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I really think the issue with the Assurance feat is the expectation it creates in its name and description
the problem is more that assurance looks useful
I would agree with that.
The biggest problem with it is PF1 veterans subconsciously treating PF2 as though it is an equivalent game and going: "Hey look. Assurance looks like Take-10 but without the restrictions on using in combat or other 'stressful' situations. That's a pretty nice power buff. And here I heard that making overpowered characters in PF2 is hard. I'll just roll in with my character having Assurance in Performance and cause Fascinated status on all of the enemies so that they can't do anything."
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And the problem isn't so much with the game itself, it's that the player has an expectation that will 100% not work out as they're expecting.
Now, if you have a nice GM who you can say "Hey, this feat (assurance) isn't working out how I thought, can I just retroactively select something else (because I'm new and didn't understand how it would really work)" then it's not that big of deal. But you'll have some people who insist you need downtime and to retrain it. Or insist on that, and then you end up in a situation where you never have down time.
There's also generally an issue of players from Pf1 thinking they've found some sort of cheat code for winning the game during character creation that generally they've just missed/misunderstood some important portion of the rules.
Honestly, coming from PF1 to PF2 is probably one of the hardest things to do, because outside of being d20 games with the same game lore, they are not the same game. And people make a lot of assumptions based on their previous experience that is simply wrong.
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I like conversations like this cause the get me to actually look at the thing being discussed even when I havnt needed it for my games yet.
I might be ok with Assurance as it is but I agree there are some stretch of the imagination uses of it. Standard uses by a PC invested in the skill to use it normally but eliminate the a chance to fail for easier things seem fine.
If someone is taking assurance in my games I will let them know when assurance lets them bypass a roll. DC's are a behind the table thing but a PC would know when something is clearly easy enough for them to do without risk so I would make sure my players know it.
And when looking at the section for setting DC's its clear the GM is has to make a call on how a DC will be set.
Things you can use the simple DCs for are probably what assurance was conceived around for its main use.
Proficiency Rank DC
Untrained 10
Trained 15
Expert 20
Master 30
Legendary 40
Using these DCs a starting PC with assurance in a trained skill (probably from a background) can avoid rolling for any action that would be considered of untrained difficulty. Which is considered anything that pretty much anyone would have a decent chance at. For the assurance pc they dont just have a decent chance, they have a 100% chance.
Anything that relies on level to set the DC should for the most part keep a pc from using assurance unless the level is 2 lower than the pc most of the time. Some levels are level -3. The limits were clearly thought of since you can never get level -1. Unless you gained an early boost to proficiency through some feature.
At level 1 that would be anything 13 or under
At level 6 just before the proficiency bump you can at best do an 18 which is the level 3 DC.
Combat applications like assurance on a -10 map trip is not actually too disuprive because on level foes or above level foes are still going to have DCs that are too high.
But something like Forest Troll at level 5 has a reflex DC of 21 and a level 5 player can assurance on a 17 DC.
or a clay effigy has a reflex dc of 26 just 1 out of reach for assurance at level 10 which is the creatures level.
Now the bonuses and penalties to the roll are clearly not included in the assurance attempt but what about bonuses or penalties to the DC that is being set?
For example does fear lower the reflex DC for assurance attempts or is it disregarded?
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The biggest discrepancy I feel when looking at Assurance is that it is more useful for skills where you do not invest in stats and items, and thus do not reach the highest results. Which is extremely counter-intuitive to me.
In my builds, I use it for Medicine and Trick Magic Item and that's it.
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The biggest discrepancy I feel when looking at Assurance is that it is more useful for skills where you do not invest in stats and items, and thus do not reach the highest results. Which is extremely counter-intuitive to me.
Yeah, I have real problems with this too.
Especially in cases where my gnome is as good (when using assurance) at tripping as is the minotaur barbarian. It just really, really breaks my willing suspension of disbelief
The biggest discrepancy I feel when looking at Assurance is that it is more useful for skills where you do not invest in stats and items, and thus do not reach the highest results. Which is extremely counter-intuitive to me.
In my builds, I use it for Medicine and Trick Magic Item and that's it.
Yeah. My biggest issue with Assurance is that because of tricks like this and how complex it is to understand when it'll be useful vs when it won't be, its one of the highest system mastery feats in PF2.
Getting the most out of it requires understanding not only what applies to it and what doesn't, but also understanding how DCs work well enough so you can parse out which actions are going to succeed using it. That's how you get odd outcomes like "character with no WIS and no +item bonuses to Medicine can take it and be a pretty capable Medic", while also getting "it'll probably never work if you try to use it for something like Climb or Track" (as those challenges are often on-level).
