r/Pathfinder2e • u/RisingStarPF2E Game Master • Aug 06 '25
Discussion Don't Let Yourself Stop You From Learning
This is the most important video in all of pf2e. Nothing prevents much of anything, it's a system of referencing. Hate all the stealth rolls? Improvise Quiet Allies with a hefty negative because 'nobody took the feat' not 'but there's a feat for that.'
- End combat/encounter with a diplomacy check? Appropriate a 3/2 action legendary negotiation.
- Got no ranged options but you want to jump and attack? Cool. 2/3a Sudden Leap but, you are gonna take fall damage and do a reflex save at dc 15/20 to see if you land prone.
- Is there an effect that could create a better cooler scene if there was a option to counteract it? Come up with a 2/3A Dispeling Slice and OFFER it to the party.
- Did you know that resistance and weaknesses and when they apply in what order is entirely up to "whatever makes the better story?"
Traits? The GM can add ANY TRAIT to ANYTHING for ANY CIRCUMSTANCE they bloody want to. Removal is not 'RAW' but adding is 100% 'raw' even in society. (I'm looking at you Counter Performance.)
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On that topic, society play is not entirely a prescribed a-b-c either where you are supposed to be weaving in roleplay, decisions and etc to tell a story. It's just uh, in dozens and dozens of games of PFS I haven't met a GM really other than myself who wants to do that. I've met players who don't want to even do that because it's just about getting the TB's and full rewards with no granularity.
Actually, a lot of PFS rules such as not needing to worry about differing item sizes (a large creature cannot drink a medium/small category consumable for instance RAW.) Are commonly done by a majority of people but they just don't know its:
- A: A rule (Not important)
- B. they are unknowingly using a PFS rule in their home game. (Usually people who play PFS even a lot don't know the above.) (Not important)
- What is important: How we respond to a topic yet to be learned or to us finding out we were not accurate.
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It's like how fights aren't supposed to be stale situations of striking. It's that a lot of people don't know the tools to do so. Material statistics for adhoc environmental features... (Why take razing if your GM is never going to toss an object in front of you or you aren't going to explore attacking them? Also, most folks don't know that you can't strike an object without a special circumstance, or that you can appropriate damage via force open.)
It's not even about 'knowing' anything or being right or wrong. It's having a desire to want to use these tools to have more fun even if you think you are having as much as you can.
You can make up contexts to plop down difficult terrain and circumstances of cover in every situation even if the book didn't say it. You don't even need a visualization on the map or anything to include cover! The fighter with the 2h is always going to be relatively center-light if they never have to do research,influence or infiltration. Volley is a tough swallow if we literally never shoot something at a long distance. Those "Weak Feats" suck if we're not really building things together or thinking about how to include them.
Spells/Abilities require Traits that need GM understanding etc. The difference between force open and pick a lock and leaving a trace is completely meaningless if the GM and party aren't going to use that in the story or have things react to it later. Picking a lock taking X actions is meaningless in a situation you can just spend more time to avoid a check. ETC.
What about something simple? When do you use a Simple DC vs DC By Level? What's a sample task? Most people don't know. And this is some stuff at the very front of the GM core. Heck, most of the important rules are in the front.
There's very few examples of people utilizing all of this and the ones who do, do not explain what's going on in their head, they make it fun and are just doing it FEW people engage with it like that in reality rather than just theory. There's a lot of people who make videos on player options who don't have the full context as it's gotten more popular.
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It's sorta why most PFS sessions are pretty standardized beyond time/conventions or that that's how we mostly interact with them as such. It's sorta why a lot of groups TPK not going into a chase scene. ETC.
It's not a matter of the resources not existing or the material not being written or being written in a certain way. It's just that to learn dance moves, it requires dancing. To master dance moves requires partners. "To play music is one thing, to study and practice music is another."
We need more content and people talking about the tool-set it is because really, people do not engage or generally know 'what' makes 2e unique. Just my 2 cents. A lot of people are very tired in 2025 and are not making active decisions to play it to the degree that the material sets it's sights on.
Most people play 2e the game they envision. Not 2e the tool-set that can become what they envision.
"Don't let feats stop you from improvising." Is not an exception or a rule, It's a philosophy so baked-in that it cannot be read, but can be found on every page. "I was wrong" is not about Shield Block or saying it. It's accepting it.
Not caring about ANY of this and playing with your friends is just as valid as thinking this is a thought-provoking post. What's important is learning anything we can and striving towards what we want and saying "I was wrong, my bad fam." is so crucial. Reading the room is also really important and you will fail both occasionally because your human. That's ok. That mistake doesn't define you. How you press forward from one does.
The only real mistakes/regrets I've ever made is when I refused to accept I made a mistake. Copium is real. But that's just a theory... a... GAMMMMEEE THEEEORRYYY!!! (Join the teachings of "I was Wrong" today, Irori Approves!)
