or even CL+0 DCs with ease, while having a decent chance to crit succeed as well. Assurance removes the chances of failure (for CL-1 DCs) but also removes the chances of crit succeding. I agree with you that Assurance is tricky to buff because its really easy to make it too good of an option, and while I don't think the Assurance we have is bad but rather situational, I feel it could be a bit stronger and it would be perfectly okay. If you can already auto-succed on CL-1 DCs with Assurance, the next logical step would be CL+0 DCs. I think that beyond that it would be too much.
...Um, Exequiel, where are you getting 20 from?
The result of Assurance is 10 + your proficiency bonus without any other modifiers.
At expert proficiency, it would be +4, which makes it 14...
Its 10 (base) + 10 (proficiency). Proficiency is level (6) + a bonus based on the proficiency tier (4 for expert).
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Plus level, which is 6.I think this discussion in general is really going sideways. Assurance was never meant to be "you succeed at things that are supposed to be a reasonable challenge without any failure risk". And people are proposing exactly that.I have the feeling you think the difference between rolling and using Assurance is higher than it really is. Let's say you are a Strength martial that takes Assurance on Athletics at 6th level. Your Athletics modifier is +14, while your Assurance result is 20. A 5th level DC is 20, which means you need a result of 6 or higher on the die to succeed. You can reduce this a bit if you have an item bonus on Athletics or if someone aids you on the check. Yes, Assurance would be an auto-success, but unless you were to roll a 2 or 3 on the die you would also succeed with ease, plus the have the chance to crit succeed as well.
A character that maxes out a skill is pretty much assured (heh) to succeed on CL-1 or even CL+0 DCs with ease, while having a decent chance to crit succeed as well. Assurance removes the chances of failure (for CL-1 DCs) but also removes the chances of crit succeding. I agree with you that Assurance is tricky to buff because its really easy to make it too good of an option, and while I don't think the Assurance we have is bad but rather situational, I feel it could be a bit stronger and it would be perfectly okay. If you can already auto-succed on CL-1 DCs with Assurance, the next logical step would be CL+0 DCs. I think that beyond that it would be too much.
...Um, Exequiel, where are you getting 20 from?
The result of Assurance is 10 + your proficiency bonus without any other modifiers.
At expert proficiency, it would be +4, which makes it 14...You don't add your level to it... right?
"If you're trained, expert, master, or legendary, your proficiency bonus equals your level plus 2, 4, 6, or 8, respectively."
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"If you're trained, expert, master, or legendary, your proficiency bonus equals your level plus 2, 4, 6, or 8, respectively."You don't add your level to it... right?
Can you point to me where it says that.
I'm not trying to be insufferable (or at least, I REALLY hope that's not how I'm coming off), and I want to believe you, but the sources I'm looking at disagree.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Can you point to me where it says that.
Follow the link you provided for Proficiency Bonus. Read the last line.
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Can you point to me where it says that.Follow the link you provided for Proficiency Bonus. Read the last line.
If you're trained, expert, master, or legendary, your proficiency bonus equals your level plus 2, 4, 6, or 8, respectively.
...
*Proceeds to repeatedly slam head against the hardest object*
HOW IN THE FUNKY FRESH BOWELS OF ROVAGUG DID I MISS THAT EVERY TIME I WENT LOOKING AT THAT PAGE!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
If you all excuse me, I'll see myself out now.
*Leaves to go sleep of the severe migrant this mistake induced*
On the one hand, I think it would be pretty boring if any narratively meaningful rolls in the game could reliably be circumvented by a single skill feat.
Having a specialized lore and a handful of skill feats that do something interesting with that Lore skills is interesting, but the narratively meaningful moment was the character choosing to specialize in a specific lore skill, especially if that character doesn't have great attribute bonuses for INT, and then I don't really think assurance takes anything away from the narrative, because the narratively interesting rolls are not the recall knowledge skill checks.