I can't think of much else that requires you to understand how DCs work and how your GM applies modifiers to them to know if its worth taking or not.
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I wish they had just made Assurance the new take 10 rule rather than turning it into a feat myself. Take 10 and Take 20 saved a lot of wasted time rolling in situations where there was no time element or risk.
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The biggest discrepancy I feel when looking at Assurance is that it is more useful for skills where you do not invest in stats and items, and thus do not reach the highest results. Which is extremely counter-intuitive to me.
In my builds, I use it for Medicine and Trick Magic Item and that's it.
Yeah. My biggest issue with Assurance is that because of tricks like this and how complex it is to understand when it'll be useful vs when it won't be, its one of the highest system mastery feats in PF2.
Getting the most out of it requires understanding not only what applies to it and what doesn't, but also understanding how DCs work well enough so you can parse out which actions are going to succeed using it. That's how you get odd outcomes like "character with no WIS and no +item bonuses to Medicine can take it and be a pretty capable Medic", while also getting "it'll probably never work if you try to use it for something like Climb or Track" (as those challenges are often on-level).
I can't think of much else that requires you to understand how DCs work and how your GM applies modifiers to them to know if its worth taking or not.
is climb really usually an on level activity? Is that an AP thing?
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I only ask because of the simple climb task box in the player core under the climb entry. I know a GM can decide a particular surface is more or less difficult or with the example provided in the GM core it could be set to level. I just thought simple DCs were more commonly applied.
So if applying simple DCs to the Sample Climb Tasks in player core you get.
DC
10 - Assured at level 1- Untrained ladder, steep slope, low-branched tree
15 Assured at level 3- Trained rigging, rope, typical tree
20 Assured at level 7- Expert wall with small handholds and footholds
30 Assured at level 14- Master ceiling with handholds and footholds, rock wall
40 Assured at level 22- Legendary smooth surface
That seems on track with level -2 DCs if using simple DCs for those climb checks and a player is using skill increases for athletics as soon as normally possible from leveling.
If they kept it at trained the difference would show up at Expert DCs requiring trained and level 9 to hit that 20 DC. Trained and level 18 to assure those master DCs of 30.
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Yeah, and Track is in the same boat. If an enemy isn't moving at half speed to conceal its tracks, you're rolling against the simple DC for the terrain. Which reminds me-- Assurance negates the penalty for experienced tracker too. Also tracking is one of those things you might have to roll multiple checks for (if you're tracking for more than an hour) so Assurance can remove failure chance. Assurance Survival also ignores the penalty for Subsisting while adventuring, which is nice if you don't have Forager.
Survival isn't terribly useful itself, but if you're leaning into it for whatever reason Assurance ain't bad.
Sometimes it feels like an ability that was really designed for NPC Bakers to not mess up their cupcakes or something, though.
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is climb really usually an on level activity? Is that an AP thing?
Yeah. PFS Scenarios as well in my experience often give a scaling DC rather than a simple one for this stuff.
If you are using the simple DCs instead, Assurance is a lot stronger. Especially for my Gnome Cosmos Oracle who is really, REALLY bad at it. That one is a bizarre edge case, since with a STR penalty and Enfeebled stacked up from the Curse, Assurance is pretty likely to just be a flat out better result since its closer to "take 12" (or as I'm currently Enfeebled 3 in Spore War, "take 14").
When you look at it that way, this really is a fiddley skill feat. I get why it works the way it does, but it making me actually better at Long Jump than doing it normally is a really odd outcome.
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is climb really usually an on level activity? Is that an AP thing?Yeah. PFS Scenarios as well in my experience often give a scaling DC rather than a simple one for this stuff.
If you are using the simple DCs instead, Assurance is a lot stronger.
You know that's a good point. The PF2E design philosophy is a zero to hero design philosophy where the mundane is supposed to become easier as the heroes grow in power. Scaling DCs for "simple" tasks seems anti- to that.
You know that's a good point. The PF2E design philosophy is a zero to hero design philosophy where the mundane is supposed to become easier as the heroes grow in power. Scaling DCs for "simple" tasks seems anti- to that.is climb really usually an on level activity? Is that an AP thing?Yeah. PFS Scenarios as well in my experience often give a scaling DC rather than a simple one for this stuff.
If you are using the simple DCs instead, Assurance is a lot stronger.
100%, and I think it's just a byproduct of conflicting design philosophies. Someone at some point said "Oh, they're level 10, we need a level appropriate DC for this wall" instead of thinking about the wall and what kind of wall it was and saying "Hey, this is rough hewn stone wall. It's probably a DC 20. But it's been raining, so its wet. DC 22."
