Skill Feats In Pathfinder 2

Monday's Pathfinder 2 preview over at the Paizo blog talked about skills, so it only makes sense that the Friday preview would take a look at skill feats in the upcoming game.

"One that will stand out to risk-averse players is Assurance, which allows you to achieve a result of 10, 15, 20, or even 30, depending on your proficiency rank, without rolling. Are you taking a huge penalty or being forced to roll multiple times and use the lowest result? Doesn't matter—with Assurance, you always get the listed result. It's perfect for when you want to be able to automatically succeed at certain tasks, and the kinds of things you can achieve with an automatic 30 are pretty significant, worthy of legendary proficiency." This puts a new spin on critical results, as the Assurance feat lets you get the result that you might need for your character, even if it is a low roll.

Characters get a feat on every even-numbered level, so this is going to mean (at least) 10 feats for a character over the course of playing across 20 levels. "At their most basic level, skill feats allow you to customize how you use skills in the game, from combat tricks to social exploits, from risk-averse failure prevention to high-risk heroism. If you'd ever rather just have more trained skills than special techniques with the skills you already have, you can always take the Skill Training skill feat to do just that. Otherwise, you're in for a ride full of options, depending on your proficiency rank." We saw in the update about skills how the number of skills, and how your character advances in them. Skill feats are the road to further customization of your character's skills, and may be a missing piece of the advancement pie.

We know that skill mastery is going to be in "tiers" of expert, master and legendary, and the skill feats will give extra abilities with skills. For example, the cat fall feat: "Your catlike aerial acrobatics allow you to cushion your fall. Treat all falls as if you fell 10 fewer feet. If you're an expert in Acrobatics, treat falls as 25 feet shorter. If you're a master in Acrobatics, treat them as 50 feet shorter. If you're legendary in Acrobatics, you always land on your feet and don't take damage, regardless of the distance of the fall." At the cost of one feat, you receive a lot of new capabilities for your character's acrobatics skill. I suspect that more than a few Pathfinder 2 games are going to see a lot of high level rogues falling from very tall things.

Legendary characters, on either side of the screen, are going to be tough to beat in Pathfinder 2 games. "Legendary characters can do all sorts of impressive things with their skills, not just using scaling skill feats but also using inherently legendary skill feats. If you're legendary, you can swim like a fish, survive indefinitely in the void of space, steal a suit of full plate off a guard (see Legendary Thief below), constantly sneak everywhere at full speed while performing other tasks (Legendary Sneak, from Monday's blog), give a speech that stops a war in the middle of the battlefield, remove an affliction or permanent condition with a medical miracle (Legendary Medic, also from Monday's blog), speak to any creature with a language instantly through an instinctual pidgin language, completely change your appearance and costume in seconds, squeeze through a hole the size of your head at your full walking speed, decipher codes with only a skim, and more!" This is going to mean that there are going to be some pretty impressive high level characters in Pathfinder 2 games.

What do you think? Is the added flexibility that skill feats will give to character counter the changes to the skill system, or make them better?

 

[Celebrim]

I'll take my clear understanding of physics and the fact that if magic isn't involved then those laws should apply to any game narrative and play any one of the many, many games elsewhere that accept those facts.

I'm not going to quibble over your specific complaints which would be any number of rabbit holes to go down. But I do want to quibble with the bolded part of your statement because I don't think it's sustainable, at least not in the way you stated it.

While there might be some setting where it would be reasonable to conclude that if magic wasn't producing an exception to the usual rules, that you could assume that physics applied, the typical high fantasy high magic world of D&D is not such a setting.

D&D not only assumes the existence of magic. D&D assumes the existence of a physical universe very different - very very different - from the observable physical universe.

For example, D&D assumes the existence of four elemental planes and elemental creatures from those planes. Therefore there is no reason to assume that the periodic table of elements exists in any D&D universe, and no reason to assume that the fundamental building blocks of matter look and behave anything like those of the real universe - no strong and weak nuclear forces, no electrons, no protons, no nuclear mass or weight or atomic numbers, no valences, and indeed no basis of any physical chemistry as we know it.

Further, there are strong hints that the world that exists is the world the ancients believed existed, and as such any number of physical experiments in a D&D universe might produce subtly different but profoundly different results than those obtained in the real world. For example, it could be that kinetic energy increases linearly with velocity rather than with the square of it. It could be that if you burn an object the products of the combustion weigh less than the burnt object rather than more than it, meaning that mass is not conserved and that combustion doesn't necessarily involve binding oxygen atoms to other atoms (and for that matter that oxygen isn't an element but a compound). It could mean that if you submerge a cannon in a pool of water and start grinding, eventually you stop producing heat. Further you have to deal with concepts like ethereal and astral, and animism suggesting that things don't move because they are governed by universal laws, but because of individual animus that animates them according to the will and properties of the individual bit of matter. This suggests that the Galilean/Newtonian universe doesn't exist. For example, in my own game gravity doesn't exist and isn't a property of mass. Rather, things fall because earth spirits pull things back to the ground, and birds fly not merely out of aerodynamics but because they are creatures of the air not subject only to the command of earth spirits.

In short, there is no reason at all to think that a typical D&D universe has anything but the most superficial resemblance to the real worlds laws of physics. And even if you prefer your own D&D setting to have that maxim, there is no basis for asserting that the maxim is a fact rather than simply a personal preference.

