The feat says, "..."
Does this mean that rolling a failure always allows me to provide sustenance for myself and four others?
And if so, are there other abilities with similar wording that might be adversely affected if the same logic is applied to them?
Approximately, yes. It does that for critical failure rolls too.
Without the Forager feat, you can use Survival to Subsist. On a success, you take care of yourself at subsistence level. On a critical success, you can take care of yourself and one ally at subsistence level, or only yourself at an improved comfortable level.
And if you don't succeed, then bad things happen.
The Forager feat has two upgrades to that.
One is removing the failure effects. If you roll a failure or critical failure, that gets upgraded to success level.
The other is changing how much you provide. You can provide subsistence level for yourself and 4 allies (an entire party of 5) with a result of success (whether you actually rolled that high or your result was upgraded due to part 1 of the feat). With a critical success, you can either support 4 more allies (for a total of 9 people) at subsistence level, or upgrade the standard 5 people to comfortable level.
The feat says, "..."
Does this mean that rolling a failure always allows me to provide sustenance for myself and four others?
Yep. It gets silly as you advance higher in Survival since the number keeps doubling. Our Ranger in Kingmaker basically trivialized the whole survival aspect because at level 3 his worst possible outcome was "feed yourself and 8 others", which was the entire camp including NPC companions. We pretty quickly stopped bothering to roll at all.
And if so, are there other abilities with similar wording that might be adversely affected if the same logic is applied to them?
I don't know of many other things with similar wording, because PF2 has few things that are actually this strong at what it does: no possibility of failure regardless of DC, and x4/8/16/32 multiplier to the result based on your proficiency. If you applied that to some other actions it would be bonkers. Like an Athletics feat that says "when you attempt to Grapple, change any failure/critical failure to a success" would itself be a REALLY good feat and that's not even changing what a success means.
It's just that what Forager does usually doesn't matter because most campaigns don't care about that aspect of the game, so you buy some rations at trivial cost past level 2 and you're done thinking about it. But in terms of what the feat actually does within its confines, its pretty bonkers. To me it reads as "we know most players don't care about survival aspects in their heroic fantasy, so take this feat to make that go away."
One is removing the failure effects. If you roll a failure or critical failure, that gets upgraded to success level.
It's probably a good thing Assurance doesn't do this, because on a skill like Athletics or Intimidation it would be totally busted.
I don't know of many other things with similar wording, because PF2 has few things that are actually this strong at what it does: no possibility of failure regardless of DC, and x4/8/16/32 multiplier to the result based on your proficiency.
I was focusing on the "If you get result A, it increases to result B. When you get result B, benefit C happens."
Interpretation 1: I fail to get result B. I get result B anyways. I do not get benefit C as I did not roll result B.
Interpretation 2: I fail to get result B. I get result B anyways. I get benefit C since I got upgraded to result B.
I've seen similar worded abilities (though I don't recall where) that wouldn't make much sense, or even be totally bonkers, if you got benefit C even if you didn't naturally roll B.
I hope that made sense. :P
Ofcourse, one thing that needs to be mentioned is that you still need to meet the minimum threshold for the area they want to subsist in, So you arent going to pick this at level 2 and then instantly be able to sustain yourself in the most inhospitable of deserts, glaciers, oceans or planar environments. Not that most players would run into that issue, and there are spells that litterary conjures food, or something like cornucopia where you can create the equivalence of one square meal every 30 minutes starting at level 3.
But yeah, the feat makes survival real easy provided you have a minimum of 8 hours a day where you can just forage, which again.. real easy in kingmaker provided you arent doing group activities like travel.
Are you referring to proficiency gating like "must be Master to succeed" in a place like the Mana Wastes or the Plane of Fire?
I'd sure like to see a rules citation for that. If true, it would be impossible for anything weak or low level to survive no matter how well adapted to the environment it is described as being.