Climbing by design should almost never be a scaling DC. The only time that would make sense if it were some kind of leveled magic effect... but like, as written DCs are proficiency gated based on the type of thing you're climbing, a rough hewn castle wall is a rough hewn castle wall whether you're level 1 or level 12. The way the entries around Climb are written even makes that pretty clear.
It does highlight one of the pitfalls of Assurance though, in that it's very easy for a GM to incidentally make the feat much worse or much better than it's supposed to be because it expects certain things to happen.
... It does feel a little unfair to say a feat is bad because a bad GM can easily ruin it, but compared to other options Assurance can get easily degraded just through negligence and a poor understanding of the rules without necessarily any intent.
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Climbing by design should almost never be a scaling DC.
ALL climb checks are scaling DCs, even when they are simple.
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Get it?
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I'll see myself out.
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I remember, back in the days of the original PF2 playtest, one of the designers, my fumbling memory says Buhlman, but could be Seifter, explaining the usefulness of the Assurance feat by describing an encounter in which his 2nd level halfling rogue, who was expert in athletics and had assurance for it, was able to use a third action to trip an ogre DC-16.
The GM Core makes the effort to say either way you come at the DC for a climb check is appropriate. It could be a regular climb for its kind or it could be a diabolically crafted surface the level of the mastermind who made it is the example they gave.
Climbing should never be a 1 Crit fail instant death unless the character is doing something incredibly difficult, like climbing across a ceiling. Grab an edge exists almost exactly to prevent things like climbing to be one bad roll = dead.
Also, any time a rope can be tossed down or used, the DC of the task should be 15. Anything that complicates that should be a penalty that assurance overcomes.
I don’t think the game itself makes it intuitive for the GM to know these kinds of things off hand, and adventures generally don’t repeat them all the time because that gets repetitive, but perhaps with APs condensing into longer books as well, it might make sense to have one side bar reminder, around the first dungeon it would make sense to have it, about very basic adventure strategies like having an ally lower a rope to make climb DCs much lower.
I think there is a general development idea that remembering to include the DCs for simple tasks around DC 15 in adventures where players typically have +15 or higher to their checks in a waste of page space, but it does lead to a lot of table variance on the shoulders of GMs trying to pick numbers that feel worth having rolls for
Also, any time a rope can be tossed down or used, the DC of the task should be 15. Anything that complicates that should be a penalty that assurance overcomes.
On this point about assurance negating penalties. I asked this question with the fear example but it applies here as well.
Does assurance only negate penalties and bonuses to the roll?Or are people also negating penalties bonuses or other adjustments to the standard DC?
Like if an enemy doused oil on the rope being climbed it should affect the DC of the climb, its an adjustment from standard rope. I don't think I would allow adjustments to the DC be negated by the feat.
Fear on a creature though does this to a creature's saves by its value. It also seems like it wouldnt be ignored because of the feat since its not a bonus or penalty to the roll itself.
as written DCs are proficiency gated based on the type of thing you're climbing,Did you mean that? Because they are proficiency-based, not gated. And not even that, more like proficiency-tagged or even simple-DC-entry-tagged.
you said it better.
Another place I think assurance and DCs get convoluted is in VP systems where the numbers get set in advance and then a narrative justification gets overlaid afterwards. Designing a chase, for example, is going to start with a set of target numbers and then a few options that will raise or lower them by a modest amount.
I get, from a design perspective not wanting a single skill feat to trivialize a skill challenge, and many skill feats flat out don’t work well in skill challenges that might not use typical encounter turn lengths, but that is a system wide weakness bigger than assurance.
Skill feats are generally under addressed in adventure design, and it's particularly egregious for VP skill challenges. There should be better guidance on how to reward relevant skills feats.
Climbing should never be a 1 Crit fail instant death unless the character is doing something incredibly difficult, like climbing across a ceiling. Grab an edge exists almost exactly to prevent things like climbing to be one bad roll = dead.
Also, any time a rope can be tossed down or used, the DC of the task should be 15. Anything that complicates that should be a penalty that assurance overcomes.
Apologies if this is exactly what you meant, but it's worth explicitly pointing out that DC 15 to climb a rope is exactly what's given in the rules for Athletics to Climb since it's listed as an Trained simple task.
(As a side note, another thing about Climbing is that the climbing kit lets you avoid falls if you succeed on a DC 5 flat check, so long as you're only going at half speed. Combine a rope, a climbing kit, and Grab an Edge, and characters can usually avoid falling. The issue is that these tools aren't explicitly called out in a single specific place so they are very easy to miss.)
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Also, any time a rope can be tossed down or used, the DC of the task should be 15. Anything that complicates that should be a penalty that assurance overcomes.