On the other hand, I think there is so much table variance about how skill checks are handled that assurance really becomes a skill feat that you have to talk to your GM about if your are going to take it.
Just the most basic "how often will my character be able to know the DCs of various checks or even the general ball park of whether it is something that should be easy or difficult for my character?" is not uniform between kinds of checks or GM game styles.
Are players expected to know what the various untrained, trained, expert, master and Legendary types of challenges are for a specific skill? Should it be easy for them to estimate within +/-X what the DC might be? Are they allowed to learn that information with some kind of recall knowledge check? or are they supposed to have no idea what they need to roll when they approach an unknown skill, as well as what the various tiers of consequences will be?
Do the players know whether they are supposed to know these things for this campaign? Because it isn't really something that gets mentioned to talk about in session 0 or anything, but "will my character generally know the level of creatures and challenges that they face?" is something that really changes how parties should approach problem solving in a lot of situations.
Assurance with skills that don't really have a consequence for failure, for example, can be a very safe way of feeling out a lot of kinds of challenges and their difficulty. But when players generally know the target DCs, then assurance is either valuable because there are a fair number of challenges that their assurance value will pass them on, or there are not, and the skill feat is entirely useless.
I think Crafting in particular falls into the "my character really is going to know the target DCs for most of the times I roll this," and so it is particularly vulnerable to looking useless if the player is mostly trying on level or higher checks with it.
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The scaling problem with assurance is that it doesn't include ability score bonus and item bonus. Ability score can get as high as +7 , status bonus of +3 and item +3 before doing anything extreme. Which means taking a 10 to ignore those modifiers is eventually like choosing to roll a zero.
The scaling problem with assurance is that it doesn't include ability score bonus and item bonus. Ability score can get as high as +7 , status bonus of +3 and item +3 before doing anything extreme. Which means taking a 10 to ignore those modifiers is eventually like choosing to roll a zero.
That is pretty sad. Pretty much why I don't ever take something like this in PF2. They set the difficulty at 10 with all your modifiers in place for anything remotely meaningful.
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The scaling problem with assurance is that it doesn't include ability score bonus and item bonus. Ability score can get as high as +7 , status bonus of +3 and item +3 before doing anything extreme. Which means taking a 10 to ignore those modifiers is eventually like choosing to roll a zero.
*Raises eyebrow*
I'm aware of this.I'm confused.
Hard to tell what this is in response to without the quote to fill in the context.
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I am glad the feat is incredibly limited.
Its roll is to make easy things certain and not really much more than that.
If it did eliminate the need to roll for on level challenges I would just ban it anyway.
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I think "stick this on any random skill" was not a great way to design this. A specific "first, do no harm" Medicine skill feat, or a "steady as she goes" Athletics feat focused on simple DCs could be tailored better toward the specific skill and convey a better idea of what it's for and when it's meant to be used.
I think Recall Knowledge needs a very different approach at all. The DCs for any RK check to identify an enemy you really care about tend to be for monsters 1-3 levels higher than you, perhaps uncommon/rare/unique. I spent yesterday grinding my teeth at multiple combats where we just couldn't succeed because the checks just get really hard, and we were left wondering "what would get through the broad spectrum defenses of this nasty monster?" Anyway, Assurance doesn't come near to being good for this.
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I am glad the feat is incredibly limited.
Its roll is to make easy things certain and not really much more than that.
If it did eliminate the need to roll for on level challenges I would just ban it anyway.
But it IS more than that in some cases. In a way that I think hurts the game.
One fairly common use of assurance is to use assurance athletics to try and pull a maneuver on some low save opponent as your third MAP action.
And I think this is a BAD thing. First, you often see these on something silly like a gnome with his Str of -1 where it is just silly. But, more importantly, suddenly you're getting a cool in combat use of a feat that is clearly mostly designed to replace PF1's take 10.
