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Bulmahn on Pathfinder 2 Design Goals; Plus Proficiency Clarifications & Archeologists!
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<blockquote data-quote="Arakasius" data-source="post: 7738665" data-attributes="member: 6944960"><p>Dave they have been pretty explicit why they want untrained to be viable. Basically in PF1 at the start even if untrained (lets say something like stealth) the untrained fighter or sorcerer could be pretty decent. Lets compare 3 numbers at level 1.</p><p></p><p>Rogue: 8 (4 dex + 3 class skill + 1 rank)</p><p>Sorcerer: 2 (2 dex) </p><p>Fighter: -1 (2 dex - 3 armor class penalty)</p><p>You can add 1 more each to sorc/fighter if they take a skill point in stealth, fairly unlikely since both classes are very skill point starved. (both getting base 2 + int mod and neither class having any use for int)</p><p></p><p>At this point you have a stealth check of likely DC 10-13. That means on a DC 13 the rogue has a 75% change to succeed, the Sorcerer 45% and the Fighter 30%. All fairly reasonable numbers. The fighter can take off his armor and you have a reasonable chance as a group to pass a stealth check.</p><p></p><p>Now go to level 8 (not too high) and you get this:</p><p>Rogue: 16 (5 dex, 3 class, 8 skill ranks) (could be more with rogue talents)</p><p>Sorcerer and Rogue are still 2 and -1, but at least the Sorcerer might have a chance to cheeze it from spell usage.</p><p></p><p>We give something there like a DC 21 and the rogue almost auto passes while the Sorcerer/Fighter auto fail. This behavior is very prevalent in mid/high level PF play, and only gets worse as the party levels up. Any skill is either auto pass for the trained player or auto fails for the other players. Hence they just sidestep all skill checks through either murder-hoboism or spells.</p><p></p><p>Rev it is a deliberate choice to make skills get better as you level. This does have some issues like you said, but if you go the other way it makes skills completely useless. You either auto pass if you invest or auto fail if you don't. You could solve this by giving every class a glut of skill points to work with, but what does that actually do besides bog down leveling? Allowing all classes to have a broad competence of skills that a party can actually use skill checks and not cheese them has some value. Of course the way to also do this is what 5e does and get rid of skills progressing at all relative to other party members, but that runs into issues of why isn't a level 20 adventurer better at skills then they were at level 1? They've stated here that their goal in PF2 is to make the players heroic so hence they went with level scaling. So now with the above example of 75%/45%/30% those numbers hold as the party levels up instead of the current PF1 reality of 100% for trained characters and 0% for anyone else. (especially problematic with clerics, sorcerers, fighters and most martials)</p><p></p><p>So instead of gating things based on the skill value, they're gating the actions they do on the skill proficiency. Which I hope doesn't get too complex with the different tiers, but I understand why they did it. If they want players at level 20 to have vastly better skills than they did at 1, they have to keep the party up with them so skill checks don't become pointless. There is no way about that. They need to reduce the spread. 5e and PF2 really have very similar systems atm other than the level being added. Point being the game is not fun when skill checks break down and only one person can roll and everyone else is excluded from the skill system.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Arakasius, post: 7738665, member: 6944960"] Dave they have been pretty explicit why they want untrained to be viable. Basically in PF1 at the start even if untrained (lets say something like stealth) the untrained fighter or sorcerer could be pretty decent. Lets compare 3 numbers at level 1. Rogue: 8 (4 dex + 3 class skill + 1 rank) Sorcerer: 2 (2 dex) Fighter: -1 (2 dex - 3 armor class penalty) You can add 1 more each to sorc/fighter if they take a skill point in stealth, fairly unlikely since both classes are very skill point starved. (both getting base 2 + int mod and neither class having any use for int) At this point you have a stealth check of likely DC 10-13. That means on a DC 13 the rogue has a 75% change to succeed, the Sorcerer 45% and the Fighter 30%. All fairly reasonable numbers. The fighter can take off his armor and you have a reasonable chance as a group to pass a stealth check. Now go to level 8 (not too high) and you get this: Rogue: 16 (5 dex, 3 class, 8 skill ranks) (could be more with rogue talents) Sorcerer and Rogue are still 2 and -1, but at least the Sorcerer might have a chance to cheeze it from spell usage. We give something there like a DC 21 and the rogue almost auto passes while the Sorcerer/Fighter auto fail. This behavior is very prevalent in mid/high level PF play, and only gets worse as the party levels up. Any skill is either auto pass for the trained player or auto fails for the other players. Hence they just sidestep all skill checks through either murder-hoboism or spells. Rev it is a deliberate choice to make skills get better as you level. This does have some issues like you said, but if you go the other way it makes skills completely useless. You either auto pass if you invest or auto fail if you don't. You could solve this by giving every class a glut of skill points to work with, but what does that actually do besides bog down leveling? Allowing all classes to have a broad competence of skills that a party can actually use skill checks and not cheese them has some value. Of course the way to also do this is what 5e does and get rid of skills progressing at all relative to other party members, but that runs into issues of why isn't a level 20 adventurer better at skills then they were at level 1? They've stated here that their goal in PF2 is to make the players heroic so hence they went with level scaling. So now with the above example of 75%/45%/30% those numbers hold as the party levels up instead of the current PF1 reality of 100% for trained characters and 0% for anyone else. (especially problematic with clerics, sorcerers, fighters and most martials) So instead of gating things based on the skill value, they're gating the actions they do on the skill proficiency. Which I hope doesn't get too complex with the different tiers, but I understand why they did it. If they want players at level 20 to have vastly better skills than they did at 1, they have to keep the party up with them so skill checks don't become pointless. There is no way about that. They need to reduce the spread. 5e and PF2 really have very similar systems atm other than the level being added. Point being the game is not fun when skill checks break down and only one person can roll and everyone else is excluded from the skill system. [/QUOTE]
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