On this point about assurance negating penalties. I asked this question with the fear example but it applies here as well.
Does assurance only negate penalties and bonuses to the roll?
Or are people also negating penalties bonuses or other adjustments to the standard DC?
Like if an enemy doused oil on the rope being climbed it should affect the DC of the climb, its an adjustment from standard rope. I don't think I would allow adjustments to the DC be negated by the feat.
Fear on a creature though does this to a creature's saves by its value. It also seems like it wouldnt be ignored because of the feat since its not a bonus or penalty to the roll itself.
Assurance doesn't change the DC at all. Anything adjusting the DC applies normally (like the rope/wall/ladder/etc being extra slippery).
The thing is that even with a penalty to a simple DC, at some point assurance will overcome it. That differs from a standard level based DC which Assurance can never hit.
It's the difference between "you're climbing a rope which is a simple task so DC 15, but its raining which makes it harder, so its DC 17", vs "you're climbing a rope to infiltrate a level 5 settlement's guarded Fort so DC 20, and its raining so DC 22."
The climb part of that shouldn't really change since in both cases you're climbing a rope. Now, doing it without being seen is based on the Perception of the guards, and that would scale (based on the stats of the guards).
But I know a lot of folks can find it somewhat confusing when to use a simple DC and when to use a level based DC. One of the reasons Assurance is so good with Medicine is that the tasks you're doing most often are explicitly simple DCs in the rules, so it's effectively taken out of the GM's hands. But a GM who uses a lot of simple DCs will make Assurance better across a variety of skills.
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Also, any time a rope can be tossed down or used, the DC of the task should be 15. Anything that complicates that should be a penalty that assurance overcomes.
On this point about assurance negating penalties. I asked this question with the fear example but it applies here as well.
Does assurance only negate penalties and bonuses to the roll?
Or are people also negating penalties bonuses or other adjustments to the standard DC?
Like if an enemy doused oil on the rope being climbed it should affect the DC of the climb, its an adjustment from standard rope. I don't think I would allow adjustments to the DC be negated by the feat.
Fear on a creature though does this to a creature's saves by its value. It also seems like it wouldnt be ignored because of the feat since its not a bonus or penalty to the roll itself.Assurance doesn't change the DC at all. Anything adjusting the DC applies normally (like the rope/wall/ladder/etc being extra slippery).
The thing is that even with a penalty to a simple DC, at some point assurance will overcome it. That differs from a standard level based DC which Assurance can never hit.
It's the difference between "you're climbing a rope which is a simple task so DC 15, but its raining which makes it harder, so its DC 17", vs "you're climbing a rope to infiltrate a level 5 settlement's guarded Fort so DC 20, and its raining so DC 22."
The climb part of that shouldn't really change since in both cases you're climbing a rope. Now, doing it without being seen is based on the Perception of the guards, and that would scale (based on the stats of the guards).
But I know a lot of folks can find it somewhat confusing when to use a simple DC and when to use a level based DC. One of the reasons Assurance is so good with Medicine is that the tasks you're doing most often are explicitly simple DCs in the rules, so it's effectively taken out of the GM's hands. But a GM who uses a lot of simple DCs will make Assurance...
OH, I see where your coming from. Thank you for explaining.
Its a hard one for me. I mean creatures are always changing for stronger ones but walls and rope are not really doing much of that (maybe sometimes they are). I guess the stress test on using level based DCs would be shown more or less absurd if the party scaled a wall of a building with their rope at level 1 at a DC 15, then much later had reason to scale the same wall (no changes to it since) with the same rope at level 10 but now all of a sudden the DC is 27. It would be a difficult pill to swallow for me as a player and I would have a hard time justifying it to my players too.
I can see infiltrating a fortress set to a certain level will need to have challenges appropriate for that level though. maybe abstracting into the climb of those harder DCs some difficulties in the climb like building angles, strong winds, traps, ect... Just dont treat the traps as hazzards, instead treat them as elements of the climb affecting the DC.
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The only time I would use scaling DCs for Athletics to Climb, would be if the character was in a rock wall climbing competition, and the fabricated walls were DESIGNED to become progressively harder and harder.
I would also use higher set DCs for walls that were intrinsically harder (as shown below).
Cross-posting this here as I feel it is relevant:
Being trained in skills is fairly meaningless as the game goes on. Your success rate plummets relative to skills with investment, but you can only really have 2 or 3 skills with investment, depending on your level. It is nice early, though, sure.That simply isn't true. Success rates sky rocket as the game goes on.
It's just not often perceived that way since you're often confronted with greater challenges.
Scaling a DC 20 cliff at 1st-level can be quite difficult. Someone trained in Athletics and using the proper gear will likely make it to the top, whereas everyone else won't.