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I wonder if people would like the feat better if it was just “automatically succeed any basic DC that is a full proficiency level behind your current proficiency or a level-based DC 2 levels behind your current level,” would go over better with a lot of players, even if there are points where current assurance is better than this.
It seems like some players’ frustration stems from not knowing what their likely result really means in terms of when it will help.
Making controversial topics and then argueing them to death seems to be one of RD's favorite pasttimes.Individual responses to everyoneTo be honest man, if you can argue against everyone in the entire thread at once like this, I don't really know what anyone is supposed to do to change your mind. Do you, like, WANT to argue about it? Or do you think someone has an answer that will satisfy you, and it just hasn't been said yet?
Nothing wrong with testing the edges of a rule, and I don’t think dissatisfaction with assurance is THAT uncommon that it’s somehow. ‘Controversial’
I think the problem with Assurance is that it works fine for some really specific things, but that's not how the feat "sells" itself; it sells itself as being far more generally applicable.
There are backgrounds that give you assurance in skills that don't really work with it (Student of the Canon, Religion). There are skill feats that let you use assurance with Recall Knowledge, which would fail to identify any monster of high enough level compared to you that knowledge is really important.
Abilities that can't do what they promise are not fun design. The ability might be okay for other things, but then the promise should be more tailored to not give you the wrong expectations.
Are monsters really the only thing that recall knowledge matters for? Other topics might have A relatively simple DC.
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Are monsters really the only thing that recall knowledge matters for? Other topics might have A relatively simple DC.
If the GM is using simple DCs for that, yeah. Or even lower level/Easy modified DCs.
That's one of the reasons this is GM dependent: some of that stuff is just up to the GM and how they determine it impacts how good assurance is in those situations.
One of the fundamental PF2 design principles (and biggest stumbling blocks for people from other systems) is that if something is supposed to be meaningful challenge (as defined by the DC by level chart) you can't optimize yourself out of rolling for it.Well Paizo have failed more than a few times then. Example the Subtle trait just works. There is no roll. Prior to this trait it always failed though the GM might allow you to improvise a roll at some sort of DC.
Dubious Knowledge is pretty reliable.
The subtle trait might just work, but the spell you're casting with it probably doesn't. They removed the other checks because casting in social situations is a relatively rare situation so increasing the odds of failure with multiple checks feels bad when the character invested into being able to doing it. But the charm or dominate saving throw still achieves the desired tension.
The thing about simple DC recall knowledge checks, is that the whole party is probably making the check, so the risk of individual critical failure is pretty minimal and not really something that assurance is necessary for.
Assurance is best on skills where you have to make personal checks that have consequences for critical failure, which includes eating actions in combat on RK checks that might give you harmful false information in that combat.
A GM tha gives out false information in a simple recall knowledge check has to be careful not to derail their entire campaign, so it is a lot more likely for critical failure to just mean the same thing as failure, and for anyone who succeeds to be the one who learns the information.
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Are monsters really the only thing that recall knowledge matters for? Other topics might have A relatively simple DC.
Well, someone brought up automatic knowledge as a perk of assurance, and the only time saving actions matters is in combat. Usually in combat RK checks are limited to monsters. (Or hazards, but same difference.) Plus out of combat the whole party can usually roll on RK, and if it's a low enough DC for Assurance to work then odds are someone will succeed at it, maybe even the guy with Untrained Improvisation.
So it isn't that monsters are the only thing that RK matters for, but it's not like Assurance is actually helpful for RK on much else.
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Another thing that would make Assurance better is if it if you were told what success condition it would net you before committing to using it. I recall needing to scale a rock wall in combat and asking the GM is my character could judge the DC before using Assurance, and being told no. At that point I was basically still gambling on wasting my action.
Yeah. Assurance has uses, but it feels like it's supposed to a replacement for take 10—and it's just not. This is mainly a problem because the game has a lot of places where it feels like take 10 and take 20 should probably exist, still. Parties do sometimes just have no time pressure. Failure at some repeatable tasks (like picking locks when there's no one you're hiding from) just can't be made interesting. Assurance doesn't solve these, and it looks like it should.
