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There are a whole lot of feats, spells, items, etc, where the effect looks good, but then you notice that some designer oversight torpedoes the effect's usefulness. They are (typically) not "broken" outright, but their functionality is crippled due to designer error.
Due to the rare Paizo errata that has fixed some of these in the past, it becomes a matter of not "if" Paizo makes such errors, but a matter of identifying "when" these errors occur. And what to do about them.
As an example, the Summoner feat Ostentatious Arrival was published back in 2021 in Secrets of Magic. As a 0A ability that added a bit of an explosion to your summons, it seemed fine at a glance. Except for the issue that Manifesting your Eidolon requires it to be adjacent, meaning that the Summoner would always damage themself with the ability. But hey, in theory, the feat still allowed for summon spells to place that explosion safely away, so it technically would not always harm the user.
Just recently, 3+ years later, the ability was improved with errata and no longer harms the summoner. This shows that such errors can be left for years before being fixed, further evidencing the notion that there are many such mistakes within the system right now, and that the game would benefit from them being patched.
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Are there / what are the circumstances where you decide "okay, that's gotta be a mistake" and ask the GM / tell the players to edit that text to "fix" that oversight?
What types of fatal flaws do you see as being clearly mistakes?
As an example that looks super blatant to me, the Mythspeaker AP added a new feat for Exemplar:
Frequency: Once per minute
Requirements: Your previous action was a successful or critically successful Trip against a creature at least one size larger than you, and the enemy became prone.Even the greatest titans of the world are easier to kill when they’re lying on the ground. You’ve made it your mission to topple such giants and can make others fall with a force that shakes the very earth. The triggering creature’s toppling body shakes the ground, emitting a quake in a 10-foot emanation from their space. Apply the result of your triggering Athletics check against the Reflex DC of each creature in the emanation to Trip them as well. You do not need to have a hand free, and you do not lose your balance if any of your attempts to Trip are a critical failure.
RaW, you are a creature, and this toppling shockwave also affects the Exemplar. Just like Ostentatious arrival, this fatal error technically doesn't break the ability mechanistically, but it does render it as nearly self-sabotage. There's even the edge case of ranged Trip via Bolas, etc, to match Ostentatious Arrival's similar "still safe w/ summon spells" excuse.
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Are there / what are the circumstances where you decide "okay, that's gotta be a mistake" and ask the GM / tell the players to edit that text to "fix" that oversight?
The criteria that I use is: When the ability is no longer fun to use.
As another example that isn't so clear about power level, but emphasizes the fun factor:
Flames Oracle. They get Incendiary Aura at 1st level. Their Curse causes them to take persistent fire damage. Now, technically since Incendiary Aura is an Emanation shape and the caster can choose to exclude themselves from the effect, the two are able to be used together safely as long as the Oracle does choose to exclude themselves from the Incendiary Aura effect.
But that isn't as much fun. Incendiary Aura doesn't give that option to exclude to the rest of the party. Anyone else in the aura is going to suffer the drawbacks. Enemy and ally alike. It creates an interesting risk/reward setup and gives a good reason to check that the enemies aren't using fire damage before firing off the focus spell. Excluding my Oracle character from that makes the combat less interesting.
But having my own curse triggering the effects of Incendiary Aura each round is a bit punishing. So that is the point where I went to my GM and asked if we could write in an exception specifically for the Oracle curse's persistent fire damage from triggering specifically my own casting of Incendiary Aura.
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Another related and interesting question is: What criteria do you use to decide if an ability has a fatal flaw in a way that makes it too good and needs to be houserule fixed?
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Many players have pointed out that gaining an advantage out of Assurance is difficult to manage. Gaining a 10 instead of a d20 roll would be nice and assuring, but losing all bonuses except proficiency (which includes level) means that the attribute modifier bonus no longer applies. Ordinarily, Assurance could worth using only when a really low roll would be a disaster or to ignore a very heavy penalty, because Assurance is worse than rolling a natural 7.
Assurance Feat 1
Fortune General Skill
Source Player Core pg. 252 2.0
Prerequisites trained in at least one skill
Even in the worst circumstances, you can perform basic tasks. Choose a skill you’re trained in. 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).[/b]Special[/b] You can select this feat multiple times. Each time, choose a different skill and gain the benefits for that skill.