Ten levels later though? Everyone with any training in Athletics at all makes it to the top of that cliff, with or without gear. Only those without training still struggle (and even they can make it with Follow the Expert). And that's not even accounting for a host of additional options--like extreme jumping, flight, or teleportation--that can circumnavigate the obstacle altogether. The party's success rate is probably 100% or close to it, whereas it was maybe 50% for the party athlete.
There's no denying that things have become substantially easier for everyone involved.
By the time you get to 17th-level, you're probably not just scaling a traditional cliff though. You now find yourself scaling a mountain of tormented souls in the Outer Rifts. Souls that grab and bite at you as you climb, that try to throw you off, all while fiendish imps harry you from the toxic air, a demon lord tries to distract you by lashing his whip menacingly from high above, and acid rain pours down on your head making everything slippery, caustic, and crumbly. In this case, the DC is probably closer to 40, or even higher.
That still doesn't change the fact that you've long become a worlds-class climber that has a far higher chance of succeeding than you did at low levels. Success rates go up, never down. Challenges just get harder.
And that DOES matter, because you are likely going to be encountering many more mundane mountains than you are demon soul mounds in the Outer Rifts. There just aren't as many high level obstacles/tasks in this game as there are low level ones. If your GM is throwing the umpteenth soul mound at you, that's a GM staging problem, not a problem with the game itself.
Right and being untrained not adding your level into the roll means that PC never gets better at the scaling a wall no matter the level while anyone who at least decided to be trained in it do get better at simple DCs that are not increased as they level even if they do not improve to expert or higher.
I don't think level scaling should be used for static challenges most of the time or it will be true that the trained PC will get worse at climbing the same thing as the DC scales with level(which the DC by level chart accounts for skill increases)
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Right and being untrained not adding your level into the roll means that PC never gets better at the scaling a wall no matter the level while anyone who at least decided to be trained in it do get better at simple DCs that are not increased as they level even if they do not improve to expert or higher.
I don't think level scaling should be used for static challenges most of the time or it will be true that the trained PC will get worse at climbing the same thing as the DC scales with level(which the DC by level chart accounts for skill increases)
Yeah, if it's the same wall with the same conditions the DC should NOT shift just because the climber is higher level. Shifting the DC with character level would make absolutely no sense in this case, and is most assuredly not endorsed by the game developers as the way to go.
Even if the conditions change on the same wall (such as climbing during a storm), I'd recommend applying it as penalty to the check for most things, rather than upping the DC, per Unicore's advice upthread.
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OH, I see where your coming from. Thank you for explaining.
Its a hard one for me. I mean creatures are always changing for stronger ones but walls and rope are not really doing much of that (maybe sometimes they are). I guess the stress test on using level based DCs would be shown more or less absurd if the party scaled a wall of a building with their rope at level 1 at a DC 15, then much later had reason to scale the same wall (no changes to it since) with the same rope at level 10 but now all of a sudden the DC is 27. It would be a difficult pill to swallow for me as a player and I would have a hard time justifying it to my players too.
I can see infiltrating a fortress set to a certain level will need to have challenges appropriate for that level though. maybe abstracting into the climb of those harder DCs some difficulties in the climb like building angles, strong winds, traps, ect... Just dont treat the traps as hazzards, instead treat them as elements of the climb affecting the DC.
Climbing the same wall they climbed before shouldn't scale, even if you're using a level based DC. A very important detail of level based DCs is that they're based on the challenge level of what you're doing, not your own level.
ie: Sneaking past a level 2 guard patrol is a level 2 challenge. It remains a level 2 challenge even if you're level 10 (at which point its pretty trivial).
The idea behind a level based DC is that by time you're level 10, you're probably not trying to sneak past level 2 guards that are watching over a bandit camp out in the wilds. You're sneaking past the eternally vigilant undead sentries of a powerful Necromancer. aka: you're now doing level 10 challenges.
This is actually one of the things I hated most about Kingmaker's Kingdom Rules. Zones have a DC reflecting how difficult/dangerous the zone is for your kingdom to work in (similar to simple DCs based on geography), and your Kingdom itself has a "Control DC" which is basically the level based DC for kingdom stuff. A LOT of things scale off control DC that shouldn't.
The most egregious example we ran into was a lot of the region activities, like creating a farm. That uses control DC. So we had a turn where we tried to build a farm and succeeded. That caused us to level, which caused our control DC to go up by 2 and we also took a size modifier (for another increase to control DC). The net result is that building another farm next door or anywhere else got substantially harder since the DC went up by 3 and our modifier went up by 1. Had we failed to build the first farm, the same farm in the same place would have gotten more difficult.