I think they should have proficiency gated locks while letting anyone roll to Disable a hazard, personally.
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I also feel Assurance could have been simplified if instead of the complicated "no bonuses or penalties" they'd just phrased it as "Take 7". (But, now you do get to add your ability modifier etc; it's a normal roll, just pinned to a 7.)
If all the feat did was allow you to Take 7 on that skill, I think it would have been pretty transparent when it's good and when it's not. It's clearly only good for reliably doing tasks that you usually succeed at anyway.
It'd no longer be a weird MAP trick, but still good for climbing, swimming, or deciding to not take the hardest DC at Treat Wounds/Battle Medicine.
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I also feel Assurance could have been simplified if instead of the complicated "no bonuses or penalties" they'd just phrased it as "Take 7". (But, now you do get to add your ability modifier etc; it's a normal roll, just pinned to a 7.)
If all the feat did was allow you to Take 7 on that skill, I think it would have been pretty transparent when it's good and when it's not. It's clearly only good for reliably doing tasks that you usually succeed at anyway.
It'd no longer be a weird MAP trick, but still good for climbing, swimming, or deciding to not take the hardest DC at Treat Wounds/Battle Medicine.
Assuming you take Assurance on a skill in which you have a +2 attribute modifier that you plan on taking boosts into to raise it up to +5 at 20th level, the results I reached is that its 1 point worse than current Assurance in the 1st-3rd levels, the same at 4th-8th levels, 1 point better in the 9th-19th levels, and 2 points better at 20th level. I didn't take item bonuses into consideration to make it the most "average" Assurance results as possible, so the numbers here can vary.
If we compare it against a character that can use its KAS for the chosen skill, like a thaumaturge for Esoteric Lore, an inventor for Crafting, or any martial for Athletics, the result is that its 1 point higher in the 1st-2nd levels, 2 points higher in the 3rd-8th levels, 4 points higher in the 9th-16th levels, 6 points higher in the 17th-19th levels, and 7 points higher at 20th level. This one also beats CL+1 and CL+2 DCs in the early levels, and even some CL+3 and CL+4 DCs at high levels.
If you min-max it, this becomes too good of an option for characters that choose a skill that uses their KAS and plan to buy items to gain item bonuses into the skill. If you were to make it a take 5 instead then it would still be too good for the min-maxers and pretty much worthless for the rest.
As others have said. Assurance is risk mitigation and allows for high skill low bonus investments to be worth it.
It saved my barbarian and rogue players multiple times in combat while aiding in mid and high level play when aiding allies attack rolls. Oh and assured athletics can be quite solid when it comes to shutting down mooks with third actions or enemies with weak ref/fort saves (dinosaurs and giants are fun to toy with).
Is it ubiquitous, nah... but I usually see it come up at some point for crit fail mitigation on at least one character.
I would personally like to see it be a general (non skill traited) feat that imposes a floor to the roll though. Then have a return of the take 10 option but with the following changes
- out of combat only and not suffering from penalties or misfortune.
- 10+prof
- explicitly stated as taking longer
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My proposed version of Assurance.
If you roll a nat 1, no you didn't, roll again.
That's kind of the core ethos of gaining "assurance" that you'll not fumble your way into a TPK that in-story could doom the ___ to the horrible fate of the campaign's BBEG's ____ machinations.
This method avoids both sides of the using some formula-calculated static number;
it both properly rewards skill investment the exact same as normal skill use, while not incentivizing leaving the assured skill as low investment as possible because they have taken Assurance.
To better align with the idea of assurance being gained through a character's dedication to their expertise, it'll require Trained, starting at a once per day frequency.
Each proficiency gain, Assurance grants another "no you didn't" reroll per day.
And this would explicitly not be a fortune effect, so no foe shenanigans with misfortune curses, and this would give the PC the possibility for (another) heroic (or assured!) reroll in the case of double 1s.