On the other hand, the rogue Roshan in my current campaign took Assurance in Athletics because she was maximizing her Athletics proficiency. She added Assurance and Automatic Knowledge in Nature, Society, and Arcana so that she can tell which creatures are better to Grapple and which creatures are better to Trip as a free action if their level is low enough. So not all players are disappointed with Assurance.
The feat Seasoned perplexes me as written, but maybe I just don't understand the rules.
Seasoned[/b] Feat 1
General Skill
Source Player Core pg. 262 2.0
Prerequisites trained in Crafting, Alcohol Lore, or Cooking Lore
You’ve mastered the preparation of many types of food and drink. You gain a +1 circumstance bonus to checks to Craft food and drink, including elixirs if you have Alchemical Crafting and potions if you have Magical Crafting. If you are a master in one of the prerequisite skills, this bonus increases to +2.
The perplexing issue is what are the Pathfinder 2nd Edition rules for Crafting food and drink? The usual Craft downtime activity takes "2 days of work setting up, or 1 day if you have the item's formula." Using that method to Craft food would have everyone waiting at least a day for dinner. I presume most people simply ask for a Crafting check after an hour, but that is a houserule. My own houserule is to make a Survival check for preparing food and drink, since Survival already has a Subsist activity to feed oneself.
Furthermore, even with quick Craft for food and drink, does a player character who qualified for Seasoned based on Alcohol Lore or Cooking Lore have to roll a Craft check or can they roll their Lore? I would just replace the word "Craft" in Seasoned with "make."
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Are there / what are the circumstances where you decide "okay, that's gotta be a mistake" and ask the GM / tell the players to edit that text to "fix" that oversight?The criteria that I use is: When the ability is no longer fun to use.
Yeah, this. Remaster changes to Healing Bomb and Fortissimo are bugbears for me because of this. "I cast Heroism on my ally and now its harder to heal/use a song on them" is a terribly unfun design since me using a buff should not hinder my ally trying to use a feat.
Another related and interesting question is: What criteria do you use to decide if an ability has a fatal flaw in a way that makes it too good and needs to be houserule fixed?
Pretty similar, IMO: if its causing the game to not be fun for someone. One person just overpowering everything is a PF1 thing I'm glad to be rid of, and things that threaten to bring it back are squarely in my sighs for nerfs or a ban.
In this context, the GM is "someone". Breaking the game so its not fun for the GM is also a good reason to change something.
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My home game house rules Nimble Dodge to be usable after the results of the attack roll, instead of before.
Because on the one hand: as written it's a reaction for a 20% chance to reduce the damage you take from an attack.
On the other hand, it's spend a feat to do nothing 80% of the time. In practice, it just felt really bad, even if on paper it's fine.
I think a key component in going to through the trouble of fixing it is that it is something that has sparked the interest of someone and they either already invested in it (before discovering the issue) or it has come up because they started proactively looking at it and realized something didn't occur as it might have sort of felt it was 'advertised' as.
If some spell that no-one will likely pick has an issue, it can remain a non-issue by lack of involvement. But if the game gave you a wand of the spell, or the player took the spell thinking it would deliver one thing, and in retrospect is delivering another is when you start looking at fixing it.
If you can't fix it, you should at least let them retrain it away for relatively free. (i.e. refund)
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Exsanguinate from the Sanguimancer archetype is an example of when the restriction was obviously intentional, but just so so so bad for both the mechanics and the entire flavor concept of the feat that it kills it. Like it would be better if it wasn't printed at all then printed in it's current state, the restriction on the feat has killed the concept.
"Requirements: On your last action, you dealt damage to a creature that isn’t immune to bleed damage and is within 10 feet. The damage must have come from a piercing or slashing Strike. You must have succeeded at your attack roll, or the creature must have failed its saving throw, as applicable."