It makes absolutely no damn sense whatsoever. Like, it absolutely makes sense that its harder to build a farm in hostile terrain than it does in the Greenbelt, which is what the zone DC is for. But "you levelled up and are now worse at doing the exact same thing you just did" is totally absurd. (It's also a case of the kingdom rules creators seemingly not understanding how PF2 is intended to work, but that's another thread.)
And that's my lecture on why level based DCs should not be based on the party's level for skill challenges. It's based on the challenge they're trying to overcome... which is connected to party level for an appropriate challenge but means if you suddenly go back to the village from level 1, you're not going to find that everyone there has mysteriously also gotten far better at everything: you're going to outclass them.
aka: "This is an expert simple DC lock" and "this a lock on a hideout of a level 5 gang" should have the same DC of 20, no matter what level the party is.
And the reason we don't run into a lot of level 10s going up against level 5 challenges is that its kinda boring. Maybe a few checks over a few minutes to flex on challenges that aren't threats anymore, but there isn't challenge in this, nothing is really at stake when you are +5 level.
Typical play takes you to harder and harder challenges. The bad guys are richer with harder locks and straighter walls, and deadlier weapons on top of that. We get this impression nothing is easier because we rarely turn around and engage with something that is no longer on our radar. If you do turn around and your GM artificially increases difficulty you should talk to the GM about it, but this isn't what I think happens at most tables.
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And the reason we don't run into a lot of level 10s going up against level 5 challenges is that its kinda boring. Maybe a few checks over a few minutes to flex on challenges that aren't threats anymore, but there isn't challenge in this, nothing is really at stake when you are +5 level.
Typical play takes you to harder and harder challenges. The bad guys are richer with harder locks and straighter walls, and deadlier weapons on top of that. We get this impression nothing is easier because we rarely turn around and engage with something that is no longer on our radar. If you do turn around and your GM artificially increases difficulty you should talk to the GM about it, but this isn't what I think happens at most tables.
I love to have an occassional encounter that is way below the characters, ESPECIALLY if it can be essentially the same as one that they did a few levels back. Makes it obvious that they ARE growing in power in world and not just on a treadmill with Bigger Numbers.
And yes, you are expected to share harder and harder challenges. But the GM should definitely try and make sure that it is clear, in world, WHY the challenges are harder. The city guard in Axis is a lot tougher than the city guard in your starting village, this wall has overhangs, icy spots and birds flying into your face. Although it can be quite hard to do this organically as a GM and we all fail to do it well from time to time
There's a part in Book 5 of Extinction Curse where the party has to cross a river with a DC15 Athletics check. The barbarian crosses, rolls, nat 1, and it turns out, well, nat 1 is still a success (the guy was ecstatic). The cleric followed... except the cloistered cleric was untrained in Athletics (and Acrobatics and...) Rolled a 13. Started drowning. One of the funnier moments in that session. (The cleric burned a casting of Fly in the end)
I love to have an occassional encounter that is way below the characters, ESPECIALLY if it can be essentially the same as one that they did a few levels back. Makes it obvious that they ARE growing in power in world and not just on a treadmill with Bigger Numbers.
Doesn’t a nat one reduce the level of success by one level? Did he have a 26+ bonus at that point? I figure he’d have to be at least in the teens(if you add some item or spell type bonuses,). Without them, what, 15th? To be able to score a crit on a 1 which would be reduced to a success. Because otherwise a regular success would be downgraded to a failure. No?
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There's a part in Book 5 of Extinction Curse where the party has to cross a river with a DC15 Athletics check. The barbarian crosses, rolls, nat 1, and it turns out, well, nat 1 is still a success (the guy was ecstatic). The cleric followed... except the cloistered cleric was untrained in Athletics (and Acrobatics and...) Rolled a 13. Started drowning. One of the funnier moments in that session. (The cleric burned a casting of Fly in the end)
That's when Follow the Expert is your friend. Cleric can follow the Barbarian, and now gets level plus a bonus, and is making that check on a roll of 2.
Folks often forget it's a thing, but it makes a massive difference. Of course when they forget, hilarity like this ensues.
Doesn’t a nat one reduce the level of success by one level? Did he have a 26+ bonus at that point? I figure he’d have to be at least in the teens(if you add some item or spell type bonuses,). Without them, what, 15th? To be able to score a crit on a 1 which would be reduced to a success. Because otherwise a regular success would be downgraded to a failure. No?
You're right. If the result is a critical success, a nat 1 drops it to a regular success. So If they have +24, they can't possibly fail this check.
Book 5 of Extinction Curse starts at level 15. A level 15 Barbarian who is Trained in Athletics with no item bonuses almost certainly has a +22 in it (15+2+5 STR). It's a great skill so if the Barbarian invested in it, the number could be +28.