I don't know of many other things with similar wording, because PF2 has few things that are actually this strong at what it does: no possibility of failure regardless of DC, and x4/8/16/32 multiplier to the result based on your proficiency.I was focusing on the "If you get result A, it increases to result B. When you get result B, benefit C happens."
Interpretation 1: I fail to get result B. I get result B anyways. I do not get benefit C as I did not roll result B.
Interpretation 2: I fail to get result B. I get result B anyways. I get benefit C since I got upgraded to result B.
I've seen similar worded abilities (though I don't recall where) that wouldn't make much sense, or even be totally bonkers, if you got benefit C even if you didn't naturally roll B.
I hope that made sense. :P
Oh, yeah, sorry. :)
There's different versions of things like this, with the most common one being the greater save boosters as class features, like on Rogue:
You elude danger to a degree that few can match. Your proficiency rank for Reflex saves increases to legendary. When you roll a critical failure on a Reflex save, you get a failure instead. When you roll a failure on a Reflex save against a damaging effect, you take half damage.
This one is pretty clear: you need to roll a failure (not be upgraded to a failure) to get the half damage.
But then there's Oracle...
When you roll a success on a Will save, you get a critical success instead. When you roll a critical failure on a Will save, you get a failure instead. When you fail a Will save against a damaging effect, you take half damage.
You'll note this one makes no mention of rolling a failure: simply that you failed. If you rolled a crit failure and get upgraded, you failed. Thus in this case, you do get the half damage.
I'm not clear on if this is deliberate or just another Remaster Oracle error that hasn't been errata'd (of which there is no lack). It doesn't seem to be how other classes work (at least none of the ones I checked, they all mirror Rogue).
Then lets add on Debilitating Dichotomy:
You get a degree of success one better than you rolled for your saving throw.
I don't think this stacks with Mysterious Resolve's bumping up a result because you are already getting bumped, but you did get a given outcome so "you failed and take half damage" definitely applies to the above even if you rolled a nat 1.
So we have a couple different examples of verbiage. Going back to Forager:
While using Survival to Subsist, if you roll any result worse than a success, you get a success. On a success, you can provide subsistence living for yourself and four additional creatures, and on a critical success, you can take care of twice as many additional creatures.
There's nothing there about needing to roll a success. It says "on a success, X happens". We know from the earlier example that they can say "if you rolled a success, X happens" separately from "if you rolled a failure you get a success".
So on this one, it's interpretation 2: your check resolved to a success so you get the success benefit of the feat. If you rolled a success or not doesn't matter.
Subsist says it.
Ofcourse, one thing that needs to be mentioned is that you still need to meet the minimum threshold for the area they want to subsist in, So you arent going to pick this at level 2 and then instantly be able to sustain yourself in the most inhospitable of deserts, glaciers, oceans or planar environments. Not that most players would run into that issue, and there are spells that litterary conjures food, or something like cornucopia where you can create the equivalence of one square meal every 30 minutes starting at level 3.
But yeah, the feat makes survival real easy provided you have a minimum of 8 hours a day where you can just forage, which again.. real easy in kingmaker provided you arent doing group activities like travel.
Are you referring to proficiency gating like "must be Master to succeed" in a place like the Mana Wastes or the Plane of Fire?
I'd sure like to see a rules citation for that. If true, it would be impossible for anything weak or low level to survive no matter how well adapted to the environment it is described as being.
The GM determines the DC based on the nature of the place where you're trying to Subsist. You might need a minimum proficiency rank to Subsist in particularly strange environments.
Sample Subsist Tasks
Untrained lush forest with calm weather or large city with plentiful resources
Trained typical hillside or village
Expert typical mountains or insular hamlet
Master typical desert or city under siege
Legendary barren wasteland or city of undead
Since its "might", it's aimed at PCs and isn't something you're going to apply to animals or other creatures naturally acclimated to the area.
Course, it's also probably fair to say that squirrels are better at foraging than the average city dwelling human. :)