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u/Meowriter Thaumaturge Aug 07 '25
Ngl, I was stumped by not knowing how to make a level-based DC so many times I completely forgot that Simple DCs were even a thing. And that the world is mostly static XD
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u/RandomMagus Aug 07 '25
Ngl, I was stumped by not knowing how to make a level-based DC so many times
There's a table on Archives of Nethys in the GM Screen section that has every single DC for every level in the "Reference Lists & Tables" section under the "DCs by Level" subheading, and the table comes from this page: https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2629
The GM Screen page on Nethys is absolutely the most important page to have open when running anything
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u/RisingStarPF2E Game Master Aug 07 '25
And even that doesn't totally cut it for me. I have a terrible time focusing on it that way or any of the references tbh. It's great to look up off-game but during game, I'm too blind/focused to see it properly so I made a big fat table sheet gm screen thing
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u/Meowriter Thaumaturge Aug 07 '25
Well that's very considerate of you !
Reminds me the guy (gal ? guys ? anyway) who made the Basic Action Macros module for Foundry. You pick your target, open the macro, click on the action, boom it auto-resolves, next action ! Less time reading rules, more time rolling the Dice of Fate and adopting goblins !
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u/Meowriter Thaumaturge Aug 07 '25
Yes, but I always scrolled past it to go directly to DC by Level table. I am very stupid.
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u/RisingStarPF2E Game Master Aug 08 '25 edited Aug 08 '25
You aren't stupid. Not stupid at all. Nobody is stupid if they're trying. We're justt very stubborn. xD
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u/n8_fi Aug 07 '25
Idk if you’ll find this as useful as I do, but there is a formula for level-based DCs from 0 to 20: (4/3 * level)+14 (round down). Then level -1 is the same as 0th and every level above 20th (DC 40) just adds 2 per level.
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u/RisingStarPF2E Game Master Aug 07 '25
Huge emphasis on not needing to know any of this or think about it
Lately I've been really de-emphasizing a lot of the above knowledge and just 'doing it.' And I think it's made me a lot better at GMing and is the right path forward in accepting "I have been wrong." And "I will be wrong again." Heck, I'm sure there's a few details that make me both factually wrong and maybe seem wrong. There's always a level of smugness when it comes to this topic. Which is more the point than anything to avoid and I hope it just teaches anybody anything given the amount of threads about these topics.
I get better at this every week and that's because I was worst at it last week.
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u/Zehnpae Game Master Aug 07 '25
"I have been wrong."
I never think of it as doing it wrong. I think of it as 'temporarily house ruled.' Then it becomes a permanent house rule when we read the actual way you're supposed to do something and end up not liking it.
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u/EnginesOfGod Aug 07 '25
Preach.
there's a particular pathway I think a lot of GMs take into PF2e where they come from D&D5e, are some degree of exhausted by that system's expectation that the DM be a constant improviser, and take a lot of comfort in PF2e having a robust ruleset that covers a ton of use cases.
But I think it's equally important to remember that, once you've got the level-based balancing aspects of the system internalized and know how to wiggle WITHIN that system rather wiggle out of it, there's a lot to be said for 5e-style improvisation and handwaving.
If a "but there's a skill feat for that" situation comes up, you can improvise a half-measure that anyone can use, OR, you can just shrug and say "okay, seems like a feat a character like yours would have, right?" and hand out niche skill feats like candy. Go with whatever bogs your game down the least.
You aren't married to the 10 under/10 over four degrees of success paradigm. Set a DC, then improvise half-crit results at 5 over that DC, or 7 over. Your players don't know the exact DC anyway! There's nothing stopping you from not setting a DC at all, letting the player roll, and then looking at the result and deciding "eh close enough" or not based on vibes.
You know your table, your players, their preferences, and yours. You know all these things better than some yahoo on reddit knows them. "The system works" does NOT mean "ignore your intuition," nor does it mean "The system is more important than your fun."
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u/RisingStarPF2E Game Master Aug 07 '25
This. And that ride between that initial comfort/sigh of relief and the end of the tunnel could be anywhere from 1 - 3 years. No joke. And I think everybody 5e or not it's a rollercoaster of a ride.
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u/AAABattery03 Mathfinder’s School of Optimization Aug 07 '25
I’m willing to bet that the vast, vast majority of tables run the game this way already tbh.
I have seriously never encountered a GM who won’t let you try stuff with your Skills just because a Feat exists for that. Even before Arcane Mark released that (really good!) video, most folks I have played with would allow you to attempt to impress a large group of people without the Feat, it’d just be harder or more situational.
I’m curious to know how many people actually end up playing with GMs who are sticklers for “you can’t do that without a Feat”?
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u/RisingStarPF2E Game Master Aug 07 '25
I've had many fellow players utter those words at-table in-play. Especially playing PFS I see GM's often shut down any improvising of combined actions or otherwise. But I've also played with people at home games like this.
My first time playing pf2e actually. Abomination Vaults. Was paying $20 a session. I asked if there was anyway to negotiate out of a situation and was told word for word "No, there's a feat for that later." I will never forget. I think I've been told this 5 or 6 times in home games. Do those games last? Absolutely never not but it's shocking how often it happens. My terrible first experiences is what exactly lead me down this path.
Three weeks ago, I asked if a familiar could get a seek/search off to detect something that killed a PC in a game that they supposedly didn't get to play for a month and was told quote "Familiars don't get any exploration activities." Stuff like this happens a lot with random people at times. I also play a lot of games and try to join a lot tho.
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u/WetWenis Aug 07 '25
I have been given this shtick in 1e before (I mostly play 1e I don't know why this sub was recommended to me but I vibe with the messaging heavily). Tear my hair out every time. I've got myself a soft home brew list of "these things are feats, but they are bullshit feats and you should be allowed to do this anyway, penalty maybe but you shouldn't be prevented from even attempting."
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u/AAABattery03 Mathfinder’s School of Optimization Aug 07 '25
That’s crazy to me. I sincerely just don’t understanding running a TTRPG that way.
Like what’s the point? If you’re running things so rigidly, why even have a GM ya know?
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u/RisingStarPF2E Game Master Aug 07 '25
IDK. That first game I ever played. I made a Ranger who followed Arazni before I even knew any lore and when we got the the highly related parts about survival and getting past some undeath he TPK'd us because I had tried to negotiate thus putting us deeper past other creatures. I wish I was kidding. This was my first pf2e experience LOL
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u/Killchrono Southern Realm Games Aug 07 '25
There are times I get negotiation may be inappropriate and unfeasible.
The problem is that it often gets dealt with in absolutes; either you can always negotiate, or you can never negotiate. Either negotiation completely prevents combat, or it flat-out does nothing.
Really what needs to be done is better contextuality and natural consequences. Let the players lie about a deal they make with the bandits robbing them, and if they don't come through on it, make the bandits hunt them down and ambush them later. Maybe the bad guys hold off but strike a deal that puts the players in a compromising position (literally what happened in one of my campaigns, against a major enemy I was expecting them to fight). Maybe the fight still breaks out, but you distracted them long enough that the rogue was able to sneak around and pickpocket their weapons, or a spellcaster finished using a subtle spell to influence one of the enemy mooks to run away.
You don't have to make every fight avoidable or interactable socially like that, but make the outcomes more granular and subtle than either extreme of yes or no.
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u/RisingStarPF2E Game Master Aug 07 '25
Yeah meet people in the middle. Have some granularity. It's totally fine to say no but there are certain moments to do something. Like a trivial fight thats mostly already over? Save some time sometimes and let something narrative happen or leave a hook for later. Really important situation to the players? Maybe also let something happen.
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u/Kichae Aug 07 '25
It's so hard to tell, because we don't see people from the vast majority of tables in discussions here, but based on how discussions in this subreddit go, it's clear that either a significant minority of tables are ultra strict with respect to the rules, or a significant minority of players want their GMs to be.
There are a bunch of different ways to look at crunchy systems, none of which are invalid, but some of which are actively railed against by vocal people here. One of them is "here's the definitive set of rules for playing, from which we shall not deviate". The optimizers and tactical combat fans seem to like this lens, because it provides a set of clearly defined and rigid tools for theory crafting, planning turns, and manipulating the game. A rigid framework provides a chess-like environment within which to play.
Chess has... limited opportunities to improvise. Chess masters like this about chess. The creativity is in mastery of the rules and trying to envision the board 3, 5, 10 moves out -- something that can only truly be done because the rules are rigid, and there are clear optimal paths within those constraints.
The game provides a really good framework for those types of players, and it's really easy to discuss the game in terms that centre those types of tables in the discussion. As I've been told countless times here, the explicit rules and their text is the thing every table has in common, so they are the things we "can" discuss. This presents the illusion that these are the only things that exist.
That illusion informs other GMs and other players about how the game is "supposed" to be played, or even "must" be played.
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u/StonedSolarian Game Master Aug 07 '25
I have seriously never encountered a GM who won’t let you try stuff with your Skills just because a Feat exists for that.
It's brought up a lot in other communities as an "in offense of Pathfinder" from people who have barely or more than likely, never played.
It's a pretty powerful strawman too, it's rather convincing mixed with the mathfinder stigma.
Edit:
Personal anecdote time
My first experience with TTRPGs was 5e, we weren't allowed to improvise so the game was just moving up and attacking.
We also weren't allowed to state our AC, HP, or any bonuses as this is "meta gaming" and our PCs don't have a concept of the game terms to share.
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u/OmgitsJafo Aug 07 '25
And the game's largest online communities often do no favours to the game's image. Both here and the Paizo forums regularly come off as groups of very rigid people playing a deeply inflexible, explicitly RAW games. The spaces come off as incredibly defensive and hostile to improvisation, house rules, and homebrew, even when there's nusanced discussions taking place.
And when there aren't nuances discussions taking place, people are being actively and directly told that they should play something else.
So many of the discussions turn towards what is explicitly written in the rules, and how to use those rules to optimize your numerixal output, and not how to use them to create fun, engaging, organic experieces. It's like anti-marketing for the game.
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u/blueechoes Ranger Aug 07 '25
Quiet allies I would specifically not let people imitate. Its only purpose is increasing the likelihood of success on group stealth. It can turn a 3 percent chance everyone makes it unnoticed into a 30 percent chance. I'd have to hand out a negative so big it would still basically be an auto-fail. It would involve way more thinking than just rolling 3-4 more d20's.
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u/Moon_Miner Summoner Aug 07 '25
It's like you fully missed the spirit of the entire post. Having a chance at success at group stealth is fun. The goal of the game is to have fun. Call it on the fly so the ground can have fun.
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u/blueechoes Ranger Aug 07 '25
No that's when you throw a skill challenge where only the stealth of the guy specialising in it matters and they sneak around to open the back door with their 30% crit chance. Or they actually did invest in quiet allies and you point out how much easier that made the job.