So this is definitely a "can't fail" situation, which occasionally is fun to reinforce that you're actually really good at this.
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In our SoT campaign our barbarian often masters easier challenges with assurance, like rowing a boat for some time, carrying prisoners out or diving our tanuki-submarine through a cave.
Consistency is sometimes a strength on its own, avoiding low rolls can be more important than going for the maximum roll.
Battle Medicine is also a prime target for assurance, you need to meet a certain DC and a guaranteed outcome can be better. DC 15 can be met at lvl 2 with expert medicine, e.g. by medic archetype, DC 20 at lvl 6
Assurance is rather limited, but powerful. It takes some knowledge about the game to use properly.
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I rather like Assurance: Arcana for Wizards. You can generally auto-learn max Rank spells one level after they become available, starting at Level 3. The two exceptions are Rank 4 spells, which you can Assurance Learn right from Level 7, and Rank 6 spells, which you can't Assurance Learn until L15. Understandably, you cannot Assurance Learn a Rank 10 spell either.
This assumes you're bumping Arcana at the earliest opportunity for your entire career.
There's a part in Book 5 of Extinction Curse where the party has to cross a river with a DC15 Athletics check. The barbarian crosses, rolls, nat 1, and it turns out, well, nat 1 is still a success (the guy was ecstatic). The cleric followed... except the cloistered cleric was untrained in Athletics (and Acrobatics and...) Rolled a 13. Started drowning. One of the funnier moments in that session. (The cleric burned a casting of Fly in the end)That's when Follow the Expert is your friend. Cleric can follow the Barbarian, and now gets level plus a bonus, and is making that check on a roll of 2.
Folks often forget it's a thing, but it makes a massive difference. Of course when they forget, hilarity like this ensues.
Doesn’t a nat one reduce the level of success by one level? Did he have a 26+ bonus at that point? I figure he’d have to be at least in the teens(if you add some item or spell type bonuses,). Without them, what, 15th? To be able to score a crit on a 1 which would be reduced to a success. Because otherwise a regular success would be downgraded to a failure. No?You're right. If the result is a critical success, a nat 1 drops it to a regular success. So If they have +24, they can't possibly fail this check.
Book 5 of Extinction Curse starts at level 15. A level 15 Barbarian who is Trained in Athletics with no item bonuses almost certainly has a +22 in it (15+2+5 STR). It's a great skill so if the Barbarian invested in it, the number could be +28.
So this is definitely a "can't fail" situation, which occasionally is fun to reinforce that you're actually really good at this.
Ok then. Makes sense.
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Combined with Magical Shorthand, you auto-crit succeed and get spells at half price too, though not max rank ones.I rather like Assurance: Arcana for Wizards. You can generally auto-learn max Rank spells one level after they become available, starting at Level 3. The two exceptions are Rank 4 spells, which you can Assurance Learn right from Level 7, and Rank 6 spells, which you can't Assurance Learn until L15. Understandably, you cannot Assurance Learn a Rank 10 spell either.
This assumes you're bumping Arcana at the earliest opportunity for your entire career.
It even works with Max Rank spells... most of the time. It's just delayed a level.
For example: I plan for my PFS Wizard (currently 1st level) to take Assurance: Arcana as his 4th level Skill Feat. At 4th level, he can cast 2nd Rank Spells. The DC to learn such a spell is usually 18. (Player Core pg 231.) Assurance will give you an 18 at this level (4 (level) + 4 (Expert) + 10) so you can auto-learn the Spell (for half price if you have Magical Shorthand, as you mention.)
5th level, you gain access to 3rd Rank Spells, but the DC is 20 and Assurance only gives you 19 (5 (level) + 4 (Expert) + 10) so it doesn't work... but it will at 6th level.
This holds true for most of your career, with the following exceptions:
- The DC for Rank 4 Spells is 23, which Assurance gives you at 7th level when they become available.
- The DC for Rank 7 Spells is 31. You can't auto-learn a 7th Rank Spell until you hit 15th level. If it followed the trend it would be doable at 14th level.
- With a DC of 41, you will never Assurance auto-learn a Rank 10 spell.
Assurance doesn't change the DC at all. Anything adjusting the DC applies normally (like the rope/wall/ladder/etc being extra slippery).
That not quite correct.
Per the feat:
You can forgo rolling a skill check for that skill to instead receive a result of 10 + your proficiency bonus (do not apply any other bonuses, penalties, or modifiers).
So anything that rain on a rough hewn wall? Shouldn't matter. The fact you are exhausted/enfeebled/wounded/doomed? Does not apply.
What bothers me about assurance is the unevenness of it compared to other feats. For example ride straight up removes the nature check to command and animal. It does not matter what the animal is, you mount it and now it is your minion. That is insanely powerful as a mechanic.
I do think assurance needs some improvement, as currently its best use is as a crutch for things that do not scale and you do not intend to be particularly good at (it is basically an anti-investment feat), but I think the way to improve it looks something like the feat cat fall. Cat fall is awesome, if you are legendary in acrobatics. Make the benefits from assurance scale as you gain more proficiency in the skill.
Trained = current benefit
Expert = add one type of bonus to the "roll" as well
Master = are another stat bonus (if positive) to the roll
Legendary = roll normally but you cannot critically fail, or it has a "bottom" value it cannot drop below.
This way investing provides more benefit, but it still allows the wizard to climb a rope at level 3 without concern.
At this point I'm thinking Assurance should be split into two different skill feats, as there's two different use-cases competing for mechanics.
The "assured assurance" where the skill feat is just a "no more nat 1s."
and the "skill floor assurance" where the skill feat is the "don't roll, calculate the result like ___" .
.
I do get the, lets call it a "blasphemous tension," with mechanics that skip rolls in a d20 game, but pf2 already has a solution for that.
They could publish an uncommon or even rare skill feat that is just "instead of rolling, you may take 6 for ___ skill" or something to that effect.
Some GMs may disapprove, others might like it. Allowing GM opt-in to paradigm shifting options like that is IMO the best feature of pf2's rarity system.
(and I don't think the max-MAP, min skill Assurance-auto-Grab/etc use case is healthy at all. IMO if not outright removed, then it should be limited to a 3rd new Rare feat)
Personally I think there are so many mechanisms for "you cannot critically fail" in the game that having one for a skill as a skill feat is not such an onerous task, especially when we consider it is only going to prevent bad game design and play from happening.
I have to ask why are GMs even having their players roll all the time if the situation is such that time alone will allow success and there is no actual risk other than "lol take a d6 damage and roll again."
I have issues with PF2e on this side anyways. It seems to go out of its way to force mediocrity on players regardless of how or what they want to play, but that is a tangent for a different thread.
Ultimately if assurance is going to exist the design and mechanics of it needs to match the flavor of what it suggest and right now it simply does not do that.
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Assurance just compares badly to other such skill feats. Skill feats ride in three flavors:
1. Bonus in a circumstancestance, or just period
2. Additional ability.
3. Reduce swing. (you ignore critical failure, you make failure success, or success is always critical).
Consider these level 1 feats:
Forager: You cannot fail and you get extra.
Student of the Canon: Cannot critical fail, failure becomes success. Success becomes a critical success.
Ride: You just succeed.
Recognize spell: Automatic success if it is below a level for your proficiency
Quick Squeeze: 10 times faster on success.
Assurance does none of these. If instead did it's current situation it allowed you to spend extra time to negate penalties it would be more inline with other skill feats at level 1. If it required expert or master proficiency and allowed the old take 10 it would be paying off an investment, but as it stands now it is just a way to prevent the whims of the dice from distracting from the player's agency in the story with bad rolls. Basically it is an anti-gambling feat for the players.
For a second level feat Assured Identification is much more inline with what might be expected of a feat named assurance. Unmistakable Lore also hits this itch.
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Assurance doesn't change the DC at all. Anything adjusting the DC applies normally (like the rope/wall/ladder/etc being extra slippery).That not quite correct.
Per the feat:
So anything that rain on a rough hewn wall? Shouldn't matter. The fact you are exhausted/enfeebled/wounded/doomed? Does not apply.
You can forgo rolling a skill check for that skill to instead receive a result of 10 + your proficiency bonus (do not apply any other bonuses, penalties, or modifiers).
Things that change the DC are not bonuses/modifiers/penalties to the skill or to your check. Assurance in no way changes how the DC is calculated, and you don't get a different DC than someone else using the same skill with the same situation just because you're using Assurance and they're not.
You being Enfeebled/etc is something Assurance does apply to because that's a penalty on your check.
But you don't get a DC 10 points easier than someone else to identify a unique thing because you're using Assurance and they're not.
On the other other hand, you'll be surprised how often a DC15 Swim/Balance check comes up at level 15+! The cloistered cleric having to burn a spell slot on Fly after failing to swim thrice is hilarious."it'll probably never work if you try to use it for something like Climb or Track" (as those challenges are often on-level).
In PFS or SFS, everything is at least an at level DC. If you are level 10, its at least a dc 27 to Perceive the huge red dragon breathing unholy fire at you, climb a tree, convincing small children to take candy, feed a starving man.