Ok that makes sense. Guy has to bleed for the feat to work, and you gotta be near them to use the blood. And it's reasonable to restrict it to successful hits only to prevent damage on miss effects from working, if unnecessary. Has the standard issue with subordinate strikes and if those trigger it (it's significantly worse to unuseable depending on the specific martial character's favorite metastrikes if you can't use it after i.e. double slice), but that's a larger issue and I'm not going to blame this specific feat.
"After one of your attacks, you direct your foe’s blood to spray upon you, infusing you with life energy. You gain a number of sanguimancy HP equal to half your level that last only until the end of your next turn."
Ok yea, a bit of tempHP. The tempHP expiring so quickly is a bit of an oof for the amount of tempHP it is, I mean hell numbing tonic tempHP sticks around until long rest and it's more HP per turn, even for half your level numbing tonics that are dirt cheap. And they take one action to work for the whole combat, instead of one per round. Sure there's some special abilties that key off having this special sangimancy tempHP instead of normal tempHP, but we're never able to bank enough of it to do anything good anyways, because it goes away at the end of our next turn and doesn't stack with itself or other existing sangimancy TempHP. Total trap feat but hey the flavor is cool, and I guess it is a third action if you have literally nothing better to do.
"Exsanguinate works only against active foes who are able to act and aren’t restrained."
What the f*ck. What. How. How does that work. I crit succeed my grapple, strike the guy, and I can't draw tempHP from him? Why???? It makes literally no sense. The entire flavor of the archetype is that I draw power from blood, how the hell does crit succeeding my grapple, or using pin to spot, or whatever somehow negate the power in the guy's blood. Complete mechanics flavor dissonance for no gain. T
he only explanation I can think of is that they didn't want you able to drain blood from enemies after you already won the fight, but besides the fact that it would just go away next turn, nothing you can do with the tempHP is good enough to even possibly pose a balance issue anyways.
The whole archetype is awful (just take a look at transfustion and blood shield lmao), but this one is really the cherry on top.
I usually fix the items as I GM/DM the most. I mostly focus on fixing things that players want to use after seeing how it works in play.
I haven't had to fix too much in PF2. But I do have a handful of house rules that fix some abilities. We did the same fix with Nimble Dodge as Ectar.
I haven't had to fix too much in PF2. But I do have a handful of house rules that fix some abilities. We did the same fix with Nimble Dodge as Ectar.
The character Roshan, who uses Assurance, also learned Nimble Dodge. I posted in our Discord group asking whether we should use Ectar's houserule. She replied, "We've already been doing it that way."
Roshan's player is my elder daughter and has played in my Pathfinder games since I began gamemastering in 2011, until she moved to Seattle. She rejoined my Pathfinder games when we went online in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. I guess I lost track of my houserule decisions over the 6 years since we began playing Pathfinder 2nd Edition.
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I haven't had to fix too much in PF2. But I do have a handful of house rules that fix some abilities. We did the same fix with Nimble Dodge as Ectar.The character Roshan, who uses Assurance, also learned Nimble Dodge. I posted in our Discord group asking whether we should use Ectar's houserule. She replied, "We've already been doing it that way."
Roshan's player is my elder daughter and has played in my Pathfinder games since I began gamemastering in 2011, until she moved to Seattle. She rejoined my Pathfinder games when we went online in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. I guess I lost track of my houserule decisions over the 6 years since we began playing Pathfinder 2nd Edition.
We were already doing it too. Just seemed the right way to to run it. Then someone on the forums pointed out that was the wrong way to run it, so I wrote it fit the way we were already running it.
It just seems like a more worthwhile ability if the player has an idea of when it will work given all the competing reactions. It doesn't feel great to use your reaction and have it fail to help at all.
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If a player comes to me wanting to use a particularly weak option, I work with them to buff it on a case-by-case basis. I trust that my player's aren't trying to game the system so I give them leeway.
My home game house rules Nimble Dodge to be usable after the results of the attack roll, instead of before.
Because on the one hand: as written it's a reaction for a 20% chance to reduce the damage you take from an attack.
On the other hand, it's spend a feat to do nothing 80% of the time. In practice, it just felt really bad, even if on paper it's fine.
I do the same, but not even for power level reasons. I want to be able to just say "The sea devil attacks you" and roll the die without having to pause for my player to decide if they want to Dodge.