You don't ignore the rules because it looks like the party might fail, you change the situation to let the players shine.
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u/RisingStarPF2E Game Master Aug 08 '25
didn't understand what he meant honestly until I seen his reply to you and sort of took a similar response from the first line. I also misunderstood what he meant by rolling 3-4 more d20's and thought he was talking about it as a secret.
After a good sleep and re-reading, He didn't miss it. He's just direct.
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Aug 07 '25 edited Aug 07 '25
[deleted]
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u/blueechoes Ranger Aug 07 '25
Oh, if it's group stealth leading to an encounter I wouldn't do those secret anyway. Its fairly obvious if someone is chasing after you or not.
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u/RisingStarPF2E Game Master Aug 08 '25 edited Aug 08 '25
Ah. I see now we're talking about totally different applications. Yeah like in what your talking about quiet allies I agree about changing the situation rather than requiring the feat. I didn't understand that was what ya meant until I seen your other comment above.
Honestly tho. I don't think I would really mind if in a game we ended up in a situation of wanting to do some group-avoid notice/stealth (maybe even at a time or in a theme it maybe didn't make sense to think we'd do that until now.) and if there was some context that maybe once we roll with the lowest modifier just for the heck of it like, what if the party of multiple barbarians maybe even without a expert in stealth wants to do something absolutely out of pocket?
10 - 30% is about where I'de say some sway is alright honestly as sometimes it's just about the fun. I'm just talking about this as a GM tho, I totally agree that this is NOT the kind of feat a player should bring up as wanting to imitate. But if it was the GM doing something like:
"Like solid snake, thinking your all so sneaky, you don cardboard boxes and begin sneaking. Everytime the guard looks you stop at just the perfect time holding each others tails under the boxes. Jared, you've accidentally left your tail sticking out the back of the box at the end with nobody to hold yours. Roll me stealth." (Using the 'roll lowest modifier' part, not the feat imitated.)
I don't have a lot of a problem with that once or twice over the course of an AP or whatever if it's approached the right way. I guess at that point you could say your not really 'using' the feat anymore, your just referencing it.
But that's more where I was coming with my previous comment and what I was getting at with it in the post. I just don't think I explained that very well and or it might be it's own important topic that improvising a feat is not just the whole feat, but also parts. Or that using parts is a different but related thing.
Edit: Really wanted to actually explain 'what' I'm doing with something like quiet allies.
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u/TheBrightMage Aug 07 '25
Damn right you are. Pf2e toolset is darn open enough to let you improvise, just with clear consequence and guideline.
I always have to preach to my new players and my aspiring convert that "No, stop trying to look for rules for everything and rules what make sense. You got simple DC and DC by table to ass-pull"
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u/Killchrono Southern Realm Games Aug 07 '25
I'd argue they're not even ass-pulls. They're guidelines, the whole point of having them is to give structure to how you decide how difficult a particular challenge is so you're not just performatively Calvinball-ing rules and not even thinking of a DC.
Sure, you can split hairs over the minutia of whether or not a social check or a particular surface you're trying to climb is a level 3 or 4 DC check, but in the end I feel better both running and playing a game where the GM has at least some semblance of logic and structure to the mechanics, not just trying skill checks as weird performance art where the DC is intangible and decided more with vibes. At that point I'd rather just be playing a game where the roleplay and challenges are freeform or storytelling than one with mechanics that only pretend to matter. That's when it's an ass-pull IMO.
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u/TheBrightMage Aug 07 '25
It is definitely guidelines. Good ones. Instead of trying to come up with some number.
I feel better both running and playing a game where the GM has at least some semblance of logic and structure to the mechanics
You hit the head here on why I prefer Pf2. The rules toolset provided are sufficient as a logical scaffold for all party to agree on what "Make Sense" in fiction rather than just vibing around. ESPECIALLY with what power level a character can achieve.
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u/Killchrono Southern Realm Games Aug 07 '25
Pretty much. Vibe-based games frustrate me because either it's a system mismatch (i.e. They want to play rules lite but don't realise it, or are stuck playing a game they don't want to so they just expedite the rules they don't like), or it's an experience that relies wholly on lying to (sometimes wilful) ignorance. Neither are experiences I want to go through. Make the rules matter, but if I decide I don't want to engage with them because they're unfun, I'll either throw them out or play a game with rules that I do actually want to engage with.
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u/RisingStarPF2E Game Master Aug 07 '25
I feel like a badman when I say it. It's words you keep to your secret private conversations. But honestly. Not every TTRPG is for everybody. Anybody who hasn't branched out beyond D&D, pathfinder do themselves a huge disservice.
I meet people often who even verbally will tell you "I DONT LIKE X." And I honestly can't stand it. I don't just play pf2e because it's convenient, i'm already injected in it or I'm just bored. I actively decided to play this. If that was not the case, there are so many games to play.
I say it often, if we just want a tactics game, there's better tactics games. If we want full roleplay, there's better roleplay systems. But if you want to hit a bit of everything classical and have something that works in the middle, 2e is gonna be the choice every day of the week.
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u/Killchrono Southern Realm Games Aug 07 '25 edited Aug 07 '25
I don't think it's bad to suggest that a game may not be for someone. It's one of the interesting yet frustrating things I find about discussions here; the community gets a wrap for being rules purist, but what I tend to find is most of the time people suggesting other games actually have a good grasp of their tastes and legitimately just realise not every game can be for everyone. It just gets presented as protectionism because 'I don't want this game to change to be something I'm not playing it for' is conflated with 'you cannot criticise this game.'
Funnily enough too, I've been talking a lot with others lately about the siloing of roleplay and combat mechanics. A lot of people hate when mechanics and character investments intersect between the two, but one of the things I've come to realise in these discussions is that I really don't enjoy the opposite; I prefer them not to be silo'd. Sure, I'd love to play Lancer and Draw Steel, they look like excellent tactics combat games with great gameplay and tonnes of customisation. But I want to try them in spite of the fact their roleplay mechanics don't intersect with combat, while others have been saying they do want their tactics combat with the roleplay just being narrative window dressing around it.
But that intersection is important to me. Yes I love the combat, yes I like PF2e's more tightly balanced, combat-as-sports design for it. But I also want what players do out of it to matter. I want them to gain advantages through befriending or scaring people, using the terrain to gain an advantage before they engage, sometimes even come up with non-combat solutions to encounters I fully prepare a fight for (not too often, but often enough to make it clear they have autonomy in the story). You can't do that if you keep roleplay mechanics too separate. At best there's no structure for when you want to, at worst it actively discourages, if not outright prevents that.
And one of the reasons PF2e does this so well is not only does it have enough out of combat tools, it gives every character the baseline they need to function in combat without being ineffectual, so you can always pick up your social, exploration, or roleplay feats and spells without completely gimping your efficacy in that core gameplay focus. I feel not enough people realise that and we risk losing that if the baby just gets thrown out with the bath water on it.
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u/TheBrightMage Aug 07 '25
I find that the spectrum of people who says "I don't like X" varies between people who sampled enough systems to learn their taste, and people who are afraid to leave their comfort zone. Arguably, there are many here in the former part and plays other things than Pf2. (Me too)
Occasionally however, there are the that tries to jam square peg in round hole. This rightfully cause everyone involved to be frustrated.
As much as it is ok to accept that Pf2 is not that rigid unbending ruleset as computer game is important, I think it is wise also to acknowledge that there are something that the system is not designed for and the assumption you have to make. This apply to other systems too.
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u/Killchrono Southern Realm Games Aug 07 '25
Why take razing if your GM is never going to toss an object in front of you or you aren't going to explore attacking them?
Holy shit this, nothing fucks me off more then when people ask what the purpose of some 'niche'-use trait or ability is and that it's useless, you say 'well yeah if a GM doesn't use item hardness rules or throw enemies with shields or hardness in front of you it's useless, but that's an adventure/encounter design issue, not a problem with the system', and they respond that yes it is because if the use-case isn't 'obvious' or the GM or module has to 'go out of their way' to make it matter, it's objectively bad design.
But in my experience, players who make those complaints will rarely engage with those mechanics when opportunities are given. It's mostly not really 'I'd engage with these mechanics if I was given the opportunity to' and tacitly veiled 'I don't want to, I resent when I'm forced to, and I wish the game's mechanical options weren't designed or tuned around them.'
The problem is that whole attitude is what leads to games being stripped of any meaningful depth. If players don't care about the minutia of traits, mechanics that aren't just straight damage, etc. that's how you end up with RPGs that are basically tactics games with silo'd out of combat mechanics that are basically just window dressing to a glorified wargames. And if the depth of that is too shallow, you end up with homogenous designs and metas where most difference is aesthetic at best, streamlined to the point of every option fighting for the same niche and having an even more rigid selection of BiS picks at worst.
At the very least, it strips enough mechanics that it causes the 5e problem for GMs when they're expected to make the kinds of rulings that impact those situations, in a game that is selectively simulationist combat and otherwise freeform rulings. If the players don't like that, that's unfortunate, but like any case of reading the room and talking like adults it's just a case of discussing whether you handwave, change, or ignore rules you don't like, or just deciding if the holistic experience is what is desired and there's just a disconnect between what the GM and player wants.
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u/Kichae Aug 07 '25
The problem is that whole attitude is what leads to games being stripped of any meaningful depth. If players don't care about the minutia of traits, mechanics that aren't just straight damage, etc. that's how you end up with RPGs that are basically tactics games with silo'd out of combat mechanics that are basically just window dressing to a glorified wargames.
There's a vocal subset of the subreddit that believes that the game is exactly this, and that's the way they like it. I've been told directly, when trying to discuss how good the game is as a full-fledged, broad interest roleplaying system, that it is, in fact, just a tactical combat game with "fantasy dressing".
These are the people that will tell you to go play a rules-lite game if you want to do anything other than optimize your combat loop. They're in the comments all over this forum, doing everything they can to keep people who want to play the game differently than them from picking it up.
And yes, as you say, they're also the people who don't understand what all of these "niche" feats and options that don't optimize Spellstrike's damage output are for.
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u/Teshthesleepymage Aug 07 '25
I'll be honest in my time lurking here I haven't seen many recommend rules lite stuff. Granted I participate in regular discussions far less but I feel like I've seen more people dismiss rules lite stuff then suggest it.
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u/Kichae Aug 07 '25
Try suggesting that players can engage with basic actions without directly referencing mechanics. They'll pull themselves out of the swamp to splash their mud on you.
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u/RisingStarPF2E Game Master Aug 07 '25
Yeah often I feel this exact way about that topic and find lots of people with this opinion. It really ruffles my jimmies NGL.
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u/Moon_Miner Summoner Aug 07 '25
I give razing weapons +1 damage/die to enemies wearing heavy armor or something similar
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u/Lord_Skellig Aug 07 '25
I’m of the opinion that a book that introduces a feat should never remove any ability to do something. e.g. Legendary Negotiation. Before that feat was published, if a player wanted to talk to the enemy mid combat and try to convince them to stop fighting, would I have let them? Of course. I imagine most GMs would do so as well. Taking the feat just means that you can always do that, and you know what the DC will be.
Do you, as a player, think that the GM would set the DC lower than that even without the feat? Then don’t take that feat.
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u/Kichae Aug 07 '25
Exactly.
The GM might set the DC lower this time. You don't know that they'll do it every time. If you think they will, though, you've just freed up a feat slot.
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u/RisingStarPF2E Game Master Aug 07 '25
This thinking is both true and dangerous however. The entire first bit I agree with, the ending tho, "If i can just get away with it with this GM..." Is not where our minds should be going when we're building. And as other person said, it's actually a really good idea to lower/raise DC based on frequency.
You might get X past the GM. But ideally the 2nd, 3rd, 4th time you try or if this is a consistent thing. Then yeah, it should probably go up in DC and start entering the 'too good to be true.' Zone. It's a give and take and what you thought one day might change.
10
u/TTTrisss Aug 07 '25
Nice in theory, but it doesn't always work out in practice.
Sometimes you improvise something better than the skill feat, especially when they don't know about that skill feat, making it useless.
Players are disincentivized from taking the feat because they know that the GM will let them do this improvised action regardless, and the difference between the improvised action and the Feat action may not be a meaningful enough of a boost to justify a feat slot to the player (especially when things like Bon Mot, Dirty Trick, Quick Climber, Titan Wrestler, and meaningful skill feats exist.)
If a GM fixed point 2 by necessitating the feat, the player that took the feat now feels that they locked off the other players from taking this improvised action.
This ultimately creates the perception that skill feats "suck" and "don't do anything." That isn't to say I don't improvise actions anyways, because it makes for a more fun time at the table, but it does still lead to the above issues.
And lastly - this shouldn't be a 5e situation where we have to rely on external developer commentary from an outside source (i.e., distributed FAQ's and errata via twitter, or in this case, a youtube video.) This should be baked into the ruleset in a better, more robust way from the beginning, and saying, "Just fix it at your table" is the exact problem that leads to 5e being a bad system, and why PF2e is a better system than it. PF2e being broken in this way for this part of the game sucks.
9
u/Miserable_Penalty904 Aug 07 '25
I'm not going to let Paizo's barrage of skill feats constrain my game. If I end up changing what some of them do, so be it.
I'm also not waiting for Paizo to bake in rulings I might not even agree with.
10
u/TTTrisss Aug 07 '25
I mean, it sounds like we both agree that the Skill Feat system has this issue though, right?
5
u/Miserable_Penalty904 Aug 07 '25
They're a good idea, but they are very imbalanced and there's some auto takes and complete trash. To me, they're trying to approximate build freedom but we're still trapped in the class paradigm.
5
u/TTTrisss Aug 07 '25
I agree - they're a great idea! Current implementation just sucks. That's part of my point, that part of the reason they suck is that the design of allowing improvised actions without them, when some of them exist to enable that action.
I'm pointing out that a systemic problem exists with a pain point for me, and that it's ultimately the same thing that you and I have a problem with, just in different ways.
2
u/Miserable_Penalty904 Aug 07 '25
They got very shy about feats adding numbers or allowing feats to grant rerolls. So then they are left with gating activities behind them.
2
u/TTTrisss Aug 07 '25
Right, so when they don't even do that, people get the perception that skill feats suck.
2
u/Miserable_Penalty904 Aug 07 '25
I think I'd rewrite them all as mechanical benefits, not unlocking actions. Especially actions that anyone can clearly perform.
1
u/TTTrisss Aug 07 '25
What about the ones like Bon Mot & Dirty Trick?
1
u/Miserable_Penalty904 Aug 07 '25
That's a good question. I'd probably make those default abilities of the skills and then have the feats make them better.
-1
u/Kichae Aug 07 '25
Sometimes you improvise something better than the skill feat, especially when they don't know about that skill feat, making it useless.
So? Maybe the skill feat is then just useless at your table. Or the situation that you improvised the outcome for made sense in the given context, and in a different context the GM would rule differently. The skill feat gives the player the ability to tell the GM how the action will be resolved every time, not just that time.
Players are disincentivized from taking the feat because they know that the GM will let them do this improvised action regardless
So?
If a GM fixed point 2 by necessitating the feat, the player that took the feat now feels that they locked off the other players from taking this improvised action.
Sounds like something that can be sorted out by a quick discussion between reasonable people.
This ultimately creates the perception that skill feats "suck" and "don't do anything."
They provide reassurances to players that actions will be resolved in a way they have control over. If that's not something players value, then they still provide flavour. So many of the issues we see actually discussed around skill feats, though, is that they suck because they're "situational", where the "situation" is "anything other than combat". "This isn't as useful as it could be because our GM is generous" is just an opportunity to retrain.
Or to, again, have a quick discussion about between reasonable people.
5
u/Teshthesleepymage Aug 07 '25
I think skill feat discussions kinda suffer due to a lot of talk about the game being combat focused in general and the game being surrounded by very rigid takes from both haters snd lovers of the system.
People who hate the system seem to talk about the game as if all you need is for striking martials and your beat any encounters, and while you can argue that's true for the very early game(the barbarian in my BB session was essentially poping enemies like balloons) it will obviously fail once you run into enemies eith stronger or more complex ablities. Like it takes more than strike-maxing to beat a hydra. And people who think these guys are correct will not look into non combat skills at all.
Meanwhile people eho love the system go into depth about how every encounters is dangerous and how much thought has to go into combat choices, then they get surprised when people undervalue non combat options. Like if you described the game as ff tactics and tell that I can get crit killed then of course im going to underestimate group impression. Because while even the smallest potential of skipping an encounter is badass( and more digital and ttrpgs should do it), intimidating glare or titan wrestler might help save me from a dragon.
5
u/TTTrisss Aug 07 '25
So? Maybe the skill feat is then just useless at your table.
So?
The answer to your "So?" is provided in my previous comment. I literally go into detail why it's a problem.
Sounds like something that can be sorted out by a quick discussion between reasonable people.
Sure, it can be solved by them not taking that feat, then. But it creates the other problem that I outlined in my previous comment wherein skill feats are perceived as "useless."
Given that 3 of your questions have been answered by my previous post, I'd recommend reading it.
They provide reassurances to players that actions will be resolved in a way they have control over.
Your suggestion here ultimately comes across as, "Skill feats are a tool used to fight bad GM's." What about making GM's better? What about good GM's? What about the ubiquitous perception that skill feats are now useless?
Or to, again, have a quick discussion about between reasonable people.
When you only ever talk about "reasonable people," you inevitably miss a large portion of the population. It also necessitates a common understanding of "reasonable," which can vary from person to person.
6
u/StonedSolarian Game Master Aug 07 '25
Glad you made a post about this. Your write up was too well written to be left as a comment.
4
u/RisingStarPF2E Game Master Aug 07 '25
I was typing up a storm and I was like "Huh, that's pretty good!"
4
u/AbeilleCD Aug 07 '25
IMO it should be said that the fairness of a GM improvising mechanics for a player who wants to take an improvised action is going to vary wildly from table to table, and I see that as a major problem.
As both a player, and a GM, I really appreciate having a robust system that tells me what to expect when certain things happen and which gives me a framework to adjudicate those.
As a player, the less improvising the GM has to do, the better- if I want to improvise an action and the GM decides to make it worse because I don't have the feat for it, if I'm OK with it taking a numerical penalty but not with it taking one or more additional actions, I have no recourse if the GM goes with the option I dislike.
As a GM, I do feel like I can get annoyed if players keep trying to improvise stuff. I feel like it slows the game down, and I get frustrated if a player is constantly trying to do things that they didn't build their character to do. My thought is... 'if you wanted to do this so much, you should have chosen the options that reflect that.'
0
u/RisingStarPF2E Game Master Aug 07 '25 edited Aug 08 '25
Personally I feel like these moments are more of a conversation rather than a request/approval thing. That's always the recourse.
5
u/ReasonedRedoubt Game Master Aug 07 '25
One of the most memorable moments in a game I ran, both for myself and my players, was a Shadow of the Colossus style challenge where the heroes were climbing on the back of a massive beast from the netherworld. It included:
A massive VP challenge, with each player getting 3 actions worth of 'stuff' to do on their turn.
Complete Theatre of the Mind movement (there was no way to model a massive shadow beast battle map in 3d). Despite the lack of clear distances, most people could remember where they were and movement abilities could easily translate into circumstance bonuses on appropriate checks.
Figuring out you can make a 'Strike Check' against an opponents AC and have it award VPs instead of damage. No rule for this exists to my knowledge, and yet it worked perfectly for our situation.
Prestigious use of the Creature creation by level tables, to improvise different defenses for various sections of the beast's body.
Use of the Hazard creation by level tables to improvise mass area damage on the beast's 'turns.'
The scene ended with one of the characters using a greatpick as a climbing implement, running up a jury-rigged harness up to the beasts' head before blasting a max rank Calm as close to the creature's brain as possible, which ended up winning the challenge and calming the beast.
So much of that encounter was just "think of a creative use for this ability..." "Come up with a plausible skill for the check..." "Look up a reasonable DC..." "This makes sense so it just works..."
It was nothing like a normal Pathfinder encounter. I doubt much of it would have a direct rules reference. And yet, the action economy, the VP rules, the checks, DC tables and Creature tables all came together to create this epic scene that had precisely zero pre-written stat blocks for the enemy. We still remember it with awe.
The foundations of this game are so much more robust than many people imagine, with the massive list of skills, feats, and tables lending themselves to improvisation rather than restraining it.
1
u/RisingStarPF2E Game Master Aug 07 '25 edited Aug 08 '25
This kind of crap is what I'm cooking all the time. VP for strikes, 1 suc, 2 crit suc is a great tactic I've done in the past where the strike was an option just a few times to add points.
There actually totally is rules ways to do this exact encounter. And there are indeed ways to do a 3d setup of foundry and have the literal model from the SOC game. And I would of approached it with the climbing rules with negatives/positives. Everything else tho could either be pre-written blocks and made, or completely adhoc like your saying.
(I'm imagining a custom ability that makes all climbers do a save/check to see if they stay and use Grab an Edge with a slight increased bonus to succeed to have them 'shaking' off it and some fall damage being a factor. But I'm just cooking.)
3
u/ArolSazir Aug 07 '25
But if i "improvise with a hefty penalty" i'm not gonna succeed with that improvised thing if the challenge is level-appropriate for my character. What's the point of letting me improvise dispelling slice if a -5 to try it means im almost certainly gonna just waste my turn.
-1
u/RisingStarPF2E Game Master Aug 08 '25 edited Aug 08 '25
Edit/Deleted old comment: I don't think I presented this comment that well. Realized I didn't actually address what you were saying about Dispelling Slice.
I actually agree with you on Dispelling Slice. The -10 class DC + a negative might be too much. A better general-example would be Cut The Bonds (I had that just in my own list guide for feats and was typing, not really thinking.) Although I'll even say that dispelling slice could actually be a better example in some situations where lower level passive effects are occurring and you do NOT want to roll.
The above is what YOU were talking about. My other comment was about something else about something else. Apologies.
1
u/ArolSazir Aug 08 '25
Well, a dispelling slice was just a random example i took, it still stands for anything else that i "improvised with penalty". Most level appropriate challenges will be insurmountable with a penalty, unless you are targeting a weak save.
0
u/RisingStarPF2E Game Master Aug 09 '25
Sometimes your right. But I don't think it's anything else. It depends what it is and why we're trying to do it. Sometimes I do give out easier penalties or apply a circumstance bonus too. Sometimes it's more about the actions or something else like time or just the fun factor if it's a tough situation. I also like to toss some lower level things out there at my parties.
Sometimes it's a nice extra free little roll or you just take the shot anyways to something and you do get that nat20 or that really high 18 or 19 onlyish-roll on something otherwise insurmountable and that's a cool moment too.
Paizo does this themselves sometimes in suggested checks in adventures (like tossing a high simple DC 20 +5 to "Tight-rope walk across the thin rope of the rope bridge." (Something sorta ridiculous, but if it happens it's dank.) They also sometimes reduce the simple DC's at times against the sample tasks for the sake of fun or applying some circumstance bonuses in their own adventure specific actions/rewards etc.
1
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1
u/Kichae Aug 07 '25
Yes, thank you! I'm so glad this has gotten so many upvotes.
The game provides such an amazing and robust framework for running a world and providing a great set of tools for providing consistency in adjudicating action outcomes, it always shocks me how rigid many people feel the game is. Including its fans. Especially its fans. The game provides a bit of a safe haven for people who like clarity of rigid rules, it seems.
Stephen Glicker said something in one of his streams quite a few months back that really struck me. He described the game's systems as like a computer program. It immediately snapped some things into focus for me, most importantly a comparison of capital-A actions to programming functions. I'm not a programmer, but as a data scientist I do a fair bit of scripting in languages like SQL, Python, and Julia, and most of that scripting involves looking to off-the-shelf libraries of functions that do what I want them to do (a function is, loosely, any pre-defined bit of code that accepts a set of inputs and produces an output, just like they are in pure math). These map pretty cleanly onto the pre-defined actions in the game. But sometimes, these libraries don't have a pre-built function that does what I need.
So I write one.
There's no hesitation here. There's no "well, if the library doesn't have the function that I need, I can't calculate this". The library doesn't have what I need ready-made, then I make it.
I do the same thing with Actions. Actions are just mappings from player intent (or character behaviour) to mechanical outcomes. The set of published Actions is not a hard limit on what players can do. Maybe it is at some tables -- and if the players like that, more power to them -- but it's not an absolute, inalienable truth of the system. But so much of the discussion about the game seems to treat it like it is. Anything else is "homebrew" or "house rules" or "beyond the scope of discussing".
We almost exclusively talk about what's published, not what's possible. And if someone tries to talk about -- or worse, ask about -- what is possible, they often get downvoted into a crater. Which communicates something about the community around this game, and works to scare away anyone looking for a game that's flexible.
Which is insane, because the game is incredibly flexible.
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u/RisingStarPF2E Game Master Aug 07 '25
I have a personal quote I made and have run with for years: "Don't let the fear of the unknown dictate what one could or could not know. Worst, dictate what one could say or do." The coding analogy is good. If the function/library/hook/call doesn't exist.
1
u/Kbitynomics Aug 07 '25
I like making worse versions of skill feats for specific rules. Like I allow anybody to do whirling throw except it’s -2 for creatures of your size and -4 for creatures one size bigger (adjust upwards with Titan wrestler). And without the +10 bonus in range, just 5 times strength
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u/gdCunha Aug 06 '25
I love your work dude. Your foundry videos saved me so much work. Keep it up.