I also very much like the idea of being assured in one's own skill being antithetical to the nature of fortune magics, and such a PC being able to "no-sell" a Pugwampi, etc's bad luck aura.
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I think the problem with Assurance is that it works fine for some really specific things, but that's not how the feat "sells" itself; it sells itself as being far more generally applicable.
There are backgrounds that give you assurance in skills that don't really work with it (Student of the Canon, Religion). There are skill feats that let you use assurance with Recall Knowledge, which would fail to identify any monster of high enough level compared to you that knowledge is really important.
Abilities that can't do what they promise are not fun design. The ability might be okay for other things, but then the promise should be more tailored to not give you the wrong expectations.
I do agree with this. The label on the tin makes it seems like it's widely applicable and useful with anything. A replacement for the old take 10, but it's not. And those who don't understand its function well, are likely going to be disappointed.
Yeah it's one of the most system mastery driven feats so its basic billing is problematic.
My proposed version of Assurance.
If you roll a nat 1, no you didn't, roll again.
That's kind of the core ethos of gaining "assurance" that you'll not fumble your way into a TPK that in-story could doom the ___ to the horrible fate of the campaign's BBEG's ____ machinations.
I very much like the idea of reformulating the feat as a guarantee against failure when anything but a nat 1 would succeed or critically succeed, as that's essentially what it achieves much of the time. I will, however, state that there should never under any circumstances be a situation where a single bad roll dooms the party or even just one party member. If those situations still happen in 2e (and as happens with Climbing/jumping and fall damage in particular at early levels, they do happen), then the design of the game should be adjusted to avoid that. If this ends up making Assurance less desirable as a feat, so be it.
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suddenly you're getting a cool in combat use of a feat that is clearly mostly designed to replace PF1's take 10.
Not trying to call you out specifically. Quoting to provide context for bringing Take-10 into the conversation again.
I think that Take-10 was worse game design than Assurance is.
Take-10 is:
* Hard to adjudicate when it is and is not allowed to be used.
* More limited in its allowed scenarios.
* Is more valuable when it does work. Valuable enough to be used on on-level challenges that the party is actually facing. And valuable enough to try and wheedle the GM into allowing its use.
This helps promote a state for the game meta where the game is won at character creation because no dice are being rolled for meaningful effect.
Assurance isn't perfect, but it does alleviate those problems.
* It is clear when it is allowed to be used. If you have Assurance in a skill, you can use it for anything that needs a roll with that skill.
* It is less valuable. It cannot be used for most checks in on-level challenges. This means that the dice are still important and the game cannot be won by character creation and system mastery.
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I think we can find several skill feats with far less use than Assurance.
I agree. I really think the issue with the Assurance feat is the expectation it creates in its name and description to sound like it is universally useful, but that its application ends up being really niche and require a fair bit of system mastery to be able to use. Whereas a feat like Armor Assist is so obviously niche that it is pretty hard to read it and think "this is really going to be useful in regular play situations," if you have any idea of what regular play situations are in the whole genre of fantasy RPGs.
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Yeah, I think there are many worse feats than assurance, but the problem is more that assurance looks useful (to those without a lot of PF2 experience) compared to other options that are obviously less useful.
Example feat (skill feat, because assurance is a skill feat):
All of the Animal. You have to have killed a large animal with the last day, and get enough meat to feed you and one other person....it's insanely bad.
Compare that to the subsist use of Survival. Now sure it has a variable DC...but you provide food for yourself and another on a critical success.
And if you'd taken the Forager feat instead, you could automatically get a success if you fail (but not critically fail) and on a success you can feed your allies.
I guess another thing to realize/note is all the feats I'm talking about (Assurance, Forager, All of the Animal) are 1st level skill feats.
When we think about the strength and effect of feats, we have to keep in mind their level when thinking of their impact. When you remember survival is a 1st level feat...it makes more sense that it has pretty limited effects.