Finally, while I don't particularly endorse the first draft mechanics Pazio is throwing out there, I can in fact give you a physical basis to most of them that would not violate the 'laws of physics' as they exist in a D&D setting. For instance, I can tell you how a thief without magic (per se) steals the shoes off a person while that person is standing in them. However, much of that is I think going to come down a quibble about what magic actually is. So, purely in the interest of provoking some thought, what does it mean to do magic in D&D. Please give your answer in a form that gives magic a tangible physical basis, because one thing you'll note about magic in the real world and all dictionary definitions of it is that they assume it is something that doesn't exist or isn't understood, and none of those definitions hold up in a D&D universe. In the D&D universe, magic is natural and not supernatural.

 

[Celebrim]

Wouldn't the same argument apply to feather fall?

No.

 

[mellored]

No.

Why?

 

[Kobold Boots]

Feather fall - first level spell with a distance and duration component.
Skill feat (as presently understood) - not limited by distance or duration component.
Outcome - advantage skill feat.

That said, I'm firmly in the camp of folks that want to see the rules as published before jumping off the cliff.

 

[Celebrim]

Why?

Because there is no reason to believe that Feather Fall works by increasing the durability of the person doing the falling. If under a feather fall, and in normal circumstances, you never slam into anything at high speed. So why would you think that feather fall grants any protection at all from high speed collisions?

One of the general problems with this whole 'but physics' argument is that people are making assumptions about how magic works that are simply unwarranted. We don't know how magic works, and D&D does not generally give an underlying basis of magic, leaving the details up to the DM. It's ridiculous to invent a dumb explanation for how the magic works or even how the physics works, and then use that as a basis of suggesting that it's stupid and incoherent when you are the source of the incoherence yourself. Your just going around burning straw men at that point.

 

[mellored]

Why would you think that feather fall grants any protection at all from high speed collisions?

For the exact reason you stated.

you never slam into anything at high speed.

There is no difference between you slamming into other things at high speed, and things slamming into you at high speed.

That's not making up physics. Try it out for yourself.
Take a baseball bat an hit an apple. Then throw an apple at a baseball bat at the same speed. You'll get the same effect.

One of the general problems with this whole 'but physics' argument is that people are making assumptions about how magic works that are simply unwarranted.

Wasn't "but physics" your whole complaint about the skill feats?

 

[Tony Vargas]

So, purely in the interest of provoking some thought, what does it mean to do magic in D&D. Please give your answer in a form that gives magic a tangible physical basis,

To 'do magic' in D&D is to open a conduit to another plane of existence (the positive material) and channel/shape that limitless energy into energy or matter with specific effects, typically based on the pattern provided by the spell you're using to do it (though innate abilities and items shape magical energy in their own ways, too).

because one thing you'll note about magic in the real world and all dictionary definitions of it is that they assume it is something that doesn't exist or isn't understood, and none of those definitions hold up in a D&D universe. In the D&D universe, magic is natural and not supernatural.

Ouch.

Wouldn't the same argument apply to feather fall? That a boulder falling into your head would be the same as you falling head first into a boulder?

At least back in the day, you /could/ cast FF on a boulder flying at you...

 

[Schmoe]

A fair number of people here are trying to change what I have clearly stated to suit their own preference and arguments. Some are trying to ignore that I am talking about the realism of a mundane non-magical/non-ki etc. skill by saying 'but magic'.

I bolded your quote for emphasis.

Why do you assume it is a mundane skill? Why does everyone else have to abide by your assumptions?

In my games, the legends don't talk about that guy who did fell 30' and only got a little bit banged up. The legends talk about the legendary hero who fell from the chariot of Apollo and walked away.

 

[Celebrim]

For the exact reason you stated.

There is no difference between you slamming into other things at high speed, and things slamming into you at high speed.

If I drop a feather from height, it will fall slowly to the ground. A feather accelerated in the atmosphere will quickly slow to low velocity. So if I drop a feather onto a boulder from height, I would very much expect it to always lightly fall on the boulders.

The same is not true in reverse. I can drop boulders onto feathers and produce impacts with a lot of kinetic energy. I can strike feathers with baseball bats and produce impacts with a lot of kinetic energy.

That's not making up physics. Try it out for yourself.
Take a baseball bat an hit an apple. Then throw an apple at a baseball bat at the same speed. You'll get the same effect.

Actually, you won't get exactly the same effect, but that's beside the point. The most important point is this is a terrible analogy. Feather fall has no effect on anything hitting you. What feather fall does is make you fall like a feather. It has an effect on how you are thrown or how you fall. It has no effect on how things fall into your or how things are thrown into you.

Featherfall does something that makes you comparatively buoyant in the air so that your terminal velocity is relatively low and safe. It does nothing to effect the velocity of things flying into you.

Wasn't "but physics" your whole complaint about the skill feats?

I have no idea what you are talking about. You'll have to give me a quote, because I'd guess you are thinking of someone else. My actual complaint about skill feats (and I've done rather little complaining about them) is something no one has yet really focused on.

 

[Shasarak]

If a Fighter in his underpants can take zero damage from slamming into rock at 120 mph, then they also shouldn't take damage from trebuchet rocks hurled at them, or take damage from any kind of kinetic damage attack.

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Suit yourselves - I'll take my clear understanding of physics and the fact that if magic isn't involved then those laws should apply to any game narrative and play any one of the many, many games elsewhere that accept those facts.

Your clear understanding of Physics should be able to tell you that a Fighter slamming into something does not equal a trebuchet rock slamming into the Fighter. That is just classical Newtonian